Greetings From Puerto Rico
We just got back earlier this week from an incredible trip to Puerto Rico! This was the view from our balcony. Now, as beautiful as this looks, I must paint the whole picture. We discovered the first evening that all of our bedrooms were right next to a main street. We also discovered that our windows were paper thin and that Puerto Ricans like their music blaring. I actually heard a man on the street sneeze one evening. Those are some thin walls! The kids slept through it all, and the weeknights were much quieter. Now, let me share what we instantly learned about Puerto Rico:
1. Puerto Ricans are a lively bunch of people. They actually cheered for the pilot as he landed the plane. We also had a few Puerto Rican men singing some lively music on the plane in the row in front of us. When we were out to eat one day, a lady learned Shawn could not speak Spanish, so she decided to play charades with him as she so desperately wanted to share something funny with him. Now, if you know Shawn at all, you know he does not play charades, so this was pretty amusing to me.
2. Although Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, the people’s primary language is Spanish, and we learned that Abigail will burst into uncontrollable laughter when she hears a grown man refer to our turn signal as “your blinky-blinky.”
3. The drivers are CRAZY. I can say this because a Puerto Rican man told me this himself. The streets are narrow, and there “appear” to be no rules. We actually came upon an intersection with no traffic light, no stop signs. People also would stop in the middle of the road, put their caution lights on, get out, and run their errand while abandoning their car. Shawn commented one day after the person in front of us did this, “Oh, so they put their blinky-blinky on, and that makes everything okay.” Ha!
4. Walking the streets of Puerto Rico is like living in a real life game of Frogger or Crossy Road. People just dart out in front of your car while driving at high speeds. One man who was walking us to a bakery in Old San Juan looked at Shawn and commented, “This is your first time here.” Then he informed us, “The cars stop for you.” We never could get used to the idea of throwing our children and ourselves into the middle of the street for a game of chicken with the oncoming traffic. I guess we’re just not that trusting.
5. While loading groceries into our car, I glanced up to see a man sitting in a bucket above our heads. So that’s security.
6. Cats. We walked about 4 blocks one day, and the kids counted around 100 cats along the way.
7. Iguanas, lots and lots of iguanas.
8. And, lastly, such a friendly group of people. We met so many incredibly sweet, wonderful individuals on this trip. Language barriers did not stop them from being so extremely gracious to us.
On a side note, as hashtags are so popular right now, I joked with Shawn that I was going to hashtag our trip, #shawninsanjuan. He gets my weird sense of humor.
