In 2016, me and my family were going back to the United States for the summer. The routine was, we would drive from Dongguan, China, where we lived and went to school, to the Hong Kong airport, because Dongguan was too small a city to have one. Then we would get on a flight that would take us into a country in Europe, usually Germany, we would have a short layover there, then get on another flight to Dallas, Texas. The Dallas airport was enormously huge and very well decorated, but they had a lot of storms there, which often caused many delayed or canceled flights. From there, we would finally arrive home in Charlotte, North Carolina, and one of our relatives would come get us. Now, that was not the case that year. 
We all woke up early in the morning, ate a small breakfast, put some last-minute items into the suitcase, and went outside to wait for the van taking us to the airport. The drive was roughly 2 to 3 hours depending on how much traffic there was so we would all just fall asleep or listen to music. When we arrived at the airport, we checked in our luggage, we went through security, then sat down as we waited for our flight. Everyone did their own thing while we waited. About an hour or so later our flight came, and we left for Frankfurt, Germany. 
As soon as we arrived at the gate, and got off the plane, we all speed walked through the airport, trying to keep up with my dad. We sat down at our next gate, and everyone continued to do their own thing. My mom walked back a long ways away because she saw a bakery. We got lunch at a restaurant nearby and continued waiting. The plane arrived, we boarded, and we took off. Now this is where things get interesting, this was the longest flight because we were crossing the Atlantic Ocean, it was about 15 hours long. We were flying over the ocean when we flew into horrible turbulence, and our plane dropped a couple 1,000 feet every so often. I could feel my stomach drop with the plane, and I was holding onto my dad’s hand, as he was sitting next to me. Imagine experiencing a strong earthquake like a 6.4 while you're in an elevator. The elevator would be shaking in its shaft ramming and grating its outside on the walls around it, and then you would drop. That is what it felt like. I was only 9 years old and I had never actually had turbulence on any of my other flights, or at least the ones I remember, so I was terrified. 
“We’re going to be fine; we just have to get around it,” my dad said to my sister and I, but I wasn’t listening, I was too scared.  
When we finally got out of the turbulence, I couldn’t go back to sleep, I was traumatized. My dad, who has flown on many more planes than I did, was used to it, and thinking the worst of this flight was probably over he went back to sleep, but little did we know that things were going to get worse. 
By now most of the flight was over, and we were flying over the United States. The captain came on the speaker and says, “we are going to land in Austen to refuel, and we’re going to sit there for a bit because there is a storm in Dallas.” That caused a chain of events to happen, when we did get to Dallas, we missed our flight to North Carolina causing us to sleep overnight in the airport on chairs with arm rests that we had to sleep between. We tried to be bystanders on another flight to North Carolina, but after an hour of everyone sitting on the plane waiting to take off or even taxi, the flight was canceled. 
The next flight we tried to go on, only 3 seats were available, and there was six of us. My mom, my sister, and I took the seats leaving my dad, my other sister, and my brother in Dallas. One of our relatives picked us up from the airport and took us home. Then late in the afternoon of the same day, my dad, sister, and brother came home. That was the worst airplane/airport experience I ever had, and it is still a record yet to be broken.