Millie has been waking up at 6AM for a week or so now, but today she slept until 8:30. We had to wake her up to get ready to meet up with our old friends Eric, Elsa, and their son Santiago. Nick has known Eric since he was a teenager, when Jeff sent Nick to live with Eric’s family in Oaxaca (long story). We hadn’t seen them since coming to their wedding here about 10 years ago.

They picked us up at 9 and drove us slightly out of town to a breakfast place that also has a play area inside. Jackpot. Santiago is 8 and goes to a bilingual school so he spoke enough English to play with Millie. They got along great and played for 3 hours straight while we caught up.

At about 1, they drove us back to our Airbnb. I forced the kids to pose for a photo together.

We cooled down inside for a little while and then went back out to meet Jeff at a local park. I had walked past this park yesterday on my way to meet the Hiller dudes for dinner, and was impressed by the amount of kid-friendly activities.

Millie’s first stop was the giant Bob Esponja inflatable. As she was getting on, we heard a little girl with an American accent. Of course, within 30 seconds they were best friends.

They played for some time and then I struck up a conversation with her mom. They were from California but moved here a few months ago.

After the girls’ allotted 20 minutes in the bounce house was up, they did the next unique park offering: sculpture painting. We continued chatting with the family.

Millie and her new pal Lia were now inseparable and begged to keep hanging out, so we invited her family to join us on our next stop. Jeff has a local friend whose art was showing in a gallery, and we all walked over to see it.

I loved the portraits. The girls were hot and sweaty and couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Next thing we knew, we were all at a table in the Zocalo having cold drinks and mezcal. When in Rome?

The girls got bubbles and clay and a balloon from a street vendor and played while we got to socialize as adults. A parade with a marching band went past. The city of parades. The New Orleans of Mexico.

Why stop the fun here? We invited our new friends to have dinner with us at a restaurant a few blocks away.

I took charge and ordered for the table. I am who I am. I ordered a variety of different things for us all to share, one of which was a taco platter with two each of three different types of tacos. It was plenty of food. The girls each loved the Al Pastor tacos, so we ordered three more for them. The waiter brought out three huge platters of tacos. I’m not sure if this is a genuine miscommunication, a lapse in service by not confirming “would you really like to order 20 more tacos in addition to all this other food”, or a scam to get our bill up, but ugh.

We finished our meal, said goodbye to our new friends, and walked back to our Airbnb. We had a great day but I am wiped. I’m already an introvert, but after a full year of socializing mostly only with Nick and Millie, I’m realizing how weak my socialization muscle has become.