Get to Know Ceci and Eduardo Sanchez - A Lifetime in Key Biscayne
Welcome to Key Biscayne stories where neighbors meet neighbors. Today, have Ceci and Eduardo Sanchez. They've been in the Key since 1960, so sixty five years. That's a lot of that's a lot of time. You guys probably have seen the Key transform.
Alejandro:That must have been pretty interesting, seeing the transformation.
Eduardo:Absolutely.
Alejandro:How are you guys doing today?
Ceci:Fine. Great. Yeah? Gorgeous day.
Alejandro:Yes, it is. So some of the first questions we'd like to ask is how did you guys get to the key? How did that story start? Ceci, would you like to go first?
Ceci:Alright. Well, I was born in Havana, Cuba. Yeah. And one day we used to go summer in a gorgeous beach called Varadero, and my mother told me, don't tell anyone, but we're leaving Sunday. This was a Saturday when she was talking to me.
Ceci:Sunday we're going to Havana, back to Havana, and we're taking the ferry to Key West. Do not say anything to any of your friends. You cannot just keep it quiet. And exactly that's what happened. We went back home, gave me a little weekend bag, which I thought, well, if we're going to Miami, that means, I guess, we're gonna go to the beach too.
Ceci:So we just put some swimsuits and some shorts, some romance little novels that I was reading, and a few trinkets. And we got on the ferry and we got here. And the first place, my uncle had arrived a couple of maybe weeks before us. He went to pick us up in Key West, brought us to Key Biscayne. And my mom rented, he was my mother, myself, and I had three siblings.
Ceci:I was 14, my youngest brother was seven. So we ended up at what is now LaFayre, used to be called Crandon Courts. She rented motel, and she rented two efficiencies there. And that's how we started.
Alejandro:You, Eduardo?
Eduardo:I came in June 1960. My mother was married to a Air Force mayor that during the Batista government, and they had to leave Cuba in 1959. So she was already here. I stayed 1960 to finish my high school in Havana, which I did not. And I came over and my mother was already here.
Eduardo:Yes. My mother was already here since 1959. So I came as a student with a student visa. And I did not finish my high school because I started working for my uncle, which was based in Key West. He had a yes.
Eduardo:My my uncle was married to my to my mother's sister. And my uncle was her mother's brother.
Alejandro:I should put a chart. I should put a chart to explain.
Eduardo:Yeah. Okay. So my my uncle had a a boat, a subchaser, a 110 feet long, and he was taking trips to Cuba, infiltrating teams and ammunition weapons and explosives. And I went to work with him, and then I went to finish high school in Miami.
Alejandro:Okay. So the work was taking those things to Cuba?
Eduardo:Mhmm.
Alejandro:Okay.
Eduardo:Yeah. Yeah. He took a 12 trip to Cuba in December 1960, January, February, and March 1961.
Alejandro:Ceci coming in from Key West, you're from Miami then working in Key West, where did you guys you guys already knew each other. Right? So how did you guys first meet?
Ceci:Oh, well, at that time, there were, you know, no internet, no cell phones, but you learn who was here. Oh, so and so just arrived. And so we started to find out which of our friends were here. And we would sometimes plan to meet the it was downtown actually where you ended up going the old Walgreens there in Flagler. And I remember we planned a party that I am almost certain this is how it happened.
Ceci:We planned a party at the beach club on the third for New Year's Eve. Beach. This is with beach club here.
Eduardo:Here. Okay.
Ceci:And I think we were charging a dollar. And I volunteered to stand at that corner of Flagler and I don't remember what street it is.
Eduardo:Miami Avenue.
Ceci:Miami Avenue there, the old Walgreens so that people would come and give me the dollars so that we could buy potato chips and and, you know, some some Coke or something like that. And we had a record player and we because you, you know, a few of our friend, Cuban friends had already, their families had already left Cuba. And that's kind of how we all started the network of who's here. So to us in a way, even though we lost our home or, you know, your way of life. You felt kind of more, how would you say, you had some of your old friends here, let's say for support.
Ceci:My mom didn't like ski bisqueing at all. She had gone to school in New York. She was much more comfortable there. So she decided, no, no, no. My, I'll move to New York that first year.
