estamos aqui!

= we're here in Mexico! I love this country... its been so fun to wake up my sleeping Spanish over the past few days. The weather is gorgeous-- Monterrey is the third largest city in Mexico, a major industrial hub (the "Pittsburg of Mexico" because of the steel industry), and is surrounded by beautiful, steep mountains that hug the city.

Scott & I are hosted with the Ordonez family, parents of Carlos Ordonez who traveled with us in 1997. Carlos also lives here in Monterrey, but wasn't in town the first days we were here, and also doesn't have a guest room, so we are staying in his parent's lovely house, with 5 star service courtesy of mama & papa. Welcoming, warm company, plus all the mangoes we can eat. You can't go wrong!

The thing that has been harder to get used to in this country transition is eating later. Lunch comes usually between 1:00pm & 2:00pm, but sometimes not until almost 3:00pm. Consequently, our first two nights we left home to go out to restaurants for dinner at 10:00pm. This is normal! The restaurants are all packed at this time-- there are waits of 45 minutes for tables, on a Tuesday night. que loco.

After two nights of this, and long days of speaking Spanish and being in the sun, on Wednesday I came home, and I think we moved up dinner an hour because we were so hungry. So we ate at 8:30pm and I was in bed by 9:30pm... and it was so necessary. I could not keep my eyes open!