The worst flight of my life.

I need to spend a few minutes venting. So sorry in advance :) Later on, I will write another entry about other stuff. My kids have been on 14 flights. They are usually pretty well behaved. Last night was the worst flight we have ever been on. Hands down. And my kids were pretty much angels until the last hour. What made the flight so bad were our flight companions. Never before have I been surrounded by so many people who were so strongly opposed to being on a flight with kids. (Even well behaved kids) Neither kid had made a peep yet, and the lady directly in front of me was yelling to people rows up about how lucky they were to be where they are, and "look what I have to deal with" (as she points to my sweet little boy, who is quietly looking around from daddy's arms with his big doe eyes). Then nudged the guy in front of Carlos and said, "I am so sorry for you." As if we couldn't hear her. Before we took off, while waiting to everyone to board, Charlie walked across the aisle to see me, and this lady spun around in her seat and glared at him. Then, he touched the shirt of the guy in front of Carlos, and the lady acted like she was personally offended by it, and in a raised voice scolded Carlos saying, "He needs to be in his seatbelt." Well since he didn't have a seatbelt (as lap infants don't on American Airlines) Carlos just grabbed him back into his lap, and ignored her. And every time Emma made a peep of any kind, or any noise emitted from the iPad, the lady spun around, glared at her, humphed, and shook her head angrily. The tension on that plane was palpable, and Emma could sense it. Eventually a meltdown occurred (as can be expected when you are traveling all day with two kids. And it is 11pm). The guy in front of us had his seat as far back as it could go, and every time that he got bumped, or Emma cried, made a huge spectacle of covering his ears, hitting his head with his hands, and overall being dramatic about how terrible it is to be near a crying kid on a plane. Not to mention the hideous woman ahead of me. At one point, Emma was behind her, and she screamed for the flight attendant that Emma wasn't in her seat belt and she had to move. So he came back and told us that Emma had to get back in her seat. So not helpful. Let me reiterate the fact that both kids were quiet, barely making a peep for about 1 hour and 50 minutes of the 2 hour and 12 minute flight. and people were already shooting us dirty looks. To all of my non-parent friends (and I bet my parent friends will agree with this): Please, please know that the parents of those kids have it worse than you. I know that my kids aren't cute to you. I don't expect you to be excited about flying near them. If I could avoid flying, I would. Trust me. I don't enjoy taking a 2 1/2 year old and 1 year old on a plane. But I have to do it. Would any parent flying with young children like them to be quiet and well behaved the entire flight? YES!!! Do they want to hear their kid cry? Absolutely not! Just know that anyone traveling with young kids is probably dreading it. No 1 or 2 year old wants to be still for hours. And no parent can make them. A parent can only do what they can do to make them behave. We spent all of our time on that plane trying to distract and re-direct energy. Fortunately, Charlie slept. But Emma was tired, and ready to be home, and did not want to be on another plane. She is a 2 year old. She wants what she wants, when she wants it. And last night she didn't want to be on a plane. Flights aren't about giving people the opportunity to relax and get rejuvenated. That is what a spa is for. Flights are to get them where they need to go, and being nasty about the fact that a kid is misbehaving doesn't help anything at all. In fact, all it does is stress out the parents, and make them less capable of handling their child. Watching a person a few rows up pretending to strangle someone, and someone else pretend to stab someone (while your kid is crying) only makes parents more upset, and does not help anything at all. My kid cried for 20 minutes at the end of the flight. Up until that she was quiet, occasionally telling Carlos about the drawing she was doing, or the fruit she was ninja-ing. And on that note, I should mention that parents know their kids. They know which battles to fight, and which ones to let their kids win. The situation with Emma freaking out started when yet another another passenger insisted that we turn off the volume on her game (which was not even at full volume I might add). Obviously tears and fighting ensued. Once Emma started crying, the lady was like, "Oh nevermind... i'll take the ding ding ding instead." Unfortunately by that point it was too late. We knew that it would happen. But until someone insisted that we fight that fight, we were going to let her win it. But we wanted to look like we were playing nice since everyone made it explicitly clear that we were not welcome on the plane. And on that note- I take back my earlier complaint about Colombians always trying to coddle my crying children. I will take that any day of the week. My kids have acted worse on international flights, and NO ONE has ever been rude about it. They may get into your business, and try to be nosy about why your kid is crying, but no one has ever been as rude to me and my family as they were on that flight. And the majority of people in question were FROM CINCINNATI! I like to think that people from here are friendly and understanding. It was disheartening that that kind of attitude was our welcome home. I am sorry, this was very long, and very ranting, and I sound very bitchy. I just needed to vent, and maybe someone who reads this will have a little more sympathy next time they are in that predicament.

Watch out- gringa behind the wheel!!

I drove here for the first time yesterday. It was the most scared I have been behind the wheel since I was 15 1/2 and learning to drive for the first time. People here drive like lunatics. And motorcyclists think they rule the road. At any given time, anyone could come from any angle. For instance, just because you are in the farthest left lane, and are turning left, someone could very well drive into the lane of oncoming traffic, in order to pass you during the turn. There are no right of ways either. The one who has the right of way is the one who is going. It is ugly out there. We went out for YogenFruz and I and could barely eat mine I was so stressed from the drive there :) Hopefully, like when I had my temps, it will get easier every time I go out! Here is a good example of what streets look like here..

