It doesn't look like mom and I are going to be traveling much this summer with my dad.  Because of that, we are reflecting on the past year of travel and the things we've learned.

- Because Latin America is predominantly Catholic, we have had the opportunity to visit many Catholic churches.
- We learned that Catholic churches are built in the shape of a cross and are much more elaborately decorated than churches we're used to seeing.

- Because my mom drug me to a grocery store in every city we visited, we learned that Coke is universal, as is rice, bread and pasta.
- My dad loooooves tortilla soup and would order it at every restaurant we went to in Mexico.  He even had a rating scale for the different places.  I enjoyed ordering spaghetti, and of course my mom ordered nachos every chance she got.
- I enjoyed drawing on napkins on the plane flights.  Some napkins even had Sudoku puzzles on them, which my mom loved!  She also liked doing the Sudokus in the airline magazines.
-I learned how much I loved big cities, especially Mexico City, Madrid, and Istanbul.  My parents didn't like them as much as I did, probably because they were envisioning trying to drive in those crazy conditions.
-We visited about 15 museums, everything from stamps (the picture I'm looking at is made entirely of postage stamps) to Alaskan wildlife to ancient sarcophagus to intricate wood carvings.

-The different currencies we used on our trips were: pesos, dollars, euros, lira, and nuevo sol.
- We have done school everywhere from on the hotel beds to the Bible Society offices to tables to libraries.
-We spent approximately 65 hours in buses and combis (mini buses).  We haven't figured out how many hours we spent on airplanes, but we did have over 40 flights.
- We learned that some airline personnel are very friendly (like this Alaska Airlines employee who volunteered to take my parents' picture), and others weren't so friendly.

-We have gone through airport security more than 30 times.  Sometimes we had to take our shoes off; other times we didn't.  I got searched once even though my parents didn't!  I almost got in trouble once for having my school scissors in my carry-on.  And my mom got yogurt and my contact solution taken away on different occasions.
- With all of our traveling, we never missed a flight, but we did have to run through the Houston Airport once.  We never lost any luggage, but somehow my mom lost her computer cables, my dad lost his nice headphones, and I almost lost my iPod.  I left it in the seat pocket, but thankfully that plane was still at the gate and my dad could run over and get it before our next flight left.
- After going back to Oaxaca in May, we realized how much we miss Mexico!
Thanks for being our faithful readers!  We've really enjoyed writing about our adventures.  Rachel