Kaboom

On the Friday before vacation started--that is, only about 2 hours before freedom--my friend, Amie, comes into the center for our Phonetics class saying that her flight to London was cancelled. Amie had planned this trip down to the very last detail, and she had been talking about meeting up with her friends and traveling all over England for weeks, so when I heard the news I felt awful that the cloud of bad luck that drags behind her had struck yet again. Having received no emails or alerts from my airline saying my flight was also cancelled, I felt no panic. I knew that there was some volcano going off somewhere, but it seemed far away enough for me. It took several more of my classmates coming in with the same news to warrant an internet search.

Closed? No... it can't be.

Not only was Charles de Gaulle closed, but also all the other airports in the area. And at that time I could not have known that the little mocking sign posted on the website saying the airport would be open again around 1 that afternoon would be the stupid carrot always dangling just ahead. When 1 p.m. rolled around a new sign posted a reopening time of an hour later, and then the later hour turned into one even later still. It just so happened that the airports--all airports in all of France, that is--remained closed for four days.

It turns out that the ridiculously long-named volcano in Iceland went KABOOM and then continued to cough up large amounts of ash that formed a cloud over most of western Europe. It contained a certain chemical that prevented planes from safely flying, which grounded everyone and put a kink in everyone's vacation plans--the same vacation for everyone in Paris.

Like I said: KABOOM.