Alex woke up at 7:00 sharp this morning despite the fact that we didn't get him to bed until well past 11:00 pm, and despite the fact that we're in a different timezone. How does he do that?
Traveling yesterday went surprisingly well. Even after checking in and going through security, we had an hour and a half to kill before our first flight of the day so I took Alex walking up and down the terminal. stopping to investigate all the store windows, coke machines and plants along the way.
(Alex watching our plane at SLC)
Since he'd gotten up at 5:30 in the morning, by the time our flight took off he fell asleep. He woke up about an hour in and just played with toys and bounced on our laps. I did have to do the dreaded diaper change in the airplane bathroom. I had put it off for so long the diaper didn't hold and he was completely soaked. But he didn't mind. The bathroom was mirrored on one side, and Alex fell in love with his reflection. I let him stay in there playing with the mirror for so long a flight attendant knocked on the door to make sure we were OK.
Once we started our decent Alex finally discovered the window. He glued his little nose to the window and watched the entire landing. We had to pry him away from it to leave because he was watching them unload the baggage.
When we got to Atlanta, we both took turns taking Alex for walks along the concourse. It was a four hour layover, so much walking was done. I found a place where Alex could watch the cars driving around and see planes flying low (landing and taking off from other side of airport) and we had a ball watching them. It was also a good place to people watch. Whenever passengers walked by Alex would wave and yell "BYE BYE!" at them.
The flight to Panama City brought us a couple of wonderful surprises. First, the check-in attendant worked it out so we had a separate seat for Alex, which made all the difference. Second, I befriended one of the flight attendants and she gave me extra alcoholic beverages during the flight, which is always a good thing!
Since we wore him out with all the walking in the ATL airport, he fell asleep for half the flight to Panama City. Once he woke up, he busied himself with a mini Magnadoodle and an Incredibles toy mobile phone. Again, he was an absolute angel, and we couldn't have possibly asked for him to be any better.
Arriving in Panama City, I basically just followed John's lead. He seemed to remember all of his Spanish, and talked to everyone with apparent ease. Everything was so easy. Immigration? No problem. All of our baggage made it just fine. There was someone waiting at the airport to take us to our hotel. I was beginning to feel like nothing could go wrong. Then we checked in.
The hotel is really much nicer than we need. Even when I worked for a hotel company and could get discounts, I still stayed in the cheapest hotels they had. This place is a luxury hotel booked for us by John's work. We had planned to use our Discover card to pay for the hotel (will be reimbursed by John's company) and I even called ahead of time to make sure they accepted that type of card. But when we checked in we were informed that they did not in fact take Discover card. John and I just looked at each other, both with "Oh Shit" looks on our faces. We gave them a different card (with enough money to pay for maybe two nights) and went up to our room to figure out what the hell we were going to do. I think we've got it figured out now, we'll have much less "playing around" money, but it'll work out fine.
So now we're here. To be honest, during all of the planning for this trip, I hadn't given any thought at all to actually being in Panama for a month. All of my energy was focused on getting here. Passports, packing, surviving the flights... Now we're here. What to do?
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