Back to Reality for Easter

On Wednesday, while we were on vacation in Punta Cana, Piedad sent me a text asking if we had turned off the fridge before we left.  Um, no . . .  I figured we would come home to a busted fridge, but we have Jeff's mini-fridge for just such emergencies, so I wasn't too worried.  Well, it turns out that Piedad had not communicated the full range of the problem.

When we got home Thursday night, we heard a dripping sound, but figured it was just the freezer defrosting.  When we got up Friday morning though, there was still a dripping sound.  As the morning progressed, water started to seep out from behind the fridge.  We had noticed some sheet metal behind the fridge the night before, but didn't want to mess with it.  The water sound convinced us that we were missing something, so we pulled out the fridge, and this is what we found.

This was the point at which I got in touch with Pieded to try and figure out the whole story.  Turns out that she failed to mention that the reason the fridge was fried was because water was coming through the ceiling behind it.  So after back tracking, I got the full story of what had happened on Wednesday.  Piedad had called David who does the building maintenance.  He discovered that water was leaking from the 6th floor, through the 5th, to our apartment on the 4th.  Even though the official holiday weekend starts on Thursday, no one from 6 or the building administration answered any of his calls, so he used the sheet metal and a big bucket to design a kind of funnel system, so our apartment wouldn't flood.  Of course, Piedad didn't tell us that a bucket was filling up behind our fridge, so it took until it overflowed Friday morning for us to realize.

At this point, I was already taking some deep breaths.  I figured water leaking through two stories of an apartment building was worth phoning the embassy housing duty phone.  The person in charge of the duty phone was a local GSO employee who didn't speak any English.  More deep breaths necessary.  I tried to explain the situation as best I could in my Spanish which does not include the words for sheet metal, flooding, or fried fridge circuits.  I finally took the picture above to send to him.  He was very nice, but I didn't have much hope that he was going to be able to do anything.  His U.S. boss also didn't answer the phone, because it's a holiday.  To his credit, he did try to call the building guard.  The guy didn't know anything about it, and came up to see the situation for himself.  How can the security guard not be aware that water is leaking through two stories of the building he's in charge of?  More deep breaths.  Basically, the conclusion from everyone is that since it's Semana Santa (aka Holy Week), no one is going to be available to do anything until Monday.  Of course, that doesn't mean that the leak is going to be fixed or that we're going to get a new fridge on Monday.  It just means that someone may actually answer the phone on Monday.  I just keep taking deep breaths and trying to wish myself back to the beach.

With all that though, I still had to figure something out for Easter.  I don't usually like to cook a big meal under the best of circumstances, and these were certainly not the best of circumstances.  Instead, I decided we could do an outing on Saturday when things wouldn't be crowded and have a simple celebration at home on Sunday.  Jeff wanted a haircut, and Elena really wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese, so Atlantis seemed like the best decision.  Right outside the haircut place, they had a giant piano, which the girls had fun playing with.

After a while, they were ready for the next batch of fun, so we went up to Chuck E. Cheese.  I got 25 tokens (one for me!), and let them go. I got pictures of them with some of their favorites.

Viv decided to save her winnings, but Elena cashed hers in for a lollipop.  The parent treat was lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe.  The girls like it too, and they were thrilled to be sitting under Madonna's dress.

Viv likes their steak, and Jeff and I like to split the appetizer platter.  Elena had a sampler of macaroni, fries, and chicken tenders.  We all enjoyed watching and discussing the music videos.  While Jeff was trying to forward Vivian's music education, Elena was just rocking out on her air guitar.

She's such a goofball.

On Easter proper, I treated them to blueberry muffins for a special breakfast.  They had a hard time waiting, and built a "fort" to distract themselves.

Once we had all digested our muffins, I filled our collection of plastic eggs with jelly beans and hid them around the house.  It's a good thing I didn't hide them too cleverly, because the girls are NOT good at finding things.  Jeff and I had to offer plenty of hints.  At the end though, they were very happy with their loot.

