Beautiful Puebla

We are currently in Puebla, Puebla, Mexico (Puebla is the capital city of the state of Puebla). After a two-hour car ride Tuesday evening to a Park & Fly hotel, a 15-minute shuttle ride to MSP airport, a three-hour flight to Phoenix, a half-hour wait on the tarmac until a gate opened and a rush to the next flight when we finally got off the plane, a three-hour flight to Mexico City, a two-hour bus ride to Puebla and a 15-minute car ride to the Cuevas home, we enjoyed great conversation and food until after 11pm and then slept soundly until 8 this morning.

Of course there are many cultural and other differences here, which are always fun to discover. Everything is smaller - cars, rooms, buildings, shops, streets, even the people, it seems! Pete's red head is even easier to spot towering over all the black hair. He is impressed with the solidity of the buildings. Everything's made of cement, so there is no give at all to the floors. The altitude is over 5000 feet, with four volcanoes ringing the city.

The Cuevas home is just one block off a main street, but very quiet. The floors are beautifully inlaid wood, and the many built-in cabinets are either painted white or stained wood. Our bedroom has white built-ins and a white quilt; the living room has white built-ins and white upholstered furniture; the dining room has a white crocheted tablecloth (which Martha made!); there are doors to many rooms, and they're all white. No wonder Saul remembers his mom always making them keep everything perfectly clean! They have a stained-glass window of a peacock in the stairway going up. Michelle is staying in a little room with a bathroom up on the top, which is accessed by a separate outdoor stairway.

We slept very well. The last time we went to Mexico, we slept in Laredo with a dog who barked continuously through the nights, and in Saltillo on a main street with a bus station outside our window. This time it was quiet and dark, and the little dog who barked only did so about three times. More later on our warm welcome!