November 27 – 30, 2018
This was perhaps my most intriguing trip, yet. The background of this is that a sorority sister posted a link on my wall saying, “You should apply for this!” JetBlue was looking for individuals to apply for an all-expense paid volunteer trip to an unknown destination for four days. You wouldn’t know the destination until you were on the plane! Well, why not, I thought, it’s a long-shot but it’s six questions.
A few weeks later, I shockingly got an email that I was accepted into the JetBlue Check In for Good contest – one of 50 out of 40,000! I was able to take one guest, so I chose another sorority sister who was very involved in volunteerism as well. The trip was basically in the middle of the week, so getting time off from work, school, and my internship was stressful, but I was not going to turn down a crazy once-in-a-lifetime experience! They gave us a packing list and some basic details, but that was it!
Our first step was to get to JFK Airport in New York. We booked a flight out of Portland, Maine, early in the morning on Tuesday, November 27. Aside from this flight, all other expenses were paid, including airfare to “Destination Good” (the location to be revealed on the plane), resort accommodations, travel to and from the airport, meals, etc. Our flight was scheduled to leave Portland at 5:36 AM…. we were delayed…. a lot. Due to the snowy and icy weather, the plane had to wait in line for de-icing. We had a set time we were supposed to be at JFK. I was so anxious and convinced we were going to miss it.
After about an hour and a half of being delayed, we were up in the air! We made it to the proper JFK gate later than we should’ve, but we made it 15 minutes before the plane boarded! Thank goodness we weren’t delayed any longer! We were given our welcome packet that included the envelope revealing our destination: Punta Cana, Dominican Republic! (I do have a little secret – the flight attendant on our flight from Portland looked up our gate number and revealed the destination to us while we were on our way to JFK because we were concerned about the delay. They looked at us so weird when we said we only knew the gate number and not the destination! Other passengers were very interested in the program and how crazy it was to just hop in a plane to somewhere unknown!) We still were excited and pretended to be a little bit surprised 😉
And we were off to the Dominican Republic!
