Los Vuelos

There are certain things that you'll never want to do twice. Some of them are common to all people. For example, I doubt anyone would want to break the same arm twice. It's just not fun. Most people probably wouldn't want to get a speeding ticket twice in one month either. On the other hand, there's often plenty of things that most of my friends (myself included) would love to do twice. I'm sure that all my friends would love to win the lottery twice, or watch their school win a national championship in basketball twice in fours years. Sadly, it's a little harder to do the last two and a lot easier to do the first two. Funny how things work out. Last week, I got a chance to do something for the second time, and since you can only do something for the second time once I thought I'd share my story with you, just for the heck of it:

So, after taking what feels like a thousand Spanish classes and spending a million hours studying for midterms and perfecting my skills in the language, so that I can appear semi-inteligent to my professors, I've come to like Español and I don't actually mind learning little tidbits about Spanish American culture as I travel throughout South America. The same cannot be said about traveling. I have yet to enjoy sitting alone in an airport with a crowd of people I don't know speaking a language that is not my first and most comfortable. Over the past three days, I've probably sat in the airport for about ten hours. Out of those ten hours most of them were spent in the airports of foreign countries, and of those two airports one did not have heat. I'll have to say that although I haven't really enjoyed my stays in ATL, LIM, and SCL, the second time around wasn't nearly as bad as the first. It's much like the numbers -2 (second) and -7 (first). Both are negative, but -2 is greater than -7.

I had a lot of worries going into the day. Luckily, most of the problems that I thought I was going to have ended up not being problems at all. My connection in Lima was probably one of the simplest things I've ever done. I literally walked off the plane, went through a door, took a left and was at the counter to get my tickets for my next two flights. Customs was a breeze at Santiago and there was a nice man named Francisco who greeted me at the airport. My response to my smooth travels was and continues to be the same as my mom's response when she received an email from me later that morning letting her know everything went well: "Hallelujah"

Going back to the first sentence, traveling to South America was something I never thought I would do again, or at least not in the near future. I guess you just never know what someone might be willing to do twice.

More to come on Santiago, and the businesses we toured today (Tuesday)...