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"Our Story…Part 8.5"
Dave here. I know this is Kim’s blog, but since this is “Our Story”, I figured I would fill in a few missing details from the previous post.
After finding the tickets for Kim, I pretty much resigned myself to not being able to get down to Guatemala until after Christmas at the earliest. Christmas is a big family holiday in Guatemala, so everyone who lives outside the country is trying to get home for Christmas. Hence the dearth of tickets. Kim flew down on Sunday 1 week before Christmas Eve. Since I already had the week between Christmas and New Year’s off, I didn’t have too long to be a single parent.
I made some arrangements with my boss to work part time and mostly from home that week, and called some friends to watch Ana the one day I had to go in. Things looked like they were going to work out pretty well. We dropped Kim off at the airport, and came home.
Thanks to the incomprehensible intricacies of air travel, the flight I got for Kim was an overnight flight that got into Guatemala City at about 6 am Monday morning. I dropped Ana off at our friend’s house and went into work to take care of the stuff that absolutely couldn’t be done from home. At about 8 am, I got a phone call from Kim. She was obviously excited, exhausted, and overwhelmed. The hotel had no record of her reservation! Fortunately, we had arranged for a cell phone to be available at the hotel and she was using this to call me. After getting her calmed down, I got on the phone with the hotel chain to figure out what was going on.
Once again, thanks to the intricacies of international travel, and since all of this happened over a weekend, the US reservations system showed my wife’s reservation. Unfortunately, the Guatemalan reservations system wouldn’t show it until someone in hotel management arrived in Guatemala and logged into the US reservations server. As Kim mentioned, due to my travel I have a certain level of status with that particular hotel chain, so the US reservations folks called the front desk in Guatemala and got Kim into a room. Problem averted.
After finishing up at work, I started looking for flights for Ana and I to come down to Guatemala. I managed to find some flights on Sunday, Christmas Eve that were on a different airline, but weren’t overnight. I immediately booked them.
The next day, the blizzard hit! I am not exaggerating. It snowed for three days. Ana and I braved the first day to go to Best Buy to get a laptop to surprise Kim with for Christmas, but that was the last we traveled until the weekend. Tuesday night, they closed the roads and didn’t open them up again until Friday afternoon. By Friday, the evening news had reporters at the airport with stories about stranded travelers who were being told they couldn’t get out until some time after Christmas. Fortunately, the snow quit on Friday and in typical Colorado Springs fashion, it was 60 degrees on Saturday.
I got a friend to drive us to the airport Sunday morning (Christmas Eve) and we flew to Houston under clear sunny skies. At the airport, we went looking for a restaurant to eat at since we had several hours before our flight to Guatemala City. Being a typical Colorado Bronco’s fan, I was hoping to catch some of the game. We found a place where Ana could get a hot dog and I could see a couple of TVs. I commented to Ana, “Wow, look at that game, they really are getting snow there.” Then they flashed up the score. “Wait a minute, that is the Bronco’s game. They are playing at home today!” Yep, blizzard #2 hit within hours of our leaving Colorado. Once again, the Lord had his perfect timing.
Turns out that this was the first of 8 weekends in a row when it would snow. While we were baking in the wonderful Guatemalan weather, Colorado was finally breaking out of a multi-year drought. There would even be an avalanche in Colorado that made international news while we were in Guatemala. But I digress.
Our flight out of Houston was delayed for some reason, but it finally took off. We were supposed to land at 10:30. However, due to the delay, we weren’t going to land until about 11:30. I found out later that all the other flights were being diverted and we were only allowed to land because we were an international flight.
Why were they being diverted you ask? I turns out that in Guatemala, Christmas and New Years are huge holidays. Think the fourth of July on steroids and you start to get the picture. There are “official” fireworks every few blocks at midnight, 6am, noon, and 6 pm. In between, there are unofficial fireworks that average folks are lighting off. These things were awesome. If you think you can get fireworks here in the states, you are sadly mistaken. If you could have given these Guatemalans the best fireworks you can buy in the states, they would only use them because they didn’t want to offend you. These things were AWESOME. On New Years, a minute before midnight, there was easily 50 miles of visibility. At midnight, it sounded like a war zone with explosions everywhere. In less than a minute, you could barely make out the neon Coca-Cola sign that was less than ½ mile away due to all the smoke. And it went on for about half an hour.
Anyway, as we are circling around the city to come in to land, Ana says to me, “I think I see fireworks”. I say, “No, there aren’t any fireworks out there”. Then I look out the window and see several from different places. As we are on final approach passing over the slums off the end of the runway, bottle rockets come whizzing past the plane. The pilots get us on the ground and we are hurried through customs. The customs officials wanted to get home for the celebrations.
As we got our bags and started making our way through the airport, it was a bit different than the last time. For starters, I now had a 5 year old to keep track of along with all of our luggage. Secondly, the bottle of liquid laundry detergent we brought burst open during flight, so it was sticky and dripping detergent. Third, the airport was under construction, so the exit was different than it had been just a few months earlier. I slowly shepherded Ana through the now unfamiliar airport until I finally saw Kim waiting for us with Ruth. At last, we were together for good.
