The state we are living in has 4 confirmed cases of the virus. We have decided to self quarantine along with most of our children’s classmates families. The last two days have merged together. We have them an extra day of home school on Saturday because on Friday, the kids were … challenging.
This morning on day 67 we went to church, by turning our laptop on. I watched a couple sermons, one from a church across the street from Castro Valley High, and the other from our home church, Three Crosses again in Castro Valley.
Bonnie watched the church service we usually go to, down the street, but they decided to close the sanctuary down until this pandemic is gotten control of. I’m very impressed with all the proactive steps México is taking with this virus. The governor of the state we are in gives daily affirming messages to the citizens here, and even the grocery store across the street posted a sign regarding the virus going around.
After church services, we lounged around and did nothing much. I opened a jigsaw puzzle and we started working on that. We ordered KFC, and had it delivered. It’s amazing what you miss from the United States, and KFC is absolutely not one of those things.
There is an update to the border closings. The US State Dept and the Mexican State Dept is not restricting air travel, so I’m am safe to fly back and forth this next month for court. Tomorrow we start home school again. My wife is on Day 7 of homeschool, keep our kids in your prayers.*
Day 62 was our daughters 10th birthday. I still can’t believe she’s ten, that went by fast. Over a month ago I told her that I was going to miss her birthday because I had to be in court on the 18th, 19th, and 20th. She took it like a champ with a stiff upper lip. But then a week after I told her, she confessed to me how sad it made her and started crying, so I changed my flight to leave the afternoon of her birthday so I wouldn’t miss it entirely. We flew in on day 61 from Mexico City, and I flew out the next day on day 62. She had a great birthday, having pancakes for breakfast and then fast food for lunch. Her mom took them all to Applebee’s for dinner which is a treat because they have a huge playground inside the restaurant here.
Instead of a non stop flight from our city to Oakland thought, I had to take a flight to Houston and then to Oakland. I got home close to midnight and thanks to our close friend Vadim didn’t have to rely on Uber or a taxi, he picked me up from SFO and drove me back to Alameda.
Before I left for the States, each child nearly begged me to bring back books. Two of them had tears in their eyes, they really miss English books. So I did what any father would, while I was in town, I went to the Target and purchased $800 worth of books for my kids. That is about 140 pounds of books that I had to lug to the airport and through customs and in a taxi. I actually bought two large suitcases just for the books I brought back for them. It was exhausting but it will be worth it on Day 66 when they see what I brought. I also as a cautionary measure bought an entire box of Cadbury eggs, and if you’re wondering, I bough 40 Cadbury eggs. In case I can’t fly back before Easter. 😀
After I was dropped off at my home I put my bags down and then went to the office to work until 2am. Then I drove home, slept a little and went back to the office for a while. Court ended up getting cancelled, so it gave me more time to work on some cases that needed time. Throughout this very short visit I was monitoring both the American and Mexican border. My biggest fear was that either country would close the border while I was separated from my family.
I had a flight scheduled for Day 65, Friday. But on Day 64, I just didn’t feel right. I really feel like God was telling me to get up and take a flight out that evening and not to wait. So around the same time our State Department issued its highest warning for us not to travel, I bought a red eye leaving Thursday night instead of Friday afternoon.
It was nothing short of God. By the time my red eye touched down in Mexico, the US and Mexico jointly agreed to close its borders to tourists. There was a very strong chance if I just waited to leave Friday afternoon that I would be turned away at customs in Mexico and be separated from my family indefinitely. I am truly grateful to God for His urging and at the same time nearly terrified that if I wasn’t proactive that I would be living a nightmare right now.
Before my flight I was going back and forth in whether we should just all fly back. I think we are going to ride this out in Mexico. There are close to 200 cases in all of Mexico. And they have been testing heavily for it since January. They closed the kids school here a week before they closed our kids school district down in Alameda. They are more proactive here and aside from it being cheaper to live here as well, we have health insurance here and not in America. So worst case scenario, we won’t be bankrupt if we get sick here because we are highly covered. If we moved back to the state’s and got sick, it could lead to enormous medical bills. My business is being taken care of by God as well.
Unless the State Dept changes its tune on its travel advisory and its closure of its border, I will not be flying back for court. But in the past month I was introduced to a lawyer who can make all of my court appearances for me for the time being. It won’t be cheap but I’ll gladly pay it to give me peace of mind.
