After spending the week in New Orleans (not much to say about NOLA that you don't already know), my twin, my friend, Smitty and I made it to the airport about 4:45 am. Smitty dropped us off, and headed back to Senatobia with my "big ass truck".
Coley and I had a pretty easy trip to Atlanta. I had my usual body search after my knees set off the alarms. Coley was very patient while the woman went up and down, and up and down, and up and down (well, you get the picture). They loaded the plane about 10 minutes after we got to the gate.
When we got to Atlanta, we had to take the subway to the last stop at the far side of the building, and just 100 feet away we hear the announcement "all passengers for Delta Flight 533 must board now", so we hurried along and found the plane wasn't full, so we got to sit in the same row, rather than across the row from each other.
It took about 4 hours to get to Costa Rica, but it was an easy flight. We arrived under a sky filled with dark clouds and no sooner did we get into the building when the rain came in torrents. For those of you who are familiar with humidity, well, you ain't seen nothing until you step out of the plane on to the tarmac and immediately it feels like you stepped out of a warm shower. I've already
flowed into the idea of staying damp while I'm here, so don't expect any pictures of me.
When we finallly got through the lines at custom, I stood before the official as he looked at my passport and when he asked me how long I was staying, I very proudly said "5 months". He then asked me for my return ticket and I almost panicked. Yes, me, cool, calm, collected, panicked!!
"my sister booked the flight for me and she just went through the line over there." Of course Coley was off on a mission to find a cart for us to load our "way too heavy" suitcases and was nowhere to be found. So I started to back peddle "I know I'm leaving on March 18th, I just retired, blah, blah, blah". The official then tells me I can only stay 90 days, then I have to leave. "Oh, yes sir, I'lll be leaving the end of January on a cruise to celebrate our birthday, yadda, yadda, yadda!!! They did let me in, but we then had to have our bags searched. When another very nice official opened up my little suitcase, what really did look like birdseed, but was really a multi-bean soup, had opened somehow and was all over everything. He held it up like I was trying to transport drugs. He did the same thing with my Uncle Ben's brown rice. Good thing I wasn't transporting drugs!!!!
The coolest thing happened this afternoon. Coley, Shannon (her roommate) and I walked over to the ocean, which really is only about three to four blocks from their condo. While we were walking down the path, I looked over to my left and saw something move that looked like a huge, hairy yellow and orange spider, but what I found out is a rainbow crab. Way cool looking. It seems rather auspicious to me to see such an incredible creature. Rainbows remind me of beauty, unity, and harmony and crab "medicine" I'm sure has to do with being at home wherever you are, since many crabs carry their homes with them. So that's my first message: I'm here, I'm home!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment