that one time..

I have dreaded writing this post and have slacked at blogging because of it. It makes me super sad and want to cry even thinking about it still so bear with me. At the end of May I was prepping to go on a trip I had been planning for months. I was going to New York City for about 5 days and then to Israel for 8. I have a sister living over there right now and was so excited to go and visit her and all of the holy sites(Jerusalem, Mount of Olives, Church Sepulcher, Western Wall, Dome of the rock & Temple mount, Garden of Gethsemane, Garden Tomb, Via de la Rosa, room of the last supper, Masada & the Dead Sea,Nazareth, Tiberius & the Sea of Galilee) that I have read about my whole life. I have never been out of the country before so I was ecstatic to finally have the opportunity to do so. Israel probably wouldn't have been my first choice of places to go when leaving the country because I have always dreamed of going to Europe. I have a love for art history & cannot wait to go one day. Since my sister and her family live in Israel for the time being I figured why not go! What an amazing experience it would be & I've got to live it up while I'm single. Long story short we had a great time in Manhattan (lots of blog posts to follow!) and we were headed to the airport(thinking all was well in the world & we were right on time) at which I received texts and missed calls from my sister and her husband (thinking we were lost at the Tel Aviv airport) when in reality we were in a Taxi headed to JFK airport. Long story short (and embarrassing as it is) when planning our whole trip we read our flight itinerary wrong. We had planned our whole trip accordingly. We never even looked at our flight itinerary because we had our day by day plans memorized! We shouldn't have gone to the Broadway the night before, we should have been on our way to the airport!! We should have just arrived in Tel Aviv when we were only just on our way to the airport. I have never been so sick to my stomach until the moment we realized we had missed our flight. We finally got to the airport. Rushed around trying to find the terminal hoping we could transfer tickets and book another flight. Unfortunately the International airline we were traveling with only fly out of JFK twice a week and they were sold out for 3 weeks! I have never been so devastated in my entire life. Luckily we had a friend who lived in the city that let us stay the night with her. We ended up catching a flight the next day back to SLC and came back home. The lady we talked to on the phone from the International airline said we could use our credit up until September. (which wouldn't work for me because my sister we were visiting was coming to town for a month and I had three weddings I was shooting in August & just started working for a new company) Since I wasn't able to do it then I have talked to the airline and they wouldn't extend it, especially because we were a no show. My heart got broken again and again.

 

Through all of this I learned a few very important life lessons. Although yes, it was a silly mistake on our end (that probably a million people have made) 1. Always check your flight itinerary a million times before traveling. Especially when you are going to multiple destinations! I have learned that sometimes things (life in general) doesn't always go according to planned. You have bumps in the roads, cliffs you have to climb, and lakes you have to jump in to get through it. Things like this just make you stronger and you have to have a good attitude. Attitude is EVERYTHING. You have to make the best of the situation. It's rough & hard sometimes.You have to keep your chin up and realize that everything does happen for a reason. I don't know why things didn't work out or how we didn't catch our simple mistake of what day we were flying out, but I do know that it happened for a reason. Money is just money and it comes and goes. Hopefully I will get the chance to go back next year when things calm down over there(lots of craziness going on now) but for now I just have to laugh and remember the things I learned that one time when I missed my flight to Israel. :)