A Post Is A Post Is A Post

...no matter how crummy. Quick! There's no time! Show the pictures!



Visited El Morro castle with the kids. This is the inside.



Near there, there's this fountain, designed for kids to frolic about in. We brought towels and bathing suits so they could do that.











Project churns along swimmingly, with occasional glitches, mostly technical, some interpersonal. It's good, hard work, that I find satisfying and intriguing, and I ain't done with it yet. Don't really feel comfortable describing it, lest I tender a trap for m'self - write a check my butt can't cash, as it were. I'll just say this: You will all be amazed by the most amazing thing I have ever produced in my life apart from my children.

But I don't want to hype it.

And I will say this: I met a man today who is one of the most amazing whistlers I have ever heard.

Enough - I've said too much.

Q got another sea urchin spine in his foot today - we tried to buy swimmy shoes for him before this very trip to the beach, but the Walgreen's didn't have his size. Remedied it at Supermax post-facto. He's got them now, just in time never to need them again. 'Course, how will we know? The spines will just bounce off his shoes if he finds any urchins.

Going to see Harry Potter tonight - Janneke and Q have been letting bits of information slip, so I need to remedy the situation.

Off to watch the first 30 minutes or so of the first "Mr Bean" movie. Yep. They're that desperate.

Hasta pronto!

Whoah - I'm back. Watched "Harry Potter". Well-made film, gripping and exciting. I expected more in the way of sacrifice, I have to say. But I've probably said too much.

Y'know what I notice? Puerto Ricans respect the holy !@$#@ out of lines. Get in a line anywhere, and Puerto Ricans do not, repeat, do NOT elbow their way in or let their friends in at the very front of the line or jump the ropes and dare you to call them on it. Unlike Mexico and Ecuador, and even much of Europe. I find that very comforting and homey.

I keep hearing salsa songs on the radio that I really like - I think, "Hey, that's dramatic, textured, intriguing, clever" - I quick whip out a pad and paper and write down a couple of lines of the lyrics so I can look them up later. Then I go home, and I find them, and they're all by the same guy! Here are a couple:





Hector Lavoe. Genius. He may have operated in the seventies, and worn unfortunate glasses and hairstyles, but he's my latest definition of genius. Though some of his lyrics are a titch mysoginistic.

OK, OK, so I misspelled it. Don't get your panties in a wad.

Dang...Went out to see the movie and now I can't fall asleep. It's almost 1:00 AM - what am I going to do?

Beer?

That's so crazy, it just might work. To the kitchen!

Pets Go Bananas; Owners, Less So

I did project stuff all morning and part of the afternoon yesterday. Spent the time talking with a butcher at the Santurce market, seeing how his day goes from beginning to end. (It was a half day, due to a holiday, so we were able to see a condensed version.) Interesting to see how much alcohol some folks can put away in the course of a morning. Hard-working folks, but jeepers, that work apparently needs a fair amount of lubrication.

Thence came I home, and met up with the family at the beach, where we spent some time in the waves. Lots of people there, but we hit the beach at our usual spot and went left, away from the crowds. Once you go left, you get into a portion where the bottom of the near-shore area gets a bit rocky (thank you, swimmy shoes!), and is so less attractive to most folks. The beach also ends at a rocky promontory, such that there are no people at all coming from the rocky direction. This makes for a very depopulated strand, which we took advantage of to let Clarabelle romp as she might like. She pretty much bothered no one. The only trouble with that part of the beach is that it's at the western end of a long (more than a mile) stretch of beach, and the wind and waves are set on a permanent east-to-west slant, such that all the garbage from that mile of beach that doesn't sink to the bottom eventually winds up there. I think there's less garbage on the beach in general than there was four years ago, but there are an awful lot of plastic cups lying about when we get out there. I usually spend the first ten minutes picking up our immediate area - otherwise, I just can't enjoy myself. I usually find a plastic bag or two among the detritus and use them, and get about a pillow case worth, volume wise. A sad duty, but one I perform without complaint.

(For the record, the present document does not constitute a complaint.)

Home, where we played a game the kids bought at Border's (which is shutting down, apparently? Globally? Had no idea!), had supper, hung out and read together a while, and then settled in for bed. (I did dash out to Best Buy at one point in search of a simple clip-on microphone, to no avail. Drat.) Janneke and I then watched the last two episodes of Friday Night Lights, and hit the hay.

Up around 7:30 to go spend the day again on project stuff; I did that until about 3:00. I was interviewing / filming my friend Basilisa, who owns the botánica, as she went about her work day. Big fun. Back to the beach, where I met up with the fam and found this awaiting me:



His name is Benjamín, and he is a Shar Pei. Which some of you know is the breed of dog my family had when we kids were in high school. I told his owner (a nice Colombian-Belgian woman) his name should actually be "Benacá" because he's so irresistible. God only knows how she gets rid of all the sand you can see getting trapped in the wrinkles.

(By the way, the Puerto Ricans call the sea grass that accumulates on the beach "pelo" (hair).)

So, now we're home again, after a supper of leftovers. T is writing a story about a young blue whale named Christine who has two domineering older brothers and who shows them, with the help of Wom, her friend the hermit crab, that even though she's extraordinarily small for a blue whale, she has a mind that's bigger than either of theirs. Q is elbow-deep into reading "The Hunger Games", and claims to love it. "I could read it all in one stretch if I didn't have to go to bed," he says.

