{"id":3453,"date":"2014-11-23T16:44:25","date_gmt":"2014-11-23T22:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=3453"},"modified":"2014-12-29T20:35:50","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T02:35:50","slug":"week-in-tijuana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=3453","title":{"rendered":"Week in Tijuana"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;\">This week took me to Tijuana for a conference with the American Citizens Services group from all over Mission Mexico. I traveled with my boss Pete and our senior local staff employee, Mari Esther. We traveled on Tuesday late morning and returned on Friday afternoon. The conference was fun and beneficial &#8211; always good to see how other missions within Mexico do things and to see how we can harmonize our procedures. We spent all day in session, but I managed to work in lunch with my old friend Sarah who works in the Tijuana Consulate (she TDY&#8217;d in Juarez many moons ago) and got a chance to say hi to Mike and Katie, with whom we worked in Tel Aviv. Tijuana impressed me as being pretty hip overall, much more so than what I expected. Tuesday night, Pete convinced Mari Esther and me to go to the old part of downtown where we had our photo made on a zonkey (a donkey painted to look like a zebra) and have a Cesar&#8217;s salad at the Hotel Cesar where the salad supposedly originated. Fun!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;\">Last Sunday we went to Lake Chapala with Cindy and Raoul for an arts and crafts festival &#8211; it was a lot of fun and only an hour&#8217;s drive. Here&#8217;s a shot of John buying some tequila from a local brewer.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3454\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/DSC_2541.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3454\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3454\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/DSC_2541-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"Buying tequila in Chapala.\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/DSC_2541-300x199.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/DSC_2541.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3454\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Buying tequila in Chapala.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;\">Saturday back in Guadalajara, John and I went to an early matinee to see &#8220;Interstellar&#8221; which was lots of fun. We had the VIP theatre to ourselves, which was nice. Afterward we went to La Docena for a beer and sandwich (a delicious fish and oyster poorboy for me). On the way home, we stopped to enjoy a 12-man mariachi band &#8211; only to realize that we knew the Consulate family who had hired them. We gladly joined them for a few songs &#8211; it was really fun!<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3455\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/Mariachi-3.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3455\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3455\" src=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/Mariachi-3-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Mariachi!\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Mariachi-3-300x225.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Mariachi-3.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3455\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mariachi!<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5em;\">Today we stayed in. John taught me to play Imperial Settlers, which was fun!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week took me to Tijuana for a conference with the American Citizens Services group from all over Mission Mexico. I traveled with my boss Pete and our senior local staff employee, Mari Esther. We traveled on Tuesday late morning and returned on Friday afternoon. The conference was fun and beneficial &#8211; always good to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3453"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3453"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3457,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3453\/revisions\/3457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}