A Much-Needed Home-Cooked Meal

We spent a little time at the hotel before making our way to Amalio's nephew's and niece-in-law's place, which was a short walk from the hotel. Ok, we hadn't planned on that happening. Are we living a charmed life?

Ljubica (or Yubi, if that's easier for you to pronounce) and Javier prepared a lovely meal for us. We started with lemonade, before working our way up to the tequila. We ate salad with corn, tomatoes, and carrots in a caesar-style dressing, croissants, fresh guacamole, and fried plantains with rice. (The last dish tracing its heritage to Cuba, and not Mexico.) The food was very tasty, and the company was unmatched.

We spoke for a long time on any number of subjects: Nethack, vegetarianism, Mexico's nascent folic acid campaign, Buddhism, Myers-Briggs personality tests, Mexico City politics, rennet (or why your cheese might not be vegetarian), cows' milk and twinning in humans, and raising children, to name a few of the topics.

We paused briefly for vegan Sweet Tamales. Mmmm, tamales. We made another brief pause for almonds and grapes, too!

Our hosts' son, Victor, had eaten a separate, kid-friendly meal in the living room, decked out in his Spiderman pajamas. Yubi had asked Javier to help put their son in bed, and so Javier did, but not before playing the shortest game of soccer on record. Jason made a very unsuccessful joke about how Americans put their kids to bed by taking them into their bedrooms, whereas Mexicans put their kids to bed by playing soccer with them. The joke seemed funny at the time, especially under the influence of the tequila, but not every joke can be a winner. =(

We didn't make it out of their place until almost midnight! We had so much to talk about, and so many games to play. (Javier showed us his modded Xbox with Commodore 64 and Atari 2600 emulators, and Shel just had to beat Adventure.

We said goodbye to our new friends and had a safe walk home to the hotel. It seemed that everyone we met along the way tried to sell us something or invite us into a club: 'No, gracias, buenas noches', and we got back to the hotel, called in a wake-up call, and went to bed.