and that is why you shouldn't yell...

so jeremy and i had the worst travel agent in the world. proof of this fact is that we leave for india for less than a month and we were still sans tickets. (a big thank you to dr. varghese for the referral). this was the case despite our best efforts not to be ticketless. despite our stalking and harassing mathew our (not so) fantastic travel agent. no tickets. in fact, no return calls or emails. now, just for the record, i'm a level headed girl- pretty laid back concerning just about everything. it takes a lot for my patience to wear out. even more for me to become angry. but just to let you know, mathew is a lot. and apparently my patience has a 2 month expiration date. something i wasn't aware of. so, i'm sure you see where this is going. i got angry. i yelled (okay, i don't yell, but i talked harshly to), i basically fired mathew, and i maaaay have written a extremely negative online review of their company. intense i know. you totally don't want to cross me.

but here's the rub. here's why i'm not allowed to be a mean person. so i quit mathew and was determined to take the matter into my own hands and find a solution. jeremy and i spent the entire morning searching for tickets. two major problems. one- the tickets were double the cost. more than half of my entire grant funding. expensive. two, and more importantly, in the span of a few hours, all of the tickets had disappeared. vanished. (i still think somehow mathew did this to make me suffer). we tried every option, including trying to make it through mombai and customs in under 3 hours in order to make another flight (which we were called idiotic for attempting this...thanks again dr. vargese).

finally after several hours, jeremy mentioned the inevitable. calling mathew. yes, that's right, calling the man that i had 'fired' and yelled at the day before and begging for forgiveness...and for a flight to india. yeah, that's a bit humbling. and humiliating. and hiiiiilarious. so i sucked it up and wrote an embarrassing apology email- so embarrassing in fact that i refused to let jeremy read it. seriously, the one time that i'm a jerk is the time where it comes back to bite me. moral of the story- sara needs to be nice, always. lesson learned, and j walter weatherman wasn't even required. aaaaand the good news is, i officially have a ticket to india!!! mathew pulled through and i am booked and ready (literally, extremely ready) to go. love it. we leave in exactly 25 days. and i have 25,000,000 things to do before then. awesome.

in other news, i might have the coolest family in the world. within the span of an hour today, my entire family of 7 (including 2 under the age of 1) committed to, and planned out a 2 week trip to visit me and explore all of india. and i do mean all of it. for christmas. my favorite christmas thus far was the one that my family spent a month in kenya. christmas day on the masa mara. this one is set to rival. christmas at the taj sounds nice. the entire turner clan gets around apparently. and i love that.