As promised, the mariachi band that we picked up on the street in Honduras. The video isn't great, but the audio is worth it. 🙂
Welcome to the studio in my head.
As promised, the mariachi band that we picked up on the street in Honduras. The video isn't great, but the audio is worth it. 🙂
I tried to post this yesterday, but Vox/the internet ate it. I'll try again.
Wedding Day!!
It's Saturday morning and I'm one hungover chica. Do you know what fixes a hangover? A breakfast buffet full of scrambled eggs, bacon, chicken crepes with gravy, coffee, orange juice and croissants. Hell yeah! I can't say enough good things about that food. I want it right now, actually.
It's a chill kinda day in preparation for the festivities of the evening. The bridal party has gone to get all dolled up. I, not being in the party, am released from such duties and (thankfully) allowed to just chill with the groom and his guys.
We all hang out in the groom's suite and listen to tunes and order room service. Yes, more food. Club sandwiches and salmon and cream cheese sandwiches and tortilla soup with avocado and cream, oh my. It is certainly no wonder I looked so bloated in my dress. Oh yes, and beer. Salva Vida and Port Royal. Good stuff.
And now that we are good and stuffed, we retreat to our rooms to nap before the event. We're privvy to the info that the bride won't be showing up until 7 so we have plenty of time.
Fully napped and relaxed, we procede to get dressed. With Pa in his tuxedo and I in my dress, ha ha. We're ready to hit the town, or the pool area as it may be. Aren't we cute?
I forgot to suck in my gut, how lovely.
Off to the ceremony which I got on videotape while trying to take stills at the same time. Tough job. The bride and groom were on the other side of the pool in the gazebo area as they had walked across the bridge that was set up. We plebes were on the close side. There were fireworks when the couple was announced, singing, dancing (this is all during the ceremony) and the best part, the release of the birds.
Two white parakeets or doves or something with wings were released. One went somewhere, the other didn't want to come out of its cage. Poor little guy ended up getting forcibly removed from the cage at which time he chose to just chill on the ground in front of his cage. A plucky youngster who was in the wedding came over in all of his well-intentioned cuteness and picked up the bird in cupped hands and gave it a little toss in an attempt to get it to fly.
Fly it did. It zigged and then zagged and then dive bombed the pool where it landed. I happened to get the happy couple's faces on tape. I'm sorry, but it was pretty funny. I found out after that Lovey, IM, and the rest of the party were trying to decide who was gonna have to jump in to get the bird when a maintenance worker scooped it out. Oh, good times.
There were photos galore taken and supposedly we're in some magazine down there in Honduras. I just googled it and there are some photos in a couple different newspapers. Neat. No, I'm not giving out the links. I don't have their permission.
Reception was good. Lots of dancing and drinking and eating. Best dancer goes to this guy:
He was ROCO all night!
I'd do an episode four but let's just finish up on this happy note and say that customs doesn't like people with common names and an hour in their "waiting room" and an hour waiting for someone in there isn't fun. More pictures to come eventually as well as a 2 minute mariachi video. Lates!
It's day two and we have no luggage yet. We shower and put our traveling clothes back on and go to breakfast. OH. MY. GOODNESS. Breakfast. I've never had scrambled eggs taste so good. Juice so sweet. Other things that I had no idea what they were so delicious. Never would have thought of having crepes with chicken in them for breakfast but I'm glad someone did. Mini chocolate croissants. (And I wonder why I gained 10 pounds.) Best. Coffee. Ever.
Full and happily rubbing our bellies, we went back to our room. We longed to go outside and sit at the pool that we could see from our room.
But alas, we had no clothes. Lovey was getting impatient and decided to call American Airlines. Wouldn't you know it? The lady he was talking to had no clue. At the same time, the room phone rang and I answered it and tried my best to get the point of the call, but the Spanish was way too much for me. I turned it over to Lovey who triumphantly yelled that our luggage had arrived! It was delivered to the room and off we went to the pool.
Oh yeah, there were chairs and tables out there but they got moved for the wedding.
I had such a craving for some salsa and Lovey reminded me that we weren't in Mexico. But really, how hard can it be? Just gimme some tomatoes if that's all you've got. Lovey asked for some and in return we received french fries with ketchup. They were awesome but they didn't satisfy my cravings. I guess salsa isn't recognized in all Spanish speaking countries.
We had the rehearsal dinner that night at the bride's half-sister's house. She's a congresswoman and thus has a house the size of, oh, let's say, a small restaurant. The food was spectacular, or so Lovey tells me as I forgot to eat and remembered to continue drinking. There was a live band (the national band for Honduras) and plenty of rum. I'm told that I was attempting to hold a conversation with the bartender in English although I recall speaking to him in Spanish. Maybe I just got confused.
All in all, a good night. Tomorrow is the wedding. What will happen next? Tune in to episode 3 to find out.
Well well, my lovlies. I have returned, in one piece and no worse for wear from the trip to Honduras. I will split it up into pieces as I am as long-winded as they come. There are pictures galore but they have yet to be uploaded and they'll probably go straight to Flickr anyways. On with the show!
We were up early on Thursday morning as our flight was at 11 something and being international, we figured we had best get there on time. Left the house at about 7 am and picked up another of the wedding party, IM, and headed al aeropuerto.
Upon arrival at the airport, we find utter chaos. American Airlines had their heads in their arses and had lines that snaked from one end of the terminal to the other. There were actually a group of kids from Kiddo's school in our line. This is where deciding to have breakfast at the airport became a bad idea. We stood in line for a good two hours before we got checked in. Meanwhile, people who showed up late to the airport somehow got in before us. BITTER!