Nothing planned for tomorrow - Janneke's going to take the day to work, so it'll be me and the kiddles. We might hit Old San Juan and the Morro castle, which the kids want to tour; might go out to Piñones, an area near San Juan that lots of natives keep telling us we should visit. I'll decide in the morning, I think.

Meantime, here's a couple of pics:




The pets test the limits of society's willingness to accept their love and enjoy each other's company. I think Clarabelle kind of imposed herself, and Skittles was too sleepy to do much about it. Which is pretty high praise from a cat.



Here's the guilty moment after the passion wears off. (Again: For a cat, "passion wearing off" = waking completely up.)



Well, almost completely. (Q took this shot!)



Clarabelle, still feeling dirty. (Another Q opus.)

Least Interesting Post Ever

Well, at least I'm honest.

As planned, Janneke did her thing this morning, and then around 10:00, we switched off, and I did mine. Went to the Santurce market and talked with all the folks I want to work with on my project, the exact parameters of which I'll make more known at a later date. Basi, the woman who runs the botánica, had her daughter there with her this afternoon, who's very spiritual, like she is, and appears to go in for a whole lot of stripes of mumbo-jumbo. (Which I mean in the nicest of ways.) As we were chatting, her daughter asked me, kind of out of nowhere, "Do you do yoga?"

"No," I said. "Why?"

"Because your aura is so clean and bright."

Probably the second-nicest thing anybody's ever said to me.

So I was working on project stuff until close to 4:00, when Janneke and the kids got home from the Childrens' Museum in San Juan. Q and T gave me extremely lengthy and detailed debriefings, on any number of exhibits and challenges they offer there. It's on the most beautiful street on Earth, as you can find if you go back a few entries in this blog to the last time we were here 4 years ago. They had a hell of a good time.

We all hit the beach to decompress from the day, then home - where I contributed panapén as the starch portion of the evening meal. The kids love it (as much as one can love a potato substitute), and it filled us all up right nice-like. Felt good to contribute positively to dinner for a change.

Chats, Mr Bean, and bed. Another relaxing but productive day in San Juan.

Man - hardly even worth posting this. Tell you what: I won't brag it up on Facebook. That should keep the expectations to a reasonable level.

Relaxation. Recreation. Preparation. And Trivia.

Not too much time again - it's late; we just watched "Kingdom of Heaven" with Q. Fun but frustrating experience - he got it clear who were the Muslims about 3/4 through the movie. Hey, he's a kid, I guess. Should be expected.

Here are some pictures from the day, which was spent in a leisurely fashion - beach in the morning, combined with pigeon feeding; late lunch; I took a run, then we all walked to a local park (beautiful) so the kids could ride their scooters. Janneke power-walked the perimeter of the park while I sat on a bench and petted Clarabelle; Janneke used T to ferry trivia questions to me, and I would send back my answers. "What's the capital of Ukraine?" "What are the colors of the Belgian flag?"

I countered by using Q to send trivia questions to her. "What breed of horse is the heaviest horse ever?" "What living land animal is the closest relative of whales?" It was a very pleasant half-hour for all concerned.

Though strangely, the lizards that used to populate that park appear to have disappeared. I see them all over the place in other parts of the city, in people's yards, etc., but that park has lost them. It worries me.

Bought some ice cream at Walgreen's, walked home, Janneke made supper, we ate it pleasantly, and T then collapsed into bed, so we threw in the movie. T walked back out to try to worm her way into watching it an hour or so later, but she was put back to bed. A little too gory.

I also bought some swim shoes at Walgreen's. Janneke got some sea urchin spines in her foot yesterday (forgot to mention that) and has been limping since - too deep to dig out, not painful enough to go to the doctor. Today she's a lot better - mostly her calf is sore from walking to protect her heel (where the spines are) from the ground. She's had them, Q's had them - I run barefoot. I can not get sea urchin spines in my foot. I now have swim shoes. The look sort of kung-foo-ey and yet, strangely effeminate. I figure: I have a beard, and I'm bald. That evens it out.

Tomorrow I hit the market again, all day if I have to, as of about 10:00 AM. Janneke is going to go do some "work" at Starbuck's in the early morning to free up my schedule. WIsh me luck.

All right, all right, quit yer caterwaulin'. Here's some dang pictures.



Q and T feed the pigeons before hitting the beach.



"What is this thing? It rolls - and yet, it tears apart when you bite it, and it tastes of delicious fibrous plant life! Just like a stick!"



"Is it a stick? Is it a ball? My God - It's some kind of wonderful, magical.....Stick-ball! It's the greatest, most fabulous object I've ever laid my teeth into!"



"Arraraaargharahhkkkaraaakkh."

Snap-Happy Pappy Snaps Hapless Papooses

OK - The last entry was kind of a downer, and was pretty text-heavy. I mean, the deaths, the carnage, the orphans...What, you didn't read that one? Boy, you missed it. Go check it out. But for this one, I'll keep the kids out there smilin' with a lot of photographic evidence of our latest hijinks.



Clarabelle, after a full morning of fun at the beach. Plum tuckered.



Skittles, after three solid weeks of napping. Still hasn't quite caught up.



The El Morro castle, where everyone goes to fly kites, and where we went with that same object in mind. And here are a bunch of pictures thereof - too many for me to come up with clever captions for them all. In fact, I probably could have stopped that last segment after the word "many". I went a little nuts. Bear with me:










By the way, those are the shorts Q won as "Player of the Week" at soccer camp. They're silky.






