It's a Marrvelous Life: San Jose and Monterrey Mexico trips, parks, life

Trip to San Jose

Knowing we would be headed to Mexico without our kids, we schemed to make our trip to Michael's wedding extra long by going via San Jose. That way Dallin's parents got to spoil our kids while we were in Mexico and we got to see pretty much everyone in both of our immediate families! Daniel couldn't make it because Daniel and Hanna went to Utah instead to go meet their newly adopted son Miles! He's a cutie and I can't wait to meet him.

We watched Sunday's sessions of General Conference, played a few games, watched a couple of movies, attended church, went to the zoo, went out to eat a couple of times, went to the mall, ate bbq ribs, and chilled.

San Francisco Zoo

Last time we took Everett to the Happy Hollow Park and Zoo in San Jose he just wasn't that into it, but this trip to the zoo he loved. He knew the names of lots of the animals, wanted to show them to us, and even touched one at the petting zoo of his own free will. Adeline also enjoyed herself and did a lot of pointing. If you ask Everett about the zoo now, he talks about how the zebras and giraffes were his favorite, and how the goat and the bird pooped. Adeline wanted to be in the petting zoo by herself so she chased her grandma out, pushed the gate closed and yelled if she tried to come back in.

Everett said, "I'm ready." I said, "For what?" He said, "You take a picture."

There's a koala in the tree.

Kangaroos, macaws

Iguana, polar bear

Red panda, ?

Monterrey Mexico for Michael and Alicia's Wedding

My baby brother got married! My newest sister is named Alicia, which is pronounced uh-lee-see-uh. For most of their wedding day her friends and family also called me uh-lee-see-uh so that was fun. It still weirds me out every time I see her name in print, especially when Michael talks about her lovingly or when I see "Michael and Alicia". I have Skyped with her before, but this was the first time we got to meet her in person. She's lovely. She smiles a lot and just seems confident. We didn't get to be with the happy couple very much, which is expected, but we saw them being all sunny together and I think they make a good match.

Most of the time we were able to piece together our Spanish knowledge enough to know what was happening and be understood. Dallin speaks it quite well. The hardest part is understanding what other people are saying. I also had a few funny times of reading a word as if it were in Spanish and then realizing it was in English. When we got back to the US I kept trying to think of how to say what I wanted to say in Spanish and then realizing I didn't have to. And Dallin said he kept listening as though people were speaking in Spanish and then realizing they weren't. I was glad I had brushed up on my food Spanish vocab, that came in handy a couple of times.

I learned that Monterrey is one of, if not The richest city in Mexico. This news was rather sad to me because when we were driving in the more residential areas, there were a lot of very poor living conditions.
These pictures are from the internet but are like some of what we saw. Though the houses were all closer together.

Food

Dallin said taking pictures of the food would be too instagramy so I didn't. But here's some info about what we ate:
We didn't really know what we were eating most of the time. Nothing tasted bad except the red candy balls at the reception that turned out to be both sweet and chili powder flavored. I made the huge mistake of putting one in my mouth right before Michael and Alicia made their grand entry into the reception and started doing their awesome multi-song choreographed dance. Dallin said that's what I got for eating things that I didn't know what they were before the the bride and groom had even come in.
Our layovers were in Guadalajara and Tijuana, so now I've been to those places. And not just inside the airport because we walked out to get on our planes. :) In Guadalajara we had a delicious panini with an abundance of avocado and also had pineapple water. In Tijuana on our way back to CA I had a sincronizada bistek which was like an amazing steak quesadilla. Dallin wanted a good chocolate chip cookie so he ordered Subway which was an adventure because you have to do a lot of talking while ordering at Subway. His Spanish was so great that he did everything super until the lady asked if he wanted it for here or to go but Dallin wan't sure what she was saying. The lady next to him told him what she said and then said that she was surprised there at the end because she thought he must have been fluent with his good accent and vocab up to that point.
We stayed in Hotel Monterrey right by the Macroplaza.

It had a rather large breakfast selection and I tried most everything. I was proud of myself when I correctly assumed that the spread that resembled refried beans went on the crouton-like toast. There were a variety of pastries, yogurts, salsas, beverages, melons, and savory dishes with eggs or chorizo or tortillas, etc.
We ended up not having time to go to the cabrito place I had hoped we could go to, so we walked down the street and our Number 1 Spanish speaker Susan asked a street vendor for a restaurant recommendation. Thus we ended up at Mi Tierra which must mean more than just "my earth" and have something to do with meat. Dallin's torta was juicy and amazing. My tacos were quite tasty. The chips at the table were thicker than we tend to have in the states which made Dallin happy. Dallin had apple soda and I had Jamaica juice which turns out is made from hibiscus flower and might actually qualify as tea. Oops.
At the reception we ate some carrot soup, stuffed chicken in a creamy tomato sauce (I think), spaghetti in a creamy green sauce, mashed potatoes, peaches, and a white cake with strawberry filling and peachy tasting frosting (I think). There were a variety of cookies, pastries, and snacks on the tables including sweet empanadas, candies that tasted like M&Ms and jelly beans, and those horrid chili candies.

