Off to Brazil...sort of

We are supposed to be off to Brazil to visit our dear friends and Mozambique colleagues, Lúcio and Rosalee Guimarães, and our foster daughter, Queila Santarem and family, plus check in with one of the schools Steve has worked with. But I don’t know when we have begun a trip with such stress. Remember the time Mom Hardy discovered a half hour from the Canadian border that she had brought Dad’s expired passport instead of her own current one? Or maybe the time we went to check in for London and Steve had left his wallet and passport on the piano at home. This was my turn. Who knew you needed to hold onto old passports, not for the memories, but for the ten-year visa for the country you are flying to? Oh, yeah, and bring it with you to the airport.

So last night Steve flew to Atlanta without me while I drove home to look for that expired passport. (Found it in the first drawer I checked, but I swear I saved it only for sentiment’s sake. From now on it will sleep in the same zip pocket of my computer bag as my current passport.) Meanwhile, the flight Steve was on (that we should have both been on) had mechanical problems and was delayed so that he missed the connecting flight to Brazil. Which means when I rescheduled myself for the connecting flight to Vitória, I had to reschedule both of us. Only Tuesday didn’t have the same flights as Monday, so I couldn’t just do the same thing we had planned only a day later. And most of the connections involved several hours of layover in São Paul. In the end Steve says we might have been better off to take a bus. We lose a day and a half with Guimarães, and several hours with Queila on the return. And of course all those changes cost an arm and a leg for last minute tickets. Not the same company as the Delta flight down, tickets bought separately, so they aren’t responsible for our changes. And of course, no one but me is responsible for not bringing my old passport to the airport.

Theoretically I had an extra day to use, but I couldn’t settle to anything this morning. And then in the airport, I see the news that Trump is tweeting about Korea… Maybe I’m not supposed to go to Brazil at all.