We made it through the flight. Each of us sitting in a randomly assigned middle seat. My sweet innocent husband (he does travel for business right? Shouldn’t he know better?) thought someone would gladly trade with us. Haha. Or as they say down here, jaja.

I said goodbye to California – place of my birth and home to me most of my life – sitting between strangers. On one side was a man with serious manspread of the legs and arms who pretended to sleep any time anyone tried to speak to him. On the other side a woman who was from Panama and had travelled to L.A. on business. She kindly and severely made the person in front of me put up her seat because it was crushing my knees. The landing terrified her. Comfort comes in all languages.

In Panama you go through immigration, then pick up your bags and go through customs. Then you walk through a long windowless hallway to get to the outside.

Oh when you hit the outside…

It was about 9:30 p.m. and it had just finished raining. It was like walking into a steam bath. Moisture rising from the streets, the air sticking to your skin, sweat pouring off you. Jack says his first thought was “oh, mom’s gonna kill dad.”

I’m trying to get past posts up on the blog. Internet was dodgy when I first started…