Woche 5: Der harte Betrug

For about two weeks now, since Yoala's flight was scheduled, every evening ends in a family prayer: that tomorrow we receive a visa! Then a whole discussion unfolds about the various scenarios of what we will do if we receive it tomorrow, the day after, and so on until we get tired. Every morning (specifically at 3 a.m.) Yoala checks and discovers that we still haven’t received a visa.

So, we didn’t get a visa, I drove Yoala to the airport, and we stayed for three final days at the beach. It's tough without Mom, tough without my partner. We went to the big city to eat ice cream, which we've done with Yoala several times, and suddenly without her, the place felt scarier, darker, lonely, and alien. There’s been a lot of talk about how we are in this together and that we need each other - so that no one withdraws into themselves.

The kids and I deliberated and decided that enough beach time, it was time to move on. We sadly said goodbye to the beach and headed back toward San Jose hoping to wait a minute for a visa. In the middle of the journey, after two hours of driving, I stopped to buy something to eat and to get back to Heshy and Shauli, who had just called. A sleepy atmosphere in the car. I open WhatsApp from Yoala, a screenshot:

Dear OFRI KRIEF

your VISA request has been APPROVED

Does that mean what I think it means? While trying to understand the Spanish, a file arrives for Michael and Mati. I rush back to the car and scream excitedly: We got the visa!!! Everyone wakes up, screams of joy, getting out of the car looking for ways to unload the excitement. Well, let’s settle for a meal at Subway. While ordering, I talk to Heshy and Shauli, Ofri is going wild in the restaurant, Toto is vomiting. A celebration.

All the way we’re planning - we’ll fly in two days, wait, we need to get approvals for Toto. How do we transfer all the equipment from the storage to the airport? Flight tickets in the coming days are twice as expensive. Yoala finds us a flight for Saturday, Yoala will arrive an hour after us from where she is. To-do lists: go to the vet in San Jose, extend the car contract, extend the equipment storage, book flights, extend the apartment in San Jose, find an apartment in Medellin. There are no apartments in Medellin - there's a Bad Bunny concert and everything is booked. Well, we found something for two days outside the city. Finding an apartment in the city after the concert, a flight for Yoala, Ofri's birthday the day after landing, we bought presents and fireworks, went for a fun day at the water park, need a cake. Book a minibus from the airport - me and the kids, Toto, a cage, 10 suitcases. Book a car for Yoala who arrives separately. I receive from Yoala the schedule for the flight day - code name for the rescue operation from Costa Rica:

1. Pack the house and go to the airport

2. Leave the kids alone at the airport

3. Go to the storage (with Toto? Fill up gas on the way). Load the suitcases into the car. Leave the storage open, key and lock with the guard

4. Unload equipment with the kids (Toto?)

5. Return the car to Hertz (clean the car from Toto's hair)

6. Rejoin the kids (tranquilizer for Toto?)

7. Check-in for the flight (water for Toto?)

8. Good luck♥️♥️♥️

The question is what will I forget. What will fall along the way. I can’t remember to take a notebook, a coffee cup, and my sunglasses from the classroom at the end of every lesson... Check list: kids, dog, passports, phone, key for the storage, everything else - in that order

I have a thing where I’m lazy to charge my phone. It’s been a game of sorts in the last few days, when we don’t have Yoala and her phone with us, whether we will manage to get home before the battery runs out - 8% battery, 24 minutes of driving, learning the route in case it runs out before the time. Yesterday we arrive home - 3%, we made it! Wait, where is the house key? Looking, looking. Ofri with a worried look... I took it. What do you mean I took it? I took it from the car by the restaurant. I don’t know where it is. Maybe at the restaurant. Really? (he likes to make up things lately). Yes... with a worried and guilty look. Stay here. I drive back to the restaurant, looking inside under the table, in the trash. The waiter says no way. We go outside, looking on the sidewalk, on the road in the sewer drains. Under the car (discovering there’s a leak from the car, worry for another day). One percent battery. I write a message to the landlord’s representative and hope the battery lasts until I get a response... No problem, two minutes until I’m with you.

Okay, let’s zoom out for a moment. We went to Costa Rica because we got tired of sitting at home waiting for a visa. Everything up to now was foreplay, pre-season. A vacation on standby. But it turned out that the foreplay was a game in itself with easy and hard stages and even bonus stages every now and then that just collect the diamonds. Now we have undoubtedly reached the hard cone (with a ‘k’ sound) and after this begins the next game. Costa Rica has been good to us. When we arrived now at the house near San Jose, we happened to pass by the Kentucky Fried Chicken with the slide inside, the one they went to near the airport when they landed in San Jose and waited for me, and then near the restaurant in San Mateo where we sat on Christmas evening. It all seems so far and nostalgic. Everything that appeared new and unfamiliar seemed so natural today (the supermarket here near the house we call Super Matty - just like home and for the farther supermarket, Sima). It also brings back the feelings and emotions of the first days.

A wise Chinese man once told me that freedom is for remembering who you miss. It’s hard to digest that in the end of the vacation you don’t meet the familiar and loved ones again, but head toward the next unknown:

Try to imagine us many years from now

No less complicated than deciding what will happen in two minutes

Okay, a bit too dramatic

Three kids - check, dog - check, passports - check, phone - check, key for the storage - check

See you next week

P.S: In the previous column, there was slight ambiguity - the title was supposed to hint that there was no party... the only real part in the second half of the text is that Ofri vomited and Mati was scared of a spider