The last day in Mexico! Monday is Labor Day here in Mexico, and it was interesting to see that of the traditions I enjoyed most while in Spain – the puente, or lengthening of an already long weekend – is alive and well in Mexico. We came down to the lobby at 7:30 to find it absolutely overrun with college-age kids. Whereas we’d been seated immediately for breakfast the last three days, we had to wait a good 15 minutes this time around.
From the start, today had been designated an extra-work day – since I was only going to be working for four days, and since there were six units to be released at the rate of one per day – we knew going in that Cliff would have to be doing the last third of the project on his own. But thanks to the excellent production department – and a quirk of the schedule that dropped one pass from the last unit - they were able to leapfrog Unit 6 over 4 and 5 for when we arrived that morning, and then feed us Unit 4 to review later on in the hotel. And a good thing, too, since losing a pass meant that the text was a total disaster. We ended up having to rewrite a half-dozen activities completely, and I’m not a creative person to begin with when it comes to writing lesson plans in the first place. Fortunately we were able to recycle some of the previous activities so it wasn’t a total loss, but all the time we though we’d gained over the previous days was pretty much dedicated to pulling these two grades out. Ugh.
Lunch was a quickie order-in; we got all sorts of empanadas along with agua de Jamaica, the Mexican version of homemade Kool-Aid. Mine were pierna – pork loin – and milanesa – breaded chicken filet. All of the sandwiches came with lettuce, tomato and avocado. While neither Cliff nor I are big fans of avocados – which pretty much means we’ll never pass for natives – they fit these sandwiches perfectly, and after stuffing ourselves with sweet sweet energy-providing sammiches, we went once more into the breach.
Things were still pretty gruesome after lunch, but the promise of dinner awaited us, so we plugged on. Things wrapped up around 9:15, we grabbed our extra evening work and dropped it off at our hotel along with our laptops. And then it was off to my farewell dinner. We had reservations at La Casa de las Sirenas (The House of the Mermaids), which we had been told was in the historical center of town, near the cathedral. Mental note: when they say near the cathedral, they mean NEAR THE CATHEDRAL. we turned down a chained-off road, drove all the way to the end, and climbed three flights of stairs to get to an outside terrace. Upon going through the final door out to our table, we looked across from us and saw the side and back courtyard of the cathedral, spectacularly lit in all of its glory. We could also see the Palacio del Gobierno (Government Palace) and part of the ruins of the Templo Mayor, the original main temple built by the Aztecs when they build the city of Tenochtitlán. The temple was later mostly disassembled and its bricks used for the cathedral, but parts of it are still visible. It’s too bad it was dark because it would have been nice to take a walk around the Zócalo (the main plaza), but instead, the entirety of my tourist view of Mexico was from the back seat of a Renault in a brief spin through the neighborhood.
Our party of twelve had a table waiting for us, and after a round of drinks, we all ordered heartily. My dinner started off with a caldo mixteco, a spicy tomato-based broth with rice and shrimp. It reminded me quite a bit of the spitfire shrimp that Mrs. Dave is known to prepare from time to time, and needed a roll or two to calm things down before the main course. My entrée went by the name of filete de cazuela, and consisted of a beef filet covered in hot peppers, served on top of a flour tortilla. On the side were two slices of queso panela, a type of white cheese, and and two pieces of nopal, better known as prickly pear cactus. And once the first round of beer had finished, Cliff and I ordered up a couple glasses of tequila añejo, the aged stuff that’s darker and much smoother than the white stuff that’ll pickle your Adam’s apple in a hurry.
The night ended with some pleasant farewells, and after Cliff and I were dropped off at our hotels, we said our goodbyes to our chauffeur/co-workers as well. Despite the clock having ticked past midnight already, we sat down with more page proofs and worked until 2:30 before surrendering in the interest of three hours of sleep…
When I first read the part about your lunch, I thought you were meaning the aqua de Jamaica was pork loined flavored. Sounds like something Jones Soda would do.