As you might expect I will be flying out soon to spend Christmas with my family, but unlike most I won’t be going home. No, instead the Collingtons are going to the most dangerous region on earth (not including active war zones of course). It should be a good time! My brother works as a foreign service officer in the country where we are going. Most guess either Mexico or Columbia but neither is correct…close, though!
It won’t be the first adventurous Collington Christmas – we spent Christmas ’05 in the beautiful mountain town of Cuenca, Ecuador. At the time my brother was teaching English there (yes, these third world Christmas adventures are entirely spurred on by my brother’s worldly travels). We flew into Guayaquil, which my brother made sure to point out as the second most dangerous city in South America (behind Lima, Peru apparently). I think he likes to throw these facts out there so that we know what we’re getting ourselves into. I have lots of good memories from Christmas in Ecuador – harrowing 12 hour bus rides through the Andes Mountains, train derailments, using medium size rocks to “launch” our train back onto the tracks…and somehow convincing myself to be OK with all of this by repeating my mantra of “I’m SURE they know what they’re doing” in reference to our savvy Ecuadorian tour guides. Hopefully this Christmas will be equally memorable!
Obviously I’m not bringing a bike and I don’t envision myself doing any swimming, but my brother says we will be able to “walk very briskly” to a nicer neighborhood where I should be able to do a run or two. And once we are out of the city I might be able to run up a volcano or something. If I’m still around next week I’ll post some pictures. I’m SURE I’ll be fine…
In other news I got to do a video for TeamUSA.org about my favorite Holiday traditions. “Triathlete” must be a hard word to spell correctly. Sound it out USOC! Oh well, enjoy!