Heading home (March 13 & 14)

We returned to Barcelona but decided to rent a hotel room near the airport for our last night rather than cozy up again on the twin bed.

We went to Michael & Natalia’s for dinner. We bought meat and some side dishes and Michael cooked. This is not something he learned at home. Both Natalia and Michael have learned a lot living on their own. It’s all good, and they have proud sets of parents. We had Fitou wine with dinner and left them a bottle for future enjoyment. It was hard to leave them but I took comfort in the fact that we will see them in late August for three weeks.

Our long journey home began on Monday, March 13, with a 10 am Spain time. I wept as we flew from Barcelona. I love the life we have on the farm and certainly being near my mother and son in Minnesota, in the same time zone as my father in Managua and Ian being on the same continent as his teenagers, but our life in Spain and my life since I went to Europe in 1998 were such life altering times that there are many emotions attached.

Mind you I cried when we landed in Minneapolis, but that was more from relief!

After arriving stateside in New York from Barcelona (7+ hours of flying) we learned that our flight to Chicago O’Hare was cancelled because a major snowstorm closed Chicago. We were routed from JFK to Atlanta and then on standby to Minneapolis. We did make the cut to get on the plane and came home one day early. We had planned to spend one night at the Hilton at O'Hare and come home Tuesday afternoon. We had not slept since we left Barcelona at 10 am Monday. There was a lot of snow near the Minneapolis airport but only an inch or two here at the farm. Ian and I got home at 2:30 a.m. That kind of a day will bring tears to one’s eyes!