One of the plazas near El Morro in Old San Juan has this fountain in it, designed specifically for kids (and adults) to run through and scream. It shuts off every few minutes, which makes the times it turns on again very scream-worthy. Probably not a coincidence.




This is Charlie Chaplin imitator in Old San Juan. She was excellent - people were fascinated by her.



Including our kids.

Saturday-Sunday: Boremageddon

Goodness - Skipped another one. Last night was kind of a blur. I tried to go see Harry Potter at 9:25, but the line was unbelievably long. Puerto Ricans love to go to movies as late as possible, it seems - the lines were kind of long when we went to the 6:25 showing the other day, but nothing like this. I showed up, waited in line to get cash (the movie theater in the mall only takes cash), and then said "Screw it" and went home. So I got in late and went straight to bed.

'Cuz I was up this morning at 4:30 again to go film the sunrise on the face of the Santurce market that the sun actually hits. Got there on time (barely) to film the first lights coming on inside, but I was jiggling my tripod around when they went on (D'oh!) and settled on a spot that, once the sun was fully up, turned out not to be as nice as the one I had started in. Drat. And the day dawned overcast, so the sun never directly struck the face of the building, which I was shooting for. I'll try again Tuesday, 'cuz it's closed tomorrow.

Yesterday? Wow, kind of hard to recall. We did household chores in the morning, lunched, and hit the beach, I think - yep, that's it. Though I did take a run right before lunch, which was nice. Hot, but nice.

I also did a recycling run, and on the way I listened to 94.3, I believe, which is a regaetón station. Those of you who don't know what regaetón is, listen up: It's a new-ish form of urban music that was born in Puerto Rico and involves a mixture of Caribbean-style rap beats and sort of hypnotic, repetitive, Jamaican-influenced melodies. Four years ago, every single regaetón song sounded exactly alike, but now, it's really grown up, and there are complicated melodies and downright thoughtfully produced, nifty arrangements of beats that still qualify enough as regaetón to be played on this station. And then there was
this song. It's very funny - it's a long list of silly, ridiculous things that the singer can supposedly do - things like "I can cross all of the borders and don't need a visa, I finally got a decent smile out of Mona Lisa," etc. "For you - Everything I do I do it for you..." That's the refrain. I found it wonderful, came home, and found it on iTunes.

The song itself is played on ukelele, with the slide guitar as a key element, all Hawaiian-style; and I suspect that they just didn't know how to end the song, so they had it end with the gunshot and the sound of a breaking ukelele string, and then called it "Death in Hawaii" because of the ending. The video? Well, if you have a song strangely titled "Death in Hawaii", that actually has nothing to do with death, what are you supposed to do? So they do this video of two of the band members as a couple being gunned down on a beach in Hawaii. At the end, it says "25,000 dolphins a year - eventually, they were going to get their revenge." Apparently they just shrugged and said "Look, the title is a joke anyway - Let's turn the video into a joke / protest about the massacre of dolphins, which is another thing we don't like." I like that kind of thinking.

I researched the group a bit: Puerto Rican, called Calle 13, and they achieved notoreity for writing a song in 2005 as a reaction to the death, at the hands of the FBI, of Filiberto Ojeda, a nationalist resistance leader in Puerto Rico. I had no idea - I'm listening to the song as I write this for first time. It's a rap, and I suspect I'm going to get a looooot of mileage out of it in class. And out of Calle 13 in general.

And then, around 4:00, I departed to go to the market and chat with my friends there, including Basi, the owner of the botánica, who was very happy to see me and chatty, and who agreed to let me film her store and interview her all I like. Great. Also met Oscar, who does spiritual consults there on Saturdays, and his mother Aleira. Great people who are form the area where we spent last weekend.

Back home, supper, after-dinner reading for the kids, and then we settled in to watch "The Mask of Zorro"'. And I left at 9:00 to go see the movie.

So, was this our least interesting day yet? Possibly.

This afternoon we're thinking of going to fly kites near El Morro, the old fort in Old San Juan. And the dryer dial broke, so we got no dryer. And that's the end of the news. Hasta luego, mis amores!

Zig-Zagging About San Juan: I Am Officially Good At It

What a day what a day what a day. Here's the best I can do to relate it:

Up at 4:30 to go film the sunrise at the Santurce Market Place. I wanted to get there to film the doors opening, but the doors were already kind of open when I got there. Still, I found a great spot and set up the tripod and got about an hour and a half of footage of the place as the sun lit up the sky. That's how long the battery lasts, turns out.

Back home to drive in with Janneke to get the kids to camp, and to stop at Best Buy on the way back and get more video cassettes. Janneke realized halfway there that if I was going, there was no need for her to go, and she could have stayed home and gotten work done. Hadn't occurred to me, either.

The whole thing was made triply ridiculous by the fact that Best Buy doesn't open until 10:00.

But before we found that out, we dropped off the kids and were saddened to see them trundle off happily, confidently, no-problem-at-all-to-be-walking-through-palm-trees-and-spend-the-day-among-non-English-speakers. We are ever so glad we did this, and eager to find more options for them for the coming weeks. Though it's turning out to be tough. There is one woman who's willing to give T four hours a day of baking lessons, but it would be one-on-one, and it's the interaction with the kids that's the most useful. Plus, four hours alone with any adult would start feeling like a job really quick. So I spent some of the rest of the morning calling places and trying to find out options. Got a few messages in; I'll give them another jingle tomorrow. I also called the San Juan Parque Central, a gigantic, new, wholly pre-apocalyptic park complex that apparently was meant to take over for the one we visited a couple weeks ago. But the guy seemed not to be quite all there; lots of grunted, one-word answers, with little or no follow-up information. I decided I would have to drive there myself and actually talk to someone.

