Eventful Travels

The bus trip from Madurai to Chennai was fairly uneventful, but the flight from Chennai to Abu Dhabi was a nightmare! We got to Chennai and unloaded the charter bus at Blossoms, the hotel we stayed at the first day. Several of us went shopping and I somehow got separated from the group in this huge shopping center called a Bizaar. The place is 5 stories with stairs on both ends and in the middle. While I was looking for my group, they were looking for me, but we never met up. I ended up walking back to the hotel alone, but it worked out... no troubles.
Then, 12 of us left for the Chennai airport at 11 pm. Dana was scheduled to leave at 2, and the rest of us at 4 am. Dana got off fine, as far as I know, but the rest of us ran into major difficulty. Apparently, the burning from Pongal festival was causing a heavy fog in Chennai, causing only our flight and one other to get delayed (I don't believe this excuse for one second!) We waited in line for almost 6 hours to talk to someone about switching our flights, and to get checked in. It was completely ridiculous! No one ever told the huge crowd of people waiting to check in that the flight had been delayed. We only knew becaused we'd been there since 11 so we were at the front of the line. Then, once they started rescheduling people for a later flight, the whole process really got out of hand. The airport staff had us move lines 3 times and it also took the guy forever to get one ticket changed and printed (and bag checked). Most of us had been up a full 24 hours by the time we had our boarding passes. Sadly, Miranda wasn't able to get her flight chnged, so she went back to the hotel, scheduled to go on the same flight we had originally been scheduled for, only for tomorrow. She will still arrive in Chicago before us.
The only option available to us was to reroute through Munich, Germany tomorrow and arrive in Chicago a full 27 hours later than originally planned. The worst part about the whole ordeal was that the guy trying to "help" us was practically sleeping (or high) on the job. Alyssa and I stood at the counter for a few minutes with him just looking around. We were like "uh... can you check us in now, we've been waiting for 5 hours!!" He says, "oh, you haven't checked in yet?" It was such a joke! I tried to stay in good spirits the whole time, but there were squatty potty toilets and very little food near by. There were no benches, so some people slept on the floor.
Once we finally got to Abu Dhabi things started looking up. They couldn't get us on an earlier flight, but the hotel being provided to us is fabulous! I'll post photos soon, but it has a swim up bar, a kids aea and a couple good restaurants. They're feeding us well and the rooms are so nice. I can't wait to crawl into my bed ! Speaking of... until next time...best of love.