A long day of travel

As most of you know, I'm back in the states for a week for my mom's wedding. I traveled all day on Tuesday. Like actually. Here's the story of my full day of travel:

I woke up at 3:05AM (Central American time, that means 1 hour ahead of Washington) and I ate breakfast (pancakes I'd made from the day before) and finished up packing last-minute things and I was leaving my apartment in Xela by 3:55AM. I walked from my apartment to the Alamo bus station (it's about a 10-15 minute walk) and the streets were dead empty. It was comforting to know that it's not every day that there are a bunch of drunk people wandering the streets at way-too-early in the morning (another story for another time), but it was also really weird that there was no one. Well I got to the station and awaited my 4:30 bus to Guatemala city. Now, there are chicken buses which are old U.S. school buses that have been pimped out and go flying down mountain curves, but Alamo buses are like the Greyhound. They're nice charter buses with comfy seats, only one person per seat, they don't fly down the road and they go more direct. The bus ride was wonderful! We never stopped to pick anyone extra up and we only stopped a couple times before the Alamo station in Guate to drop a couple people off. It was maybe like 8:45AM when we got to the station in Guate and I hopped into a taxi to go to the airport. Just in case you're wondering, the taxi price was outrageous!! I paid Q62 for my 4-hour bus ride and Q50 for my 20-minute taxi ride. Dumb! But the driver was a really nice guy and we had a nice chat while sitting in terrible Guate traffic. I got to the airport at about 9:15 and had to wait for the United Airlines desk to open so that I could check-in.
[There's something you should know about me: I'm paranoid about being late for travel transportation. I really could have taken a bus from Xela at 6:30AM, not 4:30, but I wanted to make sure I'd have plenty of time just in case something went wrong with the bus or something] I got checked in and moved onto exit customs. I had overstayed my tourist visa by 8 days so I had to go to a different window so that they could write me a fine (Q10 per day overstayed). From there I had to go back upstairs to pay the fine at the bank, then back down to the fine window so that they could sign-off and back to the customs guy. At first he only talked to me in Spanish, but when I came back the second time he only spoke to me in English. Haha!
I got to security and still had a half-full water bottle. I thought there would be a bathroom before security, but there wasn't. I told the security guy that I still had water and I needed to empty it or drink it and he said (in Spanish) that I could drink it on the other side of security or I could take it to the bathroom on the other side of security to dump it out...either way, I could pass through security with my water. On the other side of the metal detector there was a security lady who saw my bottle and said (in English) "yours?" I said yes and she said "drink it, now!" Ummm, so the other guy was a lot nicer.
[Another thing you should know about me: I almost always have to pee, and this was no exception...so drinking half of a nalgene bottle full of water was kinda miserable]
I got to my gate and waited. There's no AC in the Guate airport, so it was cookin! Finally got onto the plane and I was sitting next to two guys, one about my age from Austen, and the other about 65 from Puyallup. We chatted throughout the whole flight and waited in customs in Houston together. We all had about a 2.5 hour layover, but customs took FOREVER so by the time we got to our gates we had about 10 minutes before boarding. But anyways, we waited in customs together and when we parted ways (the guy from Austen had a gate in the opposite direction from where Puyallup and I had to go) we actually introduced ourselves. So we spent an entire flight and 2 hours in customs chatting without knowing each others names, I love how that's totally normal when traveling!
On the way to our gate, Dwight (the guy from Puyallup, whose name I now knew), offered to buy me a coke or something for helping him out with navigating the Houston airport and customs. I declined, but he was hungry so we stopped at a taco restaurant with tacos 2 for $8 (for reals!! Tacos in Xela are 3 for Q10, which is about $1.30) and he said I could have the other since he only wanted one. So we had the most expensive tacos ever and then boarded our flight. We weren't sitting together on this one. I slept for most of the flight because by this time it was about 7PM Central American time and I was pooped. We arrived in Seatac at about 10:30PM PST and made our way over to the baggage claim (somehow it always works out that the gate you fly into is basically the furthest it could possibly be from baggage claim and your carousel for baggage claim is the one on the furthest end). My cousin, Jonathan, was already there waiting for me and then Alex came in too, we finally got my bag and I said bye to Dwight. He was hoping my dad would be there to pick me up so that he could tell him what a nice young lady I was. How sweet! But anyways, I said bye and then we headed outside. It's freezing cold here!!! But we headed to McDonald's to get shamrock shakes because it's tradition! Fenda met us at McDonald's and we were stoked to see each other. :) We headed back to my house and got there at about midnight (so 1AM central American time) and stayed up to eat some food and chat some more. I think I finally went to sleep around 2AM PST...and had to get up early-ish for a dentist appointment the next morning.
Needless to say, I'm not a big fan of traveling all day long...but I was so happy to be home for a bit! The Houston airport is probably one of my least favorite places in the world, but I survived it and I'll survive it twice more within the next 8 months. It's weird being back, but it definitely feels like home. :)