September Status

I just got back from another spectacular weekend in Merida, Yucatan for Mexican Independence Day! I even managed to stay-up past 10 pm this time and my friends and I went to the Greeto (Viva Mexico!) and the fireworks!

Street Food and Party Lights

 It was a bit drizzly in the Yucatan, but David (the proprietor of my B&B of choice in Merida) has recently built a covered porch on the back of the hotel, so our group bought a pizza at Vito Coreleone (in the Centro - so Yummy!) and brought it back to the porch and read-away an afternoon. Evenings were spent gouging ourselves on cochinita pibil, panuchas, local soups, and crepes with cajeta!

Other than the drizzles, it was the perfect temperature out and the cloudy days were really pleasant for walking around the streets of Merida, empty of people, yet crowded with a mixture of deco and colonial style homes - some restored, some evolving, some crumbling like cookies left out in the rain.

My favorite store (Minaturas) and my favorite restaurant (Amaro)
as seen from the doorway of Vito Corleone Pizzaria.

Unfortunately I've come back to rain in Monterrey. Lots and lots of rain - today, courtesy of Hurricane Ingrid. So much rain, for weeks now, that school was cancelled today by order of the local government and there is an impromptu waterfall behind my house:

This is the sky's perpetual mood these days.
That is also the hummingbird feeder I recently
had to replace due to clumsiness.

Because of all the rain, I had some time to update my travel map, so I thought I'd post it here, as long as I was posting.

Otherwise, life is school: it's teaching, it's learning, it's growing little minds into critical thinking machines. The world is just turning on and on and on and in a few days I turn older than now, which, despite all the planning, is going to catch me unawares this year, I just know it.