Here we are in Merida – been here for about 24 hours and are already seeing an amazing transformation in our little engineer. More about this later.
The best I can say about the flights is that they weren’t as bad as anticipated. These days that counts as a huge compliment. We even got bulk-head seats on the San Jose – Houston leg. I must have requested them a 1000 times before and was pretty much laughed off the phone line every time along the lines of “these are reserved for our Elite travelers, not shmucks like you” or
“these are for families with children”
“wait, I have a child, he’s 3 years old.”
“that’s too old, only 2 year old or less counts”
“but, he needs the room more than a baby …”
“sorry, Ma’m, there is nothing I can do!!! But we still have row 47 available, very convenient, right in front of the bathrooms.”
So this time I didn’t bother and got three bulk heads, next to each other. Maybe that should teach me a lesson?
We spent the morning exploring Merida by foot and ended up on the central square were the usual Sunday fiesta was going on only more so because it seems this was Merida’s birthday today. And here is where our European-Gringo introvert morphed into a Latino. It took a couple of hours, he rudely ignored the attention of Primavera, 4 years old, who wanted to play on the see-saw with him but started to get into the swing of things by chasing pigeons. And then, our son, who – we decided 2 years ago – will definitely be an engineer when he grows up (or before), demanded to go dancing. So we took him where the music played and a bunch of grown-ups in zebra costumes put on entertaining activities for the whole family, including kids’ dancing games and watched increduosly the transformation of Massisito – the Latino incarnation of Max, the Builder, – who rocked away the afternoon. He charmed the zebra out of candy, didn’t really participate in the game but was all over the place hopping, dancing, running and jumping (hacer ejercisios, correr, saltar y brincar) as I was later informed.
We had to drag him off the dance floor after the music games stopped, stuff some food into him and force him into bed for a nap (it took like 3 secs for him to fall asleep). When he woke up, he wanted to go dancing. Maybe he is going to make us a lot of money after all, not as a basketball player as I had originally envisioned, but as Latino or rather Gringo dance sensation. He even occassionally speaks Spanish to us now – something he has thrown screaming fits over in Sunnyvale – and so far tolerates me trying my Spanish with the waiters, shop-keepers, etc – another big no-no at home.
So far Merida has been very enjoyable, lively, loud, dirty, authentic – sort of like southern Europe and very much not like Silicon Valley where everything seems to get wiped off with an antiseptic wipe every 30 minutes (I have to admit, though, that I occassionally have the strong impulse to get a whole bunch of wipes out and am debatting whether I should clean the floor in our house for real, not just distribute the dirt evenly).
One word about the food (those who know me know that I dislike most Mexican food found in the US because I feel so terribly stuffed after eating it) – well, it’s Mexican food BUT, I discovered, it’s all about portion size and cheese content. The portions here are small, tiny by US standards, and so far I have yet to see a shred of cheese in or on anything. I don’t feel stuffed at all, in fact after lunch a brisk walk, another brisk walk, some dancing with Max I feel righteously hungry – a feeling noticeably absent for three to five days after eating Mexican food in the US.
Here are some pictures of the Latin Dance Sensation in action:
