Today is Wednesday. The day started off pretty normal. Hot and I decided to spend a lot of the day sitting with Dominica in the lounge chairs that we have in front of the pool. It is the spot that gets the best breeze in the house. I worked all morning and had several meetings and calls today so needed to be on the phone for much of the day.
I had barely gotten off of my afternoon long meeting when Dominica got the tragic news from Texas and all of our plans for December changed. We are returning to Texas as quickly as we can and we have a lot that has to be done before we can do that.
We called United, which has our tickets currently for our flight back, and while they could get us flights back to the States on Saturday that is both “too late” and they were going to charge us more than the value of the tickets to make the change. The cost was so high that we even mentioned the possibility of the girls and me staying behind in Nicaragua while only Dominica changed her flights and us joining two weeks later!
Dominica searched and searched and managed find a light out of Managua tonight on Spirit at one forty in the morning! It was far cheaper than changing our flights with United. She grabbed the tickets, and I texted our house manager to see if she could get us ground transportation from Granada to Managua lined up for ten thirty tonight.
So Dominica set to packing with reckless abandon and I set out on foot to run to the bank and get the necessary cash to pay our electric bill that is due before we go. I stop at the corner store for the last time and grab four last Kinder Sorpresa for the girls to give to them after they have helped us get ready tonight.
Dominica did an amazing job of packing under pressure. She was basically done by nine and we actually were not under that much pressuret leading up to the ten thirty pick up by the same guy who had gotten us at the airport in Managua two months ago.
We are a bit in shock, but from why we have to travel back to Texas and also that we are leaving Nicaragua tonight. This has been home for the last two months and we were expecting to be here for a bit longer. We are not mentally prepared to be leaving the country yet.
At ten thirty our friend arrived and this time with a van instead of a Corolla and we easily fit in with tons of room to spare. Dominica and I sat in the second row and the girls shared the third row behind us. It was dark and mostly quiet as we pulled out of Granada passing by the grocery stores going back out the way that we had arrived a couple of months ago. It is weird seeing the same trip now that everything is well known and so familiar as opposed to new and exotic and strange when we first arrived.
On the way out we had to suddenly dodge three horses in the highway. It was pretty close. A reminder of what life is like in Nicaragua.
Sadly, not far outside of the city, a dog ran out in front of us and we ran over it. There was no way that our driver was going to avoid it. He hit it so hard that Luciana was mostly out of her seat and I had to climb back and get her settled back in. The girls didn’t really notice what had happened but it was very sobering as if the day was not sobering enough.
The trip up to Managua airport is one hour. We had to dodge one more horse on the way. Other than that, it was a quiet drive.
We got to the airport just before midnight. By the time that the sun comes up we will be far to the north in Houston. Goodbye ninety degree days, it is time for sixty degrees and rain.