We had a nice, quiet day today. It felt good to relax after being on the go for a week and a half.
Our big excursion today was to find food. I finally was able to explain to the staff here that we wanted a grocery store, and we got good directions. We drove right to it, found most of what we were looking for, and we now have a refrigerator full of good, healthy food.
There weren’t a lot of fresh vegetables, but Mandy said we could find those at a market this weekend.
The girls had a swim with their orca, Amanda, and then we had a light, healthy dinner in our room of chicken, pasta, vegetables, and fruit. Such a nice change after all the eating out!
Last night at dinner, we met a nice Spanish man who struck up a conversation. I spoke English slowly, and he remarked that I was easy to understand. Alaina spoke some Spanish with him. We saw him this afternoon, and I asked where one might find a good breakfast. He recommended the hotel restaurant, but I said we’d tried that and didn’t like it. Unfortunately, the next thing he said was that we could order eggs and other things at the bar, and feel free to tell them the owner had recommended it. OOPS. He apparently lives here and eats every meal at the restaurant. But truly, the buffet is pretty dismal. I had to explain to the girls the meaning of “open mouth, insert foot.”
After dinner, we got online in the lobby, and the girls were able to use Google Chat to catch Dale at work and wish him a happy birthday. Then we walked the one block to the boardwalk along the beach to find ice cream. We took our ice cream down to the beach, which was almost completely deserted. It was too wonderful there! The girls dug in the sand and built sand castles while I did one of my very favorite things to do, which is to collect tiny, perfect shells. Pure heaven! We were there for over an hour. The light was just gorgeous, so the poor girls kept getting interrupted to pose for pictures.
They made a birthday greeting in the sand for Dale, and then we headed back to relax.
It was a nice day, but I really want to get out of here most days so the girls can be exposed to more Spanish. If you didn’t know better, you’d think we were in Germany for all the German tourists here. There’s some kind of soccer tournament going on in Europe, so a bunch of young men are always watching games on the big-screen t.v. in the lobby. They were excited about the results of one game around eleven last night, and the girls heard them chanting on their way back to their rooms. The girls swam this afternoon with three other girls, and they wished they could have talked and played with them. But the girls were German and spoke no English or Spanish.
It’s not quiet here, by any means. Our room is on the path between the pool and the lobby. But it hasn’t bothered us so far. I use earplugs, so I’ve never been awakened. We all seem to be on London time still (one hour earlier), so we tend to have lights out around eleven and get up around 8:30. That’s a lot more sleep than I ever get at home!
The weather has been so amazing. Sunny and mid-70s all the time. It’s cool enough at night not to need any air conditioning. There are a few mosquitos in the evenings, but we close up the place, and we’re cool enough.
It’s sure nice to visit countries where you can drink tap water with no problem!
Tomorrow we´ll meet Mandy around eleven and hang out with her and the other homeschoolers for the day. I´m not sure what we´ll end up doing, but I´m sure it´ll be fun. Then we´ll have just two more days before Jana arrives on the 17th. The girls are very excited to see her after four months. We´ll save some fun things to do for when she´s here.
Kathy