A Post I Started Writing Almost Eight Years Ago -- La Toma de Zacatecas

As Super Husband and I gear up for another international adventure, I'm reminded of the one I neglected to write up.         Wow, written out like that it sounds terribly ominous.
It's not.

For Super Husband's first Spring Break as a bilingual elementary school teacher we jetted to Zacatecas, Mexico for ten amazing days filled with sightseeing, family, and delicious, delicious food.
We arrived in Aguascalientes on a Friday around lunchtime, and after being picked up by Super Husband's aunt and uncle, one of seven sets on his father's side, we were whisked away for gorditas. A great meal to reintroduce our palates to real, in Mexico Mexican food.
We spent that evening at his grandparents' house, surrounded by aunts, uncles, and cousins eating pipián and shrimp soup.
Saturday morning we drove with his aunt and uncle and their two children to El Cerro de la Bufa, a hill instrumental in Pancho Villa, Panfilo Natera, and Felipe Angeles' taking of Zacatecas in the 1914 "revolucion mexicana".
The view of Zacatecas from the hill is pretty breathtaking, and makes it easy to see why it would have been strategically important.

Zacatecas seen from El Cerro de la Bufa

The Cerro also has a new camera obscura, allowing visitors to view attractions in the city up close, and in real time.
This "real time" bit was very, very important to the woman operating the camera, as she repeated it about 12 times in our 15 minute look at the city.
From there we made our way to breakfast, where Super Husband and his 18-year-old cousin consumed an amazing number of gorditas (Super Husband was put to shame by his cousin's appetite), and then on to the Museo Rafael Coronel, a museum of Mexican folk art from Zacatecano Expressionist painter Rafael Coronel's collection, and is housed in the former Convent of San Francisco.
The collection, which includes Diego Rivera sketches and pre- and post-Columbian pottery and sculpture, is based around the gigantic mask exhibit. "The Face of Mexico" is a collection of more than 5,000 masks from pre- and post-Colombian Mexico, and puppets from around the world, including a set of wayang kulit puppets depicting a scene from the Ramayana. (This was of special interest to me as wayang kulit are Indonesian shadow puppets.)

There is definitely such a thing as too many masks

 _____________________________________________________________________________________

And that's the last thing I wrote on this blog.

2016 was an amazing year. The rest of that trip was lovely - we ate Tortas de Malpaso on the way to explore to Chicomostoc/La Quemada, an archeological zone and cultural heritage site, and Tosticarnes in Jerez, we were so very spoiled by Super Husband's family. In late May we traveled around Spain and England, and in early July Super Husband returned to Zacatecas to spend three weeks with his family while I tackled projects around our house. We flew to Hong Kong and on to Southern China immediately after his return for a lovely holiday and where I officiated a friend's wedding ceremony. We returned to Zacatecas together by car that December for Christmas, and spent an incredible New Year with his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins in Guanajuato. January of 2017 brought news that we would be welcoming a Fire Rooster to our midsts and we returned to Zacatecas that summer to share in the joy of expecting the next generation. Super Kiddo was whisked to his father's homeland before his first birthday, where he enjoyed being the center of attention and all the fruit he could get his chubby baby hands on. In November of 2018 Super Kiddo and I flew with my parents and sister to Peru, where the first few days were considerably dampened by my succumbing to altitude sickness but where Super Kiddo took some of his first steps atop Machu Picchu. In February 2019 we traveled to California for my great-uncle's funeral, and spent a day at Disney Land reinforcing for Super Kiddo the concept that it is, in fact, a small world after all. December of that year saw us heading to Maine, and the home my parents had just purchased there, for the first time -- little did we know that events of the coming months would see us relocating to the Midcoast! 

That rather nicely glosses over the turmoil of the entire pandemic. 

We did manage to travel some during these last four years - mostly between our homes in Houston and Midcoast Maine, but also to visit my sister in Denver, and to La Jolla, California for yet another celebration of life.

Super Husband continues to teach, now as a high school math teacher in a 220+ year old boarding school with much local prestige. He is finding adjusting to life in the Midcoast more difficult than anticipated, and really laments losing access to Houston's superb culinary scene. Super Kiddo is now a first grader at our local elementary school, where I also serve on the PTO as Secretary. Math and PE are his stated favorite subjects, but he has recently begun to read anything and everything. Working at our local public library filled my days until very recently, when I stepped back to return to university full time.

It is my intention to return to semi-regular postings here, but to be quite frank, I haven't really decided what that'll look like. Musings and rantings, pictures of tiny bees, and maybe an occasional poem, or maybe I'll forget about this entirely for seven more years. 

Let's see.