Chapter Two

We managed to get on our second flight out of Toronto at 8:30AM on Thursday as planned! We were soooo tired as we hardly had any sleep on the plane or at the airport while we were waiting. We're still tired today, but that's another story.

We found out that our original plane lost the autopilot controls and the crew didn't want to continue on such a long flight without that back up. We were met at the airport by a bunch of flashing lights and emergency vehicles, all for nothing, in my opinion. The funny thing is that our second plane was in worse shape than the first from the passengers' perspectives! The in-flight video systems weren't working for the first five hours (but that was ok because everyone crashed almost immediately anyway) and the toilet that was right behind my seat was broken and flushed continually for about the first hour and a half. We survived, though, and FINALLY made it to Sao Paulo, Brazil!

What a day. We got to Brazil at 8:30PM (original flight was 10:30AM), and were met at the gate by an Air Canada rep who rushed us through security and down halls and halls and halls until we FINALLY got to the gate that we needed to catch our plane to Asuncion. I felt like a bag lady. The boys all decided that their backpacks were too heavy and they couldn't carry them, so I had their bags, my bags, roller bags, an oversized collapsable volleyball set and a whining, crying two year old hanging on me. We weren't sure if the situation was that our flight was waiting for us, or if we only had minutes to spare or if we were going to just evaluate what was going on. We were at the mercy of this awfully-youthful looking Air Canada rep.

We found out that there was a flight going out about an hour later and it was direct to Asuncion instead of stopping by Ciudad del Este first, but the problem was that we couldn't get ahold of Karen to tell her that we were coming in!

This story will be continued. Gaby just came home from school and we haven't seen him yet.