We saw six bulls and three matadors, what is typical for an afternoon. Each showdown was pretty short and I don’t recall it lasting much longer than 15 minutes. Each time a bull came out, the matador greeted the new bull with some maneuvering of his large cape.

Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Mexican army’s victory over a French Army in the Battle of Puebla. The holiday is only celebrated in the city of Puebla and the United States. Today is more of a U.S. holiday than a Mexican holiday.

León is the fifth largest city in Mexico with about 1.2 million people and it is the shoe making capital of the country as well. While León was interesting, the real gem of the area is the smaller, historic, capital town, Guanajuato, Guanajuato with around 70,000 people and a very unique underground maze of roads. It is a World Heritage Site. Most of my very favorite photographs and paintings of Mexico are of Guanajuato, Guanajuato.

Our Chinese friends have been asking how we will celebrate Belén’s first birthday. Apparently it is the custom in China to put the following items in front of the child and the item they choose will determine their profession.

One of the engineers on my team went to Brazil in January and brought Belén back this bikini.

Nina, our Chinese friend, who we knew during our time in Shanghai showed up on my aisle at work and I was able to say Hi. She immediately asked about the baby and then looked down at me and said, “ooh, you look pretty good.” I smiled both internally and externally as it was so refreshing to hear an honest assessment. An American would never say, “you look pretty good.” They would either say, “you look fantastic” or they would not say anything. After getting used to it, I love the honesty of the Chinese about physical attributes. While it can be a little startling at times, it is yet another breath of fresh air.

The humorous, obvious answer was their pigs. But the answer was incorrect because pigs should not be plural. It was their single pig.

The baby’s head is much smaller than my husbands. Maternity leaves in socialist countries rock!

I about jumped out of my shoes when the minister started reading a scripture about how the wife must submit to the husband and the husband must love his wife. Why and the hell must the only the wife submit? I knew that the minister had not gone over this prayer with Anna as she would surely have put the kibosh on this reading. In talking with her later, I found out that this was literally the only part of the ceremony that the minister had glossed over in the rehearsal.

Later Anna and Derik met up with us at our hotel and we pretty much spent the day hanging out by the pool and ocean, reading, swimming, enjoying food and drinks and relaxing in chairs and hammocks. It really doesn’t get much better than this. Later there was the usual afternoon downpour and it was probably good we all went inside for a bit as our skin had gotten more sun than we had expected. It is always crazy how easy it is to burn this close to the equator. My mom is still talking about how she cannot understand how she fried herself. It is quite easy to do here.