Last and Loose Thoughts

Travel days always offer intermittent internet connection at best so I offer these last and loose thoughts about our month-long stay in San Miguel de Allende from the comforts of my desk at home with my cat sitting beside me growling her displeasure at our prolonged absence and the very different--sweeter, softer and smoggier--air rippling the blinds that hang in the open window.

1. It says something about the people of a country when its drivers yield to pedestrians and do not use their horns gratuitously.

2. There is delight in Chris and I paying 48 dollars to hire a car to take us to the airport in Leon which is two hours from where we stayed and sickness in our paying 31 dollars to take a cab home from the airport which is 15 minutes.

3. Fresh fruit may only last until the end of the day but it is worth it to go back to the market continuously for more. The same is true of fresh bread.

4. American cheese in Mexico isn't what you would expect it to be.

5. Experimenting in a language that doesn't leap to your tongue unbidden forces you to think about what you say before you say it and sometimes you change your mind about what you will say.

6. Over the course of our stay, a manhole lost its cover in the pedestrian walkway near our place. First, a good samaritan propped the cover in a counter position so it wouldn't fall in but would block the hole. Then it fell in. Then perhaps a different samaritan put a bucket near the hole to warn people of the hole. Then someone put a heavy rock in the bucket to affix its place. Then the bucket and the rock fell in the hole. Then the same or another person put a different rock near the hole, again as warning. Later, someone added a second rock. An official of some sort then tacked PELIGROSO tape from the wall to the hole and placed a rock on top of the free end. Another person tied the free end around the rock. Then the rock fell in the hole. Then the tape fell in after it. While this is not a group of people who can think that a board just a bit larger than the aperature would solve the problem, they are a group of people who really care that you not fall in the hole.

7. The opportunity to live in a place you have never been and eat foods you've never heard of and ride horses and investigate the history of revolution and liberation and enjoy stones beneath your feet that may have been packed into the ground 400 years before your step is worth sleeping on a foam pad for 30 nights (but I'm happy to have a mattress under me again).

8. While I recognize it is a luxury of wealth and so on some level should be shameful, it's nice to flush one's toilet paper.

9. We were in Mexico for a month and never had flan.

10. Final Last Thought: I spent 30 days with my husband and in that time we were only parted for about six hours. That's something.

So, we're home and already making lists of pros and cons for trips in winter spring and next summer. Wherever we land, it will be good. Til then: amor y paz.