Tijuana. Day Two.

Oh, what a day. This morning we met up with some of the people from the consulate for brunch. It was so great to get to know some wonderfully friendly people. The restaurant was awesome. The outside was shaped like a sombrero, it was clean, and they had a mariachi band. I definitely LOVE mariachi music! It was loud, but not obnoxious loud. Thomas even fell asleep during one of their performances. In terms of food, I have no idea what I ordered, and I have no idea what was in it, although I recognized the words queso and pollo, and it was delicious. Unfortunately, I don’t think that I would be able to figure out what it was to order it again. After 2 ½ hours of restaurant time, as good as the food was, we were ready to go. Amazingly, the kids were fantastic the entire time. I am so impressed that they sat quietly and didn’t throw any fits, it was a great time.

After brunch, we thought we would head to the Super Wal-Mart to pick up some basics for our house, like cleaning supplies, supplies for our built in barbeque (awesome, huh?), a small baby tub (no bathtubs, all showers in our house), and other such general supplies. We spent quite awhile getting everything loaded into the cart, and when we are checking out and paying, the lady said that Ben’s card didn’t work. Oh, that is embarrassing. We have a cart FULL of stuff, and we don’t have enough cash to cover the bill. (Ben earlier that day told me to leave my wallet at home since he had his stuff with him.) Ben asked if they had an ATM, so Ben ran off, leaving the boys and I had to wait. They had to finish our transaction before they could start a new one, so there I was with the two kids, five people behind us in line, the manager that was brought over, our cashier and many onlookers staring in my general direction, and all I can do is wipe the sweat from my face that has started to form and talk to my kids and pretend I am not affected by the situation. In my head, thoughts are racing through my head; next time, I am bringing my wallet no matter what, I hope Ben is able to get some cash, and what are we going to do if we can’t get money to pay for all this stuff. After about ten years, Ben came back, cash in hand. He had taken out the max amount, and we were still short. Luckily, between the both of us, we were able to get enough money together to pay the entire bill. Oh, what an adventure.
But wait, there is more. Our drive home turned into a battle of wits between Ben and the GPS. We were re-routed so many times because of traffic and construction that we ended up in a residential area that the streets were becoming so narrow that we could reach out and stir the sauce cooking on the stove. Umm…GPS, we need to have a serious talk. That is not where we wanted to be, so we backed up, got on a main road, saw a sign for San Diego, and drove. Ben, who already has a good sense of where things are in the city, found the street we needed to be on, and we found our way home. Needless to say, I don’t have a huge desire to drive around, even with GPS, but eventually I think we will be able to get our sense of where we are and things will be better.
Day two was a little rough, but the huge miracle was both kids were in bed by 9:30, and the entire family was asleep by 10:00!