September 26th, 2011
“Dad, will you and mom stay up all night decorating the house for me?”
That was Jacob’s question to me at bedtime the evening before his fifth birthday. Jacob had already had his birthday party a few weeks ago. When scheduling means that parties happen that far away from the boys’ real birthdays, they get a smaller celebration with just Terah and me where we open their presents from us. A low-key thing, so we weren’t planning to decorate the house. I said, “Well, I don’t think we’ll be doing all that since you already had your birthday party.” And the look of eager anticipation on his face turned to a very sad and disappointed look, and made me feel really bad. Uhoh.
So while Jacob was sleeping, I mentioned it to Terah. We decided we should improvise something simple, so she found some old streamers and we taped them up, running them through several rooms in the house and across his door. It took a few minutes using supplies we already had, but the joy the next morning was priceless.
“Oh dad, you said you wouldn’t stay up all night, BUT YOU DID! Oh I am SO HAPPY! YAY YAY YAY!” And he ran through the house to discover what else was set up. Then he ran to find Oliver and gave him a tour of everything.
Then we sat down to open his presents. Here he is, holding a present from Terah and me:
That’s a copy of The Lorax. My friend Jonathan had brought a copy along during our road trip in Mexico, and Jacob was really excited about it. And didn’t really want to give it up, because “You can only get The Lorax in Mexico.” He (and Oliver) really enjoyed all his presents — he also got a train book from us (which he said, “Oh, yay, it’s the book they have at preschool!”), and a game and some other presents from the distant relatives.
But the highlight was something of an impulse buy. I was at the RadioShack in Derby — a place I’ve written about before, It is what a RadioShack should (and used to) be. It has a large amateur radio section, sells all sorts of coax by the foot, and provides astonishingly good post-sale service. Well, I was there with a radio question, and Mark (the owner) — who is an excellent salesman in a positive way — pointed me to a display of snap kits. I noticed their Electronics 101 Snap-Kit (a rebranded Snap Circuits Jr. SC-100). A ham in Pennsylvania had suggested them to me once, and as Jacob’s birthday was coming up, I gave it some thought. The kit said ages 8 and up. I asked Mark what he thought about a boy just turning 5. He said, “Well, probably not normally. But knowing you, if you’re there to work on them with him, I think he’d enjoy it. But I wouldn’t have him work on it by himself.” I agreed and we bought it.
I pondered how to explain the concept of this thing to Jacob. Eventually I decided I would call it a “toy-building kit.” He understood that.
Jacob and I spent hours together working with it. He would flip through the book, either picking circuits that looked interesting or telling me what kind of circuit he wanted to build. Then I would tell him what to put where, and he’d snap them together and play with them. He only played with each finished product a few minutes before he was ready to try another. Once I got him very excited with my offer to show him how to hook up two switches in parallel for the fan he built (and later introduced the parallel vs. series concept by hooking them up in series instead.) Here we are working on it together.
Jacob repeatedly called Terah over to look at the things he built. He was very excited that he assembled it himself. Eventually, Oliver (age 2) came over wanting to help. So he sat on my lap, and handed parts to Jacob, then Jacob put them on the grid. Oliver really enjoyed being involved in this way, even though I had to keep him from doing things like ripping the capacitor off its mount.
We tend to be modest in terms of the number of things we give the boys and their cost, reasoning that we, like many, already have too many toys in our house, and that greater cost doesn’t necessarily equate with a better experience for the boys. I particularly look for things with lasting value and unique experiences for them, and I think we succeeded this year.
But I realized quickly that the greatest value of this kit wasn’t electronics. It was having a great way for me to spend a lot of time doing things with the boys which all of us enjoyed. Those hours building things together were as much a present for me as for Jacob, I’m quite sure.
Jacob’s “real” party was a few weeks ago at the Great Plains Transportation Museum in Wichita. They let people rent a historic caboose to use for a birthday party for children. So we did that for Jacob this year.
That was a huge hit for the boys. Jacob got to help his grandpa make some pie (instead of cake) for the party. He enjoyed eating it, of course.
He enjoyed opening his presents high up on the observation chair in the caboose. And the boys got to play on all the other equipment in the museum. Jacob enjoyed playing tour guide for family since most of them hadn’t been there. He also enjoyed watching freight trains pass on the other side of the fence from the museum — preferably while sitting in one of the museum’s engines.
Oliver certainly didn’t get left out. Train-watching is serious business, after all.
