Sunday, July 1, 2012

Our exchange student – Part 1

Back in February P and I had the chance to experience the biggest party on earth at the 2012 Rio Carnival. As you can imagine it was the experience of a life time. We partied our butts off; meet a ton of cool and fun people from all over the world and had just an incredible time. I will never forget this experience with my husband (I posted the pictures on another blog if you want to check them out) and I wish and pray that we get to spend more times like this many more times in the future.
One of the highlights of our trip was Casa Cool Beans (www.casacoolbeans.com), the most amazing bed and breakfast that anyone can ever experience!!! Located in the artsy neighborhood of Santa Teresa this incredibly cozy place, owned by Lance, David and their dog Mousse, was by far the best hotel experience we’ve ever had. We woke up every day to a fresh breakfast buffet and were greeted by the extremely friendly hosts who gave us suggestions about their favorite places in the area. Our bedroom was beautiful and romantic and the entire place was just a piece of art. They even gave me a necklace before I left (every lady guest got one), a necklace! When was the last time a hotel gave you a necklace as a token of appreciation for staying with them. Pretty sure NEVER! 
Casa Cool Beans Breakfast

Casa Cool Beans



Our romantic room at Casa Cool Beans

We were so enchanted with the place that we decided that one day we would love to have something like it, where we could be the hosts, meet people from all over the world and make them as happy and welcomed as Casa Cool Beans made us feel. This is when P decided that “we” needed to make some research and perhaps start small in our own apartment in San Diego by hosting an international student to gain experience and to see if we had it in us. And by “we” he obviously meant, you (me). So I did, I looked into some local English language schools and emailed them asking about hosting a student for a few weeks, as practice for our future hostel/bed and breakfast venture. A couple emailed me back with some information but other than that no one really got back to me. I figured that perhaps we weren’t creepy enough to be host parents (I will tell you about my own creepy host parent experience at the age of 15 some other time) so after a couple of weeks I completely forgot about it. Then, about a month ago (three months after I enquired) I got a call from one of the schools telling me that they desperately needed to place a student who had signed up at the last minute and who was coming to the U.S. in two weeks. Apparently they had run out of creepy couples so they had no choice but to ask for our help!!! YAAAAAAY!  Not only that, they wanted to pay us $1500 for our troubles….are you kidding me, heck yeah send us the kid, we will be ready, two weeks is plenty of time!
Two weeks weren't enough and of course we weren’t ready because, “the kid” was going to have to sleep on the only extra room that we have: the man cave, which I have talked about in past blogs and described as not being very tidy by any regular human being standards. So of course as good last minute Latin Americans we hustle the day before our guest’s arrival and ….how should I put it…hid?  P’s s…..tuff anywhere we could since of course nothing must be thrown away, these are valuable things even if we didn’t remember having them. Our friend Melvyn was gracious enough to help us and as the good guy friend he is, he took the time to congratulate P on his awesome untouched, unread collection of National Geographics that has been boxed and moved 13 million times during the 9 years that we have been together J “Seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” P said. “And you wanted to get rid of them!!!!” Thanks Melvyn!
After an arduous day of cleaning the room was finally ready and it looked niiiiiiiiiiiiceeeeeee. We were ready for the arrival of our 23 year old Swiss student who we knew nothing about. How exciting!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (to be continued…..)

1 comment:

  1. Watch....when you're 65, you'll be able to sell the NG magazines and buy yourselves sumthin nice!

    ReplyDelete