Summer Lovin

Shortest summer ever.  So, we are back in Peru.  With wintertime here in the south and the school bell ringing Monday morning the evidence was in.  Summer vacay over.  In this odd life we repeat winter/summer for a not your typical year, so don't be packing the swimsuits up yet.

And it may have been summer in North America but did someone tell Alaska?

Cruising to Alaska with Disney

Colton did not want to get his photo taken but he is going to love these pics of him and Woody

and Captain Mickey,

 and Mrs. Incredible!

 Mickey and Minnie were his pals by this time.

So funny story.  Emily met the boy in front of Pluto when we were still in Vancouver.  He was standing with his cousin at the ship rail as we began sailing and the three of them began talking.  Emily told them she was from OK?! (which she does sometimes), and the two boys said they were from Tulsa, ha!  But twilightzoneweirder than that, the girl in the green sweatshirt is from Peru and goes to the same school as Emily!

Seriously, how many schools are there in the world?

Colton drove this boat

to these 12 whales.  We seriously thought we were on the Discovery channel with this spectacle.  The whales surrounded the boat (sometimes touching the boat) for nearly an hour, surfacing like this eight times.

The captain said never go on another whale watching trip because nothing would ever compare.

That was not the only boat we sailed on this summer.

Some awesome friends got a brand new sailboat, it was so fun to go out with them.  I love where we live.  The couple on the right have a missionary son in the Jenks, OK Ward right now!

So a month of summertime:

*7 days on a cruise

*a week for Emily at Adventure For Youth

*a week with family

didn't leave much time

for planking,

pyramids
(They were trying to qualify for awkward family photos.)

or parades.

I want this

and that.

School's out

in the jungle! Summer break in January and February means school days in June.  Her biology class took a little week long field trip to the jungle.  It took an airplane flight and a boat ride to arrive at class.

Looks like Disney jungle ride to me.

Some of the boat rides were four or five hours long.

A walk through the Amazon Basin and Palm Swamps to see peccaries, howling monkeys,

 fireflies, macaws, 

tarantulas

and a jaguar!

The lodge 

and the mud boots.

because it rains in the jungle.

Sitting in an airport

 heading back to civilization.

Welcome to the jungle.

The Prom Dress

was an experience.

One of the challenges of living in Peru is trying to buy something.  Lima has many beautiful spacious malls that appear to rival any mall in America.  Yet the selections and sizes are limited and anything imported is at a crazy price.  Emily needed a prom dress and I can't say there were any prom dress stores, let alone a dress her style and her size.

In Lima there is a shopping area called Gamarra.  It is large and frantic and hectic but it is where the Peruvians shop for lots of items and the only place to shop for many items.  It is really the only place to shop for fabric.  Gamarra is also dangerous and sketchy.  While we have been here the whole area was shut down for a brief time because of riots and some people were murdered there. It is notorious for thieves because of the predictable exchange of money.  I had never been there until February of this year when I accompanied a friend and her seamstress to buy fabric.  I was fascinated at the amount of fabric available to buy.  At JoAnn's if you want to buy prom dress fabric they might have an aisle of options.  In Gamarra there were stores with taffeta and silk and lace and satin, etc. etc. and all in every color imaginable.  The options were overwhelming and I loved it.  Everyone told me how they hated Gamarra but I am thinking wow, this is incredible.  I was only there to observe but somehow I started talking to this girl and when we parted she left me a note with her name and number and  website.  She is a dress designer.

To make a long story shorter we hired Claudia to make a dress for Emily's Prom.  She has a beautiful showroom beside her home which is almost directly across the street from Emily's friend from school.  A place we had been numerous times.  That was quite the coincidence since this town has 10 million residents.  While in the process of designing and making Emily's dress Claudia was invited to show a collection at Miami's Fashion Week.  She won best up and coming designer there and now she has been asked to show her collection at Italy's Fashion Week.  

She asked Emily what shoes she was going to wear and then said she would just have shoes made.  The dress was stunning on Emily.  She looked beautiful in the green.  The dress was meticulously made to every minor detail.  It was a really fun experience, one I will never forget.

Emily and friends and dates went together to the dance. 

 They met at her friends house before for pictures. (The friend that lives across the street from Claudia.)  Lonny and I arrived right before Emily.  She had been at another friend's getting ready.  

 (The nicest houses in Lima are modern, the walls are just unpainted, unfinished cement. Her friends house is so beautiful it looks like a museum with all of the art work on the walls. Those paintings were all the work of Maria's dad,(Maria is standing next to Emily)also one of Emily's friends. The houses are inside a security wall so it is safe to open the floor to ceiling windows and let the outside in.)  

The bodice fabric is handwoven velvet and satin.  In fact the velvet started out white and was dyed to the finished color.

Emily and Jonathan

The dance was outside.

We are in Peru, doesn't matter that winter is next week.  The dance was outside.

Colombia again

Here is Emily on our ride to the boat.  We took a boat to an Island Resort.  There are numerous Islands off the coast of Colombia both in the Pacific and Caribbean Sea.

This was leaving Cartagena

and this may have been the entire Colombian Navy.

There was a statue in the water and we were speculating on whether it was the Statue of Liberty.  Maybe every nation has one?  As we got closer we could see it was a statue of Mary and baby Jesus.

When we saw these two guys I looked to see if a National Geographic Photographer was nearby.

First thing that happened at the resort was

Emily decided to wakeboard.

It may have been before she saw the little boat that was going to pull her out of the water and around the ocean.  It took a few tries before she got up and she was embarrassed.  What you can not see from the photos is the line of lounge chairs along the beach with nothing to look at but ocean and Emily attempting to wakeboard.

She was a champ for not giving up and those guys are not speaking to her in English.  She can hold her own with Spanish.

Of course when she did get up everyone on the beach was also watching,

so she gave them a show.

The pool looks deserted but later there were lots of swimmers, probably because it was in the shade.  Have I mentioned how hot it is in Colombia?

We took a boat to another island with an aquarium.

There were turtles

everywhere

and little sharks

and dolphins

and big sharks

everywhere.

The sharks would swim onto the blue platform and splash until they were fed.  Those birds would eat the fish food whenever they were given a chance.

One of the birds appointed himself the chief and would chase off the other birds from the food.

Here the chief bird is standing watch while the dolphin is kissing the trainer.

and flapping his wings at the fish food burglars when they tried anything.

More Caribbean Islands in the distance.

I guess you can build a fence when the water is shallow.

When we left the resort to return to Cartagena the water was really rough.  They told everyone to put their cameras and phones away.  It was funny but water kept on coming over the side of the boat and drenching us, like 20 times in the 30 minute boat ride.  I am just glad we were already wearing our swimsuits.  It was the real version of an amusement park water ride.  Thankfully we soaked up all the water and the boat did not sink.

Modern and old Cartagena.

It was a fun vacation if you like sun, beaches, boats and food.