On our way...

Yesterday was a long day at the airport... after waking up at 3:30am for a 6:10 flight that was cancelled, I ended up hanging out in Reagan National until 3:30pm, when my rescheduled (and also delayed) flight took off for Miami. The wait went by pretty quickly though, as the first half of the morning was spent trying to figure out how to make international calls so that I couldsecure shelter in Quito that night -assuming I ever got there - and the second halfwas spenthanging out with the one and only Sean Koehr, who randomlytapped me on the shoulderfrombehind while I was shopping for phone cards. Incidentally, he was on his way to Midtown in Chicago that morning. We grabbed some Potbelly's sandwiches for lunch and washed them down with a couple of root beers before we headed for our respective departure gates - which were temporarily the same gate at one point, as Sean's flight changed gates at least 4 times.

Anyway, I finally got to Quito around 10:30pm (Quito time), spent an hour in the customs line, and Spanglished my way into a taxi headed to Residencia Ilinizas, where my friend Jose Miguel, whom I'd met during our last trip, was on call to let me in around 11:30pm. I attempted to mingle with a couple of the residents for a few minutes, and finally, after 22 hours awake, 19 of which were spent in an airport or in a plane, went to bed.

Mariana tells me she made it to Bogota just fine, and I'll be meeting her at the airport this afternoon before we tour the city a bit and meet the family she'll be staying with tonight.