Finally checked in, we immediately hit the greasiest thing we could find…Burger King. We were hoping for cheesy tots, but they didn't have them there so we had sammiches and tots and juice instead. Ah yes, checked in, but not through security yet.
As MIA is naturally a clusterfoob, security was a nightmare. For some reason, they had five lines converge into two to get your carry-on x-rayed and to walk through the metal detector. We were on-point without our laptops to hold us up this time. People around us, not so much. Seriously, how long has the rule been in effect that you can't take liquids? Why did the lady somewhat in front of us try to go through with an entire bottle of water and a frappucino from Starbucks (untouched). Yes, we laughed when she had to throw it away.
The guy that was "directing traffic" was pretty funny. He kept telling us that you couldn't have liquids and "sorry to bust your bubble, but you can't bring x, y, and z through here" and a bunch of other stuff that kept us giggling in the line. Poor guy, he must have been so tired of the SSDD.
It was 5pm somewhere so a frosty beverage was called for. Nothing like a mojito (minus the mint, I know that makes it not a mojito, I was a bartender for pete's sake) at 10:30 to get the juices flowing.
The actual plane ride was uneventful. Just a lot of loud giggling between all of us. Btw, all of us is me, Lovey, IM, the groom, the maid of honor, her hubby, groom's mom and stepdad, groom's dad, bride's dad, groom's sister, groom's neice.
We were prepared for the scariest landing ever in Tegulcigalpa, but it really wasn't as bad as people portrayed it to be. I have it on video so look for it later.
Yup, landed and greeted by the bride and bride's mom among others. Hey, hey! Guess what? They neglected to put our luggage on the plane in Miami! Yeah, crappy. Someone is irate but I don't really care as much because hey, it's a reason to go shopping. Turns out that our luggage will now not arrive until 24 hours later when the next flight arrives from Miami. Oh, the fun.
We get checked in to the hotel and YUMMYLICIOUS! I love a squishy king bed and a view of the pool and a huge tub with the rain thingy shower head! Let's not forget mini-bar and television with a million channels that I can't understand.
It's time for lunch and so we head over with the whole group to a Mexican restaurant across the way. Holy smokes, delicious! They bring out these four long trays of meat with all kinds of fixins and tortillas and we stuff ourselves silly with steak and beer. Honduras has great beer! Salva Vida and Port Royal are my favorites. After lunch we retire to our room to fume about not having luggage.
We need something to wear for our little tour, though, so we walk across the street to the mall. Wow is all I can say in regards to the mall and its clothing selection. Took forever to find a pair of jeans that weren't butt ugly. Finally did and learned that their sizes are different when I took a size 7 into the dressing room and couldn't get it past my knees. Tried again with a 9 (no go) and an 11 (a bit snug but I refused to buy a 13). Lovey was having the same problems. We came away with a pair of jeans and a shirt each. I shall never wear those jeans again.
(I know this is getting long, but episode 1 is almost done, I promise.)
Later that evening, we went on a bus tour of the city. The bride's uncle owns a transportation company so it was no holds barred on the freaking bus. I couldn't finish a beer without being handed another one. We got to go up into the mountains and see the lights of Tegu which was pretty cool. We also saw some statues and such. We were shown where the US Embassy is (you know, in case we get in trouble).
Oh yeah, and how comfortable is it when the local police are making kissy noises at you? YUCK! Lovey was not pleased with that but fortunately didn't hear it when it happened and avoided an altercation. This is in the same area where we were told before we got off the bus to take off rings. HA! Safety at its finest.
That concludes our tour of the country and episode 1. Do Lovey and I get our luggage? Does Lovey fist fight Honduran police with AK-47s for hitting on me? Do we drink more beer? All these questions and more will be answered on the next episode. 🙂
Is the name of a Stephen King novel. There, I said it. On with the post.
Yesterday was a bad day to be in Miami. See Roboco's post about the crane collapse, there were break-ins that resulted in shootings, the road that I take to travel the 9 miles from the place I work to my home was shut down because of a very bad accident involving two motorcycles resulting in a 2 HOUR drive to get home and the side street on the way was clogged up because of another motorcycle crash in which an older guy laid it down and was laying in the street when I went past. Yikes, what a nightmare for Miami.
There are only a few things that I am afraid of. I mean, really afraid of. Needles are one and bats are another. Not like baseball bats, flying rats. Those nasty little buggers. I've never been a fan ever since one dive-bombed my head when I was walking home at dusk when I was around 10 years old. ACK!
When I lived in Mexico, there were bats everywhere. I was freaked out all the time heading back to my room. There were places I wouldn't walk because I knew they were hiding in there. Slightly irrational? Yes. I've seen them on the ground. I know how big they are. They're small. That doesn't make them any less yucky.
Last night I dreamt that one flew into the house when we left our sliding glass door open. This wasn't a small black bat. This thing was huge and brown. I think that's why I called it a coconut bat* in the dream. It was as big as a freaking coconut! Lovey shooshed it out of the house while I screamed. I woke up this morning thinking, man I'm glad we got that stupid bat out of the house. It was just that real.
* I don't think there's any such thing as a coconut bat.
Today, Kiddo goes to Mom's, thankfully not on American Airlines as I'm watching CNN and they just cancelled about 200 flights. Tomorrow, we leave the country! No, I'm not excited or anything. 😀
It's hump day, ya'll. Get your hump on! Have a great day! HEP.