I also walked back to the park and chatted with Basi a bit, but she was so busy I couldn't get a decent moment to ask if she'll let me interview her and film her store. But tomorrow's another day.

But first, Janneke and I went off to see Q at his last day of soccer camp. We got there in time to watch about 45 minutes of the end-of-the-week slugfest among the three five-man teams to determine the champions of the week. We watched a few short games, and Q was downright ferocious for most of it. In fact, over the end of one game, which his team won 2-0, and the second, which his team won 3-0, Q had one assist - and four, consecutive, goals. Including one that - Well, let me describe it: Q received the ball at midfield and zigged and zagged into the corner, where he tried to center the ball. It was kicked into the air by a defender near him; Q ran under it, headed it over the defender, ran around him, and found himself with the ball coming down toward him and the goalie charging. Before it could hit the ground, he popped it into the air again, over the arms of the leaping goalie - and into the net on the far side. The whole crowd of kids, on both teams and the team that wasn't playing, erupted in shouting; the coaches put their hands on their heads or slapped at the air helplessly; Q ran and slid on both knees, arms splayed the sides, and screamed, and was mobbed by teammates - and a 13-year-old from the team not playing, who lifted him in the air and carried him around the field for a bit, hollering.

The players all gathered around the coaches at the end, not leaving the field; unlike last week, we were the only parents who'd showed up to see the end of the week. There was talking, a lot of high-fiving, and when it was all over, Q came away with a little bag containing a pair of soccer shorts. One of the other kids reached us at the fence before Q did and told us with a grin:

"Q fue el jugador de la semana."

What a fantastic end to a fantastic experience. Here are some pics:



Q and Alejandro, a boy he got on really well with, who was on his team and who kept coming by to high-five Q and say "Bye" one last time. And one more. And one more. You could tell that each was very sorry to see the other disappear over the horizon.




Q and a couple other boys, all signing each other's SPADI camp balls. Not sure who's on the left, Giovan on the right.

Dropped Janneke and Q at home, and headed straight back out to Best Buy, and thence to T's camp.

Where I finally bullied my way past the barricades and got in to see what some of the inside of this delightful camp looked like. Behold:



One of T's friends singing in the camp-ending talent show.



T in the audience, cheering her on.



T in her starring role as the wolf for their re-telling of the Three Little Pigs. In Puerto Rico, the first house is straw ("paja") - but the second is of wood ("madera"), and the third is of concrete ("cemento", which is technically not correct, but is what they said).



T and her friends, and one of the counselors, who really pretty much ran the show.



T at the final sign-out. What a sad moment!

I watched the theatrical production (I sneaked out one minute before the end of the second one, to go see the parrot they have in a cage (it's the same species as the wild escapees we saw a couple weeks ago), and got busted by T, who broke down and accused me of not watching her shows. "I did! I did!" I said, and qucikly re-told the plot of both, and held up the camera to show her the photos and prove it. She bought it. ('Cuz it was true.)) Then I helped T carry out all her booty (they're big on giving prizes at this camp), collected the dog, and headed home.

But not before swinging by the Parque Central, so I could talk to someone other than whoever that monosyllabic dude had been on the phone. Found the office of the Natatorium - the largest outdoor pool I have ever seen, a gorgeous, multi-million-dollar facility that would be the envy of any city, anywhere - and walked to the front desk.

Where there sat a young man - the same one I'd talked to on the phone - with spiked hair, a yellow polo shirt, and Down's syndrome.

I felt awful. He was pretty clear about there not being any options, but when he allowed me and T to go through to the pool area so she could use the bathroom, I checked with a couple of other people.

The guy had been right: No organized classes or anything until August 15th. Shoot. And damn me to hell for doubting him.

Collected Clarabelle (we'd left her tied at the front, where we could still see her through the glass - What, do you think I'd leave her in the car? Or tied up where we couldn't see her? Sheesh! What next...!), drove home, and pretty much piled back into the car - by now, it was 4:30 - to go out for dinner and a movie.

T ate Burger King; I had "La vaquita frita", which is not a dish, it's a Cuban restaurant chain. I had the "mofongo relleno de ropa vieja". Literally, that's mofongo - a banana-based dish of unimaginable deliciousness - filled with, literally, "old clothes". Which turns out to be their funny name for pulled pork.

And speaking of pulling: T lost a tooth while we ate! She worked it and worked it, and took the advice of a family nearby, who told her to grab it with a napkin and twist it until it came out. We all applauded when it finally did. Janneke and Q ate somewhere else, closer to the theater; their start time was about twenty minutes earlier than ours, so they didn't really have time to walk all the way back to the food court.

Janneke and Q saw "Harry Potter"; T and I saw "Zookeeper". T said that it was the best movie she had ever seen.

I would not go quite that far.

But it did make me laugh. And T insisted on sitting in the very front row, so it was a pretty neck-stiffening experience for me.

Get this: Two previews before the movie, and TWENTY-TWO COMMERCIALS! Something is wildly out of whack in San Juan in that department. I wanted to burn the place down before they finally showed me some Kevin James riding an ostrich.

Home, where T wrote the tooth mouse (our version of the fairy) a four-frickin'-page letter before turning in.

OK - Off to a well-earned and much-needed shower, and then to bed. Won't be getting up at 4:30 tomorrow. Won't do that again until probably Monday.

