Safely Here

Well, we made it. The trip in several ways was more exciting than we expected, but also better, so we can't really complain.

Everything went without a hitch getting to DFW. When we went to check in however we had some trouble with the fact that our plane tickets made it look like we were going to be in Uruguay for more days in a row than allowed without a visa. This isn't really a problem because we are going to other countries, but it led to a couple of tense hours while the study abroad office worked things out. It was all good in the end and we just did our waiting outside of security instead of inside. We did miss out on lunch... ah well. I was really blessed to have Rachel Brown, the student coordinator for Study Abroad, with me. It was really nice to have someone to take much of the burden off when it came to the whole drama. But for as tense and worried as we were for a couple of hours, we made it to the gate with 10 minutes to spare!

The flight to Miami and our time in the terminal finally getting some food was uneventful.

Our next two flights were both flight 943. So we were supposed to fly to Montevideo with a stop in Buenos Aires, which was going to give us a three hour layover in B.A. Well just as everyone was getting seated, the pilot comes on and says that there is some issue in B.A., so they were going to fly us to Montevideo first. That meant that we were going to arrive 4 hours earlier! Luckily they told us in time that I could contact the Walkers and Kevin to be sure the Walkers knew to come get us. Ah... the beauty of an iPhone.

The flight to Montevideo was fine. We all made it out and through passport control just fine. A few of us had some of our bags looked through because they thought we might have non-prepackaged food. None of us did, so it was fine. One of Dara's bags didn't make it. It should be here tomorrow. The Walkers were there to pick us up. I was really excited to see them!

On the way to CasaACU, we stopped at a park that overlooks the city to take pictures. Oh have I mentioned that it is gorgeous here. It is unseasonably warm and is in the 70's. After visiting the park, we headed on to CasaACU where we had room assignments and lunch. Mariella and Beatriz (who is filling if for Raquel) had empadas ready for us. That always makes life better.

After lunch we were broken into teams to do a scavengar hunt in the local area. I tried to not to help my team too much... but we did win. I'm not sure whether I was an unfair advantage or not. :) I did do the whole challenge with out a map.

Its a little surreal to be walking around the neighborhood. In someways if feels like I never left. I'm really blessed to be back.

Tonight we are going out to dinner and then we get to SLEEP!