Coming to America

David finished off his semester with a bang. He did great and we don't have to go back to Grenada. We packed up the last few days but were mostly concerned about selling our car. We have been praying and fasting that we could sell the car before we left but that didn't happen. We were given a name of a Grenadian that sells cars for you. He is a middle man so we thought we would try, but the problem is that we needed to replace the windshield but it wasn't scheduled until 4 days after we left. We left our car with some good friends and they were kind enough to help us out. We gave Sean, the Grenadian, the money for our windshield and he took $200 EC and we haven't heard from him. He totally hosed us. The windshield is fixed but the mechanic is $200 short and won't give up the car. We are so frustrated because we were trying to do nice things for others and be kind but we got hosed, this is not the 1st time either,,, just wait. The day before we left Sean called and said that the power was turned off at their home and he needed $200 EC to turn it back on. We told him we couldn't help because we were leaving the next day and we had already changed all of our money into US dollars. Now that we find out that we are $200 short at the mechanics and Sean is no where to be found we know that he took the money we gave him. Super duper frustrating.
So that is the car, we are still trying to sell it and are in the process of getting it from the mechanics.
Leaving Grenada I wish was a smooth transition but knowing us and our luck with travel it was another nightmare.
Originally we were to leave Grenada at 6:25 AM to Barbados at 7:25 then to Dallas by 10:30. This was plenty of time in Barbados to go through customs and immigration and check back on to catch our AA flight to Dallas,,, but this was not to be.
We got to the airport at 4:10 AM with 3 children and lots of luggage and LIAT airline ticket workers didn't even show up until 5:15 and they told us that our flight was delayed an hour and a half. K, that was bad but that still gave us enough time to catch our next flight. That 1 1/2 hours turned into 4 1/2 hours and we missed our connection out of Barbados to Dallas. The plane was in Trinidad and didn't even arrive until 11:15.... so now we are in trouble. We will be stuck in Barbados if we don't do anything. I talked to the LIAT ticket people and they said they take no responsibilities of flight missed from other airlines. They could not do anything for us.
David and I wanted to make sure that we did all we could to make sure we got back to the states, anywhere in the states so we started to call AA to get on a flight to Miami that was leaving at 4:00. They reserved our seats and confirmed, told us that it would be an additional $1300 dollars for the change. We didn't care at that point because we wanted to get off of the island and it didn't seem that we had a choice, so we booked it.
We finally got to Barbados and went up to the ticket desk and the lady told us that we shouldn't have called. LIAT took care of all of the passengers that missed the flight and payed for the transfer fee for them and booked them on their continuing flights. We couldn't cancel ours or we wouldn't have any seats on the flight. So that phone call cost us $1300. We were so ticked. We talked and talked to them. There wasn't anything that they could do for us and the customer relations people would have to work it out when we got home. At this point we were so ticked off and really had no faith that they would do anything for us. We were just trying to do the right thing and take care of our family. With the information that they gave us calling the reserving us seats seemed to be the best thing for our family, but again we got HOSED big time and it still makes me fume.
The rest of the flights went fine. We had to do customs and immigration in Miami also, but that was pretty smooth although there were tons of people. We got to Dallas at midnight and Michelle, David's sister picked us up and we had a great night at her house and fun morning with her kids. IT was such a blessing to have a warm welcome after being hosed and having a frustrating day. The kids were so great. They were tired from waking up so early and were disappointed when the flight was so late, but they were great on the plane and through all of the customs and immigration. They slept most of the flights. They were great.
We made our SLC flight and we were almost home.
We are glad to be back to the land of the free home of the brave. Grenada was a great experience and are so grateful that David was successful but we love America and it is a truly a blessed country.