My last post was quite a long time ago, and we’ve been on quite a long journey ever since, in every sense of the words…. Cesar’s passport didn’t come in the few days we were told it would come, and the day was arriving that I would have to leave. I truly believe God made me a promise, and he is faithful. The Monday of my last week we went to the Post Office. They told us again to come later in the afternoon. We did. They said they didn’t have it, and then somehow they “found” it. Except they didn’t. You see, I’d put down the address of a friend’s hotel to make sure it arrived in responsible hands, but I couldn’t have imagined what would happen. To make a very long story short, we went back to the post office about four times. They “found” it because we called the Post Office in Rio and they gave Cesar the tracking number. According to post office records, it had arrived on the 11th and been delivered (and this was the 15th, after we went to the post office every day since the 11th…). We eventually had the hotel owner go to the post office and he just casually mentioned that passports stolen = federal police and within a few hours they discovered that they had delivered it to the wrong PO Box, tracked it down and delivered it into our hands. Just a few hours later, we bought our tickets and Wednesday we began our journey home.
Wednesday we got up and took the 6AM van to Xinguara to catch a 9:30 bus to Goiana. We arrived in Goiana around 7 the next morning and caught another bus to Brasilia at 8:30, arriving at Cesar’s sisters house (a taxi ride from the bus station) around noon. We hung out and talked late into the night and woke up at 3AM to be at the airport around 4. We took a flight to Panama City, a 5 hour layover there, and a flight to Houston. In Houston, upon attempting to board the flight to KC (the last flight of the evening after having gone through immigration and Cesar having been fingerprinted and approved), Continental Airlines said that we had not paid for Audrey’s ticket. She had a reserved seat, but it had not been paid for. It doesn’t make sense to me even today….
I, of course, burst into tears. They wouldn’t hold the plane, wouldn’t let us on. We were going to have to spend the night in the airport and come up with the money for another ticket for her, as Continental wouldn’t budge at all and the money they were asking for was NOT the discounted price I’d normally pay for a two year old. After many tears, back spasms, and explaining our circumstances, my wonderful grandfather arranged for Audrey’s ticket and the lady at the ticket counter couldn’t resist Audrey and gave us food vouchers and a fully paid night’s stay at the Holiday Inn– a peaceful end to a tiresome day.
We caught the flight in the morning, and our luggage was waiting neatly for us in the baggage claim room, the end of one long journey.