Meet the Parents

We’ve now been here in New Jersey for while, relaxing, laying by the pool, eating lots and lots of good food and haven’t bothered about updating the blog for a while. So we figured that it was about time we posted something at last…

Well, the first night we arrived, there was a big family dinner at my Grandma’s place and Suz got to meet almost everyone from my side of the family that very night (good thing we didn’t arrive from Europe that day, no jetlag to complain about)!! It was lots of fun and they all liked Suz (I knew they would) and she liked them all as well.

That night Freddie (my cousin Kira’s husband) asked us if we wanted to go with them the next day to see “Superman Returns”, at an Imax theatre. Of course we wanted to go with them. We bought the tickets online that night which turned out to be a good thing since all the tickets were sold out when we arrived at the cinema. After waiting in line for around 20-30min we were let in to the theatre, and given our 3D glasses at the same time. 3D?!? Nice, it turned out that the movie contained a few scenes here and there during the movie which were in 3D. It’s very cool to see Superman almost flying into you…… (you look a bit silly with those big glasses on though).

After the movie we had some food…..the beers were two for the price of one (Freddie and I liked that a lot I might add) and the normal drinks had free re-fills (Suz liked that part), so we were all happy.

We watched some of the games of the World Cup at my tio (uncle) Denis’ place since he has a nice big TV to watch the games on. In between the game we went to the sportsfield and played some football as well. My brothers (René and Denis) and I were the ones playing while Suz and Amanda (René’s girlfriend) were sitting by the side watching us.

It was lots of fun to play some football again, I started that day as a goalie and I managed to make some very nice saves by throwing myself in the air (it might have looked nice but I was in pain for a few days after that). We all took turns in playing goalkeeper…..after a while we had to leave to go back and watch another game on TV only to be back at the field again after it finished. The next day I was in pain and René could barely move…..we need to move more. Denis on the other hand is very fit so he didn’t have any problems at all…..

That night we all went to a Brazilian restaurant (owned by Koreans). It’s a big buffee style restaurant, you pick up the food you want, and they have lots and lots to choose from. I started with some Miso Soup and Sushi and then hit the meat while Suz just started on the meat straight away. When you sit at the table there is a little colored wooden stick. If you show the green side up there will be a waiter at your side all the time offering you all sorts of different meats and poultry. Once you have eaten as much as you can you turn the wooden stick upside down, to show the red side, and at that point no one bothers you.

We celebrated Amanda’s birthday that evening and without anyone telling her the waiters arrived at her table with a cheesecake and also had the band play “Happy Birthday” for her.

After dinner, before we headed home we decided to show Suz her first glimpse of New York by night. We drove to the township of Weehawken, which is on the New Jersey side but offers a great view over New York. Here we eventually managed to find some parking close to the promenade where we even managed to spot a guy who had lost his car keys (or maybe he just wanted to borrow the car, we walked away quickly so we didn’t ask). Anyway, the view was grand as always and Suz really loved it!!

More days followed when we weren’t doing anything at all, just spending time with the family, watching the World Cup on TV, having great BBQ’s and eating a lot of great food!!

Most of our time over here we’re staying at my parents place, but during one weekend we stayed with Kira and Freddie. The whole weekend was spent in or next to the pool (usually with a nice cold drink in one hand while the other covered the drink from getting pool water in it). Since we were planning to have a nice BBQ party we needed to stock up on supplies. I’m not really sure how it happened but Freddie and I ended up doing all the shopping while the girls got to relax by the pool. We got through about 4 stores before we found everything that we wanted and by the time we came home we were exhausted. Luckily, we have some great girls who prepared dinner and served us wine while we got to lay by the pool.

Well, that pretty much sums up everything that we’ve been up to so far……of course we’ve been into the city (New York), but we’ll write about that later in it’s own blog. And since we missed out on our Washington DC trip due to the fact that we stayed over in Copenhagen one night, we are going there as well to explore it….we’ll keep you posted.

By the way, speaking of staying over in Copenhagen…..for those of you that have been following the blog we can tell that we finally managed to get our money for the vouchers…..but it wasn’t that easy! As we previously said we couldn’t cash our vouchers in Washington DC. So we called Scandinavian Airlines and they told us that we could cash them in at Newark Airport, we asked them if they were sure and they told us yes…..110% sure that we could.

Said and done, we borrowed my mums car and headed over to the airport, takes around 25-30min, parked the car and made our way into the terminal. Here at the ticket desk they once more told us that we couldn’t cash them in, we needed to send the vouchers in to get them paid out……AGAIN!!! We complained since they had promised us over the phone but they couldn’t do anything to help us. We got another phone number to call and Suz did all the talking. To cut a long story short we talked and talked over the phone about all that had happened to us and eventually they called us back where they told us that they felt bad for us, and after aproval from the Financial Officer, they advised that we could pick up the money from their main office. Yeah!!

Anyways, we are fine, everyone else is fine and we are having lots and lots of fun…..and Suz is realising just how much Spanish lessons are in order!!!