Ceci:So that summer we were here and then she left for New York with my two younger brothers. I went to boarding school in Philadelphia, the same school of the nuns that I went in Cuba. They opened it to anyone, if they could pay or weren't able to pay. It was kind of like a Peter Pan. All the girls could come and they started, this was not a boarding school.
Ceci:She started to make little rooms any place they could to facilitate, and and it was really wonderful. Although that year really was, in my case, extremely traumatic. As you know, 1961 was the day of pigs, was the invasion to Cuba to try to liberate Cuba. And my father, who was 38 years at the time, he called me one day. Still all that time from 1960 to January 1961, February 1961, you could still travel back and forth because my father did.
Ceci:And he then called me saying, I want you to know that I've just registered for being, how would you say, go to the training camps to prepare for an invasion to Cuba. And that he said that to him, he felt it was his duty to do that and that he would write to me, and he wrote, and I wrote him back. And unfortunately, he died. The invasion was a, I would say, let's not go political, but it was a failure and my father died.
Alejandro:He participated. Was of the invasion.
Ceci:Yes, and he was, when they took them prisoners, they ran. Remember, the Kennedy administration broke the promises. And they were left there between the swamps and the bay, and they ran out of ammunition. So somehow I don't know exactly the details because I've tried to find out and I have never been able to get the facts right, but apparently my father was captured somewhere trying to run away. And he was then put in a metal, unventilated metal truck, stuffed with more than a 100 we don't know exactly the details of it was 130, 150 men in an unventilated truck.
Eduardo:It took nine hours.
Ceci:To take, to go back to Havana, and he suffocated. They asphyxiated there. So at least my life, my perspective of life, I was, again, 14 years old, was very different after that. By the way, we had returned to Kibiscay after that school year, And this happened in April 1961. We came back.
Ceci:I I can I could tell you the addresses of where I turned 15, 16, 17, like that?
Alejandro:Yeah. I
Ceci:was living on Harbor Drive.
Alejandro:Going back a little bit to that to that party before we touch on the other things you mentioned, you guys knew each other from back in the day, but that party, is that significant to how you guys met?
Ceci:No. No. Okay. So Because he would go he would go to Varadero in the summers to my uncle's house in Varadero, and I would visit my cousin, and I would see him there.
Alejandro:Yeah. So how did you guys start?
Eduardo:From
Alejandro:Dating, you mean? Yeah. Dating the the the I guess the the yeah. Towards marriage.
Ceci:Maybe he can tell you or
Eduardo:No. You go ahead and tell him.
Ceci:I had adopted two children. At that time, maybe they were oh.
Eduardo:Five and three.
Ceci:No. No. When we got married, they were three. It's my daughter was three and Alex was five. But when this happened, maybe maybe my ex husband left me when my daughter was less than a year old.
Ceci:So here I am at the yacht club with two little children going down, just just passing the time, etcetera. And I hadn't seen him in a while and he's coming down the dock. So when I see him, I go on greedy wheel. Why is this what happened to me? And I guess maybe something happened there that he then called me and he invited me out to dinner.
Alejandro:So how was that experience from your side, walking down the dock and meeting, it says again after a while and
Eduardo:getting Let me tell you. Let me tell you. I used to keep my boat at the Yacht Club. So I was there working on my boat, and I see her walking towards me on the on the dock. And I tried to say hello and she starts crying.
Eduardo:And she starts crying and she keeps crying and telling me what's happening to her. So immediately that hit that hit the vein on me. I reacted and I said things are gonna get better. You trust in yourself, trust in God, and things will get better. And I invited her to go out, and that's how he started.
Eduardo:Yeah. And
Ceci:then and then when it started to get a little serious, then I guess he accepted an offer to go to Puerto Rico where he went
Eduardo:I working with AT and T. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico had bought the telephone company from ITT and they signed a contract. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico signed a contract with ATT for consulting services. So I was hired to go there and provide that. So initially, it was gonna be three months.
Eduardo:I spent three years.
Ceci:So I guess, you know, in the distance and any and, you know, what he said was true. You have to learn to stand on your two feet and, you know. So he would come sometimes to see his mom, see me, you know, this and that. Then I guess he chose between the several girlfriends he had. Like me.
