Guate pic/story dump #4

*****Disclaimer and credit thing: some of the pics here and the other guate days were totally stolen from other peeps on the trip!

***Other disclaimer: In my foggy confusion of timelines and events, I forgot to include Friday night's drama. We came home from running errands after visiting the dump to my inbox having about 12 messages saying "your flight was canceled." but no emails saying "Your new flight is...". Somewhat worrisome. Although, I always have been that person to start something and not finish it.

So, I called Continental and was told by the first person that our flight was still scheduled. Hmmm...when I asked her to check on Continental.com she said she's not able to go to that website. Hmmm...So, that's when she connected me to a supervisor. We started rescheduling flights and realized that there was only 2 spots for Tuesday, 3 for Wednesday and the majority for Friday. She wanted names of who needed to go home first. Chaos ensued. Girls started tearing up at the thought of staying a whole extra week. They had stuff to get home to, understandably and up until this point, we were all going home on time. All of them, no matter what they had to get home to, quietly told me their plans, and most of them offered for someone else to take the first spots. Good girls, every last one of their cute little selves.

Then my OH SO VERY PATIENT Continental supervisor asked how hard it would be to get to El Salvador from where we were. Russ went to ask the hotel staff and they said it's only 6-7 hour drive and it's fairly normal to make the trip. I asked Supervisor Lady what our options were there and she said we could all fly together Wednesday morning if we went that route. It seemed like the best plan since every time we'd fill a space for an earlier flight, 3 more were gone for the next one, possibly pushing our group into the following week. (Hi, Stress, nice to hang out again, how's your mother?)

So we had a quick meeting, Russ, myself and their team leader and decided that was the best option. I called our transportation company and asked if they go to San Salvador and they said yes, we would leave Tuesday, drive during the day and stay in a hotel. The drivers would stay with us until our flight took off which meant 3 more men would be on hand if anything shady went down. I trust our transportation company and if they said we'd be safe, I believed them. (Shout out Mayra!)

This expression sums up my feelings Saturday morning. Rain rain and more rain. And then, oh a little more rain. I'd never been to San Salvador but wasn't super excited for the new opportunity.

(For those of you who know the greatest McD's on the planet, this was the courtyard the first few hours of the day!)

We all took the day off, sleeping in, watching movies, etc. It was needed and necessary given the fact that IT WAS RAINING. We went out long enough to grab lunch at McD's with Madi so they could run and play at the indoor playground. Which was handy since this is how the morning was spent for E:


That night was one of the girl's birthdays so we all got in real clothes and went out for dinner. It was good for us to get out but there was definitely a heaviness over the group. Part of that was because it WOULD.NOT.STOP.RAINING. and part of that was just being ready to be home already with a side of 'no one wants to go to El Salvador'. But we had a good time, enjoying the world's best brownie and a very scary pinata.



P.S. Here's two pics I forgot to add from Thursday night dinner of E and his Aunt Manda!