Jacob has long talked about going to the “train museum” and the “airplane museum” (Kansas Aviation Museum) on the same day, so one of his birthday surprises was that we went to the airplane museum after his party. His favorite item there is a retired FedEx 727. Here he is walking down the rear of the plane.
And, of course, they played captain and co-pilot in several different planes.
Categories: Family
Tags: birthday
September 20th, 2011
The sixth in a series; see also parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
It’s been about two weeks now since we got back home. Every few days, our boys still talk about Mexico. Jacob talks about what he will want to do “when we go back” and how he’d like to see Jonathan over there again. Jacob, Oliver, and I look at photos from our trip a few times a week. This is all a sure sign that our boys loved the trip. And I keep trying to find Mexican food that tastes as good as the real thing (and, so far, failing). Another sign of a good trip!
I think it is possible to have fun, relax, and enjoy new experiences all at the same time. We did that in Mexico. We had a lazy afternoon or two with the boys taking naps or playing with other children at the house we stayed at. And we stayed in a beautiful hotel without air conditioning, explored old downtown areas and ancient ruins, and bought things from crowded markets and people selling things from a table along a road.
To anyone thinking about visiting: Go. Enjoy it, bring back memories, and live a little more serendipitously than usual. That’s what I hope to do when we visit Greece before too long.
Finally, here’s a photo of the painting I bought from a roadside vendor for $17. Make sure to view it full screen. I think it says more about Mexico than 6 blog posts do.
Categories: Family, Travel
Tags: mexico, mexico2011
September 15th, 2011
The fifth in a series; see also parts 1, 2, 3, and 4.
One piece of advice we got in Mexico went like this: the nicer a place looks, the worse the food and prices will be. Roadside taco stands will be great, and nice-looking restaurants not so much. That seemed to be accurate. We only tried one real nice-looking restaurant and it was very good (though pricy), but it may have been sort of an exception.
But perhaps the most interesting bit about eating in Mexico wasn’t the food. It’s the adventure.
We ate one day at Guadalajara’s San Juan de Dios market. In that huge labyrinth somewhere was a set of restaurants. They’d tend to have a small cooking area, usually just open, and a few tables. We chose one.
And at this point, I have to take brief detour and explain something. There are a lot of people in Mexico that do things for tips, and quite often without being asked. Some other examples might be washing a car’s windshield at a stoplight.
So anyhow, we had ordered our food, and before long, a guy wanders down the aisle and plonks down a boombox. And turns it on. And then he pulled out a microphone, which we quite soon realized was connected to the boombox. (I guess making it more of a karaoke box.) Anyhow, he started singing a song — decently — and seemed to be enjoying it. About 45 seconds into it, a competing boombox man plonked down a competing boombox 25 feet away, turned it on, and — yes, you guessed it — pulled out a microphone and started singing a different song. Worse than the first person but louder.
Eventually the boombox people left and our lunchtime conversation could resume. But pretty soon a drum guy showed up. He had a bunch of drums on a strap so he could just walk around and play them. He apparently decided that an excellent place to play them would be directly behind my head. I did not entirely agree with his decision, but hey, it beat the competing karaoke guys.
Eventually the drum guy left, and somehow between the time I looked down to get out money to pay our bill and the time I had it counted out, a clown had shown up and made several balloon animals for our boys. I tipped him, we paid, and then headed on.
You might think from this story that this would be an annoying series of events. And honestly, if it had happened in a big mall in the USA, it would probably have been both annoying and creepy. But really I enjoyed it. The fact that dueling karaoke happened, despite sounding really awful, was pretty funny and really seeing this whole parade of people was interesting too. It made American restaurants seem a little boring. You always know what’s going to happen here (and if something surprising does happen, the place probably gets a bad review on Yelp.) Interesting things sometimes happen at mealtimes in Mexico and I like it that way.
I had a torta ahogada (drowned sandwich) at that restaurant. And at this point, another brief aside.
I’m the kind of person that can go to an average American restaurant, see items on the menu helpfully indicated as spicy, order one, and genuinely wonder if other people would find them spicy, because I either don’t notice spiciness at all, or maybe notice a tiny bit if I concentrate really hard. Others, meanwhile, might take a bite and lunge for the water. Having said that, I know people that lived in Thailand for awhile and I have nowhere near their tolerance for spiciness.
