The Tooth Genie

Hello everyone! We are still in Doha, Qatar, for a few more days anyway. We leave this Friday to go to the other side of the world. I am traveling with my family o visit Houston and Mexico during my summer vacation. I can hardly believe that I have been gone from Texas for 5 months now.

We have done a lot of great things in Doha. I have been to the beach 3 or 4 times since the weather warmed up. I ca

n actually see the water from my apartment. I went snorkeling last weekend a

nd saw fish and crabs on the bottom of the ocean. The water is crystal clear and blue. Only the Arabian Sea doesn't make many waves so it looks more like a lake. While we were at the beach, the tide came in and surrounded us where we had set up our barbecue. We actually had to drive through a little water in order to get to dry land again. That was funny. I thought we were going to be trapped on a little sand island!

I left my house in Grand Mission for an apartment in Downtown Doha. I live on the 26th floor. When it gets foggy outside, it looks like we live in the clouds. Our pool doesn't have a water park. But it is indoors so that we don't have to worry about the heat.

Another cool thing about Doha is that all of the malls have BIG playgrounds inside. Since it gets so hot in the summer most of the cool things for kids to do is indoors. So you can go to any one of the 5 or 6 malls around town and they have HUGE AREAS filled with roller coasters,

trampolines, ferris wheels, video games, and carnival rides. It's a lot of fun.

We have a really cool park here that has a half-pipe to skate on. I haven't been in a couple of weeks because it has gotten hot outside. But in October when it cools down, we'll hang out again. It fills up with kids and they have a concession stand to get ice cream and snacks.

But it does get hot here. It was 47 degrees the other day. That is almost 120 degrees farenheit! In Houston, the hottest it ever gets is 105. It's not even August.

My school is awesome. I go to the American School of Doha. ASD Dragons! Not everyone is American. In fact, most are from other places. But we all speak English at school. My good friend Qori is Indonesian, but his family is from Australia. We have kids from Venezuela, Pakistan, Turkey, France, and other places. Almost all of the kids speak a couple languages. Arabic, Spanish, French.... Next year, I will get to play sports. They have soccer, basketball, and swimming. I think I like basketball and swimming the most.

I lost a TWO teeth as well. Only the tooth fairy doesn't live in this part of the world. We have the Tooth Genie in the Middle East! The first tooth I lost I got 50 riyals and 5 dollars. The tooth fairy was here for a little while. At first, she was seconded into the local joint venture to help set up the organization and recruit more permanent hires. Her first direct hire was the Tooth Genie. He left me local currency to spend here and I have a few dollars to buy stuff with when I go to the US. AWESOME!

I can't wait to come to Houston. I want to go to the Children's Musuem, the Science Museum and Hermann Park. I hear they built a bridge at Memorial Park. I may have to go and ride bikes there to check it out. Nasa may be a fun trip as well. I can't wait to see my grandma, Nini. She misses me and I miss her.

After we leave Houston, we'll go to Mexico. In Mexico we are going to visit Teotehuacan, which is a large pyramid outside of Mexico City. There is a pyramid of the sun and a pyramid of the moon. It is the second largest pyramid next to the big pyramids in Egypt. I'll have to post photos. The food in Mexico is good too. My abuela and my nana are going to cook a lot! I can't wait to see my family there.

I hope everyone is doing well and has a great summer!

Nico Romero

Where is Doha, Qatar?

My family left Houston after the Christmas Holidays to move to a place called Qatar. Qatar is a peninsula located on the back side of Saudi Arabia.

Since I am now on the other half of the

world, there is a time difference of 9 hours. So when school starts at Juan Seguin at 8:00 AM, it is already 5:00 PM here in Doha. So when you start your day, we are almost finished with ours!

Here is what the Qatari flag looks like.

The City I live in is called Doha. Can you see it on the map? Doha was a small village where people fished for pearls in oysters. Then they discovered natural gas in the sea bed out in the floor of the Arabian Gulf. Now people have come from all over the world to work in Qatar.

There are 1.2 million people who live in Qatar. Compare that with 5.7 million people living in and around Houston and you can see it is a MUCH smaller place than where I used to live.

The primary religion here is Islam, though the Qataris welcome all people of faith. Judaism and Christianity are also practiced here.

