Traveling woes

Its been a busy week here in panama. I've working with my family help them setup up there computer net work. I finally have some free time so I though I would write about what had to be one of the worst traveling experiences in my 10 years of going to Central America.

It all started last Friday morning at 4am in Boston. Thats when I had to get up for my 6am flight. I'm not a big fan of early flights but it helps in case you miss a connection or something. Anyway I arrived in north Carolina around 8:30. On my way to my next flight I passed one of the monitors only to see that my flight was canceled.

Canceled? I've never had a canceled flight before. Epically ON THE DAY OF THE FLIGHT. When I get to the would be gate no one is there. I guess I was supposed to know what to do on my own. I found a age agent at another gate and she told me to go to the service desk.

The service desk was moving very slowly...of course. Thankfully when it was my turn the agent tells me they are putting me on a 7pm flight out of Miami. I thought "This isn't too bad . At a least I will be there tonight."

I arrived at Miami around 2:30 in the after noon. I signed up to use the internet and settled in for a 5 hour wait before my next flight. As 7 drew closer they made an announcement that there was something wrong with my plane and that we can not take it. Perfect. However they did have another plane and they assured us it would only be a 45 minuet delay.

We finally start boarding the plane AT 7:45. Around 8:10 we are all on and just sitting there The captain informs us that we are waiting for catering. This turns into another 20 min wait. Then it starts to rain and they close down a run way. We finally get out of there around 9.

Oh and the catering we were waiting all that time for, is just drinks. They didn't even feed us.

Once we land I get out only to find an hour and half line for customs line in front of me. Lucky they didn't lose my bags and I my sister was there waiting for me.

We finally get home around 2am my time. By this time I had been up for 22 hours.

I think the only good part of the day was the car ride to my sisters house. My niece and I were sitting in the back seat falling asleep on each other. I had this feeling like: This is the reason I put up with all the headaches of traveling. To be here in this car with my family. Somehow, in that moment, it all seamed worth it.

Off to Central America

I've been running around all day getting ready for my trip to Costa Rica and Panama. I leave tomorrow morning bright and early. This is going to be a business trip of sorts.

I'm working on a project with my family in Panama. My father Luis has an embroidery business that he has been running in Panama for almost 20 years now. (After he left the revolution in the mid 80s he moved to Panama to rebuild his life. I may add a post about this part of the story.)

I'm working to help them create an order tracking system. I would like this to be a pilot for a bigger project of creating open-sourced business resource for Central America. I'll probably put a post up about that when I have a better idea what it is going to be all about.

In the mean time I am planning to do some more video interviews with various family members. Keep an eye out for those sometime next week!

E-Book is done!!

Its been a while since my last post. Thats because I have been working hard on creating an e-book of our story. I took a bunch of our blog posts and put them in order to make the story easier to understand. I also added a couple family pictures.

I was supposed to have this out by the begging of the summer but it took longer than expected. Well thats life I guess. Anyway we hope you enjoy and we would love to hear your feedback.

Ana's Miracle is the story of how our family was separated by death and adoption during the Civil War in El Salvador and our journey to reunite. This e-book is a collection of blog posts written by the children of a family that was torn apart. We are writing this to tell our story, share our experiences and remember our mother who is the inspiration for this e-book and our blog.

Ana's Mircale E-Book (pdf 1.8MB) Right click "save as"