I've been waiting to travel abroad for years and it was one of the things I always wanted to do on the bucket list. 2024 was supposed to be a better year than 2023 and I was going to kick it off by traveling to Paris and Tokyo. I don't have the most money in the world but I tried to save up my money so I could fulfill this request of mine.

In 2023 my cousin went to jail for double vehicular manslaughter, my sister tried to kill herself, my dog died, I had to retire from MMA due to my deteorating health, my aunt got breast cancer, I was sick for a month and a half, and my grandma died. So needless to say 2023 was the worst year of my life bar none.

So for 2024 I tried to make it better by finally traveling out of the continent for the first time. When I finally purchased the tickets I was excited. I was the happiest I've been in a long time. I was going to spend a week in Tokyo and a week in Paris. My flights looked like this DENVER -> LA (United), LA->SEA->TOKYO (Delta), TOKYO->SHANGHAI->PARIS(East China Airlines), PARIS->NYC->DENVER(Jet blue). My ticket to Japan was only $400 so I was very stoked about the deal I got.

During the day of my first flight, the weather report said I was only supposed to get 1-2 inches of snow so I thought no big deal. But we ended up actually getting pretty substantial snow that caused my first flight to delay by 3 hours. I thought no big deal I'll talk to United and re-route to Seattle since I was going to miss my Los Angeles flight. I stood in line for 2 and a half hours to talk to United customer service but I was able to re-route to Seattle. The next thing I had to do was inform Delta about my change of plans. I contact the live chat agent and he told me since I wasn't going to Los Angeles I won't be able to go to Tokyo. So I thought he was bullshitting me so I went to talk to the Delta customer service rep in the airport. The service representative wasn't there so I had to call them via phone. I talked to the service representative and she said I could change it so I could go to Tokyo. I said great let's do it, but then she told me there was a fee. I asked her how much the fee was and she told me I would need to pay $1,500 just to delete the Los Angeles portion of my itinerary. There is no way in hell am I going to pay that especially since I'd have to remove a flight and not even add a flight. At that point I just broke down in the airport in tears, I was really looking forward to it especially with the new year. So I'm really not having high hopes for 2024 anymore and am prepared for the worst again.