Stuck in Phoenix

So my post earlier today was a little optimistic. I, a naive traveler, just assumed that airlines were somewhat organized and tried to keep to a schedule. Today I have lost my traveling innocence. As we rushed to our gate in Phoenix to get on our flight to Philadelphia, the announcement was made that our flight was delayed an hour. Ok, we can handle it, we will be cutting it close for our connection, but we'll make it work. FYI: I was chosen to be a Group Travel Leader, so delays and such are what I'm supposed to deal with and inform the office of. Ok great, well we weren't going to miss our connection, so we don't need to worry. Not so fast. It was soon delayed another half hour, which means we would have 15 minutes to make our international connection. Problematic? Yes. And then it's even worse when they just end up canceling our flight. So basically we don't have a way to get to Philadelphia, therefore we don't get our connection to Tel Aviv. This is not good. So we all end up in the airport for 6 hours while the other two group leaders and I try to figure out what to do with customer service. I would think that it's kind of a big deal to cancel international travel for 51 college students. Unfortunately, the airline didn't seem to realize this very quickly so it was a very long ordeal. After much waiting and many questions, we are currently in a hotel (using vouchers), eating food (with vouchers), waiting for the call that we have flights. Hopefully they'll find us a flight that is sooner than next Tuesday, but if they don't, that will be the day we fly to Jerusalem. All said and done, we're safe, but we desperately want to be in Jerusalem. We all just keep telling each other that there must be a reason for this, and our group is going to get to know each other really, really, really well. Those other kids that flew out today and got there safely are just not having the same bonding experiences as we are. I don't know whether to be jealous of them, or grateful. Maybe I'll decide that later.