The Flight!

So my first destination is to Guam! I will be spending a few months here, since I am going to be attending one of the Universities on the Island. However, I will not be posting anything about my school work on here. I will just be talking about my travel experience.

(View of mountains over western United States)

My flight was supposed to take 22 hours. However, after all was said and done, my flight took about 38 hours! First, I was supposed to fly to California, than to Hawaii, and then to Guam.

Water and mountains on the beach at my hotel

My first flight went very smoothly, and our plane actually made it to California a half an hour earlier than expected! However, my next plane in California arrived over an hour late! Therefore, I did not make it to Hawaii on time to get my plane to Guam. The airline rescheduled my flight free of charge. They gave me a series of vouchers. The airline paid for my hotel room at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort, transportation to and from the hotel, as well as $50 worth of food.The hotel was wonderful! I had a corner room with two balconies on the 8th floor! Beautiful views of the beach! The sand was very soft and the waters were warm and beautiful to swim in! The restaurants there were good as well, although a little pricey.



(Sign and waterfall at my hotel. It was beautiful!)

The next day, I got on my flight to Guam. That was probably one of the roughest flights I've ever been on. The plane went into turbulence often, because there were so many storms over the Pacific. The plane could not land at the airport in Guam, because at the time, there was a tropical storm over the airport. We tried to land three times and we were not able to do so. We were then going to land at the airport in Saipan. However, by the time we would have gotten there, it would have been too dark to land. (The airport had no electricity since they were hit by a typhoon earlier in the week.) So the plane had flown back to Guam, and we made an emergency landing at Andersen Air Force Base. Once we landed at the base, it started to down pour, we were not allowed off the plane, and the plane was guarded. We were stuck at the base for an additional 2-3 hours. They sent buses to the base (the buses had to be inspected before being allowed on the base). We were loaded onto the buses, and escorted to the domestic airport to go through customs. Even though I did not have my luggage for a day and a half, I am very grateful that we were able to land on Guam at all, and very thankful to all the service men and women that helped us land.