Flight of the Spruce Goose

Ok, so this wasn't actually the plane that Brenda flew into A Coruña on, but it might as well have been. Pablo, Shana and I all piled into his VW Golf and drove the hour into A Coruña and then spent another twenty minutes finding the airport. We ended up being an hour early anyway, but we didn't mind sitting in the café and browsing through the bookstore. Eventually, her arrival time rolled around and the flashing screen changed from "On Time" to "Arrived". Thirty minutes later, it was still flashing. Now this particular airport would take a maximum of 5 minutes to walk across it's entirety, so this was a bit odd. Finally, there was an announcement that the flight had been redirected to Santiago. We live in Santiago. But don't worry! The passengers were being bused to A Coruña. Eventually, we were able to confirm a message to Brenda who didn't even know that she was in the wrong city, telling her to stay put. An hour later, we picked her up in Santiago. Fortunately, we had a wonderful time the rest of the evening eating and walking around showing her the sites at night.

Monday was spent flying through Madrid and London on our way to Hanover, Germany. Our meeting was at a retreat/ vacation center in the country. Let me tell you something about Germans. They're kind of weird. Spending more than 2 minutes and 30 seconds in a hot shower is a crime against humanity, but they are perfectly willing to spend 30 trillion dollars a year separating the little metal staples from their tea bags so that they can be recycled properly. Germans don't use trash cans. They devote an entire region of their living space to waste receptacles. There are no less than four separate and color coded cans for waste. And if you put the little metal staple in the same can as the rest of the teabag... they will hunt you down, fine you beyond any reasonable year's wages, and deport you from the continent!

Actually, the week went well, but it was fun laughing at the Germans. And it was nice to not feel guilty about speaking English for whole week! We had some good fellowship, some a normal food, and even a little snow the last day we were there. Very refreshing. Now that we're back in Santiago, its back to the grindstone. :)

And tomorrow, I'm going to church with the Mormons! I'll explain next time.



P.S. This is Brenda and me at the Gatwick airport posing as Victorian British people. I'm doing an impersonation of that bad guy from Oliver Twist.