Gifts from the Birthday Boy

I have read that in Germany it is customary for someone who is celebrating a birthday to treat his / her friends for dinner at a restaurant.  Well, I didn't take Alejandro's family out to eat, but I did have a bunch of presents to give them after we ate birthday cake.

Some of the gifts were practical such as a box of N-95 facemasks and a couple of COVID home testing kits.  (Hopefully they won't have need to use them, but home testing kits are not available here in Mexico.)  I also brought a number of food products they won't find in the supermarkets down here, such as 100% Ohio maple syrup.

I also brought them more clothing items.  I doubt if there is another family in Mexico City that has so many t-shirts, hoodies, caps, etc. emblazoned with Ohio, Cleveland, or local universities, sports teams, parks and cultural institutions.

Alejandro's dad with yet another Ohio t-shirt

A few of the gifts were items I found while cleaning out my house.  I gave Alejandro's nephew Ezra this Mexican flag that I used to hang in my Spanish classroom.

You may remember that I gave Ezra my stamp collection on an earlier trip.  While cleaning out one of the closets I found another stamp album.  Some of my mint condition U.S. stamps in this album are more eighty years old and might be worth some money.  I told him to take good care of it.

You might wonder why I never post a photo that shows Ezra's full face.  Mexican parents generally do not want pictures of their children posted on the internet.  I doubt that any Mexican kidnappers are reading this blog, but I respect the family's concerns.

 

False Alarm

Alejandro has an earthquake alert app on his cell phone.  At 3:17 A.M. this morning the alarm went off, warning of a strong earthquake.  It was very loud and scary, and woke up Alejandro, his dad and me.  Alejandro's sister and nephew upstairs did not hear it, and even though Alejandro called to them, they did not wake up.  As his dad and I headed toward the front door to go outside, we noticed that the neighborhood earthquake siren was not going off.  We didn't feel anything, although there were a lot of dogs barking.  They must have sensed a slight tremor.  After waiting a few minutes, we went back to bed. 

There was indeed an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.1 near the border of the states of Guerrero and Michoacán, about 180 miles away.  I have not read of any casualties or damage in that area.  

I have experienced a number of minor earthquakes during my many trips to Mexico City.  You might wonder why I am planning to move to such a seismically active area.  Well, my reasoning is not scientific, but I don't expect to experience a "big one" in my lifetime.  From past experience, it seems that Mexico City has a major earthquake every thirty years, more or less.  In 1957 a 7.6 magnitude quake destroyed numerous buildings in the city and toppled the gold-gilt "angel" from the top of the Monument to Independence. Twenty eight years later, in 1985, the city was devastated by the catastrophic 8.1 quake that killed more than 10,000 people.  In 2017, thirty two years later, on the anniversary of the '85 tragedy, a 7.1 earthquake killed more than 300 people.  I was at home in Ohio when that one struck.  Judging by the city's track record, unless I live well into my nineties, I am not going to be around for another disastrous quake. 

Anyway, just in case any of my readers should read about today's early morning quake, here in Mexico City, we did not even feel it. 

So Much for My Diet

During the three months that I stayed at home in Ohio, from May 6th until my return to Mexico this week, I was on a diet.  Except for occasional meals out at a restaurant with friends, I did not eat any bread, pasta, cheese, desserts or red meat.  The diet was very successful.  I lost fifteen pounds and my cholesterol went down by forty points.

Of course I knew that any pretense of being on a diet would go out the window once I was in Mexico again.  On the day that I arrived, Alejandro prepared spaghetti in meat sauce for dinner.  It may not have been authentically Italian, but I thought it was very good.  It reminded me of the spaghetti that my mother used to make.  He made more than enough for the entire family.  I don't know if it is common practice among Mexican families, but in Alejandro's house leftovers from dinner are often served for breakfast.  So I had spaghetti again for breakfast!

Spaghetti - the Breakfast of Champions!

Supper or "cena", which in Mexico is a light meal served around 9 P.M., consisted of hot chocolate and "pan dulce"... Mexican pastries.

One of the reasons that I usually come to Mexico in August is to celebrate my birthday.  Of course that involved more feasting on foods that were not on my previous diet.  On the way home, Alejandro's sister stopped at a taco stand that we all like, and bought tacos.

As you can see from the grease stains on the paper wrapper, these tacos would never be classified as healthy eating... but they were so delicious!

And for my birthday cake, Alejandro found something I had never seen before... in Mexico or in the United States... "baklava cake".  I thought he was joking when he told me what he had bought, but when he unwrapped the cake, sure enough, it was baklava.  

Actually, the bottom was cheesecake, and it is covered with slices of baklava.  It was very good, and everybody liked it.  Baklava is something most people in Mexico have never heard of, much less tasted.  The only reason Alejandro was familiar with baklava, is that he had some  when we went to the West Side Market in Cleveland on one of his trips to Ohio.

Of course the family sang "Las mañanitas", the Mexican birthday song, followed by a chorus of "Happy Birthday to You".  It was a festive and fattening celebration with my Mexican family!  

   

More Reading Material

When I travel I always choose a couple of books to pack into my backpack so that I have something to read while waiting at the airport, on my flights, and before bedtime each night.  This trip was no exception.  However, the two novels that I had picked out will have to wait.  After passing through security at Cleveland Airport, I still had plenty of time before boarding my plane.  I browsed through one of the airport shops, and there was a book that caught my eye, "The Song of Achilles" by Madeline Miller.

The novel, published in 2011, is a retelling of the mythological story of the Greek warrior Achilles whose exploits were told in "The Iliad" by Homer.  The author graduated with a bachelor's and master's degrees in Classics, and was a high school Greek and Latin teacher.  "The Song of Achilles" was her first book, and it was #1 on the New York Times Bestsellers List. One reviewer wrote that the novel is "more poetic than almost any translation of Homer".

