Airport Trouble

Leaving for the Brussels airport didn't go quite as planned. On wednesday we left for the airport at around 3:00 pm to get to Dulles airport in plenty of time for my 6:00 departure. As soon as we started driving it started to rain and hail. I was getting very nervous that my flight was going to get cancelled, but we checked and it was still on schedule. After we arrived safely, and checked in my 2 bags, we looked at the flight board and my flight was delayed an hour. I met up with my roommate Delaney and we said our goodbyes and were off to the gate. At this point it was snowing extremely hard. At the gate we met 8 other students from JMU who were going on the trip with us. It was a lot of fun meeting everyone and we all introduced each other and talked about the fun things we wanted to do while abroad. An hour or two after waiting they made an announcement that the flight was cancelled. Mid-announcement a girl in my program screamed, "go to the counter"and the ten of us ran up to be first in line to rebook. We all managed to rebook on the same 6pm flight for the next night and we thought the trauma was over. We then talked to all of our parents, who were trying to drive home in the snow storm, and found out that they were stuck in hours of traffic. After calling numerous hotels we were able to finally get a extremely expensive room booked for all 10 of us. We went to get in the cab line downstairs and then saw that it was at a minimum 500 people long. At that point we had left security so we were not allowed back into the gated area. We were stranded in the ticketing section that doesn't even have chairs in it. We had to sleep on our carry-ons, on a cement floor. It was miserable and cold. I didnt even fall asleep till 4 30 am. At five am the cab line finally died down and we managed to get in a cab. We decided to all go to a girl's house who lived about ten minutes away. The cab barely made it, but when we arrived her family was so nice and got us all couches/mattresses/blankets to sleep on. We were able to get a few hours of sleep and SHOWER!! It has never felt so amazing to shower. We woke up and had a pancake breakfast and headed back for the airport. Her family saved us!! We finally made it on our flight and I was asleep before we even took off.