This traveling thing is great, but I really have been missing my family. Being without them on a holiday kinda makes it a non-event for me!

Thanks for the emails! It has been fun to have a connection to home even through I’m really enjoying this trip! I got sick. I am not just talking the sniffles. I’m fairly sure that I lost ALL the fluids in my body. SO when I got to the airport in Lima all I wanted to do was to get on a plane heading for HOME! I was thinking I might be able to figure out where you were staying and just meet you there. But I’m going to stick it out here.

The floor of the airport was my sick bed, then the flight of three hours with a layover in Guyaquil. I slept through some rough turbulence and was so thrilled when Shelley Bokoles was at the airport to meet us. We hadn’t been able to get a hold of her, so didn’t know if she knew when we were coming. So when we got through customs and saw her it was very exciting!!!

By the time we landed all I wanted to do was to find a clean warm bed and curl up for the next 24 hours. So, I’m springing for a nice hotel ($33/night). The room ins clean and the blankets and pillows are light and fluffy….I may recover!!!

It is Sabbath as I write and Joelle, Shelley and I are enjoying out just hanging out and catching up on life, the universe and everything! We are going to spend New Years with some friends of Shelley’s, so that should be a lot of fun! Apparently they burn things in effigy – something about burning off the bad of the last year so they can begin fresh in the new year.