So, having been in Mexico a whole 24 hours or so, I decided not to follow Jonathan’s wise lead in ordering a torta with the spicy sauce on the side. I figured I hadn’t had anything spicy yet, so maybe this was would be nice and mild for me. Via Jonathan’s translation, I ordered it with the spicy sauce. I believe the phrase I heard him use was “con chile“. The waitress looked at me, gave me an amused “the American is ordering it con chile? Hahaha….” sort of smile, and went off.
Pretty soon our food arrived. (The food always seems to arrive pretty soon in Mexico, by the way.) Oliver was having a bit of a culture shock that day, and mostly refusing to eat (once hunger got the best of him later, he really enjoyed Mexican food.) But the rest of us dug in, including me.
I enjoyed my torta. It was spicy, but not too bad. I took some big bites (it was, after all, a thick sandwich) and was really enjoying it. For about a minute. Slowest-acting spiciness I’ve had in awhile.
Then it hit me. Spiciness, and lots of it. I took a big gulp of my horchata (a creamy sweet rice drink that I found at many restaurants). That helped. A little. I really liked the torta and ate it, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the waitress noticed how extremely quickly a drank my horchata…
Another interesting experience was in Guanajuato. It was raining as we walked towards the Guanajuato market. Their market was large and similar in concept to the Guadalajara one, though a lot smaller. The restaurants were all in a row, in a side of the building that was open to the outside. Most were on the ground level but it looked like a restaurant or two were upstairs.
As we approached, all of a sudden people were yelling at us. First it was a guy on the second story, then pretty soon people at the restaurants on the first floor did so as well. They were yelling rapidly in Spanish, waving their menus around in the air. I’m imagining they were naming foods they sold or reasons to eat there, but I don’t know enough Spanish to know. As we walked down the long row of restaurants, the ones we left behind would quiet down in disgust and other hopeful restaurant owners would take up the yelling and waving cause. I imagine if we did some time-lapse videography and walked up and down that row, we could produce an effect not unlike the sound of a dot-matrix printer going back and forth on the page.
Anyhow, we selected one of the quieter restaurants pretty much random. The others then quieted down until another person chanced to walk past — at which point it would get loud again. The lunch there was good but I think I mainly will remember it for the selection process!
On our way into Guanajuato, we stopped at a wonderful roadside taco place. In typical fashion, they had a large vertical pork thing (I don’t know the proper word for it) from which they would carve off meat on the spot anytime someone ordered something with pastor. We found a table. And we ordered a few tacos and such. They were usually a few pesos each (working out to less than a dollar), small round things on a soft tortilla, with meat, cilantro, and onion on top. And typically delicious. They had very little in common with an American “taco”.
We’d often order a few, and if we wanted more, just order more. They were made quickly enough for that. Tacos were very similar from one restaurant to the next. My favorite flavors were pastor (pork), chorizo (sausage), and bistec (beef steak).
A restaurant in Guadalajara — sadly I’ve forgotten its name, since we kept calling it “the potato place” — had what I might call a Mexican version of the loaded baked potato, with a meat, queso (cheese), a delicious sauce with a flavor unlike anything I’d had before, and some garnish. But really my favorite thing from that restaurant was their amazing juices. I am not much of a juice drinker normally, but in Mexico I went for them whenever they were offered. What passes as fruit juice in the USA has about as much resemblance to a real Mexican fruit juice as Taco Bell has to a real Mexican taco stand. (Very little, in case that wasn’t crystal clear.)
That particular restaurant offered three types of juices, which were, if I’m remembering right, aguas, frescas, and jugos. I has a jugo verde (green juice) on the first visit there. It was good, but the one I can still remember was called, I think, the fresa fresca (fresh strawberry juice). And it was incredible. I’m not sure how to describe it, other than real.
One observation before I end. It seemed a common thread at some Mexican roadside taco stands to not have soap in their restrooms. Instead there would be a plastic cup holding — I kid you not — powder-form Tide laundry detergent. It was amusing anyhow. My hands left those places extremely soft and smelling like laundry.
One of the last restaurants we visited on our trip was in Ajijic, near the Chapala lake. It was actually right on the lake and served seafood. This was the only restaurant with prices as high as I’d be used to in the United States. I ordered a stew served in a stone bowl. It came out sizzling, and since the very thick stone bowl retains heat well, it kept sizzling the entire time I was eating. It was excellent as usual.
Coming up in part 6: some thoughts on returning to the United States, our decision to visit, communication, and tips for anyone else considering a first visit to Mexico.
Categories: Travel
Tags: mexico, mexico2011
September 13th, 2011
The fourth in a series; see also parts 1, 2, and 3.
