my poor parents

Umm. Alright. So, my parents are supposed to be here. They were actually supposed to be here at 2:35 this afternoon. I waited for them to get in, oh-so-patiently. I even figured out the "system" of announcing flights at the Merida airport - I say "system" in quotes because there is no system. There are no monitors. If you want to know if a flight has arrived or is arriving, you either watch the sky to see if it's coming in or you have to ask an airline representative. Otherwise, ya just stand around and wait.

Anyway, like I said, my parents are supposed to be here right now. I don't know where they are.

After waiting for a while, around 3 I asked someone if their flight from Caracas had been delayed, and sure enough, it had been. They told me it would probably arrive around 4:30. I waited and waited some more, and meanwhile, the valley Merida sits in got foggier and foggier. 4:30 rolled around, I looked to the sky, no plane. 4:45 there came an announcement. (My God, an announcement! That's a step up.) The announcement basically said that, due to the fog, all flights had been redirected to the airport in El Vigia, 45 minutes away. The airline told me my parents flight would have been redirected there as well. Great.

Since my Spanish-speaking abilities and my level of stress have a direct correlation (in other words, the Spanish part of my brain doesn't work when I'm freaking out like this!), I ran down the street to school to get help from Astrid, the study abroad director. She called the airport in El Vigia, and they said no flights had come in yet, but to keep calling back. Now I'm just waiting around until Astrid calls again.

As far as I know, all this means my parents are still in Caracas, but I have no way of knowing that for sure. They also have no real way of getting a hold of me to tell me where they are. They have my homestay family's phone number, but as my homestay family doesn't speak English and my parents certainly don't speak Spanish, a lot of good that does when I'm not there.

I'm sure this will all get figured out and that my parents are fine. I hope that they aren't terribly worried because I'm doing enough worrying for all three of us. Probably end up prematurely gray. I'd just feel so much better if I knew where my monolingual, very gringo-looking parents were...