And the fireworks were a nice touch too. :)
After finding the tickets for Kim, I pretty much resigned myself to not being able to get down to Guatemala until after Christmas at the earliest. Christmas is a big family holiday in Guatemala, so everyone who lives outside the country is trying to get home for Christmas. Hence the dearth of tickets. Kim flew down on Sunday 1 week before Christmas Eve. Since I already had the week between Christmas and New Year’s off, I didn’t have too long to be a single parent.
I made some arrangements with my boss to work part time and mostly from home that week, and called some friends to watch Ana the one day I had to go in. Things looked like they were going to work out pretty well. We dropped Kim off at the airport, and came home.
Thanks to the incomprehensible intricacies of air travel, the flight I got for Kim was an overnight flight that got into Guatemala City at about 6 am Monday morning. I dropped Ana off at our friend’s house and went into work to take care of the stuff that absolutely couldn’t be done from home. At about 8 am, I got a phone call from Kim. She was obviously excited, exhausted, and overwhelmed. The hotel had no record of her reservation! Fortunately, we had arranged for a cell phone to be available at the hotel and she was using this to call me. After getting her calmed down, I got on the phone with the hotel chain to figure out what was going on.
Once again, thanks to the intricacies of international travel, and since all of this happened over a weekend, the US reservations system showed my wife’s reservation. Unfortunately, the Guatemalan reservations system wouldn’t show it until someone in hotel management arrived in Guatemala and logged into the US reservations server. As Kim mentioned, due to my travel I have a certain level of status with that particular hotel chain, so the US reservations folks called the front desk in Guatemala and got Kim into a room. Problem averted.
After finishing up at work, I started looking for flights for Ana and I to come down to Guatemala. I managed to find some flights on Sunday, Christmas Eve that were on a different airline, but weren’t overnight. I immediately booked them.
The next day, the blizzard hit! I am not exaggerating. It snowed for three days. Ana and I braved the first day to go to Best Buy to get a laptop to surprise Kim with for Christmas, but that was the last we traveled until the weekend. Tuesday night, they closed the roads and didn’t open them up again until Friday afternoon. By Friday, the evening news had reporters at the airport with stories about stranded travelers who were being told they couldn’t get out until some time after Christmas. Fortunately, the snow quit on Friday and in typical Colorado Springs fashion, it was 60 degrees on Saturday.
I got a friend to drive us to the airport Sunday morning (Christmas Eve) and we flew to Houston under clear sunny skies. At the airport, we went looking for a restaurant to eat at since we had several hours before our flight to Guatemala City. Being a typical Colorado Bronco’s fan, I was hoping to catch some of the game. We found a place where Ana could get a hot dog and I could see a couple of TVs. I commented to Ana, “Wow, look at that game, they really are getting snow there.” Then they flashed up the score. “Wait a minute, that is the Bronco’s game. They are playing at home today!” Yep, blizzard #2 hit within hours of our leaving Colorado. Once again, the Lord had his perfect timing.
Turns out that this was the first of 8 weekends in a row when it would snow. While we were baking in the wonderful Guatemalan weather, Colorado was finally breaking out of a multi-year drought. There would even be an avalanche in Colorado that made international news while we were in Guatemala. But I digress.
Our flight out of Houston was delayed for some reason, but it finally took off. We were supposed to land at 10:30. However, due to the delay, we weren’t going to land until about 11:30. I found out later that all the other flights were being diverted and we were only allowed to land because we were an international flight.
Why were they being diverted you ask? I turns out that in Guatemala, Christmas and New Years are huge holidays. Think the fourth of July on steroids and you start to get the picture. There are “official” fireworks every few blocks at midnight, 6am, noon, and 6 pm. In between, there are unofficial fireworks that average folks are lighting off. These things were awesome. If you think you can get fireworks here in the states, you are sadly mistaken. If you could have given these Guatemalans the best fireworks you can buy in the states, they would only use them because they didn’t want to offend you. These things were AWESOME. On New Years, a minute before midnight, there was easily 50 miles of visibility. At midnight, it sounded like a war zone with explosions everywhere. In less than a minute, you could barely make out the neon Coca-Cola sign that was less than ½ mile away due to all the smoke. And it went on for about half an hour.
Anyway, as we are circling around the city to come in to land, Ana says to me, “I think I see fireworks”. I say, “No, there aren’t any fireworks out there”. Then I look out the window and see several from different places. As we are on final approach passing over the slums off the end of the runway, bottle rockets come whizzing past the plane. The pilots get us on the ground and we are hurried through customs. The customs officials wanted to get home for the celebrations.
As we got our bags and started making our way through the airport, it was a bit different than the last time. For starters, I now had a 5 year old to keep track of along with all of our luggage. Secondly, the bottle of liquid laundry detergent we brought burst open during flight, so it was sticky and dripping detergent. Third, the airport was under construction, so the exit was different than it had been just a few months earlier. I slowly shepherded Ana through the now unfamiliar airport until I finally saw Kim waiting for us with Ruth. At last, we were together for good.
And the fireworks were a nice touch too. :)
3 comments:
Little did you know that the detergent-in-the-suitcase episode would foreshadow Ana and the bleach....
(Btw -- right now the Rox are tied at 5, and right now I'm grateful for Columbus Day being a day off.)
Hi Dave and thanks for sharing your story too:)
Its wonderful to hear how God brought your family together...just amazing!
Anna
Christmas here at home is fantastic, but nothing will ever compare to that Christmas in Guatemala. I love reading through the "story" and I love you guys!
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