Home Visit

Flying home felt surreal. We had just spent seven months abroad, constantly moving. Neither of us were really prepared for this, it hadn’t been part of the original plan. Honestly we were happy we were only going home for a couple weeks.We were so excited to visit with out friends and family, but we had gotten used to being on the road. Going home felt strange.

As soon as we landed in Toronto, from Bogota, The Tragically Hip were playing on the airport sound system. They are one of Canada’s all-time great bands and it was awesome to hear. After a quick stop in the bathroom, we were both pretty happy. I know this sounds like a weird thing to say. However, the reason why we were so happy was because it was so nice to be able to actually flush toilet paper! Due to plumbing in Latin America, over the past seven months you simply place the used tissue into the garbage bin next to the toilet. They always say it’s the little things that you miss about home, well, this was one of them.

We had some soup on the layover and were on our way to Edmonton, our home town. Arriving at noon, we had picked up our bags and headed for the door to see our parents, who always are the ones to pick us up at the airport. It has always been the same, Marks parents come and my parents come and we end up going home to separate houses. That in itself is always a little weird. We spend so much time together for so long and then we are taken apart. But, it is tradition and it is really nice having time spent with our respective families.

Skipping forward a couple weeks we are full of moms cooking, tired from the most amazing visits and parties, and we are off again. We had some late nights with great friends, long talks with family and loved ones, visited some of our favourite hang-outs and ate some amazing food.

The visits are way to short, there is never enough time spent with friends and family. Also, the main reason we were going home was to see our new nephew who was born a month prior to our visit. Since we didn’t know how long we were going to be away this time we though it would be a good time to head back home to say hello, and welcome to this world.

We were flying from South America to Europe and the only way to do that was conveniently through either the USA or Canada, and well obviously we chose Canada!

After our short and sweet visit we were off to the airport, where we ended up having an extended layover in Calgary, a city about three hours from Edmonton. It was supposed to be only six house at the airport, but the flight was delayed, and delayed and delayed. We ended up staying in the airport for 19 hours! We were exhausted by the time we got on our flight to London, which was seven hours long. We didn’t get much sleep due to children being on the flight who decided it was better to kick our seats all night then to sleep themselves. But, I remember being a bored kid on a flight as well, so I understand that it happens.

Needless to say, after being awake for over 40 hours, we arrived at our house-sitting spot just outside of London. It was all we could do to squeeze in a quick shower before crashing hard on the cloud-like bed for a few hours.

It’s time to begin the next leg of this incredible journey.