Once upon I time I got trained, by the Puerto Rico office of my company, to deliver an “Effective Business Writing” class. Since I moved to Cincinnati, and the general offices, I trained another person in PR to take over this training. Interestingly, she also moved over here and the office has called me twice to administer this training.
Initially, I was scheduled to travel right after my triathlon (from Chicago) but given Hurricane Earl (Cat 3 at that point), my flight got moved and then moved again because another hurricane, Fiona, was heading towards the island. Thankfully, both hurricanes missed the island but that didn’t stop the rain and winds from knocking the power out of my Mom’s house for 2 days. Alan and I rescheduled and found ourselves on our way to see everyone.
Whenever we go to Puerto Rico, it is a whirlwind of action, where we have to see a great number of people in a few short days. In addition, Alan got to spend some QT with his grandmother. If the “Jersey Shore” TV show has made common the meaning of “GTL” (gym ,tanning, laundry) then my Mom has “PBF” going on in her house whenever the grandkids are around (pool. bath. food). To say more, no more than 3 hours after we arrived, we went to see my grandparents and my grandma said that Alan looked “pale and thin”. Five seconds later, the organic baby food I had brought got sneered at and Alan was eating rice and beans for the first time. Since he is half Puerto Rican, he took to the rice and beans fine but then collapsed in exhaustion after eating enough for 4 or 5 babies.
I’m not going to lie, the flight was rough. Alan was very active and is apparently sensitive to the flight elevations so he spent a good amount of time just screaming. Nothing that I tried helped and the lady next to me kept “offering” solutions like “maybe he’s hungry. maybe he’s tired” . Word to the wise: the Mother of the screaming kid is NOT happy about it and is probably in a lot of stress. Unless you want to say something nice like “we’ve all been there”, just don’t say anything at all.
A week seems like a long time but it actually FLIES by! Seen through Alan’s eyes, he ate a lot of new and good food (and left chubbier, I swear). Had some very fun experiences!