Eduardo:Oh, let me The contract we had with the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico entailed that we could fly home every three weeks or four weeks. Man. So I will fly no. No. It was accident.
Eduardo:Exit. No. Not only that. We were housed at the San Juan Hotel, which is a one right on the beach. Then they cut it on we went to the Excelsior Hotel, which was second class.
Eduardo:Okay. Right. But they used to fly us every three or four weeks, and I would use the the resources because they they would pay for the ticket. And the person who had the ticket agency was a friend of mine. So instead of flying to Miami every three weeks, I will fly every three weeks to Washington.
Eduardo:The next three weeks, I will fly to Miami because I had a girlfriend in Washington also.
Alejandro:Oh, okay. And
Eduardo:I had a girlfriend in in Puerto Rico. Okay. So it was, you know, three weeks here, three weeks in Washington, three weeks in Miami.
Ceci:Wonderful.
Eduardo:Diff Oh, it was a wonderful time.
Alejandro:Different times. Okay, so you guys, you were working in Puerto Rico, you were here in the Key. You guys, you were coming to visit.
Ceci:I was a social worker. Okay. At the time.
Alejandro:Okay, working for
Eduardo:whom?
Ceci:Aid to families with dependent children. It was an eye opener. Okay. And you learn
Eduardo:It was federal state.
Ceci:States to family with dependent children. That's That's fair. I think, I think actually he might have some federal, but I think it was Dade County. Yeah, okay.
Alejandro:So, when do you guys, when do you, I guess Puerto Rico ends at some point and then when do you guys get married?
Ceci:Yeah. Then he his time was over, you And
Eduardo:then No. No. No. At that time, AT and T signed a contract with the government of Iran.
Ceci:But you.
Eduardo:And I was offered going to Iran. At that time, he was the shah.
Alejandro:What is that?
Eduardo:The the before the Ayatollahs, she was the shah, the shah of Iran, a a monarch.
Alejandro:Oh, okay. The type of government. Okay. Okay. But
Eduardo:I was already dating, so I said, no. Thank you. Let it go by. So I I came down and stayed in Miami.
Ceci:So he married me, and I have five German Shepherds and two little kids.
Eduardo:We were we were married in 1976.
Alejandro:Okay.
Eduardo:Do you remember what date? You remember the date? June 18. Wrong. 08/08/1976.
Ceci:No. June 0 that's right. That's right.
Eduardo:And I was single. Remember where I came from? I came from staying at a first class hotel in San Juan with a three week, being able to travel back and forth, all expenses paid, not a worry in the law, in my mind. And I came and I got married to this lady who had seven German shepherds.
Ceci:No. Five and a half. Okay. Oh, six. She's half.
Ceci:Do a pituitary dwarf. I owned a a little one.
Eduardo:But five of them were full size. Okay? And she was living in a muckle.
Alejandro:Okay. One of the original homes out.
Ceci:Alright. They're in Ridgewood, which later on, we remodel
Eduardo:So I I came I came from a life of splendor to to being married to this lady with five shepherds, two children, and a station wagon.
Alejandro:Okay. But so since then since then, I have some questions about how the key has transformed since then.
Ceci:Here I am living in this house Yeah. In the corner of Hampton And Ridgewood, 250 Ridgewood Road, and my neighbor in the back, a doctor
Alejandro:Yeah.
Ceci:One day, I see him with a pad writing things down. I said, sir, is there something wrong? What are you doing? Because I had fence. When I bought that house, I I had fence for the children.
Ceci:It was a pureless fence. I I said, what are you doing here? And I said, I'm the owner. This is my house. I said, impossible.
Ceci:This could not be your house. This I guess he looked at me that it was too young. How could I own the house? So you had, you know, Kiwi's cane was different. Number one, it was, you know, other people from other places.
Ceci:Maybe would you say, you know, the accent, this or that. And also some of those houses, they were Kiwi's cane, a lot of the houses. You didn't have fences around houses. So, you know, things started to change when we married and then we were remodeling the house. I went to the neighbor across the street and I asked the lady, you know, we are asking for a variance.
Ceci:It requires a signature. And the lady tells me, why should you have a house bigger than mine? So I'm just telling you, you're asking me Uh-huh. How gay Biscay was. Yeah.
