Inspired by my husband's cousin, Carrie, (or is it second cousin once-removed? she's actually the daughter of his first cousin...) and the writing workshop I attended a few weeks ago, I will start blogging as of today.
This is really my second attempt at blogging. I tried it a few months ago but could not manage to get interested or excited about writing in it. I think I need to think of a topic or theme for the blog, but there are so many to choose from. I guess I can start by telling you about our trip to Mexico this weekend.
Then we hit another snag getting our car permit in Laredo. There were no directions posted anywhere and no one seemed to know what we needed to get a permit and five people into Mexico. They had us go through the same line three times and each time they kept forgetting to ask us for a copy of this document or that one. One-hundred and forty dollars and one and a half hours later we were finally back on the road. Unfortunately, we had one hour before the wedding was supposed to start. Darn.
Once you cross the border, the drive down to Monterrey from Laredo is 145 miles. (It's 225 from Austin to Laredo). When we realized we were going to miss the actual wedding ceremony, we decided to just enjoy the drive. Well, I decided that. The kids and David had decided that the moment we left the house. It was hard to enjoy the drive at first because the drive is not so pretty right out of Nuevo Laredo. All you see in this segment are trucks parked on the side of the road, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, cardboard houses, stagnant water, and blown out tires. The scenery changed dramatically once we were half-way to Monterrey. Breath-taking views of mountains and valleys appeared. The dessert valley was covered in tall cacti and bushes with beautiful white blooms. It was easy to relax in this gorgeous scenery.
I got nervous again as we approached the city because we had no map of the city of Monterrey. All we had was the address of the hotel, but due to a fortuitous alignment of the stars, the hotel was on the main highway we were on as was a Sam's Club and Church's Fried Chicken and many other American companies. In some parts of the highway, it felt like we were back in the states. It was sad and disappointing and I couldn't help but wonder why people in Monterrey would want to eat Church's fried chicken when there are so many other delicious Mexican foods to choose from?
By the time we got to the hotel, we had missed the wedding ceremony and we still had to change into our party clothes. I thought we were going to miss the party, too, but I was SO wrong. When the cab dropped us off at the beautiful ballroom an hour latear, they were just finishing up the civil ceremony. It was 10pm when the party finally started. We got to dance and have dinner - very late @ 11pm! - and enjoy ourselves until the wee hours of the night. The kids napped during the early part of the reception and woke up in time to play with cousins and dance with us. The dance ended at 3 a.m. but the party continued at my brother's house until 6a.m. This last part of the party is called the torna boda and they serve menudo and tamales. Yum. But we were so exhausted that we took the chartered bus to the hotel from the ballroom and went straight to bed. We probably didn't fall asleep until 4:30a.m. and we were up at 9a.m. the next morning. After a leisurely brunch at my brother's house, we were ready to head back home around 2pm. We tried a new bridge -- there are 3 in Laredo -- but it still took us 1 hour to cross it. We got home at 10pm and we had parent teacher conferences this morning at 7a.m. What was I thinking when I scheduled those so early in the morning?
Despite the lack of sleep, we had so much fun that we are thinking of driving to Veracruz for part of our Christmas break!
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