Home soon for Christmas

Edit from January 2019: In this blog's original appearance, on Travelpod, I wrote this entry retrospectively on 20th January.

The first leg of my flight home for Christmas began in the evening - a night flight to Amsterdam. I took special care packing because some of the Christmas presents I had for people were quite delicate. So into bubblewrap went the bottle of Zhumir (aguardiente) and glass jar of chimichurri before they went into my hold luggage; into my hand luggage went the clay bowl handmade by a Kichwa-speaking tribe in the Amazon, the tagua nut tree decorations, straw angel tree decoration, polished stone llama and turtles, Montecristi (Panama) hat and the bag of yuca crisps. To protect the Montecristi even more, I put it inside the leather 'Rodeo Montubio' hat I'd got for Dave.

My emotions were pretty complex as I sat on the plane. My joy at the prospect of being home for Christmas was also tempered with some news I had received about Dad. The week before, I found out that his cancer had returned, this time to his spine; then a couple of hours before I left for the airport today, that it has also spread to his liver, lungs and abdomen. Chemotherapy was lined up for him in January. I suspected that this Christmas might be his last one, so I wanted to make sure that it was happy as possible. I couldn't wait to see the look on his face when I gave him his Panama hat and told him that I had bought it directly from the source where it had been handmade - a famous workshop in Cuenca. It wasn't the standard kind either but the grade above. I knew he was desperate for one!

I was flying with KLM for the first time and I had a very positive experience. It did feel strange to hear Dutch being spoken after so many months of Spanish! The food was very good, I managed to get more sleep than I thought I would and I watched the film 'The Butler' which was excellent. However, although I had a window seat, it was directly over the wing, so I couldn't see much below.