Here's are a few things I've been enjoying about being back in the USA:
- Shopping!! The Dollar Store, Walmart, Target, the outlet stores, etc.
- Listening to NPR on the radio while I drive Christina to her summer school class.
-Taking Christina to the local library, the nearby State Park, and other neat places (we're going to the aquarium tomorrow).
- Mexican Food!!!
- Micro-Breweries!!
- The Oregon Country Fair, "Que vivan los Hippies!"
- Watching movies instantly online from my mom's Netflix account.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Back "Home"
As I write this I am sitting in at the desk in my mom's guest bedroom and enjoying the view of one of Oregon's beautiful coastal forests. It is a nice, relaxing change from the hustle and bustle of a week spent in Quito, and I'm looking foward to two months of relaxing, spending time with family and friends, and, of course, shopping!!
Our trip from Quito to Portland was not un-eventful and I'm lucky that I have such a peaceful place to "recover." The hardest part was actually getting out of the country. Before we left I stressed and stressed about having the right paperwork - passports (1 for me, 2 for Christina), identity cards (2 for me, 1 for Christina), permission (signed by a judge and notarized) for me to leave the country with Christina without Lucho, etc. I thought I had everything right, but you can never be sure. I my experience Ecuadorian officials tend to be arbitrary and capricious. One person will tell you one thing and another will tell you something completely different. There is no way of knowing who will have the final word and in the end all you work may be useless because the laws have changed at the last minute.
So it was not without some trepidation that I approached the immigration desk in the airport. There were about 10 different booths, each staffed by a migration official in uniform (most of them young women with pulled back hair and severe expressions on their faces). As I waited in line I prayed to the travel gods to send me to a good one, but this time my prayers went unheeded. The woman who reviewed my paperwork was beyond arbitrary and capricious - she was downright sadistic. I knew I was in for it when she barked siga! ("next") and looked at me with an expression that said she would just as soon throw me in jail. I handed her my documents and kept quiet while she took her time reviewing them. Finally she looked at me and said that I was missing a stamp on my new passport and I would have to go to the Immigration Office in Quito for a new one. When I told her that I had a plane to catch in 45 minutes she just looked at me and said no puede salir del pais ("you can't leave the country"). She had a look of satisfaction on her face, as if she was happy to see me squirm. I asked her if I could talk to someone else and she told me that she was the only person I could talk to.
Fortunately I had a back up plan. I had already rehearsed what I was going to say if this situation were to occur. I told her the what I was going to visit my mom (true) and that it was her birthday (not true - but might as well have been). Then I started to get anxious and flustered, my face got red and tears started to come out of my eyes (this was not hard to do considering the situation and the fact that I had had about 4 hours of sleep the night before in order to get to the airport by 4:30 a.m.). Christina noticed that something was going on and started to ask me why we couldn't leave. I picked her up and she started being very cute and babbling away in Spanish and English. That might have softened our gatekeeper a bit, I don't know. But I noticed that she was stamping our passbooks and entering information into the computer. Then, with a sour expression on her face, she handed us our passports and told us to continue on to catch our flight. I was so relieved I thanked her profusely and dredged up just about every positive Spanish phrase I could think of to tell her. I think that she might have almost smiled as we left.
Later Christina looked at me and said, "That woman wasn't very nice." "You're right," I agreed, "I was not happy with her."
After that the fun continued. As we were sitting in the waiting room I heard my name called over the loudspeaker. Apparently I had been "randomly" chosen to have my bags inspected. (I don't know if Miss Sourpuss had a hand in this at all, but it seemed too much of a coincidence.) So Christina and I were led out of the waiting room and down and around to a place where they had one of our three suitcases sitting on a table. Everyone was nice and polite; they opened our suitcase and checked it and then let us go. It was a relatively painless process, but after what had just happened it was still pretty stressful.
Our plane left Quito 45 minutes late which got us into Miami with just under an hour to go through customs and security and get on the next flight. As it turns out, that was not enough time. We missed our connecting flight by just a few minutes. After dealing with some extremely rude American Airline employees, dragging a tired 5 year-old back and forth through the maze that is the Miami airport, and being put on stand-by for several flights and not being able to get on, I finally found someone nice who got us on a flight to LA with a connection to Portland.
Our connecting flight in LA was on Alaska Airlines so once we got there we were directed to a shuttle that took us to the new terminal. There was still an hour before our flight so I was finally able to enjoy something that I had been missing for the past year or so - Starbucks!! (yes, Peets would have been better, but they aren't into world domination like Starbucks). As I was enjoying my grande coffee they announced that our flight to Portland had been overbooked and was there anyone willing to wait until tomorrow? A free hotel room and two $300 travel vouchers were included in the deal. Hmmm, I thought. I went over to check it out and decided to take the deal. We had to wait until they boarded the plane until we got our vouchers, so it was about 10:30 p.m. (12:30 p.m. for us) by the time we got into bed. Our flight the next morning was at 6:30 a.m. so we checked out of the hotel and caught the shuttle to the airport around 4:30 a.m. We had time for another visit to Starbucks before our flight and then we got on the plane to Seattle (!) and then to a connecting flight to Portland.
