The (LONG) Trip Home

TRAVEL TIP #(LUCKY)13 – When travelling, always bring: a travel buddy, your patience, and most importantly, your passport.

The winter holidays have arrived!  After 5 months of gruelling lesson planning, endless marking, and trying to stay sane in the classroom, I was ready for a vacation.  Little did we know, we still had a few hurdles to get over on the way home…

After school on the last day, the foreign teachers arranged to meet at a place called La Fonda to do our Secret Santa gift exchange.  We also had the chance to play a sport of Colombia’s own called Tejo (pronounced “tay-ho”).  The game is pretty similar to a bean bag toss/horseshoes.  Players each get a throwing stone to throw into the box of clay and in between the four triangular pieces called mechas.  You get a certain number of points for getting it closest to the middle, in the middle, etc, but the best part is if you hit those mecha pieces just at the right spot, they explode!  They have some sort of gunpowder in them which definitely made me jump the first time someone did it!  I, however, could not explode one of those things to save my life, and was convinced they were faulty mechas.  So I went up to the box and did the equivalent of a slam dunk onto those mechas – and they worked.  So I guess I just need to work on my tejo skills (so much for beginner’s luck)!

And then the trip home started the next morning.  Veronica and I took another bus to Bogota, which thankfully did not take as long as the first trip there.  But it was still not very comfortable.  We arrived around 8:30ish and got free accommodations at Travis’ place again!  What a nice guy.  Travis and I went to walk around and see more of Bogota’s Christmas lights and the rule was no talking about school!

The next day, on the way to the airport, I was getting a little nervous because we were stuck in traffic.  Time was ticking and I’m a nervous traveller as it is!  Once we arrived at the airport, we discovered that our flight had been delayed due to maintenance problems.  So Plane #1 to Miami that we were supposed to take had not even left from Miami yet.  This also meant that we were going to miss our connecting flight to Toronto, so we were going to be stuck in Miami for the night.  Then we heard that the system at Bogota’s airport was down, and that’s why the line was not moving at all.  So we had a seat in the line and made a new Australian friend named Rich that was also heading to Miami on our flight.  He went to go grab some beers and we sat on the floor and waited.

Finally, we were called to the desk, and they checked us into our flight that had been delayed from 2:30pm until 6:00pm.  For the inconvenience, we were given food vouchers for Crepes & Waffles, and somehow I ended up with a much bigger value than Veronica and Rich!  So we used the extra money to buy some coffee, mugs, and chocolate covered coffee beans!  We got through security, got on the plane, and were on our way to sunny Miami.

We arrived around 9:25pm or so and therefore it was confirmed that we missed our connection by about 20 minutes.  I later found out that that Toronto flight was also delayed and didn’t leave until 9:50pm, but I’m still not sure we would’ve made it because we needed to get off the plane, get through US Customs, collect our luggage, get back through security, and get onto the second plane.  That would’ve saved us a lot of trouble though!  After we got our bags, we joined the very long line at the American Airlines counter to be compensated for missing our connecting flight.  It seems that many people had connecting flights that were messed up by that flight, or maybe other flights too.  When we finally made it up to the counter, it was around midnight.  Veronica and I go up, the lady asks for our passports, and then she tells us there are no more hotels left!  We were not happy.  She gave us $14 worth of food vouchers and said, “You can write to us on the website to try and ask for more, but that’s all I can do for you now.”  We were not happy.  We had to take our stuff upstairs and sleep on uncomfortable cots in the airport with probably about 25-40 other people.  It was not a nice sleep, but I guess the good news was that we didn’t have to go far to check-in in the morning for our 10:35 flight to Toronto.

Around 6:45am, I was woken up by all the lights being turned on and two guys noisily collecting the cots up, smashing them together, and completely ignoring the fact that there were some people still in there trying to sleep.  Not a nice wake up call!  Veronica and I then decided that we might as well go downstairs and check in since we didn’t have anything else to do.  So as we packed up, Veronica says, “I can’t find my passport.”  She unpacks her carry-on and her luggage that she had opened, and I look through my carry-on, but her black travel case was nowhere to be found.  I started to freak out inside, but she was fairly calm surprisingly.  We went downstairs to see if she had left it at the counter at American Airlines from the night before and they sent us to the American Airlines Lost & Found.  That’s when Veronica started to get worried.  No luck there, so we went to the Miami Airport Lost & Found.  We were told it didn’t open until 8am, so we were waiting outside of this office where we thought the Lost & Found was.  8am came and went, and so I decided to go walk around looking for someone to ask.  I discovered that we were in the wrong place, so we arrived at the real Lost & Found and found these two very nice guys.  Veronica had remembered that she had a scanned copy of her passport in her email, and those guys let her get onto her email to print it out.  They also told us that if we filed a Police Report together with that print out, we should have no problems getting on the plane.  We breathed a sigh of relief, got the report filed, and went back downstairs to check in again.

