Saturday, December 15, 2007 –

It has been almost a year and half since my last big vacation. It felt even longer because during much of that time, I was working two jobs. During the last half of the year, I moved to one full-time job and my boss was kind enough to give me two weeks off to travel with my brother Jeff to Argentina and Chile.

I had been dreaming of traveling to South America for a long time. Finally, Jeff and I had our chance. I had been studying Spanish for 14 years so it was great to visit some additional Spanish-speaking countries. Little did I know how little Argentine Spanish would sound like the Spanish I was familiar with in Spain! It would also be the first Christmas Jeff and I had ever spent away from home. We decided we would celebrate Christmas with the family when we returned.

Today, I flew out of Birmingham at 11:45 in the morning in route to Atlanta. Seemingly paradoxically, it was cheaper to fly to Argentina from Birmingham than directly from Atlanta. After a lengthy layover, Jeff and I met up for our flight to Buenos Aires. We grabbed dinner and Chili’s in the airport before our flight left that evening at about 20:30 p.m. for Buenos Aires.

The flight down to Buenos Aires is a long flight, even longer than to western Europe. It was pretty fascinating because we flew down the beautifully lit coast of south Florida before flying over central Cuba. After flying over the lights of Cartagena, Colombia, I drifted off to sleep.