The food is good as well. People eat a lot of rice and vegetables. Things like goat an lamb are also served. Since Qatar is surrounded by water, fish and shrimp are also available to cook and enjoy, though no one eats pork here.

The people are very friendly and everyone likes to talk to kids. The mall has an ice skating rink and a movie theater. There is even a rollercoaster inside!

Talk to you soon,

Nico Romero

8-Jan-09

Out of this world

So this is a quick note to transition the theme of the blog. In 2007 and 2008 I was a very dedicated athlete and spent a lot of time training and racing in a multi-sport race format called adventure racing. I even got to race on a sponsored team and qualified in a US leg of the race to go to Nice, France to race in against Volvo, Bechtel, Disney Hong Kong, Airbus, and many more. So when people talk about the French mediteranean, my memories are a bit different than lounging on a beach and enjoying wine and cheese. We were racing in December in freezing rain and kayaking down gourges. I did 17 races in 2007, the shortest 4 races were half-marathons. IN 2008, I competed in 5 races before age caught up with me in June. I reinjured my right ACL and had to have surgery in Sep 2008. My racing career is on hold indefinitely. However I am looking forward to getting signed up for a 10k or perhaps a cycling ride and slowly building back into a more active lifestyle. It was the best I ever felt in my life.

So if I am transitioning this blog out of race reports, what then could we be talking about here. Well, the good news is that my family has supported me in the decision to take an offer with a Middle East National Oil Company. On January 2, we will board a flight for Doha, Qatar and I will go to work in Sales and Marketing for RasGas, who is an LNG producer in Qatar. It is a joint venture between Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobile. So as of now, my house is basically packed, rented and we are just enjoying the last few days here in Houston before we head off for our new adventure. I will be writing to share experiences and photos with everyone. Additionally, we'll have a section that Nico will drop some information onto so that he can share with his former kindergarten classmates. It rakes the idea of being "pen pals" into the 21st century.

I look forward to sharing this exerience with you all and the door is always open should you decide that you want to explore the Middle East.

Texas Sprint Series #2 - Muleshoe Bend Park near Austin Texas

This was a fun event. I raced with a good friend of Marilupe's. Her name is Elisa Uribe and she is from Colombia. VERY strong Runner. Last fall we were both in training for the Houston Marathon which took place in January 2008. There was a 1/2 marathon, a 20k and a 25k race in the lead up to the marathon. At each race, we finished within 5 or 10 minutes of each other. (I was faster....)

Well, Elisa has been training and has been running with a strong group recently. So for the last 2 weeks in training, we'd take off through the trails and y the time we were finished running for 2o-40 minutes, I'd be about dead and my lungs would feel like they were going to explode.

That's good information to have when you start thinking of strategy for a race. Elisa is new to biking and neither of us are really any good at paddling. So I knew that if we were to excel in this race, we'd have to do it on the run.

Come race day, we were ready. We had our Transition Area (TA) set up and were well-rested and fully hydrated. The the order of events was this: 3-4 mile run, 100 meter swim, 30-40 minute paddle around a couple of buoys, and an 8-10 mile bike. The gun went off and we took off. We were weaving between folks and making our way to the front of the pack. After about 10 minutes, I realized that I was running too hard because I could barely breathe, but I didn't stop. This is where we had to do well. Elisa was right behind me. We went from trail, to a rocky/sandy slope on the edge of the lake and had to scramble to keep footing and to keep passing people. By the time we got back into the woods, we were at the front of the pack. Definitely top 20, maybe even top 15. As we came out of the trails in back to TA for the swim one of the marshalls told me we were the 3rd coed team. Second place was about 20 meters in front of us. Well done, I guess.

The swim was really a walk through shallow water. You only had to swim the bit in the middle and it was just to get everyone wet and hopefully spread the teams out a little. We sprinted through TA to get out seats and our secret weapon. We made it to the sevys (inflatable kayaks) and attached the secret weapon. I brought 2 come-alongs with me and attached them to the middle of the boat so that it would keep the sides stiff and not give so much as we paddled. It didn't help much because we both stink at paddling. 30 minutes or so later, we were in 6th place. I was counting the coed teams as they passed us. No matter how fast we paddled (literally how many paddle slaps per minute) or how hard we paddled (by digging in and trying to get good forward motion) we were getting passed. We even resorted to using our abs to do crunches and propel the sevy forward by rocking back-and-forth every time we dug in with the paddle. Steering was fine. (Thanks to Weihan Lin, HART team member and a certified paddle instructor.) We went in a straight line, we just didn't go fast.

