We are not BBQing

Alain went to work… which, in our Mexican lifestyle, translates to driving a couple minutes to the Internet Café and sipping coffee while uploading yesterday’s work.

While America is BBQing, we are just floating in the pool. Summer vacationers have started to arrive in our little neighborhood and unfortunately the first batch was not very pleasant. An American father and his two kids came to the pool. I said “hola” to the father who did not even acknowledge my presence so I decided to ignore him and his offspring. The little boy was just as obnoxious as his father. He said to M&O “so you *do* speak English?” and continued on ignoring them. The little girl seemed nicer and Oscar played a bit with her although, let’s face it, she was no match for his new Hispanic playmates. For the icing on the cake, here is what the kid told his father as they were leaving the pool: “Father, by the way, I wanted to thank you for taking time off to come with us to the swimming pool”. Yikes… what type of family is that? Would they thank each other for flushing the toilets?

M & O are starting to get some good colors and are looking more and more like the players in French national Soccer team (you know what I am talking about if you have seen the games). Talking about soccer, Italy just beat Germany with a spectacular game ending in 2-0. (Sorry Dirk! But imagine how your life would be difficult in a final Germany vs. France. By the way, Alain might have a problem. In fact if Italy is playing with France, he will have to watch the game at Walmart).

I will take a moment to congratulate myself and all my Italian friends for supporting Italy in these grandiose moments and for criticizing it the rest of the time. For me, who cares about soccer only on during the World Cup, I think it’s good to be patriotic for a month every four year and then be international the rest of the time.

Later on that day, we went to visit an incredible Spa and hotel just down the street from our house. The Spa is inside a Maya Pyramid style construction (a little kitsch), but the inside is very luxurious and they have all kinds of way to pamper their guests: from water therapy, to massage, and including been wrapped into chocolate. For the people who want to generate a minimum of effort they also have a gym, spinning classes and a climbing wall…but we are not going to be climbing walls, are we?

It is funny how living in New York takes away the wow effect… the guy who gave us the tour was still impressed by the place even if he works there. Meanwhile we felt we had to look a bit impressed and not let the New York “done it seen it” transpire. But hey, I was just happy to get a half hour of listening-comprehension in Spanish…

Back at the pool, I met brother of the woman who teaches French at M&O’s future school, hopefully he put a good word for them.