Most of the photos I'll post today will be taken with my phone camera, since after lugging around my DSLR for a week, I started to grow weary of its weight on my shoulder, and maybe a little worried that my focus was more on recording the beauty of our vacation than on enjoying each moment and savoring its memory. As a result, we don't have nearly as many food pictures, but rest assured that we did eat these last few days. :)
So here we are, sitting at the San Diego airport awaiting our flight to Dallas, where we will have less than an hour to locate our gate and catch our plane to Cleveland. I am hopeful that there will be plenty of time for a bathroom run as well, after using the theater's restroom 6 times last night and Brigantine Seafood's 3 times during dinner just before. It's hard to follow the healthy liquid intake guidelines and not spend every single second on the toilet, but Felipe finds plenty of humor in the times when I walk out of the bathroom, say, "Oooh, I have to pee again!" and rush right back in.
The play we saw last night was called The Foreigner and was put on at the Lambs Players Theatre, just a few blocks from our hotel in Coronado. The first act was pretty good and quite funny, but I got very uncomfortable during the second act. While the actors were very talented and the audio effects were great, I didn't appreciate that it took a really serious, scary topic (racism and the Klan) and spun it into comedy. One girl got up and walked out when three men wearing sheets and holding guns came on stage, and while I'm not sure if she really needed to use the bathroom or was simply offended, I admit that I was shifting uncomfortably in my seat for the rest of the show.
We met about 4 people on this trip who we really appreciated, though we don't even know their names. All were on Coronado Island, and they included:
- A Hotel Del cab driver, who moved here from Brazil 11 years ago, is the father of two little girls who love to draw and talk and give hugs, and whose wife made the decision to be a stay at home mom when the first was born. He talked about the financial difficulties they faced but how thankful they are that they made that choice now, and how his older brother cries because he drops his 3 month old son off at day care for 11 hours per day.
- The owner of a delicious candy shop in Coronado located conveniently near the Lambs Players Theatre, who grew up in Stow, graduated from the University of Akron, and left Ohio 25 years ago to make a new life. As he put it, he said, "peace!" and has never gone back... like, not even to visit. He told us about how he met his wife and married her three months later, then shared his experience watching his wife's cesarean sections, one for a miscarried son at 6 months pregnant. He felt so familiar.
- A French woman staying at the Hotel Del with her 18 month old son, who noticed I was showing and asked if we were expecting. She proceeded to tell me in great lengths how important it is to appreciate each stage of being a parent, as she also has a 9 year old son. One thing that stood out was when she told us about how long it took her son to learn to walk, and how we can't expect every child to develop in the same way because everyone is different. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and it was refreshing to hear something other than, "You have no idea what you're getting yourselves into," or, "Your life will never be the same."
- Mary, a woman working at the front desk of the Hotel Del the morning after our first night there, who took it upon herself to remove a portion of the cost of our night's rate after I asked a question about the noise coming from their water pipe maintenance while we were sleeping. After having a very friendly conversation with her, we headed to breakfast and forgot all about it, but upon our return she stopped us to let us know she'd applied a credit to our account. A couple of days later we ran into her again, and we learned that she had grown up and lived mainly in San Diego but had also lived for short periods of time in New York and the Philippines. Mary also liked donuts and was unbelievably warm in personality, unlike every other person we met working at hotel desks, who tend to look like they'd rather be doing anything else in the world but are dutifully suffering through a painfully false smile to earn their paychecks. Take Bobby, the concierge, who didn't even know where to find donuts on the island - as if that weren't his job!
