This morning I woke up at four o’clock, tingling with excitement because it was not yesterday anymore.

Bad analogy: yesterday was a beater semi truck and today is a dancing fairy in blue ballet slippers.

Translation: yesterday was rough and tough and today is not.

I hate packing. And being weak and woozy from four days in bed didn’t help matters. Normally, we are helter-skelter and frantic when packing (is anyone not this way? never mind. don’t answer that), but yesterday was off-the-charts bad. We did everything backwards. Like getting rid of the furniture before we packed up the clothes.

My husband had a bizarre method for coping with our crazy. He swept the mess from room to room and then from side to side. For hours. I alternated between 1) pacing, wringing my hands, and whimpering and 2) blaming him for not getting everything done sooner (you know, while I was busy being sick and he was just whiling away the time taking care of the house, four kids, errands, etc.) And then—miraculously—everything was packed!

We’re such a team.

But then came the loading-the-truck part. There was no way, absolutely no way, it would all fit.

I watched my husband jiggle and juggle, push and shove, and then I offered an astute observation.

“Honey, you know that feeling you get when you’re watching a sport team that you really, really love and you can see that there’s no way they can possibly win? That’s how I feel about you packing this truck. I’d rather not watch.”

He got everything in, though (humph), and soon after the sun set, we squished into the truck and bounced down the driveway.

The nighttime ride to the city was mostly uneventful…except for our older daughter getting carsick and puking out the window. Upon finishing retching, she sat back and declared, “Wow! I’ve never thrown up from a moving car before! That was awesome!”

And then, “Um, it’s all over the side of the truck…”

Her sister: “Well, it’s good you didn’t throw up facing forward because it would’ve hit you in the face. I tried to spit forward once and it got all over me.”

Also, at one particularly desolate stretch of road, I inconveniently recalled that sometimes whole buses got pulled over by gangs and we were just a little truck barreling down the road all by our lonesomes. I kept my useless thoughts to myself and no one stuck a gun in our window.

Now we are at the guesthouse in the city, resting, shaking off the dregs of the illness, letting the dust settle, and trying to get our bearings.

Illness struck and all my carefully laid plans flew out the window.

The goal was to close out our time intentionally, carefully. Instead, we’re cramming. There is no method to the madness. It’s simply pack-up-and-get-out mode.

Everyone says it is important to be thorough with goodbyes. They’re awkward and rough, but skipping out on them only makes things worse. But here we are, brushing over them. I’m sick enough that there’s no other option, but not sick enough not to care. This is not how I wanted our term to end.

The Bezaleel teachers planned a going-away lunch for us yesterday afternoon. I thought for sure I’d be better after a weekend of illness. But I wasn’t; I was worse. So my husband and I took a taxi to the school and I walked around saying goodbye while the taxi waited to take me home. I felt awful, turning away from the teary-eyed women and their kettles brimming with food made just for us. They were so disappointed and sad. I wanted to stay, but even more, I wanted to climb into bed and shut my eyes.

Earlier that morning my husband carted several trays of cinnamon rolls to the children’s school. I had made them the day before—Day Two of the illness. (Day Three was the worst.) He took the camera and photographed the children with their friends and teachers. Scrolling through the pictures, I cried. I wanted to be there, too.

We were planning to take this coming weekend to do something special, but now I don’t know. My younger daughter is burning up with fever, and my husband and older son have yet to get it (my, aren’t I optimistic). There are meetings and paperwork and errands and sorting to be done. We haven’t bought a lick of stuff on our Guatemala-stuff-to-take-home list. There’s way too much food in the kitchen that we now have to figure out what to do with. (I was going to cook through a bunch of it over the weekend.) And I need to write a letter to the school and can’t find any unlined paper.

Living in Central America has taught me a lot about flexibility. Perhaps this is just one final lesson?

I’m sitting here in bed, sipping coffee and trying to decide if I’m well enough to get up. I can type, so I’m not too sick. But maybe this is only just the beginning?

Yesterday, the youngest was felled by a raging fever, chesty cough, and splitting headache. Upon talking to a friend, I learned that her family had been taken down one by one. The doctor said it’s a wicked virus, of some sort or another. So now I’m slightly paranoid.

We finished at Bezaleel yesterday (except now the teachers want us to come back next week so we’re not completely, completely done), and the focus of this weekend is Sorting and Packing. Monday is the last day of school for the children, cinnamon rolls to the teachers (maybe), and a date with my husband. Then Tuesday, my husband goes to Guatemala City to bring back the truck. Wednesday is a fun day (maybe a visit to some caves), or perhaps a last-minute errand day, and Thursday we load up and move to the city. Then meetings, a beach trip (we hope), and home.

So I’d really like to not get sick now.

About that Sorting and Packing. We came down with 11 or so suitcases (thanks to a university group that was traveling down around the same time), but we can only go back with six. This could be a problem. True, we’ve destroyed/outgrown mountains of clothes, but we also came down with way more winter clothes than we actually used. Which is kind of good. Because a lot of them still fit, so we won’t have to scramble for warm duds upon arriving in nippy Virginia. (We may end up paying to check a couple other suitcases. Forty dollars a bag seems really pricey, but when compared to what it would cost to buy the shoes, jeans, and sweaters that it’s hauling, it’s a savings. Or so says my husband.)

I’m rambling. I feel chatty, but in a pointless sort of way. Exactly what bloggers are not supposed to do. We’re supposed to be concise, witty, and pointed. This is not that post.

Remember all my angst about my kids not learning Spanish? And then remember the sudden (kind of) breakthrough? At that point, I said something like, “If only we had another year here…”

I take that back. At least for the youngest. Another three to six months of school and I think he’d be almost fluent. Here’s why:

*He’s a natural motormouth with zero fear of speaking.
*Proof: the other week when I was approaching his classroom, I could easily hear his foghorn voice above the classroom chatter. Alejandro blah-blah-blah-o…
*The other morning when he woke up, he said something to me that I couldn’t understand. He repeated it a couple times before switching to English, and then I was like, Oh! He was speaking to me in Spanish! Not exactly what I was expecting to hear first thing my early morning haze.
*He says he dreams in both English and Spanish.
*He easily flits between past, present, and future tenses.
*My older son reported that he’s heard him mix up his English, as in, “That’s my car blue.”

I’m not sure how we’re going to keep up the Spanish once we return home. The children stage mini-revolts when we try to force Spanish conversation (I don’t really blame them because, well, it doesn’t feel natural), and there aren’t any Spanish-only speakers out in our neck of Virginian woods. I’m thinking I’ll read to the children from Spanish children’s books once a day, and we might do some Rosetta Stone, but aside from that, I’m kinda stymied. And sad. We have a good thing going. I don’t want it to end.