This post is going to be more a photolog than a narrative, and I apologize in advance for it being a bit disjointed.
I’ve already touched on these themes a bit in the other post, but now it’s time to focus on them. Immediately after leaving the airport, it’s quite clear that things are a little different. Trees are square. People ride around in the backs of pickups — sometimes on top of piles of debris. Left turns are made in front of other lanes of traffic going the same way. But those are just the things obvious from the road. It’s a lot of fun to enjoy the differences. First, the ubiquitous square trees.
They look pretty, and are found all over. I also found carefully-manicured trees in cone shapes, more cylindrical shapes, etc. It seems that tree care is taken seriously in Mexico. It was also not uncommon to see the bottom few feet of a tree painted white. A park in Guanajuato had a whole bunch of trees carefully trimmed.
And from up on the mountain, it still looked impressive (the green area behind the dome).
Driving in Mexico was interesting for a lot of reasons. The highways there aren’t quite as limited access as the freeways in the USA. It was quite common to see bicyclists, walkers, a mule, or some cattle ambling along the side of the road. Roadside taco stands don’t require taking an exit. You just pull off the road because it’s right there.
Some sights were a bit surprising. Cattle in a pickup, with rope, for instance.
Or cattle crossing the highway on the overpass.
Street vendors were everywhere. Stop at a red light and someone might spring from the side of the road and suddenly start washing your windshield (expecting a tip); try to sell you flowers, juice, or bug zappers; or even throw business card-sized advertisements for adult websites into any open windows they can find. One night we saw an incredible fire juggler. I would have tipped him well but he was too far away to do so before the light turned green.
Mexico’s history stretches back into prehistoric times, and we saw the Teuchitlan ruins at Guachimontones one day. It was truly a remarkable feeling to be able to walk down the middle of the ancient ball court, or to climb up one pyramid and see the other from it.
It’s not exactly architecture, but Jacob and Oliver sure enjoyed visiting the hot springs at Bosque de la Primavera. Jacob still remembers that “where the steam is, the water is 200 degrees, and we CAN’T TOUCH IT THERE!”
Back in Guadalajara, here’s a photo from the inside of the grand old cathedral.
Compared to the cathedrals we saw in Europe, this was of a similar general size and design, and perhaps only slightly newer. But one big difference: worshipers outnumbered tourists at every Mexican cathedral I saw, whether in the center of Guadalajara or at a rainy intersection in Guanajuato or a plaza in Tlaquepaque. It made them feel more alive, and perhaps more sacred as well.
One surprise was seeing people sitting on the steps of the cathedral in downtown Guadalajara selling trinkets such as beads. I think the only other place I had seen something like that was in New Orleans.
All of Guadalajara’s Centro was beautiful. Much of it survives from colonial days; I think a person could spend days exploring its museums and buildings. Way too many of my 900 photos were taken in Centro to post on the blog, but just for flavor, here’s one of the less than historic scenes.
Yes, that is a bus shaped like a tequila bottle.
Fountains were beautiful and common across Mexico. A few of them were easily reachable by boys, and ours sure loved those.
There was a lot of public art, including this interesting chair/skeleton/I’m not sure what it is:
And, just for good measure while walking around Centro, they tossed in an apparent Redundant Array of Inexpensive Typewriters.
I don’t know what they were doing, but there were about a dozen guys sitting out in the sun typing on their manual typewriters on their identical tables.
And who can leave Guadalajara without seeing one of North America’s most impressive traffic circles. I’ve got to hand it to the Mexicans for making something that is normally really boring into an interesting work of art.
Over in Guanajuato, a lot of driving takes place in the city’s vast underground tunnel system. Here’s a scene emerging from one of them.
Guanajuato was already getting decorated for Mexican independence day festivities (Sept. 15-16) while we were there.
Here’s a typical Guanajuato street scene.
Many of the streets were closed to traffic — and perhaps not wide enough to handle vehicles anyway. Those streets had a wonderful peaceful and slow feel to them.
I feel that I’ve barely done the trip justice with this post. The feelings of walking down a beautiful Guanajuato street, or stepping into a Spanish cathedral, or even seeing a bunch of guys with typewriters, just can’t be replicated. It’s brimming with history and character, and shouldn’t be missed.
Categories: Travel
Tags: mexico, mexico2011
September 12th, 2011
The third in my serious about my family’s recent visit to Mexico — see also part 1 and part 2.
Shopping in Mexico was probably the thing I was least prepared for. I probably had the biggest wins of the trip shopping, and also the biggest fails (though they weren’t all that significant).
