Home is where your hat is.
Tomorrow morning I catch an early flight and head back home. I will start my trek at 6 AM heading to the Viru Viru Airport in Santa Cruz. After my last cuyape at the airport I'll have the pleasure of passing through customs and getting on my 8 hour flight to Miami. In Miami I have to pass through American customs which can be hard or easy... just depends if they decide I am the lucky guy to get totally searched. I have a 5 hour lay over in Miami (probably 2 hours just in customs) and one of my chapter Brothers might come to have a quick dinner with me. Then I board a 8 PM flight to Detroit Metro. My flight arrives at 11:30 PM and Heather will pick me up after waiting for my bags and then drive me 1 and half hours home. That means I would of left my house in Bolivia at 6 AM... and arrived home to sleep finally at about 1:30 AM the following day... man I will be tired at work my next day!

So that will be my journey to end my week in Bolivia. Given the circumstances it was a great trip. After the funeral life started to be back to normal here. We had family staying in my parents house the entire week. My abuelito's Brother and wife stayed here at the house and abuelita's sister stayed with one of my uncles. It was a fun week of catching up with family, but a sad week of packing up all of abuelita's stuff in the house. It was fun seeing some of the things she saved, and how she saved them. I got to pick a few things that I would take back home with me as memories of her.

The city has not changed a lot since my last visit. It has grown bigger but still the same. Some of the streets and better paved, while others have gotten worse. They made some changes to the Plaza Central which are very nice and make that a better space now. They also built a multiplex for movies with places to eat, arcade, stores... a whole night out.

I got to do some new things... us cousins for the first time ever did a BBQ just by ourselves. It was fun with no uncles around... and we eve spent time making fun of them and all their craziness. We told fun stories about growing up and of course shared some stories about abuelita. It was Fernando's birthday (one of my cousins) and after the food we went Cosmic Bowling. We had a good time but my team (Ivan y Samuel) always took second...

It was a fun week of parrilladas (ie lots of meat), stories with the cousins, a trip to the alligator farm my uncle is building (they have 10,000 eggs already!), and just enjoying the crazy Santa Cruz traffic. I will miss Bolivia as I always do... but this trip it was different... it felt like home. I enjoyed helping my mom clean the rooms, organize the closets, and cook breakfast. I guess even though one of the main reasons I used to want to visit Bolivia is now gone (los abuelitos), but now after 20 years in the states Bolivia surprisingly felt like home. I think I enjoyed telling the cab drivers to take me home, and I actually meant MY home.

Well off I go... packing to go to my other home.