At the counter, Veronica explained the situation to the guy behind the counter but he was not convinced.  He said, “Actually, you need a valid, government issued ID in order to legally leave the US.  You can get into Canada alright, but you can’t legally leave the States.”  So I’m thinking, just deport us then!  Veronica asked to see his supervisor, because we had been told we should be able to get on the plane, and our boarding time was fast approaching.  He went away for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and our hopes of getting home were disappearing quickly.  He finally came back and said, “I have good news and bad news – the bad news is that you definitely need a passport to leave the United States.  The good news is that I have your passport!”  We both started crying tears of joy at that point, we were just so happy to be able to go home.

But the next problem was that we were boarding in five minutes and the security line was miles long.  Our new friend behind the American Airlines counter, Carlos, said if we wait five minutes he could escort us to the front of the security line.  So we waited and waited, one lady was taking forever to check in and I was antsy!  We finally went over to security, and picked up a few more people to escort to their flight.  A brother-sister duo had their flight leaving in 15 minutes!  So we were chatting, each trying to take our minds off the fact that we were both in good shape to be missing our flights.  We got through security, thanked Carlos, and the brother and sister took off running.  As they were running up the escalator, I saw something fall from the guy’s backpack, and I had no idea what his name to call it out!  So we ran to pick it up (it was his Oakley’s sunglasses case), and caught up to them on the Sky Train.  I handed it back to him and said, “I had no idea what your name was to even yell out that you dropped this!”  So then we met Alex and Victoria and continued to sprint through the airport with them.  We saw them run into their tunnel to make their flight and as we approached our gate, we heard our names announced over the PA System calling for a final boarding call!  As we sat down on that flight, I could not believe all that had happened in those last four hours and the fact that we were on our way home at last!

Despite the cold, snow, and current ice storms Canada has to bring to the table, it is good to be home!

(Sorry for the lack of pictures in this one, we were a little busy touring the Miami Airport!)

PS. Veronica, do you have your passport?

Thanksgiving & Bogota

COLOMBIA TIP #21 – Colombia does Christmas right.

November flew by with so many long weekends, and all of a sudden we had entered December and the last two weeks of school! 

A couple weekends ago, I attended my first Baby Shower for Caitlin.  I don’t think it was a typical baby show because a) it was in Colombia, and b) all the boys were invited too!  Veronica and I bought Ben and Caitlin a diaper bag and a really high-tech bottle and everyone went in on buying them a stroller.  Our hand-made quilt is still in the process of being finished, but I can proudly say that I sewed a few squares myself!  At the end of the baby shower, Bill introduced us to this interesting game he called the Cereal Box Game.  Basically, each person took a turn picking up a cereal box by their teeth with no hands and without knees or hands touching the ground.  After each round, the cereal box was cut down shorter and shorter until only a few people remained and competed to be the last one standing.  It was a pretty fun game and entertaining to watch, and all you need is a cereal box, scissors, and some friends!

The next weekend was (American) Thanksgiving, and while Colombia doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, our American school had some celebrations for the foreign teachers.  On Thursday night, all of the teachers, kitchen staff, cleaning staff, maintenance staff, etc were all invited to the school cafeteria for a nice Thanksgiving dinner complete with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes (my favourite!) and desserts.  It was nice to see not only the teachers dressed up all nice, but also the other staff that we don’t see in normal clothes every day!  Each teacher signed up to bring some food as well and I brought my world famous (okay, Wilson family famous) cookies.  My secret is to not cook them all the way so they still taste like cookie dough.  Delicious! 

Stephanie, me, and Matt enjoying some Thanksgiving dinner!

And Matt thought he’d be funny and try to sneak in a kiss on the cheek for a picture.  My reaction time to back away was pretty fast!

We also had Friday off of school, so Veronica and I took this chance to visit Bogota.  So after dinner, us two and Ferney, the Colombian Physics teacher from Bogota, went to the bus terminal and got on a (k)night bus.  He told us that it should take about 5-6 hours because at night time there is less traffic (the usual bus ride during the day takes about 8-9 hours).  But to our surprise, we arrived in Bogota around 10am – an ELEVEN hour bus ride.  It was hard to tell what was happening while on the bus when it was pitch black outside, but I remember waking up and not only being stopped on the highway, but the bus was actually turned off.  I looked out the window and it looked like we were sharing one lane of a highway ramp with oncoming traffic.  Ferney told us that there was a collapse (at least that’s what Google translate told me – his English is not good and our Spanish is still not up to par).  I also heard later from other people that landslides are quite common this time of year because of all of the rain, so I’m guessing that’s what happened.  Either way, we arrived at the bus terminal, and now Vero and I know that when we head back to Bogota for our flight home for Christmas, we have to be mindful of the extra bus time that could happen. 