Ceci:The claro. That's the idea. Yeah. You had all of that. You had, did you have, did you have Spanish speaking people in the Chamber of Commerce?
Alejandro:The Chamber of Commerce was around by then? Oh, yeah. I don't know what
Eduardo:it is.
Alejandro:The Chamber of Commerce. Should I should have asked.
Ceci:Jane Yarnell. Jane Yarnell, I would say was kind of the spirit or embodied. They had a little a little place inside the Kiwis King Bank.
Alejandro:Yeah. So you mentioned there is no William Powell. No big bridge.
Ceci:No. We had the drawbridge. I mean, I had to do I went to did my eleventh and twelfth grade at Immaculata, Immaculata Academy, now La Salle. Okay. Immaculata.
Ceci:Eduardo inherited or was lent his brother's old clunker card that we used to call the avocado because it was that color, avocado. And he needed some, I guess, money for gas, etcetera. So he was doing his senior year at La Sal that he can tell you that he was one of the but that's let him tell you that story. But he would carpool. So my mom could keep her car for my for her life and my three brothers, whatever, and he would be my carpool to Immaculada just like Margaret Carter's daughter, Pam Muller.
Ceci:And, you know, I don't know how much he charged for doing the carpool thing, but he was my ride to school. Now you needed to do an assignment. No computers, remember at the time. You went to the Miami Dade Public Library downtown in Bayfront Park, no longer there. But I used to take the bus.
Ceci:You took the bus to downtown. Downtown was important at the time.
Alejandro:And in the quay, what do we have in the quay?
Ceci:Vernon's was a blaze. Oh, the Sundays were great. I mean, little deal like I had to buy something for my mom, I would buy her a perfume or something at Vernon's Vernon's kind of sold everything. We had a wonderful where
Alejandro:Where was Vernon's located?
Ceci:Vernon's in the Vermilter
Alejandro:Right? Was it? Yeah. Vernon's Drug Store? Drug where where was it located?
Eduardo:It's in the corner of Westmaston and
Ceci:No. No. That's Westwood. Westwood And Crandon, the corner. That's what does that mean?
Ceci:It's now would you
Eduardo:Yeah, Jason.
Alejandro:So that mall was that mall there and Vernon was in that mall?
Ceci:Right in that corner. Okay. And the post office was a little booth in the back. That's where it was.
Alejandro:In Vernon store.
Eduardo:In Nuevo. So and and they had a telephone booth, the only telephone on the island at that time.
Ceci:Well, when they found it.
Eduardo:When they found it. When they found it.
Alejandro:Is that the historic telephone booth that is now stored at the Youth Game historic Butters? Uh-huh. Okay.
Ceci:But where CVS was, there used to be a grocery store there.
Eduardo:Pantry Pride.
Ceci:So we had two big grocery stores at the time.
Alejandro:I remember that when I was coming here from from Peru to spend some time here in the Anand House, which is one of the first buildings. Oh, yes. My grandfather had a place there, so we would come from Peru, I remember, like, this very vague memory of a second store.
Ceci:Bakery. I don't remember exactly where it was, but we had a bakery. Okay. And there were a lot of we had a great little five and ten store where you could find all kinds of things, which is where now is Peruvian in the other corner. Yeah.
Ceci:El Graninca. El Graninca. Okay. Now we, of course, had the English pub and the Jamaica Inn were gorgeous. Then later on came actually we had the there was a great fish restaurant there.
Eduardo:Chief's?
Ceci:No. Well, Chief's across the street from the Kiwis Game Bank, you could they had seafood there apart from Bay that. But what I'm saying is the Royal Biscayne Hotel
Eduardo:I mean, I don't know.
Ceci:That's it. Was was a place where now Grand Bay where now Grand
Eduardo:Bay There was a Sheraton there. Well,
Ceci:the Royal Biscayne was a Sheraton. Okay. And you the Ki Biscayne Hotel was gorgeous. Eduardo was manager for a while there.
Eduardo:Yeah. It had 50 acres.
Ceci:Actually, done by the it was done by the Madison.
Eduardo:Mhmm. Okay.
Ceci:Very, very nice restaurants. It was a place that
Eduardo:No. I I still have a photograph. I have to look for it of Nixon and myself shaking hands, president Nixon At the Hotel because he used to go there and stay Right.
