Spain - Day 1 (Travel Day)

When I woke up this morning I had no idea of the adventure I was in for. Today was the first day of a task force trip teaching English to children in Spain. The trip to the airport was pretty normal, with no wrong turns and minimal stress. After getting through security, I caught up with another student from Bethel and sat to wait at our gate. At first, our flight had a 45 minute delay - no big deal. Then an announcement over the loudspeaker said that, due to high winds, the flight was delayed 1 hour and 20 minutes -- okay, still not a huge deal. We would still have plenty of time to catch our connection in New York. Then the really bad news came -- our flight was going to be delayed for 2 hours and 10 minutes. This would put us in New York 10 minutes before our connection left for Valencia, Spain. Would we make our connection or would we miss it and have to catch the next flight to Spain? The extremely helpful lady at the airline desk assured us that the flight was being rerouted so that it would only take 55 minutes to get to New York rather than 2 hours. This calmed our nerves - we were sure that we could make our connection with plenty of time to spare. However, after we had boarded the plane, the pilot announced that we would be in the air for 1 hour and 39 minutes. Um....what?
When we touched down in New York, we found out that our flight had left 9 minutes before we had arrived. After several phone calls and multiple visits to the airline desk, we decided to stay the night in New York and fly out the next day. So, after getting off the plane, we hiked through the airport, across the road, up some stairs and caught a train that took us to a bus station which took us to our hotel. Although our room is on the smoking floor (this smell will never come out of my clothes) and the view from our window is of a dusty bus garage, I'm still thankful to have a bed to sleep in. After riding in a car, a plane, a train, and a bus I'm running out of transportation options. Hopefully we'll be in Spain soon though and the real adventures will begin...