Now I’m with my family, we are safe. We are healthy, and will ride out this storm together. We have already spoken to the Stare Dept over the phone and they assured us if things started getting difficult here, there is nothing preventing us from coming home. Even if they close the borders, they won’t close it to its own citizens. It’s comforting knowing that even though we are in another country, our country will not close its doors to its citizens even during this pandemic. It reminds me of the phrase “civis Romanus sum” I am a Roman citizen. If you said that while traveling anywhere during the Roman Empire, you would be treated with respect or risk the full might of the empire as a consequence. I am not broadcasting that I’m American to anyone but being an American is comforting while living abroad during this pandemic.
Just getting home after a red eye, a connecting flight all while lugging over 140 pounds of kids books over 1700 miles. Celebrating our daughters birthday with fireworks indoors. Why yes that is a smoke alarm almost right above our pyrotechnics.
The last week we have vacationed in Mexico City has been very enjoyable and stressful. The response to the virus country by country is so different. I just read that Canada just closed its borders to foreigners. I’m praying that Mexico doesn’t close their borders to foreigners.
We got the kids out of the hotel by 8am, those of you with four kids will call that miraculous. I just have a very hard working and forgiving wife.
We got to the airport by 930am after dropping our rental car off. We had breakfast and then went through security no problem. The Mexico City Airport is enormous, we had to take a bus to where our plane was on the runway.
As soon as our bus arrived at the plane, an airport official opened the bus door and said the airport we are supposed to be flying into has been closed. Everyone’s first thoughts were the virus that’s going around and the City the airport is in is just being cautious.
So we get dropped off back at the terminal and we start discussing logistics. I need to be in court Wednesday, Thursday, and a Friday. Hopefully I can continue the Friday court hearing. Then we hear the reason the airport closed.
A small airplane crashed into a passenger jet while landing. The small plane had no authority to be anywhere near that air space. So it delayed our flight one hour, the airport had to make sure the runway was fine to land on. I’ll finish the next paragraph after we land in our home city. ******** Forty minutes later********
It is a 40 minute flight to the city we are living in. As soon as the plane gets to its cruising altitude, twenty minutes later we are descending. We finally got home and are now unpacking. I am re-packing for my flights tomorrow. I would have flown home tonight but I couldn’t miss my daughters entire birthday. What would usually be a 4 hour non stop flight into Oakland, will be a one stop in Houston with a 4 hour layover and a flight from Houston to sfo. I’ll get home maybe by midnight. I have court 8 hours later, and I’m still hoping and praying that they cancel it because there is a shelter in place for all Bay Area counties. We will see.
oThe kids were very well behaved during this afternoons airport drama.
We are two months into this six month adventure. In many ways we are exhausted. But at the same time we are in awe of the things we’ve been able to experience with our children. Today is our last day in Mexico City, and even though this city is beautiful, and rich in culture, and enormous. I will not miss it, and it certainly is not on my list of places to re-visit (I’m looking at you Athens, any part of Germany, Iquitos, and Florence). The main gripe I had with Mexico City was the traffic, there aren’t any traffic laws being enforced, unless you look foreign. There are rarely any stop lights and even those seem to be more of a suggestion. The buses will run you over, taxis will stop in the fast lane of a freeway and let people out for a few minutes. Also I’ve noticed it is very common for people to cut in front of you here in any line. One woman was so blatant about it today and it was during our youngest having an almost tantrum in a place I wanted to leave immediately. Oh well, I do like you México City, but I won’t miss you.
Day 61 we fly back to the city we are living in. It is going to be a very busy day because I have to fax file so many documents for Wednesday court hearings in the Bay Area. This brings me to the elephant in the room.
I’ve been trying to avoid discussing the pandemic going on. Mexico has it locked down pretty hard, they have 17 confirmed cases, and they have a type of CDC website h that meticulously tracks not just cases of the Corona Virus, but even suspicious cases that are being tested. The government proactively closed all sporting events to the public, we were going to see a soccer game this morning at the Aztec Stadium but we’re turned away. So now we have this anxiety about my flying to the US for work.
I need to fly to the US for work, that’s how we are mostly paying for this trip, the problem is México is concerned about American tourists infecting them, and rightly so. I sneezed today at a playground and a couple families got their kids and walked away from the area. I am monitoring Facebook and I see the school district my kids are in has been shut down for three to four weeks. The grocery stores have been pillaged to nothing, and parents are struggling trying to find child care so they can still pay bills. I can’t imagine how crazy it is from 1700 miles away, and I’m praying for all of you constantly. My biggest fear is not that Mexico closes its borders before I fly to go to work, my concern is they do it while I’m in the United States, stranding me from my family.