Ceci:But you
Eduardo:As a matter of fact, we kept villa there were there were 69 villas in the hotel, the hotel that had 200 rooms and 69 villas. Wow. And in one of those villas was where president Kennedy met Nixon after the election. Where Kennedy won, Nixon lost, and they met there. So I remember that real
Ceci:well. And in in the middle because it was kind of u shaped. And in the middle, you had like a between the hotel and the beach, you had like a little mini golf course. It was a very nice ambiance.
Eduardo:Very waspish.
Ceci:Well and and then a little bar in there at night. You didn't wanna go home after dinner, a place where you could go to have a drink and dancing just like you had a place also with music at Sonesta. You had a lot more places here at the time where people could gather and, you know, with music and stay a while, I think.
Alejandro:Yeah. You're right. We don't really have a place now where you can dance. My friends I have my friends go to the Ritz, I think the ones I think once a week. I don't know if it's Friday.
Alejandro:I don't know what day, but they do the salsa in the lobby. So they've invited my wife and I to go a couple of times. They go, they they have a drink while they maybe doing like a special or something, and then they do some salsa right there, and they dance a little bit, you know. But that's it.
Ceci:I remember then then came Stefano, and then, oh my lord, that place got packed. So it was restaurant until a certain time, and then it was just the place to go and and dance and stay there until what? I think it closed probably 03:00 or something like that in the morning. I remember my son used to work at Sonesta, like Friday night, Saturday night parking valet. And he would go at the end of his shift to Donut Gallery to have breakfast, and he would come home.
Ceci:Just he couldn't go to sleep because I guess all the commotion of of running and and getting cars. So we had really I think it was a lot more active, the night scene in those years. We're talking about we're talking about what? The nineties thing by that time? So when you
Alejandro:were working at The Quay, you were where exactly in life? Were you already become a real estate agent and got in your Montessori?
Ceci:When he was at the Quay Biscayne Hotel, I was a real estate agent. Okay. I think it was a wonderful, a wonderful, really wonderful time. Met a lot of not only client wise, but the realtors in Key Biscayne. We you had started to have a mix.
Ceci:Kibiscayne became extremely inter international.
Eduardo:At that time, they had an an outreach called RIPA, Real Estate Professional Associations of all the realtors. That that ceased ceased to exist when?
Ceci:No. Well, actually, Sylvia Irondo, where I started was it was called Iriondo Eker Real Estate and then later Sylvia and Juta Eker, Swedish. She, they sold the company to Fortune International, But but at that time, remember, the only thing that the realtors had was that big book where you had to look. No Internet. You had to look for the listings.
Ceci:But we, being a small community here, we started or Sylvia started to organize as assistant would go to every real estate office, which we had several here at Gibbous Gain and get their listings. And then we we they would put them all together.
Eduardo:Pile them.
Ceci:Compile them and then give them back. So it was very easy for us Kiwi Skiing realtors to know exactly what properties were on the market. But it was, there was a lot of camaraderie at the time. And, of course, prices started to go up and up. And who would have imagined?
Alejandro:Prices back in the day were what? One of the original Michael Holmes was going for how much, for example?
Ceci:Well, his brother bought
Eduardo:his My brother brought to his house for $17,000.
Ceci:This is way back when? In the sixties, early sixties.
Eduardo:Early sixties.
Ceci:Early sixties. Now I bought the house in Ridgewood, a February, maybe it was $62,000 sometime in, let's say, '74. And then we remodeled the house. We sold it for about $3.50 or $3.75. I don't remember.
Ceci:Then we bought the houses in Cypress Drive.
Eduardo:For $3.50.
Ceci:For $3.50.
Alejandro:And and that time you were still at Kewscan Hotel?
Eduardo:That time.
Ceci:I think so.
Eduardo:Yeah. I think so.
Alejandro:When did you transition to Kew Colony?
Eduardo:Oh, two years after.
Ceci:But you wanted a date?
Alejandro:No. No. No. It doesn't have to be exact. So two years after you guys
Eduardo:Two years two years after I bought my house.
Ceci:Okay. I remember at that time there was a slump, and I I put my house I fell in love with a cypress lot because it was larger and I always I ran out of space for my plants. I'm a plantaholic.
