My family and I have recently returned from our annual summer visit to Mexico.
As a little background, I resided in Mexico a decade and a half, where I worked as an English teacher. There I met and married Lilia, and later our two sons (David and Raphael) were born. Several years back, I received a job offer stateside and so we moved here to the U.S. But we visit Mexico at least twice a year, in the summer and at Christmastime.
Spending time in Mexico is an effective way to visit my wife’s family, friends, old sites, and to reconnect with the country.
We drove into Mexico, and the border crossing and trip went smoothly. We had neither security nor mechanical problems.
We visited my wife’s parents (she is an only child) and also saw and at times ate with relatives and friends.
We like to go to the movie theater when we’re in Mexico, as the cinemas there are very nice and more reasonable in price than where we live in the United States.
The cinema business is a big one in Mexico, and many English-language movies are shown. If the movie is considered as being for children, the dialogue is overdubbed in Spanish. But if it’s not, the dialogue is left in English and there are Spanish subtitles at the bottom of the screen. I grew accustomed to this while residing in Mexico, and even though I know English, I find myself reading the subtitles.
All four of us went to the Angry Birds movie. Originally based upon a Finnish video game, this was an animated feature about an island of flightless birds (with one exception) which is invaded by a ship of pigs. It was dubbed into Spanish.
On another occasion, my wife and I went to a showing of the Independence Day II movie. The original Independence Day movie, basically an updated version of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, was released – can it really be? – twenty years ago, in 1996!
(PHOTO: locallens.com)
Back in 1996, they defeated the invading aliens by putting a computer virus in the alien spaceship’s computer. (Conveniently for the survival of the human race, the alien ship’s computer was compatible with the earth computer.)
Well, twenty years later it’s discovered that an alien communication was sent to their fellow aliens elsewhere in the universe, so Planet Earth must now face another alien invasion. I won’t spoil it in case you haven’t seen it.
While in Mexico, my sons and I took walks in the neighborhoods in the vicinity of the house of my suegros (mother-in-law and father-in-law). There are always interesting things to encounter, with a multiplicity of businesses in such neighborhoods. There are mom and pop stores that sell snacks and soft drinks, and also mechanical shops and other businesses.
We were also able to take a touristic-type trip to another city in Mexico, where we visited a number of interesting sites, including Spanish colonial buildings, a mine, a Mexican Revolution battlesite, and a nearby pre-Hispanic site. We had visited that same city twelve years ago, but the boys were obviously a lot younger. My elder son, who had been five years old on the previous trip, did have his memory jogged by this more recent visit.
The ongoing Mexican media coverage of American presidential candidate Donald Trump continues. The Mexican media has almost 100% negative coverage of candidate Trump. I say “almost 100%”, as I ran across a few articles that, while not pro-Trump, did not immediately descend into hysteria.
One Mexican pundit, for example, pointed out that Brexit (the United Kingdom’s exit referendum) and the Trump candidacy in the U.S. represent responses to globalism, and though he didn’t support those movements he noted that world leaders need to deal with the challenges.
Another Mexican pundit actually agreed with Trump against Obama on the Muslim issue.
And another pundit wrote that both Hillary and Trump are bad, but Hillary is worse!
Also on this visit, I was introduced to the Turkish telenovela (overdubbed in Spanish) my mother-in-law is watching, and so I too started watching. It’s interesting. Did you know that Turkey is now the world’s second-biggest exporter of TV shows, after the United States? I didn’t know that.
When we returned to the United States, we brought my suegros back with us for a visit, so they’re here with us now.
It was a good trip.
By Allan Wall for TYT
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Allan Wall, an educator, resided in Mexico for many years. His website is located at http://www.allanwall.info
