How I kept three kids calm during 30 hours of airline travel and airports – The points system

We left our apartment in Santo Domingo at 10:30am on Wednesday, and arrived at my friend’s house in Goiania, Brazil at 5:30pm – 30 hours of travel that involved four stops and two long layovers. Amazingly, the kids managed to remain fairly well behaved for the entire trip and earned the prize I had promised them – a trip horseback riding.

When we left the house, I told my daughters, 8-year old twins and a 6-year old, that they would earn points for good behavior, and that, if they earned ten points, they could go horseback riding once we got to Brazil. I am surprised how well that rewards system worked.

In the car on the way to the airport, when the twins began to fight over whose turn it was to play the Nintendo DS, I reminded them about the point system, and they found a way to resolve their fighting. When my 6 year old began fussing on the plane and kicking the seat in front of her, I reminded her about the points, and she stopped kicking the seat. On one of our long layovers, the twins had to help with the luggage, and when they complained, I promised an extra point for being so helpful with the bags, and they complied.

They managed to behave during a long layover in Miami, an hour wait in a line in Sao Paulo, and the eight-hour flight from Miami to Sao Paulo. We didn’t board the plane in Miami until midnight, as the flight was delayed. Almost immediately after boarding, Tatiana and Soraya fell asleep. They woke up before I did. Luckily, the American Airlines flight has individual televisions where you can choose from a menu of movies. They watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Night at the Museum while I continued to catch some zzz’s, or at least tried to.

When we got to Sao Paulo, I had to offer the girls another point while we waited for quite a bit to get processed by immigration. It turned out that Fernando had overstayed his visa on a previous trip to Brazil. We were worried about that, but, as ten years had passed, he no longer had to pay the fine, and they stamped his passport to get into Brazil.

As our flight was late getting into Sao Paulo, we missed our connection to Goiania. This turned out to be for the best, as our original travel plans involved changing airports in Sao Paulo. As we missed that flight due to delays, we were able to get a new flight that left out of the same airport. We had to wait in line for an hour to re-check our bags. But, the girls sat on the floor and played Mario Kart on their DS’s while we waited in line. Towards the end, they complained they were hungry, as it was past lunchtime. But, they held out until we were helped out, finally.

Luckily, we had time at the Sao Paulo airport to have a decent lunch. We went to one of those serve-yourself places where you pay by weight. The girls loved the opportunity to serve themselves. Raymi served herself rice, beans, and chicken. Soraya got rice, beans and salad. Tatiana got the same. But, she saw the pasta and decided to serve herself another plate of spaghetti with tomato sauce. It turned out her eyes were bigger than her stomach, but Nando and I helped her out with the spaghetti. Stomachs full, we made our way to our last flight – that would take us to Goiania.

The last flight stopped in Brasilia on the way to Goiania, so that was a bit disappointing for the girls, who thought the seemingly interminable voyage had finally ended. But, the fight from Brasilia to Goiania is only 25 minutes. And, they made friends with some nearby passengers and chatted the last 25 minutes away.

Finally, we made it to our friend, Izabel’s house. Izabel was kind enough to offer us a place to stay while we figure out where we are going to live. We are trying to decide between staying in Goiania and going to one of two smaller cities – Perenopolis or the old city of Goias. Meanwhile, the girls are having a great time at Izabel’s as she has a swimming pool in her apartment complex, as well as a very friendly dog.

Now, we just have to figure out where we will take the girls horseback riding.

From Santo Domingo to Sao Paulo with three kids

My task of remaining calm as we moved the family to Brazil became a bit more difficult when we had a couple of unexpected problems as we prepared to go to the airport. The first issue was that I had to return my wireless router to the Internet company personally. I had sent my husband, but, apparently, I had to go myself. Our second issue was that we nearly had too many bags to fit in our friend’s SUV.

Fortunately, we had planned to leave well ahead of schedule and were able to resolve those two problems and still get to the airport before noon for our 2:20 flight. We made it through check-in, immigration and customs fairly easily. We had overstayed our tourist visas in the Dominican Republic and everyone had to pay a US$30 fine – except for me. The Dominicans were nice enough to waive my fee when I told them I had technically not overstayed as I had traveled to Haiti for a few days.

The kids managed to keep themselves occupied in the airport and on the plane with their video games and other things we brought along to entertain them. The flight to Miami from Santo Domingo went reasonably well. I told the children that their reward for good behavior on the long trip to Brazil would be a trip horseback riding over the coming weekend. That seems to be working fairly well.

When we got off the plane in Miami, we were greeted by three large men in Homeland Security uniforms. They weren’t waiting for us, but seemed to be waiting for someone on the plane. I stopped to wait for my daughters behind me and they asked me to keep moving. Whatever they planned to do, it seems they didn’t want an audience.

We passed through immigration without much incident, and were told to go ahead when I gave my customs form to the customs agent. However, as we were making our way out of the customs area, an agent called Fernando and asked him to come and have his bags checked.

I was bothered by this. We had already been approved by customs; they had already told us to follow the green dots out of the door. However, one of the agents saw Nando with a pile of suitcases and made us go back – the wrong way – through the customs line. We put all ten of our bags through the x-ray. As we were headed out, I asked the agent why he had singled us out when we had already passed through customs.

He told me that it was a random search, because we had so many bags. We do have ten suitcases – three large ones and seven small ones. But, there are five of us – so only two each. I looked at him, and said: “That’s okay, I know why you stopped us.”