Banzai!

Rapid-Fire Reportage

OK - Going to try to get to bed early tonight, because I'm going to get up early in the morning. I will give myself fifteen minutes. Starting...Now.

Stayed in in the morning today reading Janneke's article manuscript to see if I could see any fat to trim. She needs to get rid of 500 words, I think, and it ain't easy. She's an economical writer, and all her words are valid. But I did what I could.

Picked up Q, saw a very little of the play. Nothing to report, really. Then shook hands with the coach to sign him out, and he invited me to walk with him back to the main area. And he said to me, in some order, the following things:

"Juega en los Estados Unidos, no?" (He plays in the US, right?) He then searched for words a bit, before saying: "Que continúe." (He should keep playing.)

"Era el mejor del día ayer. Hoy fue como el tercer mejor. Y es uno de los más jóvenes." (He was the best in camp yesterday. And today he was, like, third best. And he's one of the youngest.)

"Necesita más empuje, más fuerza en los pases, pero eso vendrá con la edad." (He needs more strength, more oomph, on his passes, but that will come with age.)

He seemed quite excited about his progress. A few pointers, a few things to work on, but lots of praise - and he brought up the award for the Player of the Week, for which Q is in contention. Nice things to hear!

Home to a nap - I was plum tuckered - and then to pick up T, who complained that she was feeling ill and didn't want to get in the car for fear of car sickness. (Ten minutes left to write!) I told her she'd said the same thing yesterday, and it had been OK, but that if she wanted, we could drive with all the windows down. We did, and you know what? I like it better that way. It's hot, sure, and when you're stopped, it sucks. But when you're not, you feel a lot more alive. Despite the heat, which was over 90 today.

Home and off to the market, where I chatted with Basi for a while - bought her a coconut water, which made her happy. But she was busy today, and I kept having to step out so her customers could come in. One of them was a wonderful, charismatic, eloquent woman from the Dominican Republic. I thought as I walked to the beach to meet the kids, "I should write her name down." So I did. But somehow I didn't think, until I was home and it was too late, that I should ask to interview her for the project I'm working on. She's local, so I hope I run into her again.

She gave me some great pointers on places to look for activities for the kids - I'm going to be following up on that tomorrow afternoon, I think. But tomorrow morning, I'm going to try to film some sunrise stuff, so I have GOT to get to bed.

There - Six minutes under time. Dreamland awaits. More tomorrow, I swear it!

Wednesday Comes on Thursday. It's Puerto Rican Law.

Howdy howdy! Well, it’s Thursday morning, and I realize fully that I did not blog Wednesday. There are reasons, which are best set forth over the course of the telling of the day itself. To whit:

Up, out. Kids to camps, me to the market to chat up my recent acquaintances. Basi has been either absent or a bit stand-offish lately – I’l have to work on that some. But the other folks I’ve been getting to know are really nice and very friendly. Including Lilo, a vegetable vendor who gave me a couple of these:



It’s called panapén, and is apparently a relative of breadfruit. Which I’ve never had, but which I understand has been named perfectly. Because when I fried and boiled it (two batches for two specimens that were in varying states of ripeness, per Lilo’s instructions), the result was at least as tasty as yucca and just as filling as potatoes. I’ll be doing that again. Here's the cooked version:



Off to pick up Q from soccer. I got to watch about 20 minutes, and in that time Q was scrappy, creative, and potent, scoring twice and holding his own against older players defensively. At one point an 11-year-old, who’s quite small, was trying to move Q out of the way on a corner kick. Q held his ground; the other kid lowered his center of gravity and began an all-out shove against Q’s hip. Q looked down, seemed surprised, and then, seeming to shrug, as if to say “OK, if that’s the way you want it,” he shoved the little guy completely away from him with his left arm, just as the corner kick came. It was kind of slapstick-y and funny.

Post camp, as I went to sign Q out, his coach, the Spaniard, shook my hand as I approached and his eyes got big. He gestured toward Q. “Regateaba muy bien hoy,” he said. I must not have instantly shown comprehension – not surprising, as to me, “regatear” means “to bargain / haggle”. He repeated it; then his eyes kind of darkened, and he just handed me the paper, frustrated / disgusted, it seemed, with my failure to understand.

I asked Q. He didn’t know either. So we used the Cellular Telephone Device and called Janneke, who looked it up. Apparently, in a soccer context, “regatear” means “to fake someone out”.

Upon hearing this, Q grinned. “OOOOOhhhh,” he said. And he told me why that had been something the coach had noticed. Q has a kind of signature move on the end line. The other kid is between Q and the goal, and is using the end line as a wall, thinking, “Well, he can’t go that way, so I’ll cut him off this way.” Q, however, lifts the ball over the kid’s foot JUST inside the end line, and he himself runs around the kid, outside the line, to recover the ball on the other side. All perfectly legal; just something most of the players he plays don’t consider possible. Rob Swann, one of Q’s coaches, chuckled once when Q did the move and said that what he loves about it is that anybody can do it – you just have to have speed, skill, and smarts. Any one of those isn’t there, and you can’t do it.

Well, Q pulled that one out of the bag Wednesday, and got a lot of props for it. He’s also just gaining in comfort level and confidence, so his natural abilities are coming to the fore more and more. And: His Puerto Rican accent now sticks with him, to varying degrees, all the way to bedtime.

Here are a few pics from soccer camp:



Q celebrates a goal.



Q and his team take a break.



