Waffles or omelet?

Since we were scheduled to leave within a couple of hours, and the flight was going to be long, we tried to keep Lorena from falling asleep in the airport. We managed, and she was soon asleep after takeoff. Oh, and I must say that she finds it most amusing when the airplanes “walk”, it is quite silly to her. Back to the flight; she watched the wings and said, “But look, the wings are not moving, they are not flapping!” Come to think of it, one really would expect the wings to flap, and that very thought guided many a failed attempt to device a flying machine. Later on, it might have been on that flight or a subsequent one, Lorena covered her ears and said, “I am covering my ears because I don’t want to hear: BOOM, BANG, PASSS, or, the plane is crashing!!!” Again an example of thoughts little kids have, sometimes they say them aloud, allowing you a quick glimpse into their heads, but many others they remain quiet thoughts,.

She was sitting with dad, and Arantxa was sitting next to me. With experience, we have figured that the best set up is to be seated on the same side of the plane, example seats 10A, 10B, 11A, and 11B. Lorena has to get a window seat so she can seat in her car seat. Then, Arantxa sits right in front of her, thus keeping Lorena’s kicks in the family. We can then all easily share books, toys, etc. and help each other out.

Arantxa and I were reading Pippi Longstocking among other things, so she laughed aloud frequently. When they came to offer us food, they asked her: “Would you like waffles or omelet?” She looked perplexed and asked them to repeat the choices. “Waffles or omelet?” repeated the attendant. Arantxa turned around, opened the window blind (it was pitch dark outside), and she told me, “but mom, it is nighttime!”

I had to explain that since we would have left in the morning, the food they had prepared was breakfast items. She took the waffles and managed to empty the syrup on her clothes. The flight attendants gave us a bunch of wet towels, and we cleaned as best we could, and it got all stiff but not sticky after it dried.

When we finally landed, it was quite late; and even more so after we cleared customs and immigration. We saw Palo and Vane (Pablo’s dad and sister) with the traditional red balloons, Yeya had stayed home sick. We went to the car rental booth, and found that calling Alamo to explain that the flight was delayed, and hearing from them that a note had been tagged to our reservation, was a waste of time. Why? Simply because we called Alamo, not Alamo Mexico. ARGH!!!!

We installed the car seats in Yeya’s car, and Pablo wanted to take a taxi; but it was really late and it had been a very long day. I ended sitting between the car seats (not an easy feat), Pablo drove, and his dad and sister sat on the passenger’s side.

Aeromexico is now exclusively using the new Terminal 2, we’d never been there. We followed the sign that said “Circuito Interior”, basically ignoring a Mexican driving rule of thumb: signs are randomly put in the city with no logic behind them. In this case, as in many others, it was worse to follow them. Side story. Once some friends and I were driving back to the city, and we followed a sign to the new highway. We followed the exit and ended up in a dirt patch of road right away. We thought we had made a wrong turn, so we backed up and tried again. We had followed the sign correctly. Then we understood: the highway was not yet built, but the sign was already installed.

All 4 adults kept trying to figure out where we were and how to get home. Arantxa fell asleep right away, she’d been awake many hours. Lorena was awake for the most part. The city was very difficult to navigate because they had had the brilliant idea to repave several of the main arterial streets at once (all to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the independence and 100th of the revolution next year). Many areas looked as if they had been bombed. After much driving, we pulled over to ask a policeman. Funny how we could do that with 3 passengers in the front seats; they guy did not blink, perhaps because everybody was wearing a seat belt.

Finally, we arrived home at about 3:30 am. Both girls transferred easily to the mattress that was set for them.