In Bogota, we were going to stay with our Canadian friend, Travis, that we met in La Guajira over the October Break.  The school that they teach at in Bogota has only three foreign teachers – the three that we happened to meet on that last vacation – so they did not get the Thanksgiving Day off.  They’re all Canadian anyway, so they weren’t too upset, other than the fact that it’s one less day off of school!  So we took a taxi over to Travis’ apartment, got the keys that he left with the doorman, and took very long naps on the couches.  We planned on waking up and going out to explore one of the museums or something, but when we woke up, it was raining and we were still too lazy, so we stayed in.  We started catching up on The Voice on Travis’ computer and when he arrived home from school, we chatted, caught up, and naturally put on the Leaf game.  A few other friends of his came over, Caity that we knew, and others that we met, and later we went out to a place called the Jaguar.  It was a fun night filled with (bad) dancing, drinking, and meeting new people. 

The next day, we woke up and went out for breakfast and then headed downtown with Travis and Caity.  They took us to Monserrate, which is a mountain in Bogota that has a church built on top of it.  We got to take a gondola up to the top where the view was awesome.  Bogota is HUGE.  For a city of 9 million, I guess it’s expected.  Of course, it started to rain, so we got a little wet, but we knew to bring our rain jackets along. 

Vero and I with the gondolas

Me, Travis, and a bit of Caity enjoying the view from Monserrate.

A not-fake-pointing picture at all.

After admiring the view for a bit, we went back down and wandered over to the Museo Nacional.  I really liked that it was free, not only because we didn’t have to pay, but that it was so accessible to everyone to go have a look at the artefacts, paintings, etc from Colombia’s past.  We had a good time being people in art galleries from the movies – “What do you see in this picture?” “It says so much by saying so little…”  I just don’t think art is my thing, though some of it is cool to look at.  It was Caity and Travis’ first time visiting this museum too, so that was neat!  Next time we’ll have to check out the Gold Museum! 

Me, Vero, and Caity outside the Museum.

And no museum visit is complete without statue imitation pictures!  Something we have learned from Ellie.

We went out for dinner to a Thai restaurant also with Andrea (who we had met before) and her boyfriend Juan Carlos.  It was really good food, not that kind of variety we’re used to in Armenia!  After dinner, we were all pretty exhausted, so we just had a night of playing cards before going to bed.

On Sunday, we were originally going to rent some bikes and ride downtown, but the bike place was closed even though it was scheduled to be open.  So instead, we looked at some of the flea markets around town and I bought some earrings and a hair band with the Colombia colours.  We met up with our new friends Caity, Laura, and Sebastian who had just finished a bike race that morning for lunch at a place called El Ingles (or The English).  It was run by a man from England and had all of the traditional English foods – Yorkshire pudding, Guinness, etc.  I had breakfast for lunch, which was very tasty and very filling. 

Veronica with her Guinness!

After lunch and after saying goodbye to the others, Travis, Vero, and I went to explore downtown Bogota.  The entire city was completely covered with Christmas lights!  It was a sight to see.  Apparently Medellin is the most impressive city during Christmas time, so next year we will definitely have to go visit that city to see what all the fuss is about! 

Feliz Navidad!

We visited a few more markets, walked around the streets, and just had our last few hours of fun before hopping back on a bus back to Armenia.  We met back up with Ferney at the bus terminal and got the 8pm bus, which didn’t leave the terminal until 8:30pm, which had to then go to the other terminal in Bogota, and didn’t leave there until 9:30pm.  Luckily the bus ride was as expected – 6 hours – but that also meant we arrived at 3:30am.  Silly Katie had not fully planned her lessons for Monday morning so I had to put together two lessons, which landed me in bed at 5am.  Woke up at 6:10 feeling not too bad, but after a couple hours at school, I wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep.  Thankfully I survived the day (as far as I remember, all of these school days seem to blend together now), and I definitely slept well that night!

Now we are down to one week of school, and it’s actually only four days because there is no school on Friday!  The teachers and staff are supposed to have that day to spend together, but I think a lot of the foreign teachers are flying out Friday and Veronica and I want to make sure we get a relatively early bus to Bogota, taking into account any landslide occurrences, etc so that we are ready for our flight on Saturday.  We’ve already been invited to stay at Travis’ again before we fly out!  Fellow Canadians are the greatest.

The countdown currently stands at 7 days, 4 hours, 12 minutes, and 41 seconds until we’ll be back in Toronto!  I cannot wait!