It seems to me that shopping is all about serendipity. You almost have to be good at impulse buying. I normally try hard to resist impulse purchases, preferring to research and compare carefully before making a decision. That attitude didn’t serve me well in Mexico, and when I was able to overcome it, I got some great purchases.
Around here, some of the best places to shop are the ones that have been in business for decades. Anderson Office Supply in Newton, KS, for instance, has been around for over 100 years, and has — in stock, even — everything from a ribbon for my slightly obscure 1940s typewriter to local history books. Moler’s Camera in Wichita often meets or beats the online stores prices, and has better service.
But in Mexico the best places seemed to be packed into a large crowded shopping area, or a dusty stand along a road, or a guy selling stuff on a plaza somewhere.
Here is Guadalajara’s market (San Juan de Dios):
It’s an incredible open-air market. We spent quite some time there, even ate lunch, and yet I’m sure we saw only a small fraction of what they had. It was a cramped place, with small booths and tiny aisles, but all sorts of interesting things. Although I did appreciate walking quickly past the raw pork and fish corner. Terah bought some genuine extract of vanilla there, at a good price.
Some of the street vendors were selling what I think were butterfly toys — they had some sort of launcher that would launch them in the air, and they’d flutter and float down to the ground. We saw them mainly in Guadalajara Centro on our first day, and I (unwisely, it turns out) thought, “Hmm, a plastic toy — our boys would love it, but I don’t want to buy it on our first day. Besides, I’m sure we’ll see them all over or online.” Wrong on both counts. So there’s one of my fails.
My greatest win came on the road back from Guachimontones (an ancient pyramid site). Every so often along that country road, there would be a vendor with a table selling something or other. I saw some paintings out my window, thought “neat”, but — and here you can see how terrible an impulse buyer I am — didn’t actually put together that we should turn around and look at them until 10 minutes later after a bathroom stop for Jacob. We went back, and I picked out a beautiful painting on canvas of those pyramids at sunset. And the charge: 200 pesos (about $17 USD). Incredible and incredibly cheap, and there is a great place on my wall for it. The vendor was also the artist. I am kicking myself for only buying one. (No photo yet as it was too big to practically transport by plane.)
Another memorable purchase was this one:
This was another roadside find. We were driving through Ajijic, and I noted a rug vendor along the side of the road. I had walked past a rug vendor in the Guadalajara market, so I was keeping my eye out. I made a note to stop there on our way back out of Ajijic. So we did. This is a rug made in the Zapotec tradition, all hand-made, with natural dyes and wool. It was 550 pesos (about $46 USD), which I considered to also be a pretty good deal for what it was. I have no idea how many hours went into creating it, but I’m sure it was many.
My luck in shops wasn’t so good. We visited Tlaquepaque, which had lots of shops selling beautiful things. But the prices there were higher than I’d pay for similar things back home. Tonala’s shops were too inconveniently located to be practical with what were then tired boys, so we didn’t go in there.
I’m not used to shopping without planning, and perhaps am not very good at it. On the other hand, I really enjoyed making those two purchases, and only regret not buying another 200-peso painting! Maybe next time I’m in Mexico, I’ll even buy something on the first day there. Terah will be so proud..
Categories: Travel
Tags: mexico, mexico2011
September 11th, 2011
As I wrote in part 1, my family and I were in Mexico recently.
Today I’ll write about the places we stayed. We spent most of the time in a room we rented in a private home in Guadalajara. My friend Jonathan had found it for us, and it was not too far from his home.
The owner was a grandmother, and across the courtyard was more family, including a granddaughter close in age to our boys. They enjoyed playing together.
It was really a perfect arrangement for us. There’s no better way to be a part of local life when traveling than to stay in someone’s house.
Here’s our bedroom:
Notice the glass slats in the window — it’s a nifty, though not airtight, alternative to our regular windows. More on that later. More of the inside:
We had a bit of a language barrier while in Mexico, though never anything significant. My Spanish vocabulary started with almost nothing and I reached maybe a few dozen words by the time we left. Terah knew some Spanish from high school and college, and my friend was fluent. Our hostess also knew a little English. But we all communicated well enough. Terah or Jonathan would help translate when needed.
As I’d seen before, the children would say things to each other, but never seemed to be bothered that their playmates didn’t understand what was being said. They just had a great time anyhow.