I have already read several chapters, and I am thoroughly enjoying it.  After doing a bit of research on the author, I discovered that she wrote a second novel "Circe".  It is a retelling of the story of the Greek enchantress in Homer's "The Odyssey" written from Circe's perspective.  I will have look for that one the next time I am in a bookstore back in Ohio.   

Up Before Dawn

Back home I usually get out of bed around 6:00 A.M.  My first morning here in Mexico City was no different.  Alejandro drives his sister to work at six, and when I heard him shutting the garage door this morning, I got up.  Shortly afterwards I climbed up to the roof of his house.  (The flat roofs of Mexican homes are called "azoteas", and there are steps to get up there.  Many Mexican housewives hang out their laundry up there.) 

Looking down on Alejandro's street from the "azotea"

The tower of the Mexico City Mormon Temple, just a few blocks away from his house, was still illuminated.

My reason for going up to the roof was to see if there would a nice view of the two volcanoes, Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl, that are located to the east of the city.  You may remember that on some of my previous trips I have taken some cool photos of the two mountains silhouetted against the pre-dawn sky.  I had no such luck this morning.  The volcanoes were shrouded in clouds.  However I did get this rather pretty picture of the early morning sky.

Heading South

Yesterday I was up before the crack of dawn to get to the airport for my 7:30 A.M. flight from Cleveland Airport to O'Hare Airport in Chicago... the first leg of my journey to Mexico.

There have been a lot of stories in the news about the chaotic situations at airports and the number of cancelled flights.  After checking in, the long line to pass through security seemed to bear out the truth of those stories.  It was 5:30 on a Tuesday morning, and I have never experienced a wait of a half hour at Cleveland Airport just to get to security.  There were people near me complaining that they were going to miss their flight.  Fortunately, I always arrive at the airport at least two hours before my flight, so I wasn't worried.

Once I got to security, the process was not too bad.  You no longer have to remove your laptop from your carry-on luggage, so that was one less hassle.  I made it through in a fairly timely fashion.  

I then went to the gate where my flight to Chicago was to depart on schedule.

It was a dreary, gray morning in Cleveland with light rain.  We began boarding right on time, and departed right on time.  The clouds were low and I was not able to snap many photos as we left Cleveland.   

The flight is only about an hour.  It seemed that we barely reached our cruising altitude when we began making our descent into the Chicago area.  At that point the clouds began to break.

I'm always paranoid about missing my connecting flight, and usually I try to schedule at least a two hour layover.  This time, however, I only had about an hour and a half between my flights.  The flight from Cleveland arrived five minutes ahead of schedule.  O'Hare Airport was very crowded, but I got to my next gate with plenty of time to spare.  The flight to Mexico City boarded on time and left the gate just a couple minutes behind schedule.

The skyline of Chicago and Lake Michigan beyond as we take off from O'Hare.

The journey from Chicago to Mexico City is a four hour flight.  After flying over the gulf for a while, we have our first glimpse of Mexico as we reach the coast near the city of Tampico.

Cloud cover did not allow us to see any of the volcanic peaks as we flew inland.  As we made our final approach into the sprawling metropolis of Mexico City the view was rather hazy.  (Since this is the rainy season, I don't think that it was smog.) 

We flew within sight of the Mexico City World Trade Center (in the center of the photo.)  The condo that I rent is just a block away from it.

The skyscrapers along the Paseo de la Reforma are visible through the haze.

The domed structure in the center of the photo is TAPO (Terminal de Autobuses de Pasajeros de Oriente), one of the four bus stations in the city.  Buses leaving for destinations to the east of Mexico City (such as Veracruz or Cancún) depart from there. 

We are about to land, and as you can see, the area around the airport is densely populated.

When I got off the plane and went to immigration, there was a long line.  However, as the  passengers from our flight arrived, they opened more immigration desks, and the wait was not long.  It was a much longer wait, however, for the luggage, but my two overpacked suitcases finally appeared on the carrousel.  Fortunately, there was no inspection at customs, and I just walked out through the sliding doors into the terminal.  Alejandro was already there waiting for me.  He drove me to his house where I will spend the first several days with him and his family.

Yippie!  I'm back in Mexico!

 

  

 

Traveling (Not So) Lightly

Experts have long exhorted travelers to travel lightly.  Indeed, I have often taken their advice.  There have been several long trips to Europe in which I have traveled with nothing more than carry-on luggage.  Each night I would wash out my clothes in the hotel sink, hang them to dry in the bathroom, and use the hair dryer on those items (mainly socks) that were not dry the next morning.

Since 2017 I have been renting the Mexico City condo that I intend to buy next year.  I am allowed to keep clothes there, so the only time I have had to check a large suitcase on those trips is when I have a lot of gifts to take to my "Mexican family".

Tomorrow, when I leave again for Mexico, I will be hauling more luggage than I have EVER taken on a trip.

Since I have a first-class ticket, I am allowed to check three suitcases.  I am going to check two, and they are both quite heavy.  I am also taking a small bag in addition to my backpack as carry-on.  I have a number of gifts to take to Alejandro and his family, but I am starting the process of moving things down to my future home in Mexico.  I have packed more clothes, some handicrafts that I want for decorating the apartment to my own taste, some framed family photos, and some books to start building up a good supply of reading material for the future.

I am going to look like one of those tourists that the travel experts always scold for being overloaded with luggage.  At least I won't be dragging this stuff all over Europe, and I will be returning home with oddly empty suitcases.  I just hope that I will not have to go through an inspection at customs in Mexico City.  "And WHY is it that you are transporting Mexican handicrafts TO Mexico???" 😕