Happy Faces in Grecia

We packed for an overnight trip to Grecia and San Ramon and headed off. On the way, we stopped to pick up the passports. It took a little while (they had to torture Cristina with one last dose of bureaucratic nonsense) but we finally got on our way with four new Costa Rican passports. In my family, I am now officially outnumbered by Ticos.

We got to Grecia close to 1, which was late for lunch. We grabbed some bread from Mus Manni to take as a humble offering. Alice’s house looked the same from the outside, but the inside had changed drastically. They’ve completely remodeled the inside.

Vicki, Marcos, Alice, and Daniella (V & M’s daughter) were all there, as well as William’s ever-present mother Doña Olga. Marcos had come by on his lunch hour (he works at the bank), but because we ran so late, he had to eat without us. We only saw him for about 10 minutes before he had to go back to work.

Lunch was excellent: Vicki’s arroz con pollo. I have her recipe, but mine never tastes as good as hers. Alice had made some onions and sweet peppers in a vinegar dressing that was a great topping or side. Sofia tried ensalada Ruso (Russian salad) for the first time. The bright pink salad is popular here, but she hadn’t tried it before today. She liked it okay.

We spent the afternoon at the Casa de los Mangoes, hanging out, chatting. Vicki and Cristina picked up the boys, Carlos Andres and Christopher, and soon all the kids were playing soccer outside. Even the dog, Sarchi, was playing soccer. That was amazing. The dog, a little dachshund, had not impressed me, but when I saw him dribbling the soccer ball around the yard, even stealing the ball from the boys, I fell in love. He did everything but shoot on goal.

To pass some time with Daniella, I played around with our new camera. It has some photo effects, which I had not yet explored, like red-eye removal and various types of shading and focus softening. The one effect that intrigued me the most was called “happy faces,” that allows you to modify people’s faces to appear as smiling. I had to try that one out. So I took a picture of Alex not smiling and then applied the Happy Faces effect. The results were hilarious. His mouth was digitally manipulated to curl up at the ends into a weird facsimile of a smile. Needless to say, we had many good laughs with that feature. Everybody got a turn.

Regular Alex

Happy Face Alex

Regular Sofia

Happy Face Sofia

Regular couldn't-stop-smiling-even-though-we-told-her-to-frown Isabella

Happy Face Isabella

When William arrived, Vicky connected their computer to the internet and looked at some of the photos from my blog. They also showed us photos of Volcan Turrialba, which is erupting after being dormant for a very long time.

It was getting close to bedtime, and we still needed to drive to San Ramon to rendezvous with the Sheridans for the night. We showered the two youngest kids at Alice’s, got them in their PJ’s, said our goodbyes to the Fallas family, and headed out.

It was only about 30 minutes to San Ramon, and though Bella fell asleep, she woke up when Bill met us to show us the way to their house. The Sheridans go to bed early, and even though it was late, they gave us the full house tour (more house details tomorrow). We chatted with Jen and Bill until going to bed around midnight.