Last day!

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Our last full day at the resort! Tomorrow we check out around 7:40 am, and the bus picks us up at 8:30 am for our 12:30 pm flight. The day dawned bright and sunny, and we were early to breakfast – around 8 am. We sat on the patio and got Rosa, the waitress who really likes us (although Torsten is really mean to her and always frowns when she tries to talk to him). Actually, all the staff have been really nice to us; the Dominicans generally seem to be a friendly lot and really seem to like children.

Breakfast was the same old food, minus some of the things I normally eat, like the tinned peaches. Sunny and her family also came in for breakfast and sat on the patio, and as we were leaving, she asked us where we were going. Then she TOLD us where to go – we should go back to our room, change into our bathing suits, and then meet them at the little pool. During this speech, her mother just covered her eyes with her hand. We met Marty and Erin coming up the path to have breakfast, and Torsten went to meet them, but Erin ran away, and eventually buried her head in her mother’s skirt. Marty listened to what she had to say, and then told us that Erin said that she was too sad to talk to Torsten! Hopefully she’ll be more cheerful later.

When we got back to the room, Torsten didn’t want to get changed, and put up a fuss about getting his bathing suit on. Ingo decided to take the opportunity to go see if Glenn was waiting for us at breakfast (since we hadn’t told him we were having an early breakfast), and when he returned, informed us that Glenn had asked Rosa if we’d eaten already. In the meantime, I had managed to get Torsten sunscreened and into his bathing suit by asking him if he thought he could get his clothes off by himself. We then went off to the Kids’ Club. As we walked there, we saw Glenn on the beach, and I went to talk to him. Turns out that the only time that they do the raffle with the certificates to win a trip back to the resort is on Friday, so Glenn is out of luck. Now he has a bunch of certificates that he can’t use because the auction for souvenirs was last night – so he’ll end up giving them away to someone. That Glenn!

Torsten puttered away happily at the little sandbox for a while. There was a little girl there who played with a really miserable face, and didn’t seem to want to play with Torsten at all. After a while, we suggested a change of scene, and Torsten decided he wanted to walk on the big sandbox. So we strolled along the beach, stopping along the way to wave some badminton rackets around. We wound up by the marina with the small sailing catamarans (which were beached, as the flag was red), and Torsten climbed across all three. Then we walked up to the little wading pool where Sunny was splashing around with some other kids.

Although Torsten played in the wading pool a little while and went in the big pool with Ingo, he was quite tired, and spent a lot of time sitting with me on the deck chair and eating popcorn. I had a nice chat with Sue, Sunny’s mother, who had apparently been born and raised in Hong Kong until she was a teenager! She’s Jewish, as it turns out, and has travelled extensively in Asia, so we talked about that. A photographer came around and took some pictures of the kids, but Torsten didn’t seem to want his picture taken, and came to sit with me. The photographer (Nestor) then took a bunch of photos of me with Torsten, and then took some of Torsten with Ingo – I think he sensed a sale. At any rate, we’ll take a look at the photos when they’re at the digital photo shop in the main building tonight, and see whether there are any we want to buy.

Because Torsten was drooping, we took him back to the room to see whether he’d fall asleep before lunch again. He did, but was very restless, so after a little while, he woke up and was upset. Ingo took him in his arms to sleep, thus putting paid to any packing we might have done during the nap. However, this early nap does mean that we have some more time in the afternoon to enjoy the resort!

When Torsten woke up, he didn’t want to leave the room, and it took some time to persuade him to go out. By that time, the World Café was close to being closed, so we decided to head down to the Oceana Restaurant, which was open till 4 pm. However, Torsten had no interest whatsoever in going into a restaurant, so instead we went to the Barefoot Grill on the beach and picked up a few burgers and nachos to eat in the Kids’ Club. Torsten played there for a while, and then it began to get towards closing time (5 pm), so we began to pack up. Over the fence, we saw Glenn on the beach, starting to play a game of beach volleyball with a pretty girl (turned out to be Natasha, the girl he’d been interested in), and people who looked like her family. I yelled that it wasn’t, perhaps, the BEST activity for a healing broken ankle, and he yelled back that he could stay in one spot and just hop if he needed to move – and then began hopping on one foot ostentatiously. Sigh.

After a short walk on the beach (Torsten wanted to join in the volleyball game, but we dissuaded him), we started heading back up the path, as I wanted to see how the pictures from earlier today turned out. However, we were sidetracked when we passed the little wading pool and saw Sunny and her parents, as Torsten said, “Want to go there! Yes, I do!” So he splashed around there for a little bit, until we told him it was getting late, and we should get going. As we had brought dry diapers with us, we changed him into dry clothes then and there and went up to the main building, where we looked at the pictures. They were really good, so we bought them (on CD and 10 6x9 prints). Then we settled down to wait for Glenn for dinner.

While we were waiting, Ingo was approached by a manager and invited to go to the wine tasting that was set up in the lobby. He took a look at the wines, and they looked good, so he went. Torsten and I, meanwhile, watched some Teen Titans on my BlackBerry. After a bit, Torsten became a bit bored with them, so we played in the chair. Suddenly, we noticed that a strange and dour family had joined us in our chair grouping. The father had sat in the seat across from me, and looked like he was glaring, although he was probably watching the photo slideshow on the monitor behind us. Torsten hid behind me. Thankfully, the mother soon showed up and they went into dinner. Glenn showed up shortly thereafter, and we had dinner as well. Rosa saw us come in, and told the usher to seat us in her section, which was nice. Dinner was uneventful, and after we were done, we went back to the room to pack.

Packing didn’t take very long, and now we’re watching TV. Tomorrow, we’re flying back to Canada – and I for one say hooray!