Puerto Rico = humidity, baby lovers and dead igauna's

This is my first visit to a location that isn't connected to the states. I have been to Mexico 4 times and lived in Canada for 4 years, but never had to fly over water to get somewhere. We are staying with friends who are connected with the camp. They have been living here for almost 2 years as teachers in a Christian school.  Joe was asked to come speak at their  3 day spring break retreat for the junior and high school kids.
It is  now day three in Puerto Rico and so far the biggest unexpected surprise was the intense humidity! It should make sense, for the simple fact that we are on an Island and all. Is it like this in Hawaii? I hope not because I really want to visit that place.  We may be taking a trip to Haiti this winter too so and I am really hoping I will be patient with the heat. I am not picky about very many things like I am the weather.
From what I have observed, Puerto Rico is America on an Island with Spanish speaking people.  Every time I visit a place where spanish is spoken I always leave telling myself that I am going to learn to speak it as fluently as possible. This time I am serious and so is Joe. We decided we will find a language Program to help us learn.  We also really want to improve on our French. We both know more French than Spanish, but when it comes to pronunciation I've got spanish down and Joe French.  I don't know how many times I have had to tell Joe that the "H" is silent in spanish.  He He! 
Okay, some more about Puerto Rico. 
The people here LOVE babies.  I have never seen a culture of people love on a baby like they do here. It is crazy how obsessed they are over Jake.  I went to visit Joe and the kids at the retreat Joe is speaking at today and I didn't get more than 3 feet in the door and we had a group of kids running at us and squealing over Jake.  By the time I left I am pretty sure that Jake had been held by 30 kids and we were told about 15 times that Jake looks like the Gerber baby.  What a nice compliment! Joe and I agreed.They couldn't stop saying "Que Lendo" which means "cute" in spanish. I keep kicking myself that I didn't enter him into the "Most Beautiful Baby" contest on Regis and Kelly this year.  It would have been nice to meet Regis and Kelly and take home 25,000 bucks for Jake's college fund.  Oh well, there is always next year.
I will post some pics in a later blog of our trip to Puerto Rico.

The Island is beautiful! They have beaches, Mountains, and Rain Forests. We took a day to go hiking in the mountains on Wed.  It was much cooler in the mountains so it was nice to have a break from the humidity for a day. The drive up to our hiking location was long and the roads very windy.  Traffic was crazy as well. You have to drive very aggressively like you would in Chicago except there aren't as many road rules. You just stick your nose out and go, no turn singles, and you get honked at a lot.  Very much like Chicago. When it comes to road kill, it's not cats, dogs, deer, or raccoons. Puerto Rico have Iguana's like we have squirrel. On the East side of the island there is a road called Beach Road and there are always Iguana's sunning out on the shoulder of the road. Sometimes they just chill on the side or they decided to cross. I have never seen so much road kill and these are huge Iguana's. It is very common to see 10+ dead iguana's in the span of a few 100 feet and they are bigger then cats! I wish I could have taken a picture of one. Below are some pictures of our trip.

The last picture of the three of us on the plane was taken soon after take off on our way home. As you can see we had a whole row to ourselves.  20 min before this picture was taken we were sharing it with a 275 lb, over 6' 2" black guy that I would have had to rub shoulders with for 6 hours but luckily was asked to move to an exit seat so he had more room for his legs. After he moved, Joe mouthed to me, " There is a God!" We had a really long day of flying home since we didn't have a direct flight to Chicago.   We had what I thought was going to be a miserable 6 hour flight to Minneapolis that arrived at 8:30pm IN time with a 90 min lay over and then a 60 min flight to Chicago that arrived at 12:15am IN time.  We didn't get Jake to bed until 2am.  From the time we left Puerto Rico at 3pm to the time we had him down for bed he only cried for no more then 3 of those mins.  He was incredibly good for us that day. I even got to hold him while he slept for 1.5 hours on the plane.  It amazes me how well he handled such a crazy day and could sleep through a noisy plane ride. We are truly blessed with an easy, go with the flow baby. Now I don't think I will ever want to fly with him again until he is 5 years old, but if I had to do it again I won't be as stressed out over it. I think my blood pressure rose about 50 points that day because of how worried I was. We are back to our regular life at home. It is great to be back in IN, just in time for spring weather. Goodbye March!