Here's why.
Camps, first and foremost. Janneke's been doing drop-off, and I've been doing pick-up. I spent the morning walking to the post office to mail something to Betsy (care of Brad), and discovered that in the age of email and Skype, all the people who are actually physically in line at the post office have multiple, bulky, complicated things to mail. So that took forever. From there, to the Santurce market, to check in with my new friends there. Productive face time. Promised to come back for lunch this afternoon with a kid in tow; walked the neighborhood a bit, got some things done, project-wise.
Home, where we heard from the feller who's running the snorkel tours that we are a go for Sunday. So Saturday morning we'll take off, doing a long tour of the island on the way to Hormigueros, whence we'll hit Rincón for some snorkeling. The only way Q would go along with the deal was if, post-snorkeling on Sunday, we find a TV and watch US-Japan. We acceded.
Off to pick up Q. Watched the last 20 minutes of his camp again. He's got a great eye for passing, and set up a goal (well, it should have been) and scored another while I watched. Their coach sat them all down at the end to give them a bit of lecture about not letting on-field rivalry, which is good, bleed over into off-field animosity. We're all friends, he was saying, and we can be competitive on the field, but we shake hands and forget about it off the field. Chatted with him a bit afterward, and he said a couple of kids were getting chippy. But all in all, a great group.
Q told me that he now has no problem what-so-ever understanding Puerto Rican Spanish. He seems honestly a little bit fascinated by the fact that it isn't confusing to him anymore. I giggle every time I think about it, and thought today that I detected an oh-so-slight influx of PR cadence and flavor to his own Spanish. That'll be interesting to watch over the coming weeks.
He and I drove back to the Santurce market (part of my walkabout this morning led me to an "Aha!" moment, which allowed me to drive directly there with no confusion from the south), bought us some empanadas and batidas, and marched over to my friend Basiliza's. (She goes by Basi.) She's probably 70, a grandmother, and owns a botánica, which is a supply shop for santería and mysticism. And she is now officially in love with Q, who was patient, charming, polite, and - I'm now an eye-witness - much more fluid and quick in his comprehension of PR Spanish than I. We stayed as long as we could, and then I had to get him back so I could go pick up T.
Zoom, across the city I went. I've now discovered the closest thing to NPR on the radio here: The station of the University of Puerto Rico. Old, classy Latin music, news, commentary. A refreshing change whenever there are commercials on the salsa station.
T had a great day - it was Thursday, so it was "water day" at camp. They bathed the dogs, and also hired a giant bouncy-castle-cum-water-slide dealy. T was in her bathing suit and squealing with delight when I arrived, but marched straight over to be picked up without complaint. I nailed the arrival timer perfectly, it appears.
T's Spanish, by the way, DEFINITELY has a PR lilt to it now. It's got me so excited I'm literally rubbing my hands together gleefully as I write this.
Never you mind how that's possible.
Clarabelle was handed back to us with about three-quarters of a leash. I held up the handle-less leash and gave my withering-yet-ingratiatingly-quizzical look; the counselor said, "Habrá sido ella misma" - Must have been her. "That," I said, in Spanish, "is why you don't leave them tied up by their leashes." Which they had apparently done. I went out this evening and bought another leash for $4.99 and Supermax. Grumble grumble grumble.
Ever since the empanada, though, I had had a screaming headache, which I managed to keep under wraps until we arrived home. And then I turned over the kids and hit the sack for an hour. I'd had one the day before, too - not sure what brings them on. But I was out of commission a while, and was really only half-present once I rolled out.
Supper. Janneke, on her power-walk, had noticed that a street fair was being set up on Ashford Ave, and wondered if the family might like to take a stroll down and check it out. It was still veeeery lightly raining, so Q opted out, but T was in. So she and I walked out to find dessert somewhere in the wide, wide world.
Sat in a Starbucks and had cheesecake. Here, I'll prove it:
But the street fair was setting p to be an alcohol-soaked affair, so we skee-daddled on home. T had me explain a few things on the way - like, why the planet is round (I managed to make it through that one with minimal errors, I think, and SHE, amazingly, held on to the end as well) and how electricity is made and transported (John Johnson's granddaughter she definitely is). She's a very cool kid, with a curious streak a mile wide and an attention span the length of the Amazon.
Janneke and Q had set up to watch "The Return of the King" while we were away - apparently, they thought we'd be out for hours. T can't watch Gollum, so we set her up with, I think, Club Penguin for an hour or so on the computer while the rest of us watched us some Tolkien. Good way to end the day, I guess.
And now I am off to bed. Not sure what's wrong with me, but I'm still a little headachy. Could be all the driving, could be the empanadas. Could be the salsa music, for all I know, reacting badly with my Norwegian genes. I'll keep you posted.
2 comments:
umm...jose, why IS the world round?
Here's my guess: In space, objects are attracted to each other and stick together because of their mutual gravitational pull. The pull is only in the direction of each other. So as two, then three, then four bits of stuff clump together, and their gravitational pull gets stronger, and they pull more stuff to them, the new stuff could come from any direction at all. So if a million things come from a million random directions, the resulting mass will be round-ish, reflecting the random nature of the direction stuff came from and the random nature of where it eventually stuck to the forming body. When it's big enough to exert a lot of force over its own large mass, that mass will tend to pull things that are up, down, until they can pull them no farther down; over time, this adds up to everything being increasingly equidistant from the center of the mass. That is to say, "round".
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