Tonight is our last night in Colombia and we are all ready to get home. The past three nights we have been in Bogota, and between the travel and being in another new unfamiliar place, someone has been a little cranky and irritable. Me. Actually we are all doing well but I have to say that I really can't wait to wake up in my own house and see my dog after a month. Tomorrow morning we leave the hotel at 6:00 a.m. and if everything works well we will arrive in Chicago at 6:15 p.m., where my folks will pick us up. It is going to be a long day but it will be well worth it to get back.
This afternoon I put a load of laundry in the washing machine at our hotel and went to put it in the dryer about an hour later. When I got to the laundry room, a lady that works here motioned to me that she had already put it in the dryer for me. I said "Muchos gracias" and started to walk out. She stopped me and said something in Spanish, that as usual I didn't understand. She had been doing the dishes and had on yellow dish gloves. She held a hand out to me palm down the way a lady might if she expects you to raise her hand and kiss it. I didn't know what to do and she repeated the phrase and again I didn't understand. So I took her wrist and started to raise it to my face when I noticed that her name was written on the back of her dish glove and that was what she had been trying to tell me all along. So then I tried to play it off by shaking her wrist like a handshake while her hand flopped around. She gave me a look I've seen time and again the past month and I walked away. I'd really like to think that will be the last time I make a complete jack-ass out of myself in Colombia, but there is always the airport tommorrow morning. It will be nice to get home where everyone already knows that I'm socially inept without having to surprise strangers with that fact on a daily basis.
Almost home to Wisconsin, Paul