A trip to Nelly's

The United States’ first game was this morning at 10 am. Nelly was scheduled to pick us up around 10 to come to her house. We were running a little late, as was Nelly, so the time got bumped to 11. This allowed me to see enough of the game to realize that the US was going to get its pants handed to them. They looked like a high school team out there. Embarrassing. Hopefully they’ll get it together by their next game.

For those that don’t know Nelly, she is a distant cousin of Cristina’s (she has a lot of them here. See yesterday’s blog.) who lived in Gainesville for about a year back around 1998. Having spent a lot of time with her in Gainesville, we’re pretty close to her. She married a French guy several years ago who already had a son, Alexis (pronounced Ah-LEX-ee), from a previous marriage. Thierry, Nelly’s husband, is currently in Germany on business so it was the perfect time to invade their household with our brood.

Nelly picked us up and took us to her house in Santa Ana. Their house is gorgeous. It is open and airy, beautiful Spanish tile, with a big back yard with lots of trees. A little creek runs near their yard, so you can always hear the calming, quiet sound of water. Nelly is a licensed massage therapist, so she has a massage table set up on the back veranda. When I first saw their house, I told Nelly it looked like a resort. She wants to install a Jacuzzi, which would certainly complete the resort feel.

Soon after arriving, we realized we’d left the flowers!

When Alexis got home from school (he’s 16 years old) I heard him excitedly telling his step mom how badly the U.S. was beat. Nelly shushed him, thinking that he might hurt my feelings, but I assured them I could take it.

We had an amazing lunch of tuna steaks, rice, beans, steamed broccoli and carrots, salad, and platanos. After hanging out for a while, we drove to Alajuela to visit Nelly’s mother, Lida. On the way, Nelly picked up some empanadas de pollo to have with the coffee that Lida would serve. Empanadas de pollo are fried pastries filled with seasoned chicken. Delicious. They were hot and fresh, making them even better.

We had a nice visit with Lida, and Nelly’s sister Lilly showed up too. I remembered that Lida used to have a box of Zolo blocks, wooden artsy toys that Sofia used to love playing with. The kids were getting a little restless at one point, so I asked if they still had the Zolo blocks. Luckily, they did. They were surprised at my good memory.

I also remembered that Lida had a turtle that lived in her back yard. Sofia vaguely remembered it too. It was raining, so they said we’d have to see the turtle some other time. But to our joy, the turtle walked right up to the back door where we were sitting. Nelly gave the kids some dog food to feed it, and they loved watching it carry the food back to its little water hole and chow down.

We left Lida’s and headed back to Santa Ana. Back at Nelly’s I watched a little TV with the kids while Cristina and Nelly made dinner. Funny, I try to only watch Spanish-language TV so that the kids get more exposure to Spanish. But this time, I happened to stop on a news channel from the States that was giving a report about sunscreen, and how someone is suing the sunscreen makers for not being completely honest on their packaging. Not the kind of program that kids would usually care much about, but all 3 of the kids were riveted, even Bella. Maybe it’s because it was English, and after nearly 2 weeks here they were just basking in the glory of comprehension. At any rate, when the story ended I switched to some claymation thing on Discovery Kids, in Spanish of course.

After dinner, the kids took a shower. Nelly does not have a suicide shower. She has two hot water tanks. One for the kitchen and one for the bathrooms! But I think the kids were more impressed with the wall-mounted shampoo and body gel dispenser. Now they want one of those in our shower in Arizona.

We’re sleeping in 2 beds here. Sofia and Alex share a twin, and Cristina, Isabella, and I have a full-sized. Both beds are in the same room, so we all laid down together while the kids went to sleep. It was then that I realized how quiet it is here. Absolute silence, except for the sounds of the aforementioned creek, and the light sound of crickets and geckos. Pavas is noisy. Even at 10 or 11 o’clock at night on school nights, there are teens hanging out on the sidewalks, kids singing at the tops of their lungs, and even more jarring, cars with little to no operational mufflers speeding by. Ramon and Maritza live on a hill, so every car that goes by is either gunning it to make it up, or downshifting to go down, both of which are very loud. Since the windows stay open, it’s quite a bit of noise. The kids have handled it fine; it has never kept them awake. I’ve gotten used to it also, but here in the tranquility of Nelly’s neighborhood, I really noticed the quiet.