Andrew flew out 6 am Sunday morning. He was here for three weeks, a week longer than originally planned because he caught a cold and wanted to recover and he was enjoying himself here and he didn't need to get back right away; so he gave up a week of sightseeing in Mexico to spend the time with us instead. Say it with me now: awwwww.
I've told you about our visit to Chicago to visit his aunt and uncle. He also spoke at the local library about the Zapatistas and Chiapas and what he is doing there. The total of nearly 20 people was a very good turnout for our little library.
He will be in Chiapas until mid-April, then home -- or possibly traveling to see friends around the US and the world -- until June, when he goes back to New York to start med [summer] school.
When Andrew was in Chiapas, eating beans and tortillas and on special days rice, he lost a pound every 64 hours for 2-1/2 months. As part of our parental obligation we fed him well while he was home.
Vegetarians, look away. This photo even grosses me out.
From the left, that's three New York strip steaks, four T-bones, and six Porterhouses. Smokey hit a sale on steak at the grocery store, this was all <$6/pound.
Here's how a couple of the Porterhouses looked when grilled.
He said that one of the steaks was at least the equivalent of the amount of meat in the average Chiapan's diet in an entire year. Yeah, we totally used his being home as an excuse to eat huge steaks.
Part of the fun of having steak is that Andrew always makes a huge production out of feeding the fatty scraps to the dogs. They have to work for their treats. First, they must wait politely.
Sometimes he teases the dogs by offering the treat to a cat. Cats, being the cautious types they are, sniff it all over just to be sure we haven't nurtured them and raised them and housed them and paid the vet bills and snuggled them and cleaned their litter boxes all these years just to use this opportunity to poison them.
Bear is an old, old dog. All she has to do to get her treat is to say please. Lucy, however, is required to dance on her hind legs for 10+ seconds and s-t-r-e-t-c-h to get her morsel.
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I'll leave you with some of the funny things people said to Andrew in Chiapas.
Do you wear your hair like that because of your religion?
(On seeing a jet plane way up high in the sky) Where is that plane going? Is it going to Mexico [City]?
How fast do planes walk?
(He asked one of his students if he knew what snow was.) Sure, you buy it at the stand in Ocosiningo. It comes in strawberry and orange and mango.
One of the books in the school referred to ice. The students asked what ice was, and Andrew was at a loss to explain it in terms they could understand. Subtropical climate, no electricity, no freezers.
So he is bringing back these pictures -- ice, frozen lake, snow, pontoon boat*, dock.
* I told him to tell them that this is the simplest, cheapest, most bare-bones pontoon boat one can find in the US, to which he added, It still cost $2000. That will blow their minds.
