Return of the Corless'

Dear Family,
Thanks to Heavenly Father, we have safely returned home from our latest adventure to Brazil. It was difficult to leave our family in Brazil, but it is so good to be back home to our own bed again with warm weather.

Once again, our Brazilian family and friends could not have been more gracious, kind, and generous hosts. They opened their hearts and homes to us and saw to our every need. There is not sufficient time nor space to recount all each one did for us and what it meant to us. Everyone treated us so well. We thoroughly enjoyed being with them. We could never repay them for all they gave us. Thank you, again! Muito Obrigado!

Each flight of our home itinerary had some unusual event. 1) The flight from Porto Alegre to Rio - TAM - was rerouted to Campinas (Sao Paulo state) due to fog conditions in Rio, but that was no problem because we had a seven hour scheduled wait for our next flight. 2) After an hour and a half into the flight from Rio to Atlanta - DELTA - we returned to Rio due to a faulty back-up steering system. We arrived at the hotel at 4 am and left to return to airport at 1 pm. At the airport, we stood in line for over an hour to check our luggage and get boarding passes (apparently, the computer was down). The rescheduled Rio - Atlanta flight - DELTA - was about an hour late taking off. In the middle of the flight they found a cigarette butt in one of the lavatory waste bin, which, if it had started a fire, could have killed everyone on board. We safely arrived at Atlanta at 2 am, where we were able to go through customs and passport control and rebook our flight to Detroit - DELTA - at 7:30 am. 3) They kept changing the gate for our flight to Detroit from B to E and back to B concourses, which caused us to rapidly go from virtually one end of the terminal to the opposite end of terminal. The flight to Detroit was uneventful, until our luggage did not show up at the baggage claim. We still do not have our luggage...

The best part of the day was seeing David who came to airport to pick us up, and the best part of the night was sleeping in our own bed once again.

We love you all, Mom & Dad (The Survivors)