Adios Chile

The suitcases are packed, stuffed full of all kinds of things we've accumulated these past 6 weeks.  We didn't feel like we were getting that much stuff to bring back with us, but it adds up apparently.  Good thing Greg is the master packer!  There was a spousal moment where Greg thought I had laid out all the clothes I needed to travel home, and I thought I would do that after an outing with the boys.  When I got back all the bags were packed - spousal moment, sorry honey!

I took the kids out for awhile this morning because they are bouncing off the walls with excitement to travel.  Honestly, I would have thought my kids would be the last kids that would be good travelers.  But they have done so well.  While I was doing work e-mail this morning Greg had gathered together extra food, shampoo and other things.  The boys and I brought this to our friend Liz's house (our friends here that have an urban youth ministry at skate parks - I wrote about them a few days ago, see here).

What we didn't realize as we were walking down the street was that we narrowly missed a street protest about education.  It's a long story, but high school and college students here are on strike.  Most protests have been peaceful, but a number have gotten violent.  When students start throwing rocks or get violent in some way, the police come in with tear gas and other stuff.  Liz and her boys got caught in a protest one time, just walking down the street, and before they could get out of the situation they were all coughing, gasping and had big, puffy, swollen eyes for the rest of the day.  Habakkuk got caught in a protest once at one of their skate parks, and it was so bad that they started vomiting/etc.  Whew!  So we walked by where the street protest was today just 2-3 min. before it happened.

On the way back from Liz's we got our last empanadas and sopapias from the bakery around the corner.  We are determined to figure out how to make these once we get back from Chile.

Our flight looks like it's supposed to depart on time, though it is in the midst of another international route and appears to be one hour behind.  Ahhh, an hour...not bad.

It's a mix of emotions for us today.  We're sad to be leaving Chile, but happy to be going home.  I'll write more when we get home tomorrow.  Thanks for reading!