On Sunday afternoon, when we came back from our activities, there was a buzz of activity. Children everywhere outside, running and playing. Adults too, chatting. We didn’t know exactly what was happening, but sent Jacob and Oliver out to play anyhow (which they were eager to do). The yard was enclosed by a wall, so children could pretty much run around without lots of supervision.
Eventually they were invited to have some birthday cake (ah ha!) — it was one of the children’s birthday. Jacob and Oliver actually were served the first two pieces of cake (as the “amigos”). Everyone seemed so friendly, warm, and welcoming.
Each morning started with breakfast at the house, followed by a scene like this:
That’s Jacob and Oliver, looking to see if Jonathan had arrived for the day yet.
I often noticed in Mexico that I was unsure if I was inside or outside. Here in Kansas, we can have a string of summer days that each exceed 110F (44C) — or a few weeks in winter that never get above 15F (-9C), even in daytime. And then we have some pleasant days like right now, too — or rain blowing sideways at 60MPH. In general, we spend a lot of effort keeping the outside, well, out.
It is quite clear that this isn’t a problem in the Guadalajara area. Some restaurants could have been described as buildings with large, open windows so you feel a lot of breeze while inside. Or perhaps as a simple shade roof with a few supports on the edges, so you’re never really “inside” at all (sort of like going under a small shade tent outdoors). To the extent that windows could close, many of them couldn’t be made airtight. It was clear that in that area, people spend more energy finding ways to invite the outdoors in rather than to keep it out, thanks to the year-round moderate climate.
Perhaps the best example of this surprised me one evening. We were arriving in Guanajuato, an old silver mining town in the mountains, and were going to spend the night at Hotel Socavón, which had been recommended to us by a local friend of Jonathan’s. From the street, the hotel looked tiny. But walk in, and you get in this old-looking (and feeling) entry tunnel:
That’s the front desk, apparently cut out of it there on the right.
We asked to see some of the rooms before buying — apparently a normal request around there. The innkeeper agreed, and gave us keys and directions to find them on the third floor. It included going up 2 flights of stairs, passing through a courtyard, and going up another flight.
It was after dark, and the hotel was dimly lit — something I was fine with. I thought we were stepping out into a beautiful atrium with some potted plants in the center of the building — something fairly common in some nicer hotels. Until I felt rain on my head. Then I realized that the courtyard, which began two floors up from the street, was open to the sky. Beautiful!
Here was the view from out room door:
And down the “hall”:
After getting home, a Google happened to turn up some reviews of this hotel. I was so annoyed at what some people wrote! One person gave them only 3 stars because they didn’t have air conditioning, had poor water pressure, and “lots of steps”. Someone else complained of the dark entry tunnel — something I couldn’t help but smiling about the moment I entered.
My review, which should hopefully get posted soon, is certainly different. I gave them 5 stars, because if I wanted a Super 8 with generic fluorescent lighting and the same layout as thousands of other hotels, I would have gone to Nebraska instead of Mexico. Most homes and local hotels in the region don’t have air conditioning because they don’t need it, and that’s just how water pressure is in Mexico (due to needing to pump it from municipal supplies to private storage tanks overhead). And who doesn’t appreciate entering a hotel through a brick tunnel? Ah, sigh…
This should give you some idea of the kind of travel we like: part of the point of traveling is enjoying the differences from home, and I think it is a huge mistake to be annoyed at everything that is different. Enjoy the differences!
Finally, here’s a photo of the staircase in the home we stayed in, which I thought was fascinating:
Categories: Family, Travel
Tags: mexico, mexico2011
September 10th, 2011
My family and I (including our boys) are just back from a great visit to Mexico. It was my first time there, and also the first time our boys have been outside the USA.
I’ll be writing about all the fun stuff in the posts to come, so you’ll have to bear with me on this one as I describe why we did something that appears to horrify a segment of Americans.
About a year ago, I wrote a review of Travel as a Political Act by Rick Steves. Rick’s point wasn’t actually directly political in the conventional sense, but summed up as:
I’ve taught people how to travel. I focus mostly on the logistics: finding the right hotel, avoiding long lines… But that’s not why we travel. We travel to have enlightening experiences, to meet inspirational people, to be stimulated, to learn, and to grow. Travel has taught me the fun in having my cultural furniture rearranged and my ethnocentric self-assuredness walloped.
He speaks of giving onesself permission to have a conversation with someone that doesn’t speak a language you know, for instance.
I got an email this spring from my longtime friend Jonathan Hall, who had moved to Mexico a couple of years ago. He invited my family and me to go to Mexico, generously offered to host us and show us around, and specifically mentioned my review of Rick Steves as a reason to do so, this was immediately intriguing. Due to his other plans, it was also something of a limited-time offer.