So we were down to the bike stage and it would be beer:30. We came into transition, popped on cycling shoes and a helmet. Took my first drink of water from my pack and took off running. You are not supposed to ride your bike in TA. Probably because if everyone did, we'd all run over each other. At any rate, Elisa got on her bike and I heard 3 or 4 people shouting "Get off your bike," and "No riding in TA!" I turned around and saw her and screamed "Get off the bike! GET OFF THE BIKE! GET OFF THE BIKE!" As we took off I realized that it might registered a little faster had I yelled to to her in Spanish. It could have saved a second since it wouldn't have had to have been translated by her to be understood faster. Then I realized that I would have had to have translated it, so we would have lost the second there, so net/net, it was a wash. She hopped off almost immediately. We came out of TA and were off down a dirt road. The course became a single track climb about mile after the start and we were like a lone line of ants rolling through the sand and smooth pebble trail carved out between the mesquite and cedar trees. I came down one descent VERY quickly looking to gain speed for the following climb. When I got to the bottom of the transition, it was all sand. My front tire came out from under me and I went chin-first to the ground. The first thing I did (after spitting out the dirt) was to lick my teeth and make sure that they were all there. They were, so I was good to go. Elisa had stopped so I hopped back on and we were off again with a trail of people behind us jockeying to pass. Shortly thereafter, I felt my back end getting squishy and sliding all over the place. FLAT TIRE! So I stopped, pulled out a CO2 canister and was hoping that it was a slow leak. I aired it up and we took off again. Withing 3-5 minutes, I was flat. So I stopped, flipped the bike upside down, pulled out the tube and replaced it. I aired it up with my last CO2 canister and as I flipped the bike back up, the rear wheel rolled around a bit and mu pinkie got caught in the disc brake. It sliced right into it and was stopped from taking the tip of it off by my pinkie nail. So now I am bleeding all over the place. What do they tell you in first aid? Apply pressure. So I hopped on the bike and SQUEEZED the handlebars as hard as I could and we were off again.

Some lady was behind Elisa shouting at her, "Rider back... RIDER BACK!" But Elisa didn't move. When we stopped to deal with my tire, this woman shouted something like, "Are you deaf or stupid! Why don't you listen?" Here's my take on it. If I am on single track, I will pull over for you when there is room and when it is downhill. I will not stop mid-climb to make room for you. As our coach always says, "Rubbing is racing." If You want to be in front of me on the last stage of an event, you had better make sure the first 3 stages were better for you. Part of our plan was making passing us on the bike stage difficult for other coed teams. Not intentionally and not to be a bad sport, but there was no way in hell I was going to slow my progress to help you with yours.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there considering what Team Flatlanders had to deal with. You guessed it, my rear tire went flat again. Let me say that it is CRITICAL to check the inside of your tire for debris. I didn't do it. I am not certain that in my haste, I didn't twist the tube up or have it pinched between the rim and the tire. There are a number of things that I could have done wrong when I changed my flat. At any rate, I did one of them. So 3.1 miles into an 8-10 mile bike stage and I was bleeding and without an extra tube. Patching it would be an option, but I had already seen so many coed teams get by us that I knew there was no way were were going to do anything in this race that would contribute to the point-standings for HART. So with that, I began running as I pushed my bike. We came out of the single track and crossed a park road. The odometer said almost 3.5 miles. In light of having a flat, a bloody hand, and no real prospect of finishing the race in any position that would benefit my team, I decided that we should follow the sounds back to the lake and find the finish line to let the race director know that we were going to DNF.

So with that I asked Elisa if she was OK with not finishing. She agreed, so we walked back, checked out of the race. Packed our gear in my car and hit the cooler full of beer. We had a great time at the HART tent with Marilupe and Ann, who is the wife of my college buddy, Dave. We had our little boys out there and they had a ball watching the racers come and go. They even did a kid's race afterwards. It was about 200 meters down to the edge of the lake and then back to the finish line. All of the kids got a race bib and a medal. Nicolas asked me, "Papi, why did we only run? Why we didn't go on the kayak or on the bike, too?" Needless to say I am very proud of my future mutli-sport enthusiast.

