Day One: Team Work Makes the Dream Work

Saluti from Washington D.C!

Yesterday was the Rotary GSE Team’s first full day of travel. The plan included flights from Bloomington to Minneapolis/St. Paul to Paris to Turin, Italy. The day was off to a great start. We all arrived at the airport on time. Our checked bags were underweight. And we posed for our first team photo of the trip.

Shortly after we arrived at Bloomington’s airport for our flight to Minneapolis/St. Paul we learned that the plane was having mechanical issues and that Delta would book us on a later, smaller plane to Minneapolis. The catch was that we’d only have about 15 minutes to make our international flight to Paris. You know where this is going, right? Not to Paris!

Delta’s staff was awesome from the moment we hit the ground in Minneapolis. They let us off the plane first and told us to run and catch our flight. So that’s what we did. We ran as fast and as hard as we could to the other side of the airport for about 12 minutes.

We arrived at our gate just in time to watch our flight to Paris roll away. Delta’s team jumped into action to identify a way to get all five of us to Turin Italy by Tuesday---but most flights were overbooked. We had some options that could get us there, but it would require us to split up and take different flights to places like New York City, Atlanta, Rome, Paris, etc. And you know what they say, “Team work makes the dream work"! So we decided to stick together and the end result is getting to spend some rest time in two amazing cities: Washington D.C and Paris.

Monday was full of unknowns, flight changes and adventure! Our team worked together to overcome some early travel challenges and made some responsible decisions that kept us focused on our goal: getting to Italy.

Tonight we're taking the red eye to Paris. We'll have a half-day layover there before we take our final flight to meet our new Italian friends!

Arrivederci!