Those of you that don’t live in the USA may not know what sort of stories we get about Mexico over here. Most of them involve either illegal immigration to the USA or the Mexican drug war. Occasionally there is some sort of drug-related violence on the US side of the border as well, which always makes the news. There are a lot of people that have the perception that Mexico is a dangerous place to be. Terah even knows some people that grew up in Mexico and are too afraid to return.
So we did some research, asked some questions, and it became pretty clear that yes, some parts of Mexico are dangerous, but many parts are really quite safe, and Jonathan had invited us to one of those.
The reactions we got from Americans when we told them of our plan ranged from excitement that we would get to visit a beautiful country to concern and worry about our safety. Besides that, I knew almost no Spanish and Terah had a few high school and college classes years ago to go on. And, we knew that Mexico would, in many ways, be more different from the USA than Germany was.
We concluded that this would get us out of our comfort zone in a significant way, have lots of great things to do, be a good experience for the boys, and something that we wouldn’t do without Jonathan. So we bought the tickets for it!
As you might notice, I’m quite glad we did. I’ll follow up with the details in the next stories, but for today I’ll end with the story of getting there. It involves two cute boys, so of course it’ll be interesting. Jacob is almost 5 and Oliver is 2, and neither one of them had flown for over a year. Despite leaving home at 5AM to drive to the airport (about an hour away), they were both awake and alert. Jacob was jabbering away the whole way there. He enjoyed the security process and found it interesting — I had to explain that they were checking to make sure everyone was following the airplane rules.
Then as we walked to our gate, he pressed his face against every window, looking at the parked airplanes in the dark. Oliver would see him doing this and run over to join him. With a bit of help, he noticed some airplanes had “United Express” painted on them, and others had “American” with an “AA” on them. He would talk about “American AA” and United Express airplanes for the rest of the week whenever he heard one in the sky.
I sat between the boys on our flight to Dallas, and Terah was in the row ahead of us. This is how Jacob spent most of the flight.
And Oliver, who had the aisle seat, enjoyed paging through the inflight magazines, safety brochure, wifi instruction card, and airsickness bag.
The real highlight came at the Dallas/Ft. Worth (DFW) airport, where we had a connection. And the reason: we needed to take a train to get to our connecting gate. The DFW Skylink system really works very well — but the boys cared most that it’s a TRAIN. It was difficult to get them both away from it when we got off. They wanted to see it leave, stay and watch the next one come, etc. Jacob was only happy when he realized he could see the Skylink trains running high above the window at our departure gate for Guadalajara.
The 2.5-hour flight to Guadalajara got a little long for them, but they managed OK. We struck up several conversations with friendly people that knew English as we waited in various lines. It seems to be something of a rarity for American families with young children and no Mexican heritage to visit Mexico. People went out of their way to be friendly and welcoming — even the customs officials. It felt like a great start to the visit. One Mexican man who was chatting with me encouraged me to learn some Spanish. I said my wife knows some, and that I had tried to learn some German back when I took foreign language classes. Laughing, he said, “Why would you do that?” Not as an insult; it just genuinely didn’t seem useful to him. I think they were happy and proud that someone wanted to visit Mexico and was excited about it!
More to come.
Categories: Family
Tags: mexico, mexico2011
August 24th, 2011
I’ve sort of wanted a weather station for a long time. Lately, the ham radio hobby has intensified that, and I finally got one. When I finally got the serial link cable yesterday, well I was perhaps irrationally excited. Terah accused me of running all around the house while gathering up stuff for it. That probably wasn’t too inaccurate.
Anyhow, here’s the sensor suite.
The station is a Davis Vantage Vue, and they have pictures of the included receiving console on their site.
On the upper left is the anemometer (wind speed sensor). Next to that is the rain collector for the rain sensor. There is a solar panel on the front for power, and underneath that is the wind direction sensor. The white thing underneath the back is the temperature and humidity sensor, which is inside a radiation shield. There is also a barometer in there someplace.
The indoor console receives the data via a 900MHz wireless link. The console can also be connected via a serial, USB, or Ethernet link to a PC. All sorts of software can then do all sorts of things with it. The console itself, though, keeps a history, has hi/low reports, graphs, and current condition display that is quite useful already. But if course I’d want it hooked up to a computer.