Boys and their coach. He's a very warm, even-keeled, lovely man. Laughs all day, stays serious, never gets angry. And the other kids, as you can see, are a variety of ages. Nice mix.

T had another great day. Again, I don’t see the inner workings of that camp, so I have less eye-witness information to give you. But she says Clarabelle is the only dog – and T, he only owner – to advance to doing “shake”. She hangs out with a different batch of kids every day, she says, and they’re all nice, so she can’t really decide on a best friend there. We’ve made clear that we are more than willing to organize play dates, but so far, none have come up. We’ll have to try to get phone numbers for the three weeks we have after these camps run out, because we are not finding anything at all for the kids to do after Friday. We may be resorting to private tennis lessons. Of course, our goal here is much more linguistic than anything else. Just seems like a damned shame to be here and not drown them in meaningful, other-than-us Spanish as much as we possibly can.

In the afternoon, I ran, Janneke did some exercise, and the kids and I swam at the beach, despite a (lightning-free) downpour. The water feels really warm when it’s raining, and the visuals of raindrops on the ocean when you’re bobbing in it yourself are pretty amazing. Still, the kids get sick of the ocean long, long after I do. In fact, they pretty much don’t. Ever.

Supper at home, and then Q and I did a boys’ night out, going to another Puerto Rico Islanders game. We sat in basically the same seats, and the crowd was a little thinner, but still, when the Islanders scored, it felt to me just about as loud as the Packers-Patriots game we attended last fall. Just thunderous. The Islanders went down, 0-1, on an own goal in the first half, but in injury time at the close of the half, they scored on a lovely cross from the right side that an Islander - the same one who scored the own goal! - knocked in. In the second half, the Ft Lauderdale Strikers were kind of dominating play, but an Islander got a breakaway on an errant Striker tackle and was headed for the goal, in the box, when a Striker made what appeared to me to be a brilliant, legitimate tackle from behind. The Islander went down, but, I think, less than legitimately. The ref, though, was behind the action, and came charging up decisively, pointing at the spot and pulling out a RED CARD! Q and I, and the whole stadium, went bananas. (Update, 5:56 PM Thursday: Check out the video on the Islanders site. The ref blew it: That was a clean tackle. And the red card? Not for a "denial-of-goal-scoring-opportunity in the box", or "la ley de último recurso" in the words of the commentary guys, as the rulebook says he should have given. No: It was to another player, for dissent, because he came up and shoved / grabbed the ref repeatedly. So the ref blew a couple of things there: Shouldn't have called the foul, should have (if he says it's a foul) red-carded the fouling player.)

The kick was converted by #7, the 5’7” Englishman whom Janneke and I had found so annoying for his lack of a desire to pass. But on watching them a second time, I have say, he’s clearly their best player. He has such great touch on the ball, and quickness. Anyway, once he converted, he ran to the sideline that faces the crowd and saluted us and basked in the thunder we rained down on him. Five minutes later, the swarming Islanders did an amazing short-range give-and-go that made it three to one, and soon after, he game ended. Big fun.

And directly to bed. One of these days I’m going to get up at 4:00 AM to film he opening of the market for the day’s business, but it ain’t going to be today. I was flat tuckered when I went to bed last night. And now it’s 10:25 AM – Let’s see what I can accomplish with the remains of the day.

Musings. Mustard. And Honest-to-God Mongooses.

Howdy folks - Nothing earth-shatteringly new today, so I'm going to do some quick-hit thoughts and observations on Puerto Rico for you. Might be great, might be a flop. Might cause leukemia. I guarantee nothing.

In general, if you see a Puerto Rican driver who is signaling a turn, the driver is unaware that he or she is signaling.

Further confirmation that I am a rube: They have these awesome things here that they call "carriles reversibles" or "reversible lanes". A long chain of three-foot-high interconnecting, hinged concrete barriers runs a couple of kilometers down a gigantic highway, probably ten lanes wide. And depending on the time of day, they shift the barriers one way or the other to make more lanes for the traffic direction that most needs them. The barriers are shifted with this long, yellow, spraddle-wheeled tractor-type machine. A series of rubberized wheels hanging from the center of the machine grip the grooved sides of the barrier, lift it, roll it along the wheels until the barrier has reached the other side of the vehicle, and drops the barrier neatly on the other side, exactly one lane to the right. They might have to make a few runs to get the barrier where they want it, but in probably forty-five minutes, they've gone from five in one direction, five in the other, to seven in one direction, three in the other. Did everybody else know about these things? Is this like the whole "Cellular Telephone" thing? Am I the last one for whom this is cool and new?

There is less trash on the ground here than anywhere else I've ever been in Latin America.

Puerto Ricans are less good about picking up after their dogs than Williamstowners. But they are better than the French.

Clarabelle is the only non-purebred dog at doggy camp.

Clarabelle is everyone's favorite dog at doggy camp.

Forced myself to strike up a conversation at the market today, and it paid off big, big time. Scored some free plátanos and hand-sliced bits of a fruit called "panané", I think, which I will be boiling and frying tomorrow.

Witnessed my first accident on the highway today. Saw the aftermath, really. Somebody rear-ended someone else. Everyone involved was well enough to be standing on the side of the road, hands on heads, babbling excitedly into cell phones.

The reason Medalla Light is so popular here, I think, is its price. It appears there's a tariff on non-caribbean beer. Bought some St Pauli Girl at the grocer store today; spent $13 for six bottles of beer. It's an OK beer, but man - That's Dogfish Head-type money.

