Picture of the day: not a decision I've had to make before...
Hellen's version
I woke up at 4 a.m. local time, completely wired because my body clock thought it was 8 a.m. To make matters worse we had no food in the apartment at all. Nothing. So I had to wait to eat until we got to McDonald's at 9 a.m.
We then did Wal-Mart. Food is really expensive in America. We spent over $300 (£200) and only really got stuff for three meals. We bought some chocolate snacks but must have forgotten how bad American chocolate is: looked like Maltesters, tasted like earwax.
After McDonald's and Wal-Mart we went down to the pool. I was supervising all the children there when the hurricane struck. There was thunder and lightning and I yelled at the children to get out of the pool. Gregory wanted to do "just one more cannonball!" so I yelled at him most of all. Then we legged it back to our apartment, ran up three flights of stairs and struggled against the wind along the walkway to where Roderic was holding the door open for us. We watched the palm trees bending over from inside the apartment while Hari cried, convinced we were all about to die. Gwen helpfully switched on the TV to distract her from our impending doom only to discover that every channel was broadcasting a tornado warning for exactly where we were.
Eventually the winds died down and the sun came out again, and so the children went back down to the pool while I cooked dinner. After everyone had eaten my meagre offering (we didn't have enough chicken) I took them back to the pool again until bedtime.
Everyone else version
McDonald's breakfast at home is pretty good, but here it's fantastic! So many new things to try. Suzy had fruity oatmeal, Gwen had a chicken "biscuit" (scone) and Roderic had sausage burritos. We all loved it, and are looking forward to going back to try the rest of the menu.
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| Anyone know what these vegetables are? |
In Wal-Mart the children had great fun on a trolley with large plastic seats for them (I'll see if I can get the photo from Suzy) while we had fun looking at all the interesting and exotic food. I loved corn dogs last time we were here, and Gwen loved burrirtos, so we stocked the freezer. The great thing about both of those is that they microwave in about a minute and it turns out that little Gregory (who is not much of an eater) loves corn dogs.We bought milk by the gallon, cinnamon buns, pretzels filled with peanut butter, pop tarts and a whole host of other things we can't get at home.
The 'tornado' was quite an exciting adventure, looking back now. At one stage I wondered whether it would be safer for us to just shelter in one of the door recesses rather than climb the stairs to our room, and Hari hammered desperately on the wrong door when we finally reached the "fourth" (third) floor. But I was grateful as I counted the children through the door to our apartment that we're a pretty stoic bunch. Apart from Hari (who had overheard two other ignorant tourists predicting a terrible tornado), the children were mostly just annoyed at having their swim interrupted.
You may have heard that the advice during a tornado is to get into the bath. Well, I took that seriously, and sat in our huge jacuzzi, the sound of the hot bubbling water drowning out the wind, watching the palm trees bend over the lake.
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