Another less stressful morning. Today is Simon’s dad, Ruben’s birthday. Once everyone woke up we had “fruit salad” which was chopped tropical fruit and orange juice. Another version of arepa with quesito is on the right, and the doughnut thing is pan de queso. We drove out to Simon’s home town, La ceja. It was nice being much smaller than Medellín. We went to the main park area which reminded us of the plaza in Santa Fe. We sat in a balcony and chatted while we had some hot chocolate. Simon’s sister was coming into town to surprise her dad, so we had to pick her up from the airport. We all went to a burger place in Medellín. It was a neat location and they had the burger names in English, to sound fancy. The food was very good and much different than an ordinary burger. After this we went back to the house and celebrated dinner with friends and family until 9:30 when we headed to the airport. It was a sad farewell leaving the friends that had become family in just a week.

security at the airport was a breeze and we had a while to play games before the flight. John was able to convince the guy sitting next to them to take my seat so that we could all sit together. Aidan then continued on his way to Oregon and we got ready for Dallas. Unfortunately the flight was delayed 2.5 hours before we took off. There were 16 planes ahead of us for departure. That meant that we missed our connection flight to abq.

American re-booked is for a 3:00 flight, but I was able to change it to a 1:30 for both of us. A 16 hour day of flying is a long day, but well worth the previous week’s adventure.