Return to the US, A Saga

Thursday 6/7: Move out of house into a hotel
Friday 6/8: Finish cleaning house, check out of house
Saturday 6/9: Enjoy the day like tourists
Sunday 6/10:  Church, see friends, fly to Quito in the night, 45 min flight
Monday 6/11: Spend day in Quito at park, Teleferiqo (gondolas that go up a mountain to 26,500 feet), McDonald’s
Tuesday 6/12: 7:15am leave hotel
7:30am arrive at airport
7:35am wonder why line is so long over two hours before 9:45am fight
7:40am find flight is rescheduled to 7pm.  SEVEN PM, over 9 hours delay.
7:45am get taken to special line for being pregnant and having small kids
7:55am check bags, get told captain is sick, voucher for free lunch at hotel across town, told about shuttle to hotel at 12pm
8:05am eat nasty Dunkin’ Donuts to kill time/feed hungry bellies
8:55am take our own taxi to hotel, $5
9:25am get vouchers changed into different vouchers, amazing concierge takes our carry-ons to holding room.  (Shout out to Quito Hilton Colon Concierge!)  (There should be an accent over the second o in Colon, but whatever.  The restaurant is called Cafe Colon, don’t think we didn’t laugh a lot because we are 13-year-olds)
9:35am go to huge amazing park across the street from hotel (that we spent a while at the day before.  Very lucky.)
10:55am go back to hotel and have a snack from our bags, hang around
11:55am go to eat lunch, get snubbed by stuck-up maitre’d
12:15pm eat delicious buffet at Cafe Colon
1pm hang out in lobby, watch Lion King, try not to go mental
4pm catch shuttle back to airport
4:30pm go through immigration, security, gate “special” security
5:30pm buy world’s most expensive Subway ($7.75 for 6″) and cheap cheese sandwich for kids
6:45pm board plane for 7pm flight
7:15pm plane fully loaded but upon looking out window see plane begin to get fuel, because the 24 hours that the plane had been at the airport weren’t ample time to get that taken care of
7:30pm take off.  nice attendants, no one goes mental, kids sleep 2-3 hours of 4 hour flight.
6/13 12:30am land in Miami
1:10am finish at customs
1:40am hotel shuttle arrives
1:50am arrive at hotel
2am go swimming
2:30am get ready for bed
3am kids asleep
3:30am wonder when I will be asleep, fantasize about eating delicious bagels
5:30am alarm goes off
6am catch shuttle to airport, check in
7am eat world’s worst bagel that is coincidentally also extremely overpriced even for the airport
7:45am board plane first thanks to small children policy
8:10am take off on time!  kids play moderately well for a while, eventually I force them to lay down and they sleep almost 3 hours.  people find this a great time to tell me loudly how well they are doing or how cute they are.  I rudely shush several people because if they wake up my kids I will chop them.  I mean, really.
11:30am (6+ hours later, time change) land in Seattle.  slowest unloading plane ever (isn’t anyone else tired of being on this plane?), eventually get to baggage, where my mom has already found half of our eight giant suitcases.
12:00pm get picked up by Jama, 2 minutes after Aaron finishes carrying bags to the sidewalk
12:30pm eat tasty food at Dick’s.
1pm arrive at dad’s house.  rejoice.

And that my friends, is how you move back from Ecuador.