Alejandro:I thought you were gonna say for the dogs and the kids, but for the plants.
Eduardo:Listen. At that point in time, we had purchased a new house without selling my old house. Okay?
Ceci:And the market, you know, how it is, it kind of froze for a while. This is in the seventies? '70? No, no, no, in the eighties, no.
Alejandro:In the okay, now we're in the rooms. Okay. When
Ceci:did we buy
Eduardo:'85. Cyprus. '80. Before Andrew. '85.
Alejandro:Okay. So so you did you did get Cypress, the one you liked? Yes. From the point?
Ceci:We
Eduardo:bought it we bought it in '85 without selling Ridgewood.
Alejandro:Okay.
Eduardo:So I was paying a mortgage. On both? On both.
Ceci:But we rented we were able to rent the Ridgewood house for that year. That saved us. And then and then we and then we saw and then we sold it. And then depending on my real estate commissions, we started to remodel the house. But I had a larger lot to continue my adventure with plants.
Alejandro:So what other things do you guys wanna share with the community about the key?
Ceci:We we had a beach. We lost the beach at some point. I remember this is again the sixties. You could not try or or even the early seventies. Sometimes when you went to the beach club and you wanted to, let's say, walk to Cape Florida and it was high dyed.
Eduardo:You had to walk on the seawall.
Ceci:You had to jump to the seawall of the Kiwis King Hotel, walk through the ledge of the seawall, and then jump back because because the water came all the way there. And there were several people involved that really worked very hard lobbying to get the the
Eduardo:Base renourishment.
Ceci:Renourished. Okay. And at that time, I think the first time that they brought the sand back to keep the cane, I think there was some flats right in front of the Cape Florida Lighthouse out there. Yeah. And they just it was easier than
Eduardo:To pump the sand.
Ceci:They pumped the sand back. Yeah. But my understanding is that maybe when they dredge government cut, the flow of the sand was
Eduardo:It changed.
Ceci:Disturbed. And that's why
Alejandro:we lost. We we continue to to lose the beach. Okay. But now we truck sand.
Eduardo:Mhmm.
Alejandro:And I do remember I I don't when when I was coming to Island House from Peru and and for vacation over the summers, I don't particularly remember a seawall, but I do remember the the the pumping of the of the sand into the beach. But now I know I know that the new thing now is to track it here.
Ceci:Unfortunately, we do not have, you know, the sand right there. I remember the first time, I believe, first time or the second time of renourishment, the Towers Of Kibiscayne and commodores, they refused to pay their contribution towards the renourishment because they never lost the sand.
Alejandro:So Ceci, I know you're very involved in the community. Both of you guys are very involved in the community because I see you together at a lot of events, I know that Ceci
Eduardo:We don't miss one. We don't miss one meeting.
Alejandro:Yeah. You still miss a meeting. Ceci and I are part of the Chamber of Commerce. You were telling me before that you want you want more people in the key to get involved.
Ceci:Yes. Right?
Alejandro:So tell us a little bit about that.
Ceci:You know, you can put all the excuses you want, but you can do it two ways. Your money, we can use your money, or give us your time. Give us your time. For example, I wish somebody to get to Miami Dade County. Mister Mathis and I already spoke with once.
Ceci:I would like that area between, or this is what I envision. We could have a, like a prairie or just native all of our butterflies right between Calusa and the path to Calusa behind between Saint Agnes and the 711, that area there could be where there's nothing there. Let's clean it up. And we just plant that could be our plant nursery. We only put stuff there for butterflies.
Ceci:Not only it's going to enhance, it would help butterflies, but we could harvest and the seedlings that would pop up, we could use them in other areas and just encourage people to, let's say, monarchs, any of the butterflies, they need to they need the food. They need the food to sustain themselves.
Eduardo:And to rest.
Ceci:And and other also the plants where they can propagate.
Alejandro:Yeah. And that's one of the many other ways to get involved as well is they can people can join the chamber or there's many advisory boards that the village has. Many like, we were talking before, the village is very philanthropic. There's a lot of non for profits doing all sorts of work from special needs to Exactly. Exactly.
Alejandro:Education here and abroad.
Ceci:In the special in the special needs, for example, they some of them are able to you know, they want to do something. They want to stay active even in in this part of what I'm saying in landscaping, that could be part of that.