I figured I couldn’t put the console in the basement next to the server due to wireless signal strength issues, but also didn’t want to require my desktop PC to be up for this to work. So I ordered the serial version, and some cheap DB9 to RJ45 adapter jacks. I have CAT6 strung throughout the house, so I simply converted a surplus Ethernet port to a serial port and it worked beautifully.
There are a ton of weather-related programs out there. My requirements said that I wanted something that runs on Linux. Options there include wview, vanprod, RRD Weather Graphs, Weewx, Meteo, and the commercial non-free Weather Display.
That’s quite a few choices. Of those, wview had the best support for various devices from various manufacturers, which I figure might be important down the road.
It can directly generate detailed weather webpages. It can also submit data to Weather Underground. Weather Underground has a feature called “rapid fire” which lets viewers’ screens update with current observations every few seconds. None of the noncommercial programs supported it, so I added it to wview. With my tree, it’s now sending Rapid Fire updates.
It also can submit data to the Citizen Weather Observer Program, which provides a way to both share it with others and provide it to forecasters at the National Weather Service and university researchers. It gets processed by their ingest system and is quality checked against their computerized QC metrics.
Jacob has enjoyed this — he got into assembling it, and often wants to go see if the anemometer is spinning.
And I was surprised to kind of enjoy working with C again. Perhaps that was because I didn’t have to touch malloc() even once?
Categories: General, Linux, Programming
Tags: weather, weatherstation
August 15th, 2011
After a couple of recent storms, we had some large branches down in our yard. Today was a new milestone: it was the first time out boys helped me clean up storm damage.
We all trooped outside, and for a minute, the boys kind of ran around while I found a saw. We needed to saw off a few branches that were down but still connected. I did one. Jacob wanted to try, but it was a little too hard. But on the second one, which went a little easier, he helped out and with my guidance actually did some sawing. He was very proud of his work.
Then we got into the pickup — always a highlight for the boys, even if we only drove it around on the yard. I brought it up close and started loading brush onto it. Jacob went around finding whatever pieces of wood he could carry, and happily threw them onto the pickup.
Oliver, on the other hand, meticulously picked up smaller pieces of wood and carefully set them on the rear tire — then shoved them off the back. This really annoyed Jacob because Oliver wasn’t doing it right, so Jacob kept trying to find the wood Oliver was dropping. And then, of course, they got to play in the pickup bed.
Next it was off to the brush pile (also on our yard) to unload our 5ft high pile. I got the really heavy stuff mostly off. I told the boys they could throw whatever they wanted off the pickup. Jacob threw things onto the brush pile, and Oliver, who doesn’t really have any aim yet, just threw things and enjoyed trying to figure out where they went. But the big highlight came when the boys got to sit in the back while I pulled the truck a few feet forward and the rest of the brush just fell off the end “all by itself”!
I complimented both of them on their good work – they both really did contribute. Terah commented that when they came in, they both kind of strutted in, looking very tall, proud, and like they did some Good Work with their dad. And later, when Terah said to Oliver, “Dad tells me that you were very helpful, Oliver,” Jacob overheard and came running in to say, “I was very helpful too!”
Categories: Uncategorized
August 7th, 2011
This afternoon…
Jacob: “These pancakes have sprinkles in them! Parties have sprinkles. I think we are having a party! Right, mom?”
Terah: “Sure, this could be a pancake party.”
Jacob: “And all parties also have ICE CREAM! So we should have some ice cream.”
Terah: “Uh, Jacob, I’m not so–”
Jacob: “Oliver, we are having ice cream!”
Oliver: “YAY!”
It’s amazing how fast sprinkles can get out of hand.
Later that day…
I had gone downstairs, pulled out one of the wonderful old hymnbooks I have in my collection but have rarely looked at, and sat down at the piano to play a bit. Oliver came in, sat down next to me, played a few notes, and promptly got down.
Jacob came in, sat down next to me, and took over our digital piano. He set it to provide some automatic accompaniment, selected a salsa beat, then hopped down as I continued to play a 4-part Mennonite hymn in my best imitation salsa style (not so good, in case you’re wondering). Jacob happily announced, “IT’S DANCING TIME!” He then picked up a large blanket and ran around the house, reminding us every minute or so that it’s dancing time at the top of his voice, while Oliver ran around randomly yelling “AAAAAA!”, and I went for maximum dissonance by attempting to play “Praise the Lord, Sing Hallelujah” to a salsa beat. Meanwhile Terah was sitting on the couch looking, well, a bit stunned.
Just another quiet evening at home.
Categories: Uncategorized
