Day 21: Friday, 6/10

We are planning to go to Laura Beach with Emi, her girls, and Claudia on Saturday and we needed supplies. I really hope we end up going – Claudia said we will check the weather report on Saturday morning and then decide. If it's supposed to rain, we may not go. I'm not sure how to interpret that as the report is always the same... high of 80-something, humid, with a chance of rain. So, since it's rainy season, there's a pretty good chance of it raining at some point. The sporadic rains didn't seem to bother anyone a couple weeks ago when we went but, for some reason, Claudia doesn't want to go if it's going to rain. Our backup is to have them here for lunch... yup, food again.

Seriously, I'm not losing any weight while I'm here. I'd imagined that we'd be eating lots of rice and fresh fish... when I went to Belize in 2005 and ate like that, I lost 5 pounds. I think I need to re-evaluate my menu choices or plan to burn off the extra pounds by multiple trips around Calhoun pushing the stroller :)

After breakfast downstairs and a short conversation from the Simmons' balcony, Stacy, Oliver, his birth mom and I were off to Payless for a few groceries and the cash machine nearby. We had a little adventure in the parking lot at Payless. Because Oliver was sleeping, his birth mom wanted to wait in the car. I turned the car off but left the A/C on. I had a nagging feeling this was not a good idea so I tried to hurry through my shopping – I had a list – I was quick. Apparently not quick enough because when I returned to the car the battery was drained. I asked a couple guys nearby if they had jumper cables but neither did. We figured we should look in the trunk of our car and YAY, they were there. A really nice guy saw us with the hood up and pulled up to help. I can never remember which car gets the ground but the guy had no idea what I was talking about and we forged on. Got the car started immediately and we headed back to the hotel. I wanted to keep the car running a while but was low on gas so I went to find the specific gas station Gordon requested we use. Gas tank full, back to the hotel.

Jeff was still typing so couldn't finish posting or uploading pictures so read my book instead. I realized it was after 4:00 and we had talked about getting a cheep grill to take to the beach tomorrow (and future days) but hadn't found one yet. So I drove to ACE hardware down by the RRE and found a $12 table top grill that will probably last a few weeks. Hopefully that's longer than I need.

I decided to stop in on the Wilsons to see how they were doing. They'd found out that afternoon that their paperwork was arriving on the plane tonight but if they couldn't convince Andrew to meet the DHL guy at the airport to take delivery of the package, they'd have to wait until Monday to get their visa and not leave until Wednesday. The Monday evening flight was sold out. Thinking this was really unfair timing, I did something I shouldn't have. Jamie (Andrew's wife) had given me her cell phone number so we could make plans to meet up next week. I gave it to the Wilsons so they could try and track down Andrew – calling the embassy and his cell phone had not worked and there was a big time crunch. If they missed the window, it would mean 5 more days here. In addition, their son Tyler has been sick all week and at one point had a very high fever. It just isn't going away and they really wanted to get him home to see a doctor in the U.S.

I learned later that Andrew did get a hold of them and should be meeting their package tomorrow to hand over. The Wilsons should be on the 2:00 pm flight home! Unfortunately, Andrew was not happy at all that they'd phoned his wife. I don't blame him and I apologized to Jamie profusely... but honestly, I would do the same thing again. I hope karma doesn't get me on this one. If our timeline is the same as the Wilsons, that means we may only have 2 more weeks here – give our take a few days. I know I will not be making any calls to the embassy for updates until the very last few days...