End of 2010

New Year's Eve left us with a fierce helping of stir-crazy, so we went to our favorite local natural area -- Desierto de los Leones. We explored a new part, a trail that went up to a string of hermitages. These were pretty swanky places for a hemit, many had courtyards and multiple rooms. They were all connected by an aquaduct feeding them with water from the mountain, and we followed that back up to where the real trails were.
The ironic thing about this trip was that we were originally planning on hiking at Ajusco -- the federal district's highest point. But we were warned that there have been lots of banditos there, and not to go unless you knew it would be busy. So we went here, and this morning as I was looking online for a new trail for us, a number of people warned about banditos here too. So we decided to just be extra cautious and I only carried the little camera.
Up on the mountain, there have been numerous forest fires in the past decades, and they looked like Tree Cemeteries.
We sat and had lunch by a bubbling brook, and off in the distance, we could hear something that could have been a dinosaur. Or maybe a cow. Then suddenly, we heard it again and it was about 20 feet away. This was the only thing scary that we met on the trail. No banditos.

White Christmas

For Christmas day, we went downtown to the Zócalo. This is still Mexico's Bicentennial, and they put a lot of money into all sorts of crazy things, one of which was this snow village. The weather was nice and sunny, but despite this, you could ride snowmobiles, makes snowmen, and go ice-skating. But only here in this city square in front of the Metropolitan Cathedral.

Nearby, the Aztec dancers and the such were out in full force, performing ritual cleansings for a fee and selling trinkets. It was all a big weird juxtaposition of snow, big Spanish church, and pre-Columbian religion all under a beautiful blue sky on Christmas day.

Twas the Night Before Christmas

For Christmas Eve, our friends Noelle and Bruce invited a few families over for a family Christmas evening. We had delicious food, and then all the children (under Noelle's direction) prepared a Christmas pageant. Nevara was Mary, and I believe that Zorra was the donkey.
Finally, the kids went off and played, and the grown-ups (read: women) sat around and sang Christmas songs, especially the snowy ones. It was much fun!

Milagro de Navidad

Through church, I reluctantly signed up to go on a service project. I know, I should serve with gladness and enthusiasm, but frankly, my cowardly introverted personality makes it difficult -- especially here in Mexico.

So I hitched a ride with Tonya, and off we went to Ora's house. Ora is a little Buddhist Thai lady who's been living here in Mexico City for something like 20 years. About 15 years ago, her birthday was coming up and her kids asked what she would like. And she replied that she wanted to serve the less fortunate people in her community. So her kids asked around and found how she could help, and she opened her home for 12 poor people from nearby. She cooked a good meal for them, and made arrangments to do so every month. Now, she provides a meal at a nearby church every month for 250 people. And during the rest of the month, she hosts fund-raising dinners to keep the leaders of the community abreast on the needs of the poor and allow these people a chance to help out.

We arrived bringing cooked turkeys and a half-gallon of gravy each to an average middle-class home with cars parked outside all up the street. Inside, every table surface was being used by people preparing food. In the kitchen were these two ladies stirring massive amounts of mashed potatoes. Ora (seen behind the potato ladies) was like a circus ringleader, and no sooner had she dumped our gravy into a 5-gallon bucket, we were handed knives and cutting boards and set to chop tomatoes.

Costco donated a metric tonne (not really) of salad. While we chopped, in our conversation about how I like bagged salad because it comes pre-cleaned, I found a bug. I think Tonya is now off salad for a while.

Behind us, we could hear two ladies working on the shrimp cocktail and the logicstics of thawing the shrimp. I thought, certainly we're preparing a fund-raising lunch with all of this fancy food. When all was finished, we loaded all of the food into the cars and went off in a grand cavalcade to our final location.

Before we knew it, we were in the little town of Navidad, named for the Christmas holiday that was rapidly approaching. We turned down tiny little streets, and suddenly, we were there. Parked in front of who-knows-what. We went through a tiny little door with our bins of delicious-smelling food and found ourselves inside a tiny little church. Children and old ladies were setting up a table in a side chapel, and looking around at these humble surroundings, I realized that this wasn't a fund-raising luncheon. This was Christmas dinner. I've spent so long thinking of service as giving what you have leftover -- the change in your pocket, the canned goods that got pushed to the back of the pantry. But here a tiny little lady prepared an elegant dinner, gave the best to the least among us. I was left humbled by a little Buddhist lady, schooled on the gospel in a town called "Christmas" by a person who doesn't even celebrate Christmas.

"Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these thy brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Big dogs

When we picked up the dogs from their vacation at the vet's house, Blitz was gleaming white, and Suzaku was basically a new dog. He had grown in the 8 days we were gone, and his adult coat had nearly completely grown in. If he hadn't run out to us and bitten us gleefully when we picked him up, we wouldn't have known he was our dog. He's 5 months old in this photo.

Escape to America

My cousin was kind enought to schedule her wedding for the Saturday after Thanksgiving, so with the girls having the whole week off anyway, we made a trip of it and flew to the States the weekend before. At the airport, Raul and the girls rented a car and drove to my Dad's house while I went to my friend Dana's place for much shopping. (Dana is the shopping queen and I still had all of my accessories (including shoes) left to purchase for my dress).

Dana and I ate out a lot, and everywhere we went, if a dish came with spinach, I ordered it. Dana found this perplexing, wondering how in the 23 years that she and I have been best friends that she never knew how much I loved spinach. I do like spinach, but in Mexico, Popeye's veg is only harvested when it is fully mature with leaves the size of your hand and stems that are almost woody. So I was stocking up for the famine.

We shopped until our feet hurt, and then bought different shoes to switch to so we could continue shopping.

I frequently found myself working out in my head how to say things in Spanish, and when I remembered that I was in Engish-speaking USA, I talked to everybody.

Meanwhile, the girls (and Raul to some extent) caught lizards, went fishing, and went bowling with their Papa Tom. The weather was mild and lovely.

We reunited after a few days, and Raul and I did a bit more stocking up on American goodness by eating at Chick-fil-A and drinking rootbear whenever we could. Thanksgiving rolled around and I contributed to the feast by making Mac-and-Cheese for my brother who would eat only M&C for the rest of his life if he could.

Finally, we headed back to Dana's house which we used as a home base for the wedding. My cousin had decided on a very elegant formal evening wedding, so we had come prepared with a floor-length gown and Raul's tux. My dress fit perfectly before we had flown to the US, but after a week of cramming as much American food down our gullets as we could and Thanksgiving, I had a worried moment trying to get the zipper up. Thank heavens for Spanx. And a crowbar.

Raul and I are actually of the same height; I just happen to be wearing 4" heels. Zorra on the otherhand is wearing flats. She really is that tall at age 11.

The next morning, Raul caught a flight to DC for 10 days of work, and the girls and I flew back to DF. We were not excited to be going back to Mexico. Had our dogs not been there waiting for us, I think we might have tried to find some excuse to never return.