a typical Mexican Saturday

A typical Mexican Saturday: A trip to the farm, a little soccer, an attempted kidnapping, then churros.

Last week the kids went to Tio Pepe's camp where every day they got to ride horses, hold bunnies and ducks, muck the stables, feed the chickens and collect their eggs, learn to plant, do science experiments, and most importantly, get out of the house. Yesterday was their presentation.

Iris the Patito:

 Claire the Conjejito starred in an anti-littering skit:

Elijah boogied down as a potro:

Then we hung out at the granga:

 

That evening, we ate spectacular food at Café Tacuba, housed in a mansion that’s 400 years old in downtown DF. When we headed out, the streets were very crowded. I am used to getting attention as we are visible minorities, so when a friendly woman who was walking with a stern man came up to me and started a conversation, I thought no ill. The kids and I were ahead of David and the friends we were hanging out with. So they had a better view of what was going on. The woman had her hand around Claire’s neck in what I lie to call the “doggie collar” as she engaged me in conversation. She asked if the kids spoke Spanish. I said they understood, but the girls (whose hands I was tightly holding onto) only spoke when they wanted too. Elijah ran up to her and told her he spoke Spanish splendidly. She greeted him, took his hand, and started walking ahead of us. Our friend quickly ran to them, grabbed E’s hand back, and the woman disappeared. Note to the grandparents: that may not have been a kidnapping attempt. Note to me: That may have been a kidnapping attempt. Our friends (Vanessa and Joel) were convinced it was an attempt since it's not uncommon in that part of town with that amount of people.

The crazy thing is that we had had the kidnapping talk with the kids that very day and warned them about people forcefully grabbing them. We never thought to mention people who slyly gain their trust. They got that talk later. But it’s such a hard balance: scaring the guts out of your kids so they look at everyone as potential torture artists while at the same time helping them understand that most of the people in the world are good and that we are all children of God.

We asked Vanessa to tell us about horrid kidnapping episodes her clients had suffered over churros and hot chocolate.