My trip, with one small hitch which I will explain in a moment, went pretty much as scheduled. Fortunately, the overkill on airport security that followed the incident at Christmas on the flight to Detroit, has abated somewhat. It is back to 1 carryon plus a personal bag on board. I had no long lineups for immigration or security. However, it was eye-opening at the bridge for entry by automobile. The grilling by the immigration officer was extensive; the days of in and out of the US are long gone. Many Americans no longer visit Canada often, not because of Canadian red tape, but because of the hassle getting back into their own country! Americans used to sneer at Europeans for the hassles they used to have visiting other European countries. Now, Europeans can travel freely without visas or other red tape; the US is now not very far behind places like North Korea, Myanmar, etc. Americans are rapidly losing many of their freedoms. Ironically, the people who are screaming most about the growth of government as a threat to freedom are also the ones demanding ever greater infringements of their freedoms in the nane of ‘national security’. Homeland Security is more and more creating a situation that reminds one of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
The only hitch on the trip came right at the end. I was in Houston, the plane to Guadalajara was there and ready to go and most of us had had our tickets and ID checked ready to board. Then came an announcement, “We have a delay because the captain lost or forgot his passport; he cannot fly to Mexico without it. We shall have to get a replacement.” It took about 40 minutes; the first officer, a woman, took over as captain and the replacement filled in as first officer. Fortunately, Barb was watching the progress online and learned about the delay before leaving home. She felt the practice of driving to the airport at night was good.
We went to a chamber music concert in the Northern Lights Music Festival on Friday night and have the final concert for this year tomorrow night. The Canadian Club has the Canadian Ambassador as speaker for their March meeting, also tomorrow in the afternoon. It will be busy. Also, a number of our snowbird friends are leaving at the end of March. After that, things should start to slow down a bit.
Yesterday, we ended up with 4 girls from LIA. For some reason that none of us have been able to figure out. Fatima has been reluctant to go out with us for several weeks now. Yesterday, she told Alvia that she wanted her friend, Glorieta (one of the recent arrivals since Christmas), to go with her. We agreed. We ended up putting the twins in the front seat sharing the seat belt! We see large numbers of kids sitting in the back of pickups, but Barb insists that the girls always wear seat belts regardless of how rare that is in Mexico. It turned out to be a very easy day. We took them to the Ajijic malecón (waterfront park). We also had gotten some little shovels and buckets for sand box. Well, they loved that and played happily for over an hour in the sand. Glorieta is the one in the blue and pink top in the center of the sand pile photo. Also, Dariana in the upper right corner is wearing the light blue sweater that Barb knitted; Barb was very pleased to see that. Then, we went to another play area where they have installed more equipment, including the little merry-go-round in the second photo. Again, they played for over an hour. Glorieta is a live wire and had all of the girls constantly on the move. By then, it was time to bring them here for ice cream and cookies. We didn’t even have to lie down, as we usually do, after we got back from returning them to LIA.
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