Flying Home

Visa pick-up day was Monday the 19th. We planned to all go, and have our taxi driver take us afterwards to a marketplace to pick up some souvenirs. It had been cloudy the entire time we had been there, but hardly a drop of rain. A few minutes before time to leave for the embassy a huge thunderstorm hit, so I decided not to go. Luckily we had asked our taxi to be there 45 minutes early, even though it only took about 15 minutes to get across the city from our hotel to the embassy. Trees were down, razor wire blown here and there, traffic signals were out, and there was 6 inches of water on the roads in places. Larry said the ride was unbelievable. He was about 20 minutes late, but luckily they had not started calling names yet. Meanwhile I was back at the hotel with Ruth, wondering where on earth he was. What a relief when he finally got back!

I ended up hitting the little lobby tobacco & gift shop for some souvenirs, paying probably double what I would have at the market - oh well.

Here's Ruth taking a little siesta while he was gone. So peaceful --- but she didn't wake up that way --- she had another "episode" - what we've come to call her "blue funk". She gets very sad, slumps over or goes limp, and cries or moans hysterically.



On the flight from Guatemala City to Atlanta, she did not want to wear a seat belt. When we insisted, she cried loudly for awhile, and then settled into another blue funk. Here are a couple of pictures of her after we got to take our seat belts off.



She was like that until they passed out the food, and then just fine for the rest of the flight...
Here's a picture of her chatting with the nice lady in front of us who spoke Spanish. She was able to explain to Ruth how when the light is on, we have to wear our seat belts.

Our flight from Atlanta home was delayed by a thunderstorm, and we sat in that little plane for 2 hours waiting our turn to take off. She was as happy and cheerful as could be - even wore her seat belt the whole time! We got in around 10:30 that night.