Not the most wonderful way to start my trip...

This is my first of what I’ll probably be doing all the time – writing while I’m traveling, and posting a bunch sometime later. So today has been lots of fun. We left Nashville in the morning to make the 4+ hour drive to Atlanta. Two hours into the ride, I got a voicemail from American Airlines – my flight from Miami to Atlanta was cancelled, and they had kindly rescheduled my route – tomorrow morning, I would fly from Atlanta to New York, then New York to Miami, then Miami to La Paz. Right. So I called American and the guy wouldn’t/couldn’t switch me to a different flight to Miami today, but at least made it so that tomorrow I would go Atlanta to Miami without a New York detour. But that was still a huge pain because I would have to spend the night in Atlanta and deal with food, hotel, etc, so we went to bug them at the desk at the airport. Ideally wanted to somehow find a flight to Miami tonight, but my alternative was for them to get me set up in a hotel with food vouchers and maybe even upgrade my ticket for the huge hassle they caused. Got really, really lucky at the airport after quite a long wait in line and got put on a flight to Miami tonight so that I’ll still be in time to catch my redeye to Bolivia. And Kat and Igor were awesome and waited at the airport with me while we got the mess sorted out. So it all worked out and I’ll get there as planned, just have a bit of time in Atlanta now before my flight, but that was really not the ideal to start my trip. Hopefully it will all go up from here.
Had lots of adventures in Nashville with Kat over the last week. Of course there was tons of good food, including the best popsicles ever at Las Paletas – last time I had such good popsicles was at a stand four years ago in Baja, and I’d been craving them ever since. Spent a day at the lake going tubing, attempting to water ski, going on the jet ski, and wading around. Another morning, we drove out a bit into the beautiful country for a two-hour horseback ride. We were the only ones there, so got a private trail ride with tons of trotting and galloping along the way. Also visited with a huge pen of Pomeranians who were used for breeding. They had a fairly big, nice area, but I’m not even going to go into my whole debate after that. Anyway, I discovered later that night that the ticks in the area had taken quite a liking to me – not a nice surprise, especially for a California girl who was not expecting them! The weather was all over the place, hot, warm, stormy, rainy, it would change constantly and messed with our plans a bit. But saw an awesome thunderstorm from Kat’s 8th floor balcony, I wish we got more of those in CA! It dried up yesterday afternoon long enough for us to rollerblade around the lake in Centennial Park and see lots of adorable goslings waddling around the grass. We looked a little bit ridiculous on rollerblades, but it was fun to skate around, though I wasn’t nearly as nimble on them as I used to be.
We had plenty of other adventures too, as well as some lazing around the house, but it’s hard to write about everything when it already feels like it was so long ago. I’ll be better about keeping up with writing while I’m in Bolivia. I always regret that I didn’t write enough in Ecuador or especially Tanzania because I can’t go back and remember all my stories like they just happened. So that’s what this blog is mainly for, and of course to entertain those of you who feel like keeping up with or checking in on my adventures. Please leave me comments or messages along the way, I’ll be gone for a long time and miss everyone back home! I still have two hours before my flight leaves, but I’m so ready to go right now!