After 2 nights of very little sleep and lots of stress we were quite exhausted but I'm very glad that did this last leg of our trip during the day. The flight into Seattle was beautiful and I was reminded how much I love the Pacific Northwest. Then we boarded a smaller plane for the short hop to Portland. We passed by lots of amazing mountains (my knowledge of geography in this area is embarrassingly bad, but I think we saw Mt. Rainier, and Mt. St. Helen's).
Once in Portland we were able to find our luggage with little problem and then my mom and her friend Carol picked us up in their bright red Prius. After a three hour drive, we finally made it to our final destination - beautiful Florence, Oregon.
Our trip from Quito to Portland was not un-eventful and I'm lucky that I have such a peaceful place to "recover." The hardest part was actually getting out of the country. Before we left I stressed and stressed about having the right paperwork - passports (1 for me, 2 for Christina), identity cards (2 for me, 1 for Christina), permission (signed by a judge and notarized) for me to leave the country with Christina without Lucho, etc. I thought I had everything right, but you can never be sure. I my experience Ecuadorian officials tend to be arbitrary and capricious. One person will tell you one thing and another will tell you something completely different. There is no way of knowing who will have the final word and in the end all you work may be useless because the laws have changed at the last minute.
So it was not without some trepidation that I approached the immigration desk in the airport. There were about 10 different booths, each staffed by a migration official in uniform (most of them young women with pulled back hair and severe expressions on their faces). As I waited in line I prayed to the travel gods to send me to a good one, but this time my prayers went unheeded. The woman who reviewed my paperwork was beyond arbitrary and capricious - she was downright sadistic. I knew I was in for it when she barked siga! ("next") and looked at me with an expression that said she would just as soon throw me in jail. I handed her my documents and kept quiet while she took her time reviewing them. Finally she looked at me and said that I was missing a stamp on my new passport and I would have to go to the Immigration Office in Quito for a new one. When I told her that I had a plane to catch in 45 minutes she just looked at me and said no puede salir del pais ("you can't leave the country"). She had a look of satisfaction on her face, as if she was happy to see me squirm. I asked her if I could talk to someone else and she told me that she was the only person I could talk to.
Fortunately I had a back up plan. I had already rehearsed what I was going to say if this situation were to occur. I told her the what I was going to visit my mom (true) and that it was her birthday (not true - but might as well have been). Then I started to get anxious and flustered, my face got red and tears started to come out of my eyes (this was not hard to do considering the situation and the fact that I had had about 4 hours of sleep the night before in order to get to the airport by 4:30 a.m.). Christina noticed that something was going on and started to ask me why we couldn't leave. I picked her up and she started being very cute and babbling away in Spanish and English. That might have softened our gatekeeper a bit, I don't know. But I noticed that she was stamping our passbooks and entering information into the computer. Then, with a sour expression on her face, she handed us our passports and told us to continue on to catch our flight. I was so relieved I thanked her profusely and dredged up just about every positive Spanish phrase I could think of to tell her. I think that she might have almost smiled as we left.
Later Christina looked at me and said, "That woman wasn't very nice." "You're right," I agreed, "I was not happy with her."
After that the fun continued. As we were sitting in the waiting room I heard my name called over the loudspeaker. Apparently I had been "randomly" chosen to have my bags inspected. (I don't know if Miss Sourpuss had a hand in this at all, but it seemed too much of a coincidence.) So Christina and I were led out of the waiting room and down and around to a place where they had one of our three suitcases sitting on a table. Everyone was nice and polite; they opened our suitcase and checked it and then let us go. It was a relatively painless process, but after what had just happened it was still pretty stressful.
Our plane left Quito 45 minutes late which got us into Miami with just under an hour to go through customs and security and get on the next flight. As it turns out, that was not enough time. We missed our connecting flight by just a few minutes. After dealing with some extremely rude American Airline employees, dragging a tired 5 year-old back and forth through the maze that is the Miami airport, and being put on stand-by for several flights and not being able to get on, I finally found someone nice who got us on a flight to LA with a connection to Portland.
Our connecting flight in LA was on Alaska Airlines so once we got there we were directed to a shuttle that took us to the new terminal. There was still an hour before our flight so I was finally able to enjoy something that I had been missing for the past year or so - Starbucks!! (yes, Peets would have been better, but they aren't into world domination like Starbucks). As I was enjoying my grande coffee they announced that our flight to Portland had been overbooked and was there anyone willing to wait until tomorrow? A free hotel room and two $300 travel vouchers were included in the deal. Hmmm, I thought. I went over to check it out and decided to take the deal. We had to wait until they boarded the plane until we got our vouchers, so it was about 10:30 p.m. (12:30 p.m. for us) by the time we got into bed. Our flight the next morning was at 6:30 a.m. so we checked out of the hotel and caught the shuttle to the airport around 4:30 a.m. We had time for another visit to Starbucks before our flight and then we got on the plane to Seattle (!) and then to a connecting flight to Portland.
After 2 nights of very little sleep and lots of stress we were quite exhausted but I'm very glad that did this last leg of our trip during the day. The flight into Seattle was beautiful and I was reminded how much I love the Pacific Northwest. Then we boarded a smaller plane for the short hop to Portland. We passed by lots of amazing mountains (my knowledge of geography in this area is embarrassingly bad, but I think we saw Mt. Rainier, and Mt. St. Helen's).
Once in Portland we were able to find our luggage with little problem and then my mom and her friend Carol picked us up in their bright red Prius. After a three hour drive, we finally made it to our final destination - beautiful Florence, Oregon.
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