Boricua en la Lima

Gabi finished her summer camp on Friday -- her teachers were already sad despite the fact that it was only a week long! By Friday I had decided I would sign her up for another week in August.  She was super sad on Friday morning that it was all ending and started to say she missed her Cincinnati frieds after she found the bracelet her good friend Andrea gave her as a farewell gift.  I felt so bad for her -- 4 year olds shouldn't suffer from being far away from friends and family but I guess living on the other side of the ocean it's inevitable.  So at least she was happy she's going back for one more week before school officially starts on September 1st.  So she's got one "boring" week this week, next week is Disney, then Spain, then summer camp, then one more "boring" week and then school starts.  Hopefully that's enough activity to keep the homesickness at bay! Alberto came to visit us yesterday he's in town today for meetings and then h

Gabi had a blast. She says she made 16 friends but doesn't remember any of their names. Her teacher is half Venezuelan and the assistant also speaks Spanish. They did so many cool things she can't remember. All she knows is shes grown up and pretty soon the jonas brothers are going to show up and start singing like in high school musical or something like that. Tomorrow is water day can't imagine it being any more fun than it was today but I guess it will be!!! And as proof she wont remember anything. I take it as a sign that things were so overwhelmingly fun there was no way to keep it all straight in her head. Today we finally got our drivers license, a DVD player that plays US movies so they can watch something OTHER than toy story, and a cd player for sebas' lullabies so he's off going to sleep all by himself. Thanks to the music to quote ABBA.  And gabi? She went to sleep before any of us did, including sebas. Cant wait for school to start in September. :)

This is a bilingual post because I'm too lazy to translate, plus some things really do just come out better in Spanish... We got 240 CHF in speeding tickets by mail yesterday I almost died when I saw the letter. And we got both on the same street. Today we found the camera once we knew the address. And by the way, every ticket for 120 CHF was for going 6 km per hour above the limit! Can you believe it? We are scared of what we'll get from July. At least now we know so hopefully no more from here on out! But 240 CFH is a pretty expensive lesson to learn... No nos querian dejar entrar al cina a ver Toy Story porque Sebas no tiene 3 anos. Por poco me vuelvo loca empece a gritarle a la tipa "I've been promising to take them for a month!!!!". Por poco le hago todo el cuento CABRONA LOS TRAJE A GINEBRA ESTAN ABURRIDISIMOS EN CASA LES LLEVO PROMETIENDO ESTO HACE UN MES THIS IS THEIR ESCAPE IF YOU DON'T LET ME IN THEY WILL BE HEARTBROKEN. Pero Jose luego fue el so

We are enjoying our stay -- but I definitely do miss being in the old little world where I felt the kids were so happy. I feel guilty about making them be here at home, I feel like they are all bored and I think back to their wonderful teachers and their wonderful friends and feel badly for pulling them out of that happy world! I think things will get better for them soon but my heart breaks leaving them at home with the nanny. The nanny is wonderful but of course she has other responsibilities too and is not there to play with them all the time. So it's just Sebas and Gabi and I feel like they just get bored all day long. They go to the park every once in a while which is the highlight of their day when they do go. Thankfully Sebas isn't biting anymore, although he pinches now! :) Next week Gabi will go to a one week summer camp in her new school - while it's only one week I think it'll help her maybe get to know some people and just do a lot of fun activities for a

I want to go visit Cincinnati soon. I was supposed to go for work at the end of this month but the meetings got cancelled and it didn't make sense for me to go at this point.  But I want to see all my friends and go to spinning and get pedis/manis and waxing and all the stuff that is way too expensive here. And I want PANCAKES. No pancakes here and no maple syrup at the store can you believe that! Other than that things are good, slowly getting used to the little quirks that the country has. They’re so annoying in the beginning but once you start getting used to them it doesn’t feel so bad. I do miss having girlfriends, I need a good girls night out! The office is too quiet since my whole team seats in the US so I’m all “alone” in the morning and once people start coming in we’re emailing all the time and there is no actual TALKING! We are planning a couple of trips – Euro Disney early august, Spain for a wedding mid-August, then hopefully late September Spain again just to meet

I have to say with the heat this summer if we keep going to the beach every weekend we will all be toast by the end of the summer.  Welll all except Sebas.  As Gabi so aptly puts it everyone in our family is a "little brown" -- Mami, and Papi, and Gabi.  Everyone except Sebas who is "really light".  Evidence of this is the fact that by Sebas' standards he is SUPER TAN, but he's just a slightly darker shade of beige. As a result Jose is always prompted to ask who really is the kid's dad.  If it wasn't for the fact that he's identical to Gabi (save for the skin color),  I might be prompted to ask myself. On Saturday our neighbor had told us about the "Lake Parade" so we went to down to see what was going after Sebas' nap.  What we ran into was quite the interesting sight.  All the cross dressers and crazy folk came out in style.  My only question is...where are these people normally hiding?  However, let's not forget there is a

This is next to our old house! Mt. Lookout bank robbed

Well that was the most fun I'd had since Ivonne came to visit me in Cinci last month!  Mara came to visit us for a SHORT but fun-filled weekend and we of course had to show her the best we've seen of the city so far.  She arrived Friday afternoon and by total luck we were both at the SAME WRONG train station.  Amazing how things work out isn't it? On Friday night we went to a school year end parade around Thonex (the area where we live) and then to the old city to get a bite to eat, a few drinks, and watch Ghana lose in penalty shots -- heartbreaking. On Saturday morning we took her to Annecy but we decided to do it up a little bit vs. last time.  Instead of renting a pedal boat we actually rented a REAL boat -- way easier on the legs!  Way to live it up man.  Like they say in PR: "Como viviran los ricos?"  It means "if us poor folk live like this, how do rich people live?" On Sunday we went back to Yvoire as well. Both places were SOOO much more