The adventures of Jake and Nikki

December 26th, Friday 1:00 p.m.
After multiple delays accumilating in two additional hours sitting on the runway at Denver International Airport, Nikki and I, the amazing Jacob, finally are in the air. We can only hope that we catch up on lost time, as we only had an hour delay in Newark, NJ for our next leg of the flight. I immediately read my only book, completely...This could be a looong trip. Nikki orders milk to the bemused stares of her fellow passangers, particularly the young boy in front of her thinking to himself, "how silly!" and then she passes out.

December 26th Friday 6:30 p.m.
We arrive at 6:30, the same time that the plane is scheduled to leave, and see on our phone app that they are delayed by 20 minutes. There is hope! We bolt out of the plane, determined to make it to our flight no matter what. I yell at Nikki to aim for the elderly as I shoulder my way through a group of children (Disclaimer: This might be slightly embellished) and we run through and over fellow travelers until we, completely out of breath, reach our gate. Success, or so we think as we see our plane waiting for us...The only problem isM that the gate is closed, doors locked. No matter how hard we plead we are not allowed on board. we are instead directed to the evil and dreaded United Customer Service.Dun.Dun.Dun.

This is now Nikki writing, so the story may be less exagerated (just as a heads up)! When we reached the customer service desk, a little winded but strong in spirits, we began what would be the first in a series of conversations with the man on duty. We began by telling him we had just missed our flight to Brussels and asking what we should do to remedy the situation. I told him that our plane was still sitting on the run-way and asked if there was any possible way to get onto the plane. He said it was not likely, but that I could go and check if I wanted to. I did go back and check with the people working the gate, but they said that because the walkway to the plane had already been detached, that it was no longer an option for us to get on the plane. Upon hearing this, I gave our mentor Mike a quick phone call. He picked up and I told him of our predicament, and he was very understanding and we agreed to meet in the Kigali hotel in 48 hours. By this time I was back with the customer service agent. He managed to rebook our flights for the following day, but an hour early and this time flying through Amsterdam. This meant that Jake and I had a full 23 hours until our next flight. The airlines did pay for a hotel room for each of us and gave us meal vouchers. We caught the train and taxi that took us to our hotel. We were both very hungry and ate a big dinner! After this, we sat down and played a couple rounds of cards and then each went to our respective room and retired.