Q and T have distinct Puerto Rican accents for the first half hour after they are picked up from camp. Then it fades.

Walked to Supermaxi to buy mustard this evening, and had to ask a guy where the heck it was. He walked me five or six aisles to where he thought it would be. Then asked somebody else, who took us all to the other end of the store. That better be some damn fine mustard.

I don't know how Puerto Rican policemen ever pull anybody over, because in my experience, they drive around with their lights going all the time, and nobody pays any attention to them. They don't pull over to let the cop by, they just keep merrily driving along. And so does the cop.

Apparently, those two bike cops I saw hanging out in Best Buy were stationed there. Because in KMart today, there was a cop standing at the door as a security guard would be, gun and flak vest and everything, watching people go in and out. I wanted to ask if he'd been stationed there, but I didn't. Maybe they're moonlighting. (In the middle of the day...)

Mr Popper's Penguins and The Rise of the Planet of the Apes are advertising heavily in San Juan.

Supermax does not put the Goldfish crackers among the crackers or among the cookies (which are right next to each other). Rather, there is a separate "Peppridge Farm" area. Of course.

Chihuahuas and pit bulls are the most popular dogs here. You know, therefore - you just KNOW - there's a Pihuahua walking around somewhere right now. I need to see this animal.

Heard the unmistakable sound of a rat being killed by a cat this evening as I walked Clarabelle. Suddenly, the crowds of slinking post-sunset cats in snazzy neighborhoods in Puerto Rico makes sense.

Also saw a mongoose scurry across the road up in the mountains just past lunchtime last Saturday. They were introduced to the island to fight the rat population. Nice move.

Heard an old salsa song on the radio today that was so good it makes me nearly want to cry to think that I can't recall the words, and so can't look it up anywhere. It made me ache, it was so poignant.

Puerto Ricans say "sofacón" instead of "basurero" or "tacho" when they mean to say "garbage can".

A backpack isn't a "mochila" here, it's a "bulto".

Driving isn't "manejar", it's "guiar".

Ready isn't "listo", it's "redi".

Faking someone out in soccer is "regatear". Never knew that before.

Vegetables aren't "verduras" here, they're "vegetales".

Too hot not to have the fan on; can't sleep with a fan prickling every hair on my body. Can't sleep under a sheet - too hot. Sounds like a job for: Alcohol!

St Pauli Girl, to be precise. That's going to be a nearly $3 sleeping pill.

Or two.

Frustrations Don't Kill Off the Fun

Slow start this morning, for everybody, I think. Q had a sliver in his foot last night when he went to bed, which we pretty much extracted (enough so that a long, hot shower made what was left of it slide painlessly out through the little fissure we’d opened up above it), but it affected him much more than another sliver, which I had extracted (in more painful fashion) about a week prior. I think the long weekend of travel had us all pretty vulnerable. We slept like babies, and, like babies, whined about getting out of bed.

Janneke reports, though, that dropoff at camps went superbly. I rolled out the door and met a couple more people at the market place (Basi wasn’t in today – I’ll tease her tomorrow about sleeping in on her new mattress). I bought a couple of experimental foods from a vendor that a person I know there recommended, and tomorrow, when I write down their names, I’ll tell you what they were. Both were good, turns out. Then back home to check in with the Jan-meister, who’d just arrived back from shopping.

I set out to pick up Q a little early so I could stop at some men’s clothing stores up the street and see if they had any shorts for me. One had only “Dickies” brand work shorts, which I know from previous experience to be cleverly disguised ovens that roast one’s apples to a golden brown. The other offered no fitting rooms – “La cambiamos cualquier cosa”, he assured me. “We’ll let you trade anything back in.” Sorry, not walking out of the store with it if I’ve never put it on.

Back to the car, on to the camp. But today, as I found out this morning, is some kind of Puerto Rican holiday, so a lot of people didn’t work. This meant that it took me literally half the time it usually does to get to Q’s camp, which in turn meant I had a good 40 minutes to watch his morning-ending “índor” session.

“´Indor”, by the way, is indoor soccer played on a basketball gym. They always end the morning there. They were rotating the three teams in – and Q’s team stayed on the floor a good 75% of the time, because they kept winning. And they kept winning because he kept setting up his teammates to score. I saw him make three perfect assists, so perfect the receiving player only had to one-time it into the goal. I saw another two, probably, that would have been goals had the receiving player simply one-timed it and not missed it or tried to take a touch or two. He was a goal-creating machine. And just as his Cuban coach had told the boys last week, the Puerto Rican players, by and large, didn’t even acknowledge that they were being set up. One in particular, who goes by “Surdu” (his name is Ramón, but since he’s “surdo” (left-footed), he goes by that), turned and walked away from the goal with his arms in the air, almost purposely ignoring Q. Who shook his head and let it roll off his back. Surdu is two years older than Q, as a lot of the players are, and Q doesn’t feel comfortable giving him a hard time, probably. But it was almost comical to watch their studied ignorance of the fact that they were not playing alone.

And his coach for this week, turns out, is from Spain! So Q will have had deep, prolonged exposure to Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Madrileño Spanish, which, as I posted to Facebook earlier, is basically the trifecta of difficult-to-understand Spanish. And he has no problem with it at all.

Q reports that he likes this coach (“me llama ‘Q’ y no ‘Rubio’”), and that he’s come to enjoy his role as He Who Distributes the Ball. I told him I thought he was playing supremely well today.

Home, where I departed to pick up T a little early so I could stop at the mall and see if they had any shorts that would please me.