My suspicion is that my husband, Nando, was racially profiled. When I, a white woman, handed my customs form to the Border Patrol agent, he waved us through without realizing that Fernando, my brown-skinned husband, was with us. One of his colleagues made up for that oversight by calling us to go back through the line.

I did find it ironic that the Border Patrol agent’s last name was Pardo – as that is a Spanish word for a person of color. I am at least glad that I found a way to call him out. So much for our “welcome” to the US – one by over-zealous security forces whose mandates in the war against terrorism and the war against drugs mostly work to police and surveil people of color in the US.

On a more positive note, all of the non-security agents we encountered in Miami were pleasant. And, we had a delicious meal at la Carreta Cubana. Nando had pollo asado, and I had ropa vieja. The food was tasty, and they gave us very generous portions. At least we wouldn’t be hungry during our long flight to Sao Paulo.

Three kids and a 24-hour flight to Brazil

It’s 7:21 am on Wednesday, and our flight to Brazil leaves at 2:20pm – in five hours. Amazingly, I slept all through the night last night and got in a full eight hours. International travel with my husband and three kids must be becoming routine for me because normally I have trouble sleeping before a big event.

This is our fourth time moving the family to a new country in eight months. Fortunately, we are just packing up clothes and toys, and not moving the whole house. Still, it is a fairly major operation with eight-year old twins and a six-year old.

Determined not to get stressed out about it, I planned pretty carefully for the big event this time. We took a short trip to the beach over the weekend, arriving back Monday afternoon. We had done some packing beforehand and spent the whole day Tuesday just packing. Now, Monday morning, nearly everything is in suitcases, and we still have just over two hours before we leave the house.

We are leaving for the airport extra early, as I find that to take off quite a bit of stress. Our plane leaves at 2:20, but we are leaving the house at 10 am, meaning we will arrive at the airport before 11:00 am. That will give us plenty of time to rearrange any things we have from suitcases that are too heavy, and to take care of any last-minute emergencies. Hopefully, it will also leave us time to have a good lunch in the airport.

I am a bit sad to leave the Dominican Republic. I have greatly enjoyed my time here, and grew accustomed to the sights and people here. I am glad we had the chance to see some of the best beaches – Las Terrenas, Playa Bonita, Sosua, Los Guayacanes, and Isla Saona. I also got to know Santo Domingo quite well. And, I even made it to Haiti. In all, I made good use of my three months here in terms of getting to know Hispaniola.

Now, it is time to leave for Brazil. Time to get the last few items in our suitcases, to clean up the last few corners of the house, and to return the wireless router to Tricom. That is the one task I left for today. I wanted to have Internet access up to the last minute, and Tricom is not far from our house.

We arrive in Goiania, Brazil at 1pm tomorrow. That means we have about 24 hours of travel ahead of us. Starting out not stressed is a good thing. Now, I just have to keep it up for the remainder of the trip.

This means that when the kids begin to fight, I have to remain calm. Better, I need to do what I can to avoid fights. When other airline passengers complain about the children’s loud laughter or screams, I need to find a way to diffuse the situation. When the kids want to do cartwheels in the airport, I need to figure out if and where that is possible.

When you travel with kids over long distances, there has to be a balance between maintaining their good behavior and letting them burn off some steam. Hopefully there will be opportunities for them to burn off steam in positive ways.

I have to resolve to maintain my calm and to look for things to keep the kids occupied. Here we go….

The Children’s Museum in Santo Domingo: Lots of learning, less fun

The Children’s Museum in Santo Domingo is a worthwhile trip if you have small children, but don’t count on spending the whole afternoon there. The museum consists of a guided tour that does not last more than an hour. The Museo Infantil Trampolin's motto is "Where learning is fun," yet the focus is more on learning than on fun.

Last Saturday, I took my daughters – eight-year old twins and a six year old – to the Children’s Museum in the Colonial City. We found the museum to be more focused on learning than on play, but enjoyable nonetheless. Instead of being a free play museum as in other cities, it is actually more of a guided tour through a series of rooms.

The first room involves a large a large-screen film about the solar system. Each of the other rooms is similarly educational. The room about natural disasters had an earthquake simulator, which the children enjoyed. They also liked the room with the dinosaurs, especially the game where you try to fit the dinosaur fossils into the holes in the wall.

Luckily, however, the tour is less than an hour, as the children began to get a bit antsy towards the end. The last room (pictured left) is the only one where the kids can engage in free play. After about ten minutes, however, the tour guide suggested our tour was over, as the next family was coming through. I asked if we could stay while the next family came in, and he consented.

This last room has a hopscotch design on the floor, a pretend hospital, a make-believe store, a pretend school, and lots of other great things for children’s imagination. When the tour guide asked us to leave a second time, I didn’t protest, although I did think that they should let people stay in that last room as long as they wished. All those wonderful toys and little rooms go to waste if kids can’t play in them and let their minds run wild.

When we left the museum, we were not quite ready to hop in a taxi back home. Just to the left of the museum is Fort Ozama. This is a great place to take kids who like to run around. First, we explored the huge fort and imagined what it must have been like to ward off pirates approaching in the sea. Then, we came back to the ground, and the girls had fun climbing on the various cannons.

The girls made friends with other children that were there playing, and played for a long while on the grass and on the cannons. It was a good thing that they were able to run around in Fort Ozama, as it would have been a shame to go home after just an hour in the children’s museum.