For our "Easter lunch" we ordered some yummy food from Ugly American and sat down as a family to watch Sir David Attenborough's latest, Our Planet.  It was a big hit, especially the part about the flamingos ;-)

Vivian has spent most of the day working on her novel, so she wasn't as into the show as Elena was.  

This afternoon, Jeff's buddy and his twin daughters came over to play.  Vivian read him the first chapter of her novel, and Elena and the girls played happily for hours, including a yoga break.

For our Easter evening, we hung out with some other friends to watch Game of Thrones.  They had gotten a special bottle of White Walker which we all got a kick out of.  When you put it in the freezer extra things appear, like Winter Is Here written on the side.  I tried to take a picture, but it's a bit hard to see.

It definitely added to the fun of the evening.

While it was far from a traditional Easter weekend, I think it worked out just fine.  Despite some of the frustrations of living in Colombia, we have a nice home and good friends.  That, plus some jelly beans, makes for a pretty good Easter.

Punta Cana Birthday

This year my birthday fell during spring break, and since it was a birthday that was divisible by ten, I wanted to do something special.  One of my favorite things is to relax and look out at the ocean.  We've never stayed at an all inclusive resort before, but I thought that would be a good way to enjoy the water and not have to worry about anything.  I did a lot of research to find one that had a good kids program, good food, and good facilities, which is a harder combination to find than you might think.  I finally settled on the Dreams Resort in Punta Cana.  As with all travel so far in Latin America, the flights were really expensive, but luckily Jeff has a lot of points, so I was able to get us business class tickets with points. It's about a three hour direct flight, at a very reasonable time of day.  It was nice to start our trip out in the lounge enjoying snacks.

Elena always cracks me up in a business class seat too.

Since we were getting in a bit later in the evening, I opted to stay in an Airbnb for the night rather than paying the full resort fee for just a few hours.  I picked one close to the beach, so we were able to walk out and enjoy the view right away.

The girls rolled up their pants and played in the waves for a while.  Then we walked to a nearby shopping center for dinner.

We slept in the next day, and then walked back to the shopping center for coffee and breakfast.  A van took us the 30 minutes to the resort, and the relaxation began.  The grounds were beautiful.

The kids club was near the lobby, and they were having play time in the pirate ship pool, so we lost the girls almost immediately. 

Jeff and I kept walking, and after a while, we found the ocean.

We had chosen to do the preferred club at the resort, which entitled us to a few more areas and restaurants.  The Oceana was a waterfront restaurant that was only open for club members for breakfast and lunch.  It wasn't open yet though, so we found a bar with some shade and a view and waited patiently.  This was my view.

The double decker cabanas cost several hundred dollars extra per day, so we didn't do that.  On the right, we saw them starting to set up a wedding.

Viv said she counted over eight weddings in our time there.

After a lovely lunch, we went by the club to see if our rooms were ready yet.  They were, so we headed over to get settled.  We had a "family suite" which was two connected rooms.  They were on the first floor with a nice little sitting area outside.  Jeff enjoyed the view while I got us unpacked.

One of the other club perks was access to beds on the beach.  I figured we could try our luck at getting one.  They were all full when we first got there, but there were plenty of regular loungers in the shade, so we set up there, and Jeff got his feet and view shot.

It didn't take long before someone left, and then we hopped over the rope.  Jeff got resettled and immediately took another picture.

I love my crazy photo taking man.

We decided that the beds were more comfortable, plus they had drink and food service, but the regular loungers had better shade.  They hadn't cleared the seaweed off the beach that day, but Jeff braved it for a dip in the ocean.

Our friends Kate and James arrived on their own flight from Bogotá and joined us at the beach.  Eventually, we had to go get the girls too.  The kids club closed form 5:00 - 6:30 every day.  The girls liked our set up and got juices to celebrate.

The weather was absolutely perfect, not too hot or humid, and with a lovely breeze.  It was hard to leave, but we were all hungry for dinner.  We took the girls back to the room and got them cleaned up.  They were a bit chilly in the air conditioning, so we wrapped them in the complimentary bathrobes.