Please keep my family in your prayers as I keep all of you in mine. Let’s hope this blows over fast, and with as little fatalities as possible.
Today we concentrated on the historic center of Mexico City. We drove into the city straight to the Palace of Fine Arts. There we got to see a lot of Diego Rivera’s murals, including my favorite “Man, Controller of the Universe”.
I learned about this mural in English 7a class at Chabot College roughly 21 years ago. The school even put on a play about Diego Rivera and his inspiration to modern day Latino artists. The play was amazingly terrible, but I didn’t forget it. I didn’t realize this piece was in this museum, when I saw it, the only feeling I could describe is star struck. We sat and stared at it for a long while. We looked at other murals as well and I was surprised that the children didn’t have any jokes about the topless women that were prominent in Diego Rivera’s works.
Lydia loved this painting, she thought the woman on the right looked like Captain Marvel.
Keeping the kids interested was a challenge like no other. But we ended up leaving to go to the next place we have been wanting to check out, Catedral Metropolitana de la Asunción de la Santísima Virgen María a los cielos, or in English: The Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven. It is the largest Cathedral in the America’s, and was built between 1573-1810.
Construction began when Spain invaded and took over Tenochtitlan, which was the capital of the Aztec Empire until 1521 when Spain overtook them. There were large pyramids in Tenochtitlan, that were torn down and used to build this cathedral.
After we walked around the cathedral, we went to go see some of the ruins of Tenotchtitlan, I took a lot of photos, but I’m not going to post them because I am exhausted and if you read our blog about Teotihuacán, you get the idea.
After we walked around the ruins of Tenotchtilan, I came to the realization that I had seen enough ruins of past civilizations for the remainder of my life and I was hungry. So we walked to a restaurant. Before getting there, we walked inside the cathedral. The following are photos from the inside of this enormous cathedral.
We walked towards a building with roof top seating and was approached by some guy who spoke English to us before he heard what language we were speaking. His racial profiling was spot on. The food was not great, but the view was spectacular. We also got to see the Mexican Military take the enormous Mexican flag down from the middle of the square. Oddly the restaurant did not accept cards, so my first thought when a very large business accepts cash only is its a front for an illegal business.
We were there for a long while. Afterwards we walked back to our car and headed back to our hotel. On the way to the parking garage we stumbled upon these people dancing.
In the back ground is an engineering school.
We paid for parking at the parking garage for a whopping $12. We were parked there for 7 hours, if this was San Francisco we would have paid over $150. One more day and then we fly back to our home.
I have had strange days in my life, but today beats them all. When we decided to move to Mexico, we had planned some trips within the country. Mexico City was one of those trips. For my daughters birthday we were going to do the same thing we did for our third child, swim party at the local pool. She read an article about this creepy island covered in broken dolls, and wanted to visit that place instead. So we figured we can go to Mexico City and devote one of the days to that, the port we start at is a 30 minute drive from our hotel.
While eating breakfast, we took turns watching videos about this island of dolls, otherwise called La Isla de las muñecas.
Many years ago, a man discovered a little girl drowned in the water near a remote island. This man was forever changed by this discovery and decided to devote his life to this little girl, the man started bringing dolls to the exact spot he found her. Many years went by and the man kept bringing dolls to this island, he was compelled to do this because he felt the little girl was in torment if he didn’t bring the dolls. This went on for a few decades until the man died. The internet claims that the man died in the exact spot the little girl did, that is false. The caretaker in the place said he died in his bed.
We got to the port and told one of the boat drivers that it was our daughters birthday and hat she wanted to go see the dolls. They brought us to the boat that said “Feliz Cumpleaños”. It was really adorable, she was so excited.
The trip down the river was very tranquil. It takes nearly 2 hours to float down the river to get to this place. We stopped once to go to an “aquarium”. Eventually after many twists and turns, we end up at the island. We stayed there for an hour. The caretaker gave us a tour and told us he made a point that when he took over caring for the island, not to remember where the dolls were because the previous care taker claimed that they moved. He also said he never saw it with his own eyes, but he said the night time had a weird feel to it. As soon as I stepped for on this island it felt as though I walked into a room that was stuffed with people, I can’t describe the feeling more than that. See the below photos and try not to have nightmares tonight. 😀
It’s hard to explain what happened when we left the island. As we were floating in our small covered boat along a narrow channel, we were floating by a large garden with enormous tarps covering some plants. Out of nowhere we heard a loud roar and saw a very large dirt devil tear the tarps off of the ground. The dirt devil then moved across the river and directly over our boat, and then moved to the next shore and dissipated. The boat driver said he’d never seen one of those do that. I’m still a little creeped out by that.
