Bienvenidos a Monterrey

We arrived yesterday in Monterrey. The border crossing was relatively uneventful. There was a small problem with my visa, but it didn’t delay us for long. All the worrying about the menaje de casa turned out to be for naught. We were never asked to stop anywhere for an inspection, so we just drove on through. Kind of anticlimactic, but I’m certainly not complaining. If I’d known though I could have saved the $127 for consular approval of the inventory.

When I started the drive to Monterrey I thought I’d celebrate our arrival by taking a shower, putting on some clean clothes and drinking a nice cold beer. Unfortunately, about the time we got on the open highway south of Nuevo Laredo I started developing a headache. It got worse and worse as the day wore on, and once we got to the outskirts of Monterrey I was feeling nauseous as well. So I actually spend my first afternoon and evening here lying on the bed in our hotel feeling miserable. I woke up this morning feeling much better, but I still don’t feel 100%. Not sure if I picked up a virus or maybe it was just the heat and humidity getting to me. I sure hope it passes though, because I have a lot to do over the next couple of weeks and will need all my energy.

My dad decided to go home today instead of spending the day in Monterrey as previously planned. I guess that was fairly predictable in retrospect. He isn’t one to sit around relaxing if he can avoid it. I was kind of disappointed because I thought it would be a good opportunity for him to have some play time with Enid, but instead we piloted him back out to the U.S.-bound highway and said our goodbyes. We got an email from him a little while ago saying he made it back to Texas okay, so that was a load off my mind.

We spent the rest of the afternoon investigating a school in Colonia Obispado and doing some grocery shopping at the H-E-B nearby. The people at the school were very friendly, but I don’t think it will meet our needs since they told us the instruction was 80% in English and 20% in Spanish. That is going to be a persistent problem for us in our search for a preschool because Mexicans want their children to learn English as much as we want Enid to learn Spanish. So a lot of the schools emphasize an English immersion or bilingual approach. I think we’ll eventually find what we want, but we’ll have to start using the telephone because it’s too time consuming to drive around visiting schools only to learn that they are English-oriented.

I meant to put in an appearance at the medical school today, but by the time we finished the grocery shopping it was late in the day and I was too tired to get excited about making my debut there. I sent an email though to let them know I was in town and promised to come by in the morning.