Heading Back to the States

So today is the day!  I can't say that Noah and I are super-excited about heading back to the USA.  In all honesty, leaving is the most difficult part of this trip.  But the time has come.  Noah took my sandals and tennis shoes to the baby house where Invisible was in order to give them to her.  She seems to be the only girl at the orphanage with feet as big as mine.  While Noah was doing this, I had a few letters and paletas and clothing items to drop off at the big girls house.  We agreed to meet up at the medium boys house for devotions.

At the medium boys house, the boys took turns thanking Noah for spending so much time with them and playing with them.  They wished Noah well in this next year and said they were excited to see him again next year.  Juan Carlos translated for the medium boys as they were thanking Noah and talking to Noah.

Noah with his medium boys

 We headed to the Comedor with the boys although today we didn't eat.  We spent a lot of time finding various kids around the Comedor to say our goodbyes to.  I said goodbye to Michell quite a few other girls.  We walked to school with the medium boys and hung out with them for a while.  I walked over to the high school to get my hair braided and say a few more goodbyes.  When I began heading back to the elementary school, Eliberto caught me on his bike with a letter from Luis David.  That's when I realized I didn't even see him at breakfast.  He was waiting by the large warehouse...and I could tell he had been crying a lot.  At 20 years old, our visits (and especially leaving) has really touched him.  We chatted quite a bit before I had to go get Noah to head back to our room.

Noah with Gibran - his sponsored child

I dropped off the remainder of our paletas with Doris in the office so that she could hand them to children as they came to the office to visit with parents or chat on the phone with parents.  She gave me quite a few CDs of the children at the orphanage singing praise songs.  When I got back up to our room, David and Lydia (the founders of the orphanage) were both up there to say goodbye.  They thanked both Noah and I for our time there, and the many years we've been coming.  It was such a precious moment for me.  Suly was up there as well, with lots of smiles and saying she'd see me soon at her wedding!

Norman picked us up at 8am and on our drive back to the airport, we saw a dead cow on the side of the road.  I think it may be the first time EVER that we've seen ANY sort of dead animal on the side of the road.  We were also stopped by the police because they had to check all of Norman's plates/stickers to be sure his van was registered correctly and up-to-date.  It was a really short 3-minute stop and didn't really hinder our timing to get home at all. 

Our flights back to the USA went flawlessly and the only hiccup in our travels was that I forgot to take my current drivers license, which meant I was ultimately unable to rent the car I had reserved.  Thankfully we were able to easily take the 'L' to downtown Chicago and only have to walk about a block to the Greyhound bus station in order to catch a 8:45am bus to Appleton.  The bus ride was about 5 hours, so not too extensive, and we were back home by 2:30pm.  It was a good year and a great experience.  We cannot wait for 2019!