criplomats

John and I had a quiet Thanksgiving Day here in Guadalajara. I hit the gym, then walked down the street to get my nails done. Afterward, John met me at the GastroPatio for lunch – definitely not a traditional lunch! John had a burger and I had Phad Thai. The GastroPatio seems to be a trend in Mexico – I ate at one in Tijuana, too. It’s an outdoor eating space with half a dozen food trucks permanently installed. Quite cute.

Mom had lunch with David and Alison – we chatted for a few minutes on the phone. And we talked to Pete and Ginger who were en route to spend Thanksgiving with the Texas family.

The rest of the week has been quiet. Lots of folks were off work on Friday and we were closed to the public. John and I have watched a ton of episodes of “The Killing” (the American version) and are enjoying it. I’m not feeling great this weekend, so I’ve been wrapped up on the sofa (much to Flavia’s delight). We also watched a couple of movies: “The November Man” and “Venus in Fur.” Hope these sniffles go away soon!

This week took me to Tijuana for a conference with the American Citizens Services group from all over Mission Mexico. I traveled with my boss Pete and our senior local staff employee, Mari Esther. We traveled on Tuesday late morning and returned on Friday afternoon. The conference was fun and beneficial – always good to see how other missions within Mexico do things and to see how we can harmonize our procedures. We spent all day in session, but I managed to work in lunch with my old friend Sarah who works in the Tijuana Consulate (she TDY’d in Juarez many moons ago) and got a chance to say hi to Mike and Katie, with whom we worked in Tel Aviv. Tijuana impressed me as being pretty hip overall, much more so than what I expected. Tuesday night, Pete convinced Mari Esther and me to go to the old part of downtown where we had our photo made on a zonkey (a donkey painted to look like a zebra) and have a Cesar’s salad at the Hotel Cesar where the salad supposedly originated. Fun!

Last Sunday we went to Lake Chapala with Cindy and Raoul for an arts and crafts festival – it was a lot of fun and only an hour’s drive. Here’s a shot of John buying some tequila from a local brewer.

Buying tequila in Chapala.

Saturday back in Guadalajara, John and I went to an early matinee to see “Interstellar” which was lots of fun. We had the VIP theatre to ourselves, which was nice. Afterward we went to La Docena for a beer and sandwich (a delicious fish and oyster poorboy for me). On the way home, we stopped to enjoy a 12-man mariachi band – only to realize that we knew the Consulate family who had hired them. We gladly joined them for a few songs – it was really fun!

Mariachi!

Today we stayed in. John taught me to play Imperial Settlers, which was fun!

Sunset, Puerto Vallarta

It’s hard to imagine how cold it is right now in Arkansas! Due to the altitude here, Guadalajara is blessed with wonderful weather. While the locals think it’s getting cold here, I’m still fine wearing sandals and short-sleeved shirts, perhaps with a sweater in the morning. Lovely!

This week was pretty calm. Tuesday was Veteran’s Day; it was a bit rainy and overcast here. We stayed in most of the day because our internet was out and the technician was in and out of the apartment all day. He finally got it fixed, but we were without it for several days – in a way it was pleasant. Without it, there was no surfing or TV since we stream everything – but we got caught up on talking and reading, so it was nice!

An entry-level officer started his rotation through my section this week, so I spent a lot of time training him to adjudicate citizenship. It’s so interesting that it’s fun to train.

John and I had a nice dinner out at La Tequila after work one evening. We were also introduced to a good salad place for lunch this week, so we ate there several days.

Saturday afternoon we went to Cindy and Raoul’s. They had several vendors at their house, plus it was a good chance to eat and drink and visit. I bought a pair of earrings and a necklace, both done by Cindy – very pretty.

After years of feeding Flavia only dry cat food, this week I switched her to “wet” food, after reading some about the benefits of wet food (better hydration for kidneys). She seems to love it and has adapted just fine to the switch!

Cheers! Tamarind margaritas

The Consul General hosted a very nice party in John’s honor on Friday night so the local business community could meet him. Lots of landlords and various business owners and service providers – all of whom do business with the Consulate, and, specifically John’s section – came out to say hello. It was a beautiful venue, up on a rooftop terrace, and the weather was perfect. The CG gave remarks and introduced John, then John also gave remarks – and did a great job, of course! I was very proud of him!

John’s birthday was earlier in the week and we had fun celebrating. His team did a breakfast for him – lots of good food and cake, then later in the day, I took up another cake. That evening he and I walked over to a nice Peruvian restaurant for dinner. We sat outside and enjoyed Pisco Sours and an excellent meal. He got lots and lots of birthday wishes and I think he enjoyed the day!

Saturday we met some Consulate folks in the little town of Tonalá, about 30 minutes from here. Some of the local artisans took us on a tour to see some of the town and their beautiful ceramics at the artists’ homes. First they took us high up on a hill overlooking the town (and you can also see Guadalajara from there). It’s a lovely view, plus there is a beautiful stone church there:

Church at Tonalá

Rocks with prayers placed in front of the Virgin of Guadalupe

Next we visited two local artisans’ studios – which means we went to their house and backyard, basically. The locals artisans are (rightfully) very proud of keeping their traditional arts alive, and have a hard time with the rest of their town, which is known as one of the biggest and cheapest markets around – but lots of the vendors sell stuff that they say is from the locals but really it’s from heaven-knows-where and are cheap knock-offs. I really liked Florentino Jimón’s work (and he is so nice) – here he is signing a decorative plate we bought:

The plate has two nawales on it – they are creatures who can take the shape of anything, sort of shape-shifters, I guess. You see lots of them in the artwork in Tonalá – and I found this one in the dust on a window:

Nawal

We also went down underneath a church to see the niches, where cremains are stored (Mexico is running out of cemetery space), and then we ended the tour at a tiny market where about a dozen artesans displayed their ceramics on tables for sale – fittingly in the old house of one of the town’s first ceramic artists.

Last night we walked down to Cindy and Raoul’s apartment where they had about a dozen people over for lasagna – the food was delicious, and I enjoyed sitting out on their balcony chatting with friends all evening.

The only down side of the week was on Saturday morning around 4:30 AM. I heard an odd noise that woke me up; we quickly discovered that it was water pouring down behind the wall of one of the bedrooms. Turns out the apartment two floors above us had some sort of water problem. Luckily it didn’t do too much damage to our apartment, although it did leak gallons of water into a bucket we put out and a lot of plaster fell off the ceiling!

Here are a few more photos from Tonalá. Click here to see all of them.

Ladies Room Door

Mops

Door

Basket

Truck with Chickens

Vegetables

Gum ball machines

Street posole

Ceramic Studio

(more…)