Government Palace

Museum of Mexican History

We had a scheduled tour with an English-speaking, very knowledgeable tour guide. I loved seeing things that were much older than the items I'm used to seeing, even in museums. A couple of parts I found exceptionally interesting were the Aztec civilization that the current Mexico City is built on top of, and some things about Mexican people today.

The city was built on a lake because the Aztecs believed they were supposed to build where they found an eagle eating a snake on a cactus (like on the Mexican flag). Part of how they built their city in the middle of a lake was by putting a bunch of rafts next to each other and covering them in seeded mud that sprouted roots to keep the rafts stable. Other things about the Aztecs: class systems, human sacrifices, a lot of warfare using intimidation, counted by 20s.

I gained a better understanding of the idea that most modern day Mexicans have mixed indigenous and European Spanish ancestry, and there's a lot of genetic variation in Mexico.
Not really from the museum, but from talking to the tour guide I learned about the cultural differences between people in different areas of Mexico. For example, the people in the area where Alicia is from tend to be kind of like the Texans of Mexico. More rugged, hard-working, and unpretentious, living farther apart from each other and having some cowboy/ranch culture.

The next four pictures are from the Ivory Room. They're not really a part of Mexican history because they're from this lady's collection from other countries, but they're amazing.

Monterrey Mexico Temple

My Grandpa Perazzo performed the temple sealing. I loved it. It reminded me of when Dallin and I were sealed. He spoke in English and paused often for the Spanish translator. They had a civil marriage with a judge shortly before and the temple ceremony was just so much more. It felt more important, more lasting, more beautiful. It also helped that I could understand what was being said.

Note that I got to see my cousin Sarah and all of my living grandparents! My Grandma Perazzo was cracking everybody up while we waited for the sealing to start, joking about playing musical chairs as she was moved from seat to seat in the sealing room.

Monterrey Reception

Dancing

Alicia wanted to know if we liked dancing, because there was going to be a lot of it. The thing is, she can dance, I don't know that that trait extends to all Alicias. But I enjoyed myself. At one point Michael danced with me and Alicia danced with Dallin to properly instruct us in how to dance like the locals. There was one crazy fast line dance near the end that I eventually was able to keep up with but that may have given me a few small abdominal contractions later that night. There were times when people were all dancing as couples and times when there was a large circle with people takong turns showing off their moves in the middle. Normally these after party things go til at least 3am so having people go home at midnight was unusual. I was glad that we were two time zones ahead so it didn't feel quite as late to me.

A segment of Michael and Alicia's dance at their Monterrey reception.

YouTube muted this video because the songs are copyrighted.

Right after they got done, these cute little kids started dancing and at first I thought it was part of the program but no, they just wanted to dance, and continued to do so throughout much of the night.

Traditions

Besides the bouquet throw and garter toss there was also a money dance where people put money in a box and then danced with either the bride or groom. I got to dance with Michael for this.

My favorite moment of watching one of these traditions was when none of Michael's family knew what was happening but the men his age carried him away. My dad was like, "They're taking his clothes off and carrying him outside!" But really they just took his sock and shoe off, stuck his foot in the corner of the cake and carried him over to Alicia to have her lick a bit of the frosting off.

The next two pictures show an activity where the men wore aprons with funny sayings on them and the women wore veils. As this activity was beginning, Alicia's mom came up to me and told me, indicating my pregnant belly, that it would be too dangerous for me to participate so I was pretty interested in what they were going to be doing. They joined hands and ran around really fast snaking back and forth and nearly whip-lashing each other going under the bridge made by Michael and Alicia. Dallin's apron said (in Spanish) "I have the last word, if my wife says so." Jacob led the whole procession.

Here the men danced around the soda bottle, tying to do their fancy footwork as close to the bottle as possible without knocking it over.

The border in Tijuana

The airport actually extends into both the US and Mexico. And since there's also a taxi in this picture let me just say I was happy to take taxi rides to and from the airport. The funniest part was when we were headed down a main freeway and then the driver slows down and pulls off onto this random looking side road. He really knew how to get where he was going. That and he knew how to drive in what seemed like crazy driving conditions. It seemed like he knew the roads so well he was anticipating potholes. Jacob did a great job driving when we were with him on this trip but there were times when I wondered if we'd be able to get over to the lane we needed to without dying. The taxi fares were much cheaper than in the US and the second taxi driver even tried to give me back change when I was giving him a tip.

Parks and Walks

We spent a lot more time outside in March than in February. One really nice thing is that our new next door neighbors don't smoke so we can simply play right outside our back door.

Manito Park