Janneke wanted to come along this morning to go see Q's potential soccer camps in action and to check out T's dog-training camp. I had thought I'd leave her to work this morning, but she didn't want to miss it. So all four of us hit the road somewhere around 9:30, I believe. Easily found our way back to Q's two potential camps, and they were both delightful-looking places for him. The one had larger and better facilities, so we opted for that one. It's called SPADI. It's housed on the colegio, as i told you before, and we stood in the light rain and watched all three age groups practice. The kids who were clearly Q's age were, mostly, not very skilled, so we began to wonder if Q would wind up being bumped up to the older group. But it won't matter - he's there for the Spanish, more than anything. And we never heard a word of English out there on the field.
We walked into their temporary office (somewhat mini-Explo-like), and got the forms filled out and left them a check. Q's got a new soccer ball now with SPADI printed on it, and a T-shirt, though he'll eventually have 2. He left loosey-goosey and smiling, so I don't think he's really very nervous about it at all.
From there, we went to find T's dog training camp. But just as we pulled out of the Colegio, what should we see swooping across the road and back into the treetops, but one of THESE babies:
That's right: A blue and gold macaw. No, they're not native to Puerto Rico. But there have been enough escapees over the years, it seems, that there is now a wild population, consisting of at least four individuals, which we know because it swooped back to the top of a very tall palm tree, and began to cavort there with three others of its enormous, gorgeous kind. Really, it was a treat for us, right up there with the little parrots we saw in the tree as we ate our snacks pre-supper in Old San Juan the other day. (I think that was the truncated-entry day, so this may be the first you hear of it. Little guys, 11" long, green, with yellow wings, eating the fruit out of an ornamental tree right in the heart of the old city.) And on we drove.
Massive errors in reading the map (never mind whose errors, you mean-spirited blame-monger) led us deep into the hills on a windy road that ends up at a massive water purification facility, where the grim-faced woman at the security desk knew nothing of the place we were looking for. (She also seemed shocked that we were coming to her station from inside the plant, having driven past the main entrance and around some service roads to come straight up her backside, so to speak. A flanking maneuver. Learned it from "Braveheart". Unfortunately, I learned that scene a little too well, since I wound up charging out of the car at her, painted blue and lifting my kilt. As far as you know.) Back down the hill to the main road we'd left to wind up at the filtration plant, where we pulled over and called the facility - on our Cellular Telephone, which, I stress again, is an item that we now possess - from a strip mall. Janneke stayed on the phone with someone there who talked us through all the landmarks until we arrived, safe and sound, at De Varona. It's the tidiest, coziest, most hygienic and charming little new-age pet-lover's haven you can possibly imagine, complete with tinkly bamboo-flute background muzak. We saw the current crop of camp attendees scampering and playing in the grass under the watchful eye of their counselors, all of them young women in their 20's (this seems to be a precondition for employment), happy like clams, cavorting with delight. It really was incredibly sweet, and now T left grinning hopefully about her upcoming camp experience.
Got turned around again going home (Janneke's fault. Totally.) and had to improvise, with me guiding myself by feel and, to a lesser extent, by the geography of the surrounding high-rises, zig-zagging this way and that until I felt we should come out right about where we live and look at THAT! That's the church up the street from our apartment, and look at THAT! We're on our street! Not bad for someone who'd never taken that route before and couldn't consult the map because someone couldn't find any of the street names we were on or passed quick enough to be useful. (Janneke again.)
Got home, walked the dog, had a lovely lunch that Janneke lovingly prepared, and then certain of our party required rest, and so napped for a reasonable amount of time. (20 minutes or so. Never mind who. Jeez! Enough with the Spanish Inquisition number...!) Q decided to stay back and watch the US-Sweden women's world cup game, and Clarabelle, T and I hit the beach around 3:00.
T had fun in the waves, but the most exciting thing, potentially, was that Clarabelle met a little white dog whose name I forget, but whose OWNER was named Xavier. He's 37, grew up in Canada, Spain, and Puerto Rico, the son of a catalán chef and his catalán wife. He is a soccer coach and, I think, former pro player; he has a son Q's age, and he and his son had been prowling the beach with a soccer ball, looking for someone to play soccer with. They live nearby and are out on the beach every day about that time, he said, trying to scare up a game. I told them about Q and the awful irony that he loved soccer so much he'd skipped THIS PARTICULAR afternoon at the beach to watch the game. (His friends Ada and Karen are at that game, so that might also have kept him home.) We chatted for a long time (T thought it far too long), and parted determined to meet up again on the beach. I have very high hopes. Oh - He also highly recommends SPADI, says that if he hadn't been scheduled to spend July with his son (he and the boy's mother have split), he'd have been contracted to coach there. A great chance meeting, and now we'll be on the lookout for each other on the beach. Could be good, fertile stuff, socially speaking.
Clarabelle met a new friend, then, and many others, including a gorgeous formerly-feral dog named Selva, owned by a crunchy-granola Spanish couple who appear to have come here a few years ago as partiers and never left. Such a gorgeous animal - color and ears of a dingo, with a pleasant amount of chub covering the ribs in revenge for the first four months of her life before Iker (that's the man's name) found her, living on a remote beach (called "Playa la Selva"), surviving on lizards. Never barked, hardly left her owners' side except to run with Clarabelle. Great, great dog. So, wave-leaping and friend-making until 5:00, then back home, where Janneke and I took turns hitting the street for exercise.
I ran to the end of the new Dos Hermanos Bridge, then back again, all along Ashford Avenue. I've been going barefoot all I can around San Juan, and running barefoot on the beach and on the street on alternate days, and I tell you, my feet are getting to be downright tough. I picked up some pretty good speed today, nearly heedless of the terrain or the surface, though always prudent, and while it was a shortish run, it gave me a lot of confidence. We'll see how the tootsies feel tomorrow, as to whether I do the beach or the street, but progress is steady and is beginning to be steep. Big fun it is, to run again, after so many years of non-running and then injury-plagued minimalist-shoe running. I feel right now like I'm never going back to shod runnin'.
Evening of leftovers and early to bed - kids have been yawning a lot lately. Perhaps tonight I can make some headway on some personal projects - it isn't even 9:00, kids are about to be in bed, and I've done this. Lookin' good.
Hasta la pasta!
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