Days of flood: The group that got through!, June 7 & 8, 2008

Amy F.
Saturday June 7th:
I woke up early in the morning just wanting to get to the airport and be in Guatemala. It had been storming for almost 4 days and it had been raining almost non-stop. Because of the rain there had been flooding and a lot of the highways had been closed. We started to go to highway 65 then we heard that it was going to close soon, so we turned around and started to go home to see if we could just wait it out. We were almost home when Sara I. called us and told us to turn back around because it wasn’t closed after all, so we were on our way again but there was a hold up because there was a tree down blocking the road. We took a detour through the Brown county state park. When we finally got to the Indy airport only half of our group was stuck and couldn’t get to the airport because he floods. We had to leave without our to main leaders. The rain had followed us all the way to Guatemala and the power was out in the airport. We found Aida in the whole mess of people at the airport and she took us back to her home. We had dinner when we got there them we got into our rooms and went to sleep.

Sunday June 8th: We got up that morning and got ready to go then we were waiting for breakfast we turned on the T.V. that was in our room and we all watched Friends with Spanish subtitles. Then we all ate breakfast and then we explored their home while we waited for the bus that would take us to San Juan. The bus ride was really long especially for me. It was a 3 to 4 hour ride and I had to go pee half an hour into the ride. The whole bus ride Colin was trying take a picture of a gas station sign and he could never take the picture in time. When we got closer to San Juan we could see the lake and then the turns became sharper and scarier, and the whole time we were just sing songs and trying to remember the words to the songs that we were trying to sing. As soon as we got to the hotel I immediately went to the bathroom to take care of my business. We picked our rooms then we went to Patrona’s for a late lunch/early dinner. To end our evening we had a short meeting then went to bed.

Days of flood: The stranded group - June 7 & 8, 2008

Jamil –
Yesterday, the heavy rain flooded all the highways going to the Indianapolis airport. Half of the group had gotten to the airport, but the other half were not able to get past the flooded highways. It was an unfortunate experience because I thought that half the group weren’t going to Guatemala, including the to trip leaders. Fortunately, it was worked out so that the rest of the group could catch a flight the next day leaving from Louisville. The rest of the group is in Guatemala, and hopefully we’ll join them soon.

Arielle –
Yesterday, all the rain from the previous days became one big flash flood! Seeing all the dirty mud, churning and spinning while we were trying to find a possible route to get to the airport, I felt that all the hard work we had done was practically for nothing. And then I heard that while half the group was driving around Indiana, the other half had already gotten on the plane to Dallas. Thankfully after many hours of deliberation with American Airlines at a Columbus, IN, Subway restaurant, we came to a compromise: We were going to drive to Louisville the next day and take the flight to Dallas from there. So here I am, happily writing on a laptop about to go into security (at the Louisville airport)!

Sarah
June 8th and 9th, 2008
Yesterday (June 7, 2008) I got up in the morning thinking that I was going to go get on a plane and fly with everyone else to Guatemala. I was about to get in the van and start driving when we found out that highway 37 was closed. Ok no big deal there are soooooo many ways to get to Indy every things going to be fine. Well that didn’t really work, right when we started to try a new road it would get closed and we would have to start all over again. We went from plan A to plan B to plan W, until finally we ran out of options and there were no more plans to get to Indy. We all ended up meeting at a Subway in Columbus. Dena spent an hour and a half on the phone with the airlines trying to rearrange our tickets so we could leave out of Louisville. The next morning or today we met at Cracker Barrel at 8:30 to make our trip down to Louisville in time to catch our flight at 2:00. We spent the time waiting in the airport playing Mauwii. In Dallas we learned how to play Sara’s rules Uno (aka. Sruno). Now I’m sitting in our hotel it’s about 10:20 here and we are having a BLAST! Can’t wait to share our stories with you. Adios Amigos!