Alejandro:Cecien Elodro, thank you so much for joining us on the show. Thank you. But before we we finish, we have a couple of closing questions about the key. Would say, are your some of your best memories or experiences in The Quay?
Ceci:You know, I I've lived here all almost all my life. The Quay is very much a part of me. It's kind of, I set my roots here. My children live in Colorado, so it's Ed and I, the dogs and my plants, and my community. And sometimes being the age that I'm keep on adding years to, I don't know what if it's the right time to sell my house, to move to a smaller place.
Ceci:Certainly the cash, you would be you know, you kind of would have some peace of mind in that sense, God forbid, if you need it. But it's hard. It is very hard for me. All my memories are here. I had my great grandmother live to 102 living here, my grandmother.
Ceci:And we we've been apart from having to leave our beloved country, this has been our home and all our family lived here for periods of time. So it is too many memories to be able to tell you, but I really miss when we had Thanksgiving and Christmas and we would have 40 relatives, forty, fifty relatives there, and everybody helping in preparing and then cleaning up afterwards. Most of those are gone or they live too far away. So it's kind of times that, uncertain times, that we don't know how to continue, you know, what to do.
Eduardo:I echo those sentiments, but there is one truth that you cannot negate. Keep it skinny. It's not what it used to be. You go to church, you don't know anybody. You go to Winn Dixie, you don't know anybody.
Eduardo:Things are happening that you don't control. So it is out of your reach. It is not what it used to be. So the memories are there. The memories will always be with you.
Eduardo:But the reality is that Kibbe Skin is not the Kibbe Skin that we used to love. The network that she tells you. Yes. But you can develop a network on some other place. I mean, the problem is where is that other place?
Eduardo:We don't know. We we we have no idea where to go. Yes. I'm ready to get out, but I don't know where to go.
Alejandro:Yeah. Sounds like you're stuck in island Paradise.
Eduardo:You got it. You got you said it.
Ceci:That's right.
Eduardo:Yeah. A 100% correct.
Ceci:That's right. Yeah. The more you think about it, and then just as say as he said, just going off the key or coming into the key, and you see that. I even the lush the lush trees around crowded, you know,
Eduardo:park. Just just going through the gate, the feeling that you have looking at all that water is wonderful. That's that's like taking a tranquility pill. I mean,
Alejandro:it's Uh-huh.
Eduardo:It's just like no. It's just like having a drink. Okay? It settles you. Yeah.
Eduardo:I used to when I went to Georgia Tech, I used to fly home Uh-huh. In Eastern Airlines Eastern Airlines at that time. And I remember when we were coming to land, we will go work Ibis Caine, and that would already start feeling wonderful, being at a thousand feet, looking at all the lights and saying, that's home. That's my home.
Alejandro:Yeah. I know what you mean. I know when when people when I when I tell my friends that they should move to the Quay, they're like, well, I have to drive in and whatever. I'm like, wait. Wait.
Alejandro:Something magical happens when you become a Kiwi Skating resident. You hit the toll and you're home.
Eduardo:That feeling So you know exactly what I'm saying.
Ceci:That feeling, I don't think it's the same if you live in other parts.
Eduardo:I don't know that, Ceci. I don't know. I know. But, you know If you live in Kenil, I don't know if you feel the same way.
Alejandro:No. No. I mean, I don't know, but one of the things I do have to say about you guys is that, you know, I know that people change over time and groups change, but one of the positive things as well is that you guys are involved, So just like we met, know, I obviously wasn't with you guys when you, with you guys when the beach club and the $1 parties or whatever, but one of the things that helps people, because it happens to my friends too, you get married, you go to work and that's it, and then your friends are the same friends that you had when you were in high school doing the barbecues and you know, and whatever. It's harder to make friends once you're older, which is okay, but if you're engaged, you meet people and you make more acquaintances and and friendships in a different level. Sure.
Alejandro:You know? So I think you guys are super engaged and meeting different sides of sorts of people and and building new relationships just like the one we have built.
Eduardo:Yeah.
Alejandro:Anyways, thank you so much for joining us and sharing Thank you. A little piece of your Q News Game story. So
Eduardo:thank you for the opportunity to express ourselves. You do a very good work.
Alejandro:Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
