On the road again (or the sky)

**WARNING: The blog you are about to read contains references to undomiciled rodents. Reader discretion is advised***

I'm back in Santiago now . . . after another overnight bus ride. This time it was a little more comfortble, but how restful can it be when you usually sleep on your stomach??

The wedding was beautiful!! I have pictures I'll post once I return to the states. The most eventful thing happened the night before the wedding. Her wedding was at a campground near Villarrica called Lican Rey (I think I've got the correct spelling on those). The campground was like any typical summer camp: cabins, bath house, dining hall, etc. The cabin I stayed in had 2 rooms -- each with one bunk bed and 1 single bed. In one room was one of the bridesmaids (Christina), and one of Teresa's sisters (Janel). They had gone to bed early while Teresa, Angela(The other bridesmaid), Saul, and Claudia (groomsman and his wife) worked on setting up the room. She was planning on getting married outside, but it was raining on Friday, so she opted for an indoor wedding instead. When Angela, Teresa, and I got back to the cabin, Janel and Christina were already asleep. We figured out the sleeping arrangements (Angela on the bottom bunk, me on the top, and Teresa in the single bed. I asked if I needed to worry about bugs, and they said nothing deadly (last year we had some pretty scary spiders to worrry about). Then just out of curiosity, I asked if they had any larger animals they had to worry about. They said mostly mice, and sometimes bats. I figured that was good enough -- I was on the top bunk and wouldn´t have to worry about the mice and I had looked on the ceiling and not seen any bats. We talked for a couple minutes and went to sleep. As I was laying there, I thought I heard a noise that sounded like flapping wings. I thought, "Is that inside, or outside?" I decided to ignore it. When I kept hearing it, I realized it was something flying and it was inside. I said Teresa´s name to see if she was still awake, but she wasn't. I figured, "I can tough it out . . . it´s just a bat!!" Then I started thinking . . . some friends of mine at home had some bat trouble and their little 1 year old boy had to get rabies shots just in case he had been bitten. The doctor told them that you can't see where they bite you. This led me to cover my head with the blankets so it couldn't get to me to bite me!! I laid like this for a while, but it kept flying over my head and hitting the windows trying to get out. I tried to tough it out as long as I could, but when I felt it hit the covers, I decided to wake up Teresa. She turned on the light, and we saw it clinging to the ceiling. We didn't really know what to do. The ceilings were pretty high and I was in no mood to learn how to catch a bat!! So we did the next best thing: we pulled the largest mattress out on to the floor of the entrance area and slept there!! It didn't bother me any more, so sleeping after that wasn't too bad.

As I said, the wedding was beautiful. The only little hitch was that the unity candle wouldn't light! She was using someone else's candle and since it didn't get there until almost the last minute, no one had been able to check the wick. That added to the fact that when they put their individual candles down to light the big one, the wax from each of theirs fell into the big one and made it even harder. The best man ended up going up during the prayer and lit it, but even then it wasn´t very bright. Oh, well, they're still just as married!! Her dad was performing the ceremony, and he said afterwards that we won't try to interpret that as anything negative about their marrage!!

Well, I'm headed back tonight. I'll have pictures as soon as I can!!