They did. But they (Sears) also apparently did not offer changing rooms. So I went to a remote corner and tried them on anyway. They fit perfectly. But I’d forgotten my wallet. D’oh!

On to pick up T. But when it was time to leave, they wouldn’t relinquish Clarabelle unless she had been “checked out” – she had been a resident there over the weekend, and needed to get officially released. And the woman who knew how to do that was on her lunch break and wouldn’t be back until 2:30.

T was happy with this – it meant she got to stay until 2:30. I started to drive home to get my wallet, thinking it would allow me time to stop and grab the shorts I’d liked, but traffic was slow and I realized five minutes in that I’d never make it back in time. So I stopped at Walgreen’s and read magazines until it was time to pick the girls up again.

The woman was there (and T, apparently, had fallen a bit ill tummy-wise, but was now recovering, lying on the couch and being entertained by a wonderful staffer’s iPhone), but she said we’d only paid half of Clarabelle’s stay. I told her, look, we paid it all, but it wasn’t me who paid it, it was my wife, and you’ve already made me wait around nearly an hour, and besides I don’t have my wallet with me, so even if I wanted to pay you (which I don’t) because I owed you (which I don’t ) I couldn’t. So you’ll have to take this up in the morning with my wife (good luck, there), and in the meantime, just give me my damn dog back.

That’s pretty much what they did, thought it took them a good ten minutes to locate her leash and collar. And T and C and I rolled in to the house around 3:25, bushed and tuckered, as it were. I napped on the divan for a few minutes, then we all headed to the beach to end our day.

The beach, this being a holiday, was jammed. The waves were high, so Q and T had fun, and I suddenly felt a surge of energy, so I went back home to change into running clothes and take a jog. Got rained on, but had a nice run.

Home, supper (including some of the new PR foods I bought today, and a fun conversation with Q about how nations rise and fall, empires collapse, and mythologies around the glory days permeate the literature of just about every nation that ever had an empire), and relaxation time. I think we’ll take in some Mr Bean before bed this evening. It really makes the day complete for me now. Not sure what we’ll do once there are no more episodes. Just watch T and Q, I guess – one of these days I’m going to post film of T dancing like Mr Bean, and Q running like him. It’s friggin’ uncanny.

To bed! Ho!

Pictures Worth Roughly Two Dozen Words Apiece

So we went away this weekend, got a little sunburned, and took some dang pictures. I think I'll let the pictures do the talking. Here we go:



Had to drop the dog off first. You can tell by the look in her eyes that she knows she's about to be cruelly betrayed and / or disappointed. Then again, she has that look pretty much all the time. Not sure what that really says about us as pet owners. (Come to think of it, Janneke wears a similar look with disturbing frequency. I must be misinterpreting the look.)



We stopped up in the mountains at the largest, most significant archaeological site ever found associated with the taíno, the people who lived in PR before the Spaniards arrived. (And who contributed DNA to about half of the living PR population.)



So this is really the highlight of the place. Let me tell you, boy: The taíno were one unimpressive culture.



This is the roadside spot where we pulled over for lunch. The, best orange juice I have ever had in my entire life, for a buck. And the rest of the food was amazing, too. I was shocked how much the landscape and the roadside nature of the eatery reminded me of Ecuador. And I'd been there before!



This is the menu at the roadside place. If "pernil" is on there anywhere, I'm pretty much done looking. But you can take a look, see if there's anything you like. (They were out of ensalada de pulpo.)



This is how we entertained ourselves while waiting for the meal. Hangman can be a truly gripping game, particularly when a seven-year-old spelling the answers. It's always a bit of a crap shoot.




Check this out, man: That's Janneke's plate - a green salad with tostones, or fried bananas - and Q and T's plates, with pernil and green salad, and pernil, green salad, and habichuelas. I had the pernil, arroz, y abichuelas. Serious, affordable deliciousness.



The kids and the wife look at someone more interesting than their husband/father. Doesn't narrow the field much. They're actually getting instructions on something or other I never listened to before we embark on the main attraction of our time in the West of the island.



This here's the Katarina, a sailboat you can charter. We did. (Along with some other people.) We're that kind of serious bad-ass.



T and Q climb aboard the sailboat we'd chartered for a three-hour tour. A three-hour tour. Perhaps surprisingly, we never wound up being chased by cannibals or romanced by gorillas or sinking in quicksand. Strange how that happens.



The kids got tired of snorkeling after a while and preferred to just jump off the boat, climb up the ladder, and repeat. One of the leaps where Q's pose, and my timing on the button, both worked out well. Didn't happen much.



T leaps off the boat in like fashion.



T and Q at the prow, trying to see flying fish. Janneke told me they all saw some. I saw none. Sat in the back, drinking Medalla Light.



This is T being shown how to reel in the fishing rod by Dave. He was yougn and from Florida, and had spent a lot of time vagabonding about doing odd jobs in different countries. Interesting young bohemian, currently dropping anchor and serving piña coladas on a sailboat.




This is T driving the skiff. Q was offered the helm first, but refused it; T leapt at the chance and headed straight for the rocks. I'm not kidding.



This is where we watched the US women's world cup final. Tried to go to a place where the guys from the cruise would be watching, but it wasn't open, so none of us went there. T wound up waiting outside a lot in the hopes that she could flag down Dave, should he have decided to try to find us. I think she had a crush.



This is T, doing her thing while the rest of us watch the US women lose. She probably had the best idea of any of us.