Letter from August 29.
Sender: Anastasia Lebedeva, Houston, Texas
Recipient: Yulia Keda, Kazakhstan
I'm writing from Houston, Texas. You might ask how we ended up here. Why not from New Orleans?
We had to change our plans. At first, we wanted to go to New Orleans by bus the next day or on Wednesday. We thought we'd go kayaking there—all the streets are flooded, and it didn't work out with Nora. But it turned out that all trips were canceled until Friday. ALL of them. Even the flights. No one is going there. The city is closed. You probably saw on the news what's happening there because of the hurricane. We didn't know what to do, and Anya suggested catching our flight in Houston. New Orleans – Houston – Arizona. Well, we'll have to skip that city. No one refunded our bus money. But we couldn't let our tickets to Arizona go to waste!
And so, through a strange chain of events, Houston ended up on our travel calendar! After booking a hostel in advance and buying new Greyhound tickets, which cost us 50 bucks, we left for Houston on Tuesday afternoon.
It gets dark in Houston at 7 o'clock. So when we got off at the Greyhound station in Downtown, the sun had almost set. With a huge suitcase, we trudged in the direction where our hostel was supposed to be. Downtown isn't safe. There are dark alleys everywhere and suspicious people asking for change. Luckily, it was about a half-hour walk to the hostel.
In the morning, Anya called our airline to ask about the flight. We had tickets for New Orleans – Houston – Phoenix – Flagstaff. They said we would have to pay 1000 dollars just to board our flight in the middle of the route—in Houston. What the? Our mood was ruined. We were walking in a beautiful park with a lake and free Wi-Fi when we suddenly found this out. What 1000 bucks? Where would we get extra money? Anya called Greyhound to ask about tickets to Arizona. But the phone died. WTF?! I said: we should have stayed in Dallas and waited for the bus, but we're stuck here. After arguing with Anya, we decided to go grab a bite, charge the phone, and book bus tickets online. It's so beautiful around, but we're not in the mood. We walked through a sculpture park. It's peaceful. Everyone is relaxing, reading, and we don't know what to do.
WHAT to do? We went to Starbucks. We could only hope that if we canceled our flight from New Orleans in advance, we would get at least part of the 502 dollars back.
Anya called the airport. She talked for a very long time. They told her that our Friday flight from New Orleans was also canceled! And they would change our tickets! We will fly to Flagstaff from Houston. And we won't have to pay! Apparently, it was all meant to be: the buses were canceled, the phone died. After such stress, we needed an excellent Frappuccino. At the same time, we decided to do a little shopping – for such an occasion.
That's all, I'll finish here. Let's chat later!
