Dearest Rachel –
It’s Monday morning after a week away from the gym, and the sky outside is dull, gray… and most importantly, raining. You can probably guess that these are more than enough reasons for me to be thoroughly reluctant to head out to the gym, honey, while at the same time that week away (not to mention the three squares we were fed) ought to give impetus to me to head over there when the rain is expected to stop in about an hour. So while I wait for it all to pass, I’m going to go through various notes that I scribbled down, and photos I took on the way back that I just couldn’t work up the energy to compile into a letter at the time. You’d think that, with all that time on the airplane, I’d do something productive with it, but… well, I’ll get to it, eventually. It’s kind of anticlimactic, actually.
As it turned out, there’s a reason that Friday was our designated “day of rest” (so to speak); Saturday was going to be something of a busy day. Not exactly appropriate for what they call “sábado” – literally, “sabbath,” despite being (ostensibly) Christian, not Jewish – down here. Then again, they aren’t Jewish, so it’s not like they’d observe the sabbath then, anyway. Although, that begs the question about why they call the day that, but once traditions are set in language, they’re difficult to dislodge, I suppose. After a while, you stop even thinking about it as a native speaker, I’ll wager, and it’s only after a grammar teacher or a foreigner brings it up does one begin to ponder the origin of the word and its absurdity.
Besides needing to get packed up and out of the hotel by nine (with the option to head out at a quarter to eight, if we wanted to take advantage of the “shopportunity” – I almost made it back from breakfast in time, but between wanting to discuss something with Scott regarding possible arrangements to supply coffee to the church going forward and having to fill out the Honduran customs declaration, I was pretty sure I didn’t have enough ducks in a row to head out when the van was pulling out. As an encouragement to lag behind, I was told they were only selling ‘touristy’ things there, which we hardly need at home, and I’ve already got a bag of coffee for both Mom and Jenn, so…), there’s the process of checking in at the airport – and taking on several of Jim’s tools, just like our trip out – before we board and fly out a little after noon. And that’s just the first of two flights today, as we were basically taking the same trip as on Sunday morning, but in reverse.
Those that went on the shopping excursion were back within an hour, though, which made me wonder how much could actually have been done. As I understood it, they were taken to one particularly reputable vendor, and where they were going was, in general, the place where they would have to exercise the cautions regarding situational awareness that we had been warned about since the orientation, but had yet to see a need for thus far. Maybe I’d made the right call inadvertently, after all.
In particular, Brenda – who had sat next to me on both flights down (and would be seated next to me on our two return flights as well; it’s like it was planned, since the group seemed to shift around us in the back of the plane, while she, Monty and I sat together on every single flight) – showed off the hair decorations and a folding fan she’d purchased for herself before trying to take a picture of herself all decked out in her new finery, fluttering her fan coquettishly in front of her face. I offered to take a picture for her, but I think that’s the whole point of selfies; the effort of taking your own picture is all part of the challenge. In any event, the fact that the majority of purchases were of clothing suggested that I wouldn’t have gotten much out of the shopping trip. Although if I had, and she were to come up to me for advice – “How does this look on me?” – I won’t deny that it would have brought back a few memories of our own shopping excursions.
In any event, the extra time was more than sufficient to have my customs documentation filled out before our arrival at the airport, and my suitcase packed (including with a couple of Jim’s power tools, for weight distribution), so it was all probably for the best.
As had been the case on our way down here, our group occupied the last few rows of the passenger cabin, while at the same time we were among the last announced for boarding. These are the costs of flying economy class, I guess, but it does seem counter-intuitive, from an efficiency standpoint. No matter; it’s not as if the plane is going to take off without us aboard, if we’re in line to board at the appointed time. The real nuisance was in that, once we got to our seats, the overhead bins had been filled, and we were left to stow our carry-ons underneath the seats in front of us.
Under some circumstances, this would be that much more of a nuisance, but I thought it might actually be a blessing in disguise; I’d loaded my phone with some manga to read, but I was running out of stuff that I hadn’t already gone through at this point. But with my computer at my feet, rather than locked away overhead, I might just get it out to read something on one or another hard drive instead, as they have far more stored away than on my phone. However, I never got to the point where I needed to retrieve it, as what few volumes I hadn’t gone through proved to be sufficient to occupy myself for the entirety of the flight to Houston.
And when we got to Houston, I discovered that somehow I had lost track of the baseball cap I had been wearing to keep the rain from my glasses and the sun off the top of my head. I thought I’d wedged it in my computer backpack, but it must have fallen out at some point. Once upon a time, I would have been distraught about it (and you would have been more than accepting of that, having had similar experiences over your time – remember Elfy?), but after having been primed for this sort of thing happening, I seem to have developed a bit more sangfroid about the situation.
It wasn’t even the first thing to disappear on me over the week; I’d misplaced a bag with my sunscreen and bug spray (and my lanyard, which I was told was specifically for the airport upon arrival in Comayagua, so its usefulness was pretty much at an end), and I had to bum those protections off of others for the latter half of the week. I hope someone else found the stuff, and was able to make use of it all.
Meanwhile, there were others at Houston’s airport dealing with worse. We had to go through customs there, rather than in Chicago (which was just as well; I wouldn’t have wanted to deal with such stuff at midnight), and then go through security as if we’d just arrived to board a flight there. The line was, as usual, quite long, but since we had plenty of time before our flight, the only real nuisance was having to stand in the interminable, but steadily moving, line. However, after passing my stuff through the X-ray machine – and catching up with Brenda, and waiting with her as her case was searched more thoroughly (it must have been one of those randomly-selected sort of things) – we discovered a child’s iPad languishing in a tray that hadn’t been claimed.
“Oh, boy,” I commented. “Some little kid is gonna have a meltdown…”
The TSA screener glanced out to the hallway where we would be going to get to our gate, as if to scan for the folks who left it behind. “Actually, I think it was an elderly couple that came through here. I don’t see ’em anymore, though.” She didn’t think they would be back to reclaim it, though; “once they go through here, they gone. They gotta catch they flight.”
Well, I hope they managed to resolve that situation somehow, for their grandchild’s sake. It sure puts a baseball cap and a couple bottles of spray-on protection into perspective.
Again, even with the slow service, I was done with well over an hour to spare before our flight – which turned into an hour and a half, as the plane we were to catch got delayed on its way in to Houston. It was so late, and so dark, that I was actually able to nod off and catch about an hour or two of sleep on the flight – once again rendering the backpack at my feet (and yes, it happened again with boarding) moot. Well, at least I had the option if I had needed it.
And that’s most of the story of our return trip, honey. There are a few other little bits, but I don’t know if anything will come of them, so I’ll set them aside for now. Besides, I’ve gone on long enough, and I do need to get on with my day. So until I reach out to you again, keep an eye on me, and wish me luck; I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 