After we got back to Mexico City, we drove to Little Caesars to get pizza for the kids. Then we ended the night going to see Lucha Libre, Mexican Professional Wrestling. I can’t describe how incredibly bananas luche libra was. It’s hard to describe the insanity of it all. The wrestlers would come out either in a mask or out of it. They would fight three rounds, so if someone was pinned, they didn’t win unless they pinned them again. To keep the suspense going, every match went to three rounds. The kids weren’t too thrilled with it all, they enjoyed the food though. The food sold there is far different then in the states, they sold typical Mexican food dishes, and for some reason cup of noodles, the vendors would have a huge tray of premise cup of noodles. The highlight of the night was when either a small child or a little person came out with a bunch of other wrestlers, dressed as a dinosaur. He ended up performing the finishing move for the final round of the bout. It was glorious.
The event went until 11pm, over four hours past when we put the kids down. It just seemed all worth it when I witnessed the what is shown in the next two photos.
Today we drove to the ruins of Teotihuacan. On the way there I was pulled over by Mexico City police for speeding and using my cell phone. They said they’d let me go if I paid them $8,100 pesos. It felt like a shake down. They took my e mail address down to send me a “receipt” would you like to guess if I ever got a receipt?
We finally arrived at the ruins and it was amazing. Below are some of my favorite photos from the day. What wasn’t photographed were the thousands of people peddling their little trinkets for the kids. Every 50ft we had to tell a person “no thank you”. And we probably walked a couple miles today. We bought some items, mostly for other people. The kids bought things that made noises. The items were animals that made their own, owls, eagles, jaguars. It was a hard ride home.
When climbing up the first pyramid (the pyramid of the moon) our second child was kind of terrified of how steep and high up it was. He refused to walk up the Pyramid of the Sun, a much much higher pyramid. So we kind of nudged him into climbing up the pyramid and on the way down he was not happy. I taught him the Littany Against Fear from the Dune Saga and he said that worked for him.
After we left Teotihuacan, we drove back to Mexico City to have a late lunch/early dinner. We tried a place recommended by our close friend Jackie who grew up in Mexico City. The food was great, but the restaurant wasn’t very kid friendly. It would be great for a date night. Tomorrow we go see La Muñeca Island. Google it, but not at night.
The hotel room we “slept” in last night was warm. It was so warm, when we opened the door to walk in for the first time, a waft of stale warm air washed over us. I can’t sleep in a warm room. So in the middle of the night we researched the other hotel we were going to stay at and they in fact have air conditioning in their rooms. So we packed up every thing and will be heading to that hotel which is a few hundred yards from our original hotel.
We will miss the weird designs on the ceiling of our last hotel. I can only describe them as being a larger form of a typical face tattoo and a lower back tattoo, a stamp if you will.
The next hotel is amazing, they have air conditioning, and there are three enormous king sized beds in our room. The hotel even let us check in at 9am.
Today we went to two museums, Diego Rivera’s museum he built himself, and Frida Kahlo’s home, The Blue House. The first gallery will be Diego Rivera’s, he built it and designed it himself. I took a lot of photos today. Of note was the murals he sketched and the ceiling tiles he designed. Check them out below.
After we left this museum, we drove to The Blue House. We bought tickets ahead of time and were able to walk past a huge line. When we walked in, we decided to buy an audio visual tour, it took us two hours to walk through Frida Kahlo’s child hood home. This is the home she was born in, the home she lived him most of her life, and the home she died in.
We walked through her home and learned a lot about Frida. She had a terrible accident when she was 18 years old. A car hit her and an iron rod impales her in her hip and exited out her vagina. We had a lot of fun conversations with our kids when they heard that description of events. Of course the audio tour didn’t just stop there, a woman with a thick spanish accent playing Frida in the audio tour then stated “I didn’t know I would lose my virginity that way.” It was a great statement that fostered so many wonderful questions afterwards.
