My Tummy Hurts

We left Chapel Hill around 9 this AM and took a lovely smaller highway through Hillsboro and some other small North Carolina farm towns. Everything was going well until Che said "My tummy hurts." Now he has said that a couple of times before when he is bored and wants to get out of the car or watch a movie. This time, however, he repeated "my tummy hurts" even after we let him watch a movie on the Ipad. One minute later he projectile vomited, a couple of times, all over the car and the Ipad. Cesar managed to get off the highway and drive to a nice country lane where we proceeded to get Che out of the car and tried our best to clean him, the car seat, the car, and the Ipad. We had to take off the car seat cover and all of his clothes, luckily we had plenty of clothes ready to go in the suitcase. We used baby wipes to wipe him and everything else down. I am not sure what we would have done without the wipes...I of course kept gagging and finally threw up myself. It was not a pretty scene. I would like to thank the kind people of Pittsylvania County, North Carolina for stopping to see if we were ok. A couple of kind families stopped and offered their assistance and one even went out of her way, in the complete different direction, to see if we were alright. Pittsylvania will always have a good place in my heart. Cesar of course blamed the whole incident on Che overeating Cheerios at breakfast, as well as a host of other things that I "forced" him to eat (according to Cesar), such as yogurt and banana. Che will not be eating so much tomorrow morning.

After that unpleasant incident we continued driving to Charlottesville, and by the way never saw a Welcome to Virginia sign as we had seen coming into Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The hills got bigger and bigger on the drive and we could see the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance--very beautiful. UVA's campus was gorgeous. Lots of big trees and brick buildings and a surprising amount of activity for the summer. The Corners, which is a little area with restaurants and stores catering to students, was very cute and we ate a nice little Mexican restaurant there. It turns out that the day before a huge storm blew in (we have not really been paying attention to the news...) and so there were tons of trees down, people were without power and phones, and there was lots of traffic because work crews were trying to repairs lines and removes fallen trees. Although the campus and surrounding area were very pretty, it was also very dense with lots of apartment buildings stacked on top of each other and things turned shady pretty quickly. Cesar's conclusion: Charlottesville < Chapel Hill.

We arrived in Herndon, VA around 5 and went to our hotel to clean ourselves up. We were pleasantly surprised at how nice our Hampton Inn hotel was given the one we stayed in in Chapel Hill. It is very large, clean, and modern. What a relief!

We went to the Ruiz's and had a wonderful time hanging out with them. Cesar reminisced with Pocho and Urania, even looking at old pictures, while Che and Sabine played with Maxine. Che, in typical Che fashion, even stayed at the door while she went outside to talk to her boyfriend on the phone. It was very cute. She was so sweet with both of them. I of course felt awful having someone try to please my family of picky eaters, but Urania made a delicious pasta dish that three of us ate and Che had, of course, a grilled cheese.

We left very late and as Sabine slept on my shoulder in the elevator Che made friends with an older couple sharing the elevator with us even saying in Forrest Gump fashion "My name is Che" completely out of nowhere. At what point do we stop being so friendly? Apparently in Pittsylvania County one never stops being friendly.