For those of you haven't heard, we made it home safely from Costa Rica last Saturday night. We had to be at the airport by 3:30am so a few of us just decided to stay up all night and play cards until it was time to leave. At one point, someone got up to go the bathroom and said "there's a snake over here". And sure enough a snake managed to climb through one of the open windows in our house. It was small but was told it was likely poisonous. I took a couple of blurry pictures (it was dark in there) and we threw it outside over the wall.
We made it to the airport and through customs without any problems and boarded our plane around 6:30. We arrived in Mexico City around 10:30am or so and also made it through customs just fine. We then had a 6 hour lay over - yes, SIX hours...in Mexico City. Three of us were brave enough to explore some activities outside of the Mexico City airport. This involved taking a taxi 20 minutes to the square. There we found a ton of vendors selling authentic things, lots of cool restruants and buildings, and a tour of a cathedral. We had a nice lunch there and took a tour of the cathedral in the square. It was well worth the escape. We were gone around 3 hours and by the time we were getting settled back at the airport, it was time to the board the plane home!
Pictures from Mexico City
22 million people live here and it was Saturday when we visited...it was crazy!
I slept on both flights which were both around 3 hours or so. Staying up was worth that to be able to sleep on the plane. If you know me at all, conditions have to be just perfect for me to be able to sleep anywhere so making myself that tired worked. Sleeping on the plane made my travel day much faster! I even missed the meals on the planes, which you also know is not me - to miss a meal.
We got into Chicago around 10:30pm and then took our EWO bus back to the church arriving around 1am. It was so nice to come home to welcome signs in the house, a bouquet of flowers, and sleep in my own bed!!
Back at home, it's like I never left. My family missed me but they have thrown me back into things so they can have me back just as I was - unchanged. It's back to cooking 3 meals a day, cleaning, laundry and all the mom/wife things I do. I am not complaining but it did seem a lot simplier and rewarding there in Costa Rica. Why is that? I guess if Costa was my forever home, it would be no different than here. But there was a sense of working for the Lord and not for men while there. I am really working for the Lord when I take care of my family, but sometimes it just doesn't feel like it! :) I hope an pray that I am not unchanged by the experience. I am still processing everything and am sure I won't fully know what I learned until later down the road. You know I'll share details when able. I know that I made some lasting friendships that would have never happened had I not gone through this trip. I also made several realizations about how and why I handle certain things the way I do. I would have never expected that outcome from this trip. Here I was thinking about what I can do to help others and it has helped me in several key ways. More on that in another post - still processing! I did make it through the singing/duet without dying although I look just about as miserable...truth was I was still pretty petrified and our sound system was messed up from when we practiced. If I continue singing publicly, I'll have to work on my "happy" face! That is so hard when you are focusing on not screwing up the song!
I am working on a video slideshow type thing that I'd like to put on the blog but so far I haven't had any luck putting videos on here....so I'm not promising anything! I am presenting a video and some info on our trip on July 11th at the Ladies Mission Circle. That should be fun!
Also...update on Doula stuff. My certificate is in route as we speak. I sent off my final paperwork stuff on Tuesday and I am official. Just waiting on the certificate. I am still exploring an option that I can't share yet so once I get through all that, I will make some sort of an announcement.
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