From there is was BBQ at Opie's on Highway 71 in Spicewood and then back to Dave and Ann's for an afternoon in the pool. The kids slept for like 3 hours. I should have joined them!

2007 Recap

Greetings all,

All in all, 2007 was good to the Romero Tribe.

Nicolas is will be 4 in May. He has made a lot of progress in the last 12 months. We started the Spring doing potty training, rounded the Summer out with swim and bike lessons, and finished off the year with a drum set for Christmas. His favorite songs are “Rock and Roll All Night” by Kiss, “TNT” by AC/DC and “Walk” by Pantera. He throws the “Rock Out” horns every time he scores a goal in soccer. He’s all boy and loves to pillow fight and play pranks. He is just like me, only smaller and with even less accountability. It’s AWESOME! He's talking about a KISS themed birthday party as well as making plans to be Peter Criss (the cat) for Halloween. I am so proud of him. He is currently WAY into the Red Hot Chili Peppers and I am getting him turned on to the Beatles. So we have a good time in the car on the way to school in the morning just kind of rocking out!

Marilupe has had a year filled with ups and downs. She was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis in late Spring 2007 and she’s been trying medicines. We think she has the right treatment now and the disease is only very mildly affecting her so that has been great to see her get some relief. Also, she was successful in getting into a teaching program and since August has been teaching bilingual first graders. So she has been VERY busy getting used to the classroom and getting a routine going. But her hard work is paying off as indicated by one of the girls in her class who couldn’t read or write just a few short months ago and is now making enough progress that she may even be allowed to go to 2nd grade. We’re all proud of the job she is doing and her kids lover her.

I switched jobs just before 2007 started. I took a role left vacant by Mark Stewart when he left BG Group. I started doing portfolio modeling and deal valuation for selling BIG boats full of liquid natural gas around the world. I am now in corporate planning and will be doing deal valuation for everything from natural gas, liquid natural gas, and power all over the western hemisphere and Asia/Pacific. I started running and joined a local adventure racing club. Also I have been racing with my company-sponsored team. BG Group used the BG US Challenge to raise ½ million dollars for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. We got to compete against HP, Volvo, Bechtel and more at a qualifying event in the Poconos Mountains in Western Pennsylvania in October. We did a 3 day race where we placed 4th overall and 2nd in the Coed/Mixed team division. So we qualified for a trip to Nice, France to compete in a 2-day race in December where we went up against Dell, HP, Volvo, Airbus, Accenture, etc…. Both races were sub 45 degrees and we got rained on most of the race in the Pennsylvania. I did 13 races last year with the shortest two races being half marathons. I even did a run/bike/paddle that was 18 hours long! I’m feeling quite fit!

During Christmas weeks we were fortunate enough to get a visit from family. Marilupe’s mom, dad, brother, sister, and nana came up from Mexico while my mom came from Dallas. We spent the time eating too much, drinking too much and playing a LOT of Bocce.

Final news flash…we're expecting another kid. We took Nicolas to the the Monster Truck Jam and Marilupe was puking in the parking lot. I wish I could make it up, but it's true. We were given GREAT seats and it seemed like a fitting thing to do with 3-yr-old. So when Marilupe tossed 3 times before we got to the ticket gate, we kind of looked at each other like, "We need to stop at the pharmacy on the way home don't we?" The due date is late-August, so she is already showing. This past weekend I told Nico that we needed to start to think of names for the baby. His contribution to the list: Chikezie. That kid loves him some American Idol!



So that’s our story. I hope you are doing well and that you have a wonderful 2008 in the making. We are looking forward to hearing from you if we haven’t already.

Matt, Marilupe and Nicolas

Welcome!

Rockopotamus is officially up. We'll be posting here in both English and Spanish in order to keep everyone up to date with the events and happenings of the Romero Tribe. Look forward to notes detailing Nico's progress as a sentient being on Planet Earth, Marilupe's health and progress through the pregnancy and Matt's race reports. Bookmark this site and come see us every now and then.