Clearly I didn't take this while I was driving. As you can see, not only do people not follow the "rules" of proper driving etiquette, but the roads are not even built the same. At all. They aren't always marked with lane dividers. AND the "lanes" are very narrow. Not like the two-lane comfort cruise I am accustomed to. Another weird thing here... When I run on the path here, I always see people exercising in nice clothes. Like Polo golf shirts and then work out shorts. At first I thought that maybe those people didn't have normal running clothes because they were just starting to exercise, or were just going for a little jog before work. I quickly learned that that wasn't the case when I saw that they were running almost as long as I was. Since I run at least 3 miles a morning it seemed a little unlikely that these guys fell into either category. I brought this up to Carlos to see what he made of it, and I was very surprised by his answer.. He said that people here like to show off brands, and that they probably where these clothes to show off that they have them. I laughed at that, but he then said that they were probably eyeing me, and thinking, "Ha!! I am wearing Lacoste, and she is only wearing Nike.. HAHA!!!" I have only seen two guys doing this, but I still think it is so weird. I cannot believe that we are leaving here for 2 months in less than a week! I will be happy to be home, but I will definitely miss it here. When we leave, I will get some practice flying by myself here.. Emma and I are flying on a different flight to Bogota than Carlos and (hopefully) Charlie. There was a big mix up with our flights, and our airport here was closed the day we were supposed to leave. Since Carlos had booked on a different itinerary than us, and we didn't have our Bucaramanga-Bogota tickets, he got on one flight, and then when we went to buy our tickets, all that was left was first class, and more than double the price of the next flight in the afternoon. Since we didn't want to spend $300 for a one way ticket that is usually about $90, we had to book a later flight. Carlos is working on getting Charlie added to his itinerary so I don't have to travel with both kids. Fortunately it is only for the trip from Bucaramanga to Bogota. We fly to the Miami the next day. This airport practice will come in handy too, because when we get back the end of December, my family is coming with us! They will be here for about a week, and then I plan on escorting them back to Bogota, to get them through all the changing of terminals and paying the impuestos, etc! English is much more present than it was, but still- the process isn't exactly straightforward. Also, Emma is having surgery a few days after we get back :( These next two weeks will be a whirlwind. She needs her tonsils out big time, and since she is only 2, she has to be admitted :( They are so big that they are obstructing her airway, and all of her symptoms are getting worse instead of better. Poor little lady. So we will get home late late late on Monday night, Tuesday the internet is getting installed, and then on Thursday, Emma has her surgery. It doesn't take a doctor to see how huge her tonsils are! They practically touch.

I feel bad for the nurses who will be taking care of her. I forsee myself being a pain of a parent. I will keep you posted :)

Back in Bucaramanga!

We are back! Well we have been for a few days now, but this is the first chance I really had to sit down and write. The trip to the US was great! I couldn't believe how homesick I was. I didn't realize it until I got there, and I was like, "Oh how I miss it here!!" I had a great few weeks, and so did the kids! I definitely missed having Johana around, but it was sure nice to be able to just sit around, do nothing, decide at the last moment what we would do for meals. It was very nice. Plus, the weather was gorgeous and we were able to spend a lot of time with family and friends. It got me so excited to be there with Carlos come the end of Oct! When we got here, we met Carlos in Bogota, and rather than go back to Bucaramanga we flew to Santa Marta for our little vacation! It was really nice and the kids had a lot of fun! But while we were there, I was again reminded of one of my pet peeves here... Kids are constantly consoled whenever they get upset. It is definitely not the norm to let a kid cry. If one more stranger asks me why my kid is crying, or gives me a dirty look because I am not coddling my two year old during a tantrum, I am going to scream. People never mind their own business about it! Complete strangers will come up to Emma while she is screaming about something, and try to comfort her, which just makes it 10x worse since she is so shy. After making the situation even more difficult for me, they continue to ask why she is crying. In the US, no one would ask. You see a toddler throwing a fit and you are just glad it isn't you that has to deal with it. It goes without saying why they are crying- they are a toddler, and the terrible twos are terrible for everyone :) Now, Carlos has nicknamed me "Ferber Mom" since I made such a big deal about my rights to ignore a tantrum haha! Anyway- it is SO nice to be back here with Carlos and our typical routine. Johana missed Charlie a lot, so I did not feel at all bad leaving for my run yesterday morning :) Speaking of running, I am signed up for a 1/4 marathon here in a week and a half! I don't know if I will be able to do it though since it is the day we leave :( We thought it was the day before, but then when Carlos signed me up, he saw that it was on Sunday. Hopefully it will be early enough that I can do it. We don't leave until the afternoon, so it may work.. But we'll see. I am still training for it in hopes that I will be able to do it. A first will be happening this weekend!!!! Carlos and I are going out of town together! He got invited to speak at a conference in Bogota on Friday afternoon, so we are going together! We will leave early Friday morning, and get home early evening on Saturday. It isn't much time, but I am so excited. We haven't left the kids for us to go out of town ever. Just for a few hours at a time when we went out on dates. They have stayed with family overnight before if I had to work and Carlos was out of town, but never for us to do anything fun! So so excited!! It will be like old times! Here we are 4 1/2 years ago in Japan! We look so young!