This became our evening routine.  The girls got cleaned up and wrapped up and watched some cartoons while Jeff and I got ready for dinner.  The first night we went to their steak place, which was quite nice, and Vivian thoroughly enjoyed the NY strip steak.

The next morning we dropped the girls back at the kids club, and made the mistake of trying to be nice to one of the employees by listening to a sales pitch.  We ended up with him for 30 minutes, and then he handed us off to a lady who said we had to sit through a 90 minute presentation, at which point we left.  It really is too bad that they think a sales model like that does anything except annoy people.

Luckily, James and Kate had secured us spots by the pool.  We went and got the girls from the club and enjoyed some great pool time.

We had brought some floaties of our own, but the pool also had these long black floating mats scattered around for people to use.  They must have been filled with some kind of foam.  They were very comfortable and floated well.  I lay down on one and Vivian pulled me around the pool.  The pool was really amazing.  It was huge and ran the length of the property.  There were some areas that were more lively and others that were a bit more calm.  There were also little islands throughout that had trees which offered some shade.  We spent a lot of time floating around.

Elena took a little break and the resort flamingoes came to visit her.  She thought it was fantastic that her swimsuit also had a flamingo on it.

The girls had asked to go back to the kids club for lunch, since they took the kids to the World Cafe where the girls had gotten pasta and vegetables (peas for Elena and broccoli for Vivian).  We dropped them off and then kept hanging by the pool.  The pool service was great.  There was a lady who came around to see if we wanted drinks, and she brought them to us pool side so that we could keep floating around.  If we felt like getting out of the pool for a while, there were shady loungers, and there was a grill place nearby.  We didn't like the burgers much, but the hot dogs were a big hit.  We just had to watch out for the flamingos as it turns out they like hot dog buns.

Viv got bored of the club after a bit and called for us to come get her.  We were getting ready to have a late lunch at Oceana, so we picked her up and brought her along.  

Eventually it was time to get Elena too.  We got them cleaned up and got a nice picture of them with the flamingo pond on the way to dinner.

That night we tried the Asian restaurant.  The food was certainly not authentically Asian, but it was pretty tasty.

The best part as far as Elena was concerned though is that she got to eat mango.  They had a mango salad appetizer, and we asked if we could just have the fruit.  I tried to get her to stop and smile, but she just kept eating.

The big event for the adults that night was the premier of the final season of Game of Thrones.  The resort had a big showing in one of the bars.

With two young kids and a baby though, we figured it would be better to watch it in the room that way the kiddos could all sleep through it without worrying about babysitters.  After a day of playing in the pool the adults almost slept through it too, but it was a fun way to end the day.

The next day Grandpa and Grandma Goerss joined us.  They fit right into our pool routine.

Vivi had made a friend in the kids club, so the girls spent most of their time there which gave the adults plenty of time to relax.  The girls had a great time too, since the club had all different kinds of indoor and outdoor activities for them, plus World Cafe for lunch.

We got into a routine where we got up and had breakfast at Oceana.

Then, the girls spent some time with us in the morning at the pool before heading to the kids club.  One day they even tried out a game of giant chess.

Once the kids were gone, we would float around or get out and read if we wanted to.

Then in the afternoon we would migrate to the beach.  Most afternoons we got one of the beach beds.  We got one on my birthday, and it was my perfect celebration to just relax and enjoy the sound of the ocean.

We got the girls from the club, and they had fun on the beach with Jeff and the grandparents.

The hotel did some special things for my birthday.  They decorated the door and made the bed fancy, as well as presenting us with a bottle of rum to celebrate.

For my birthday, we had a yummy seafood dinner at Oceana.  We got a family picture first.

Elena got some mussels as an appetizer and then went into selfie mode.

Jeff thought it was a good idea and took one of us.

To finish off the fun night, the wait staff presented me with birthday cake.

If this is what 40 looks like, I feel pretty lucky.

We had a couple more days in Punta Cana after my birthday, and we soaked up as much beach fun as could.  It was really hard to leave, but I'm so glad we went.  It was a lovely vacation and a wonderful way to celebrate my birthday.