As it turned out, Frida’s family fell in hard times and Diego Rivera ended up paying off the homes mortgage, he never considered the Blue House his home though. Their marriage was tumultuous, and the both cheated on each other ALOT! Diego famously cheated on Frida with her sister, and Friday cheated on him with a photographer, and Trotsky, to name a few. Oh yeah, Leon Trotsky moves in with Diego and Frida into their compound for a few months. They both pleaded with him not to move out for fear he would be murders, so he moved out to his own compound and low and behold a month later he was murdered.
The photos below are from the downstairs in their house. Some interesting photos are the day bed she slept on, and a circular framed photo of a commissioned painting the Wife of the President if Mexico commissioned. The frame is shaped like a womb, and the painting even though it has fruits and vegetables in it, also resembles female genitalia. The wife never paid the commission and so it stayed in Frida’s home.
The upstairs is where Frida’s art studio was, and she had two bedrooms there as well, Diego had one. They did not sleep in the same bed in their later years. Pay attention to the bed with a mask on it, that is where she died. There is a sculpture of a pig in one of the rooms, inside of that is Frida’s ashes. 😀
After we left this museum we walked a couple blocks to a market that Frida would frequent when she was younger,… and alive. I ordered some tacos and asked for salsa, the waiter told me to be careful in Spanish. He. Was. Right.
A singer with a guitar came to our table as we ate. I asked him in Spanish “conoces la balada de los tres amigos” and he did. But it was not from the movie, it was another song about three amigos. We ended up leaving and tried to find a park the kids could play at.
Some church we stumbled upon.
We ended up finding a park and took the kids there to play for a while. Then we drove home down some of the smallest streets I’ve ever driven down.
Those photos don’t do it justice, I had to back up multiple times in order to turn down other streets. So we are back at the hotel and the video below will tell you all where we are heading early tomorrow morning.
Today we did ALOT! We got the kids to school, Bonnie did yoga, then took our second oldest to get his stitches out. I packed the remainder of our baggage, and an hour after we picked the kids up from school we headed to the airport.
Our oldest read an article about a very creepy island near Mexico City that is covered in broken doll parts. When we brought this child into our home nearly a decade sfo, the home was “decorated” in a plethora (second Three Amigos reference) of creepy clown paintings and sculptures. We counted once and there were thirty plus clown depictions in our downstairs alone, and two of them were smiling. When our oldest was in third grade, she brought a clown painting her great grandfather painted, for show and tell. I told her to tell her class that if you pay attention to the painting long enough out of the corner of your eye, the clown in the painting will twitch. 😀 So in lieu of a birthday party, our oldest has requested to go to this island of creepy dolls, and we were planning a trip to Mexico City anyways, so two birds with one stone.
The flight is only forty minutes from where we are living. The kids did great, despite a 40 minute delay, luckily there is a small playground right next to the gate we were departing from. The running theme in our household still holds true. Our even and odd numbered children sat with each other again, it’s so fascinating to watch that happen.
After spending what seemed to be twice as long with the rental car company than the flight itself trying to put the toddler seat they gave us, we pulled out to take a 20 minute drive to the Hotel Montreal. As we were pulling into the hotel parking lot, Bonnie turned to me and said “we may not be staying here all week.” I guess the site of a few women probably advertising for the worlds oldest profession may have painted an unfair picture of this “hotel” we are at. We will see.
Today I had to get a ton of work done since we will be out of town Wednesday through the following Monday. Luckily my paralegal is worth her weight in gold and she has proven time and again that she is invaluable.
I didn’t just leave my small law practice while we are here. I have a paralegal working 20-30 hours a week for me and a courier that delivers important documents all over the Bay Area. It’s hard to explain this but we are blessed that my office has only gotten busier since we’ve been gone. It’s all God’s doing, not mine.
So we leave tomorrow night, we are packed, and the kids are excited. Our oldest is especially excited because we will be touring a very very very very very very creepy island that is decorated with broken and disfigured dolls. Very! We will be doing this on of course, Friday the 13th. Hooray!!!!!!
Our youngest has been so adorable lately with his new haircut that I had to post a photo here. And even though I won’t update the next six days with the blog until we come back, I’ll post a photo Bonnie and I took of a place similar to where we are going this week.
Our third child just before he walks into class.
Finally a little clue as to what we will be seeing this week. (No we aren’t flying to Egypt)
This is outside of Cairo, well over ten years ago. Bonnie does not age, unfortunately for her… I do.
Our Family Adventure 