despedidas

It was a teary farewell as we waved goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa while they drove off in their truck loaded down with our belongings, and with Eddie sandwiched between them on the front seat. They have been very helpful to us during the chaos of these last few days and it is very hard to say goodbye, but we know that they will be coming to see us in Uruguay soon enough. This is always the hardest part of the trip, but we have done it enough times to know that with every sad goodbye upon leaving one place there are as many happy reunions in the other. We love and will miss you guys!

Bueno, ya empezamos con estas eternas despedidas. Si pudieramos apretar un boton para adelantarlo lo hariamos, porque es la parte que menos nos gusta de viajar - y como a nosotros nos toca vivir en dos mundos diferentes, siempre hay que despedirse de algunos para poder reencontrarse con otros. Pero vamos a extraniar un monton a Grandma y Grampa y a Eddie.

El otro dia vimos a nuestro gran amigo Hamid! El insistio que para hacer un viaje asi, hay que tener un GPS, asi que gracias a el tenemos otro juguetito electronico. Ahora vamos a tener que aprender a usarlo! Por lo menos no nos vamos a perder en el camino: aunque a veces las aventuras mas interesantes pasan cuando uno se pierde, no es verdad?

We were really happy to be reunited the other day with our good friend Hamid who we haven't seen since we moved away from Platt's Lane in London four years ago! Thanks to Hamid we have now hesitantly entered even further into the world of modern technology, as he insisted on getting us a GPS for our trip! It is a Garmin eTrex Legend. It was the only one with pre-loaded maps of the Americas and it is small, which is a bonus. We still have no idea about how to use it, but we will have lots of time to learn during the endless hours of driving! We are sure that it will come in handy and keep us from getting too lost (although, sometimes the best stuff happens to you when you do get lost...) Anyways, we'll keep you all posted on the technological exploits of our adventure.

Over the weekend we spent some time visiting family here. At Eric and Gina’s holiday dinner, which was a truly unbelievable feast, everybody kept asking us about our trip, which somehow suddenly made it seem more real to us. I guess we have been so focused on the little details that we didn’t realize that, yes, we are actually doing this (soon)! The good thing is that it seems like we will be getting some visitors to Punta del Diablo, especially of the youth contingent. The kids’ cousins - Matthew, Sascha and Seth (and hopefully Tina) – are planning a visit soon after we get to Uruguay. We have been tempting them devilishly with our talk of bird-watching (penguins on the beach!), whale-watching, beachcombing, etc. Ariel and Mateo also really enjoyed spending time with their cousins Annie and Daniel (who now also want to come see us in Uruguay, although it is pretty flat there and there wouldn’t be many rock-climbing opportunities for Daniel!). As a result of thier wonderful musical influence, we now have yet another instrument to take with us on our journey to be serenaded with along the way - a mandolin!