What are people thinking?

During all this time, the past months in Tijuana; I have been reluctant to discuss the violence and all the bad things happening here. Not only because I believe that people tends to magnify the stories and they love to take a protagonic role in the story ("I saw with my own eyes!") creating in the process a "negative spiral" of panic and fear. I believe that if you try to see things in a better light they become better.

But then, last Friday night, we had our close encounter with the bad side of Tijuana. My mother in law was mugged when arriving to her apartment.

Whoever did this were small thieves; not really trying to be violent or to injure her. It was supposed to be a "clean" robbery; push her out of the way, grab her handbag and run. Then her arm got tangled with the handbag and they dragged her for a couple of meters on the ground; she ended with her knee and her mouth scrapped against the floor and a semi-deep cut in her hand. Lost the bag (with a small amount of money on it), her car keys (she was driving Bonita's car but they did not make a move for it), her apartment keys, driver license, voting card, eyeglasses; minor things. Everything could be replaced easily, we replaced the locks in her apartment and cancelled bank cards that same night and yesterday my brothers in law took care of the IDs, eyeglasses and car keys. But not the tranquility.

Anyway, life has to go on; she refuses to stay at our place (or any other place) and she really thinks she got scared, but that was it; just a scare. Of course Inge (the youngest son) was at the apartment with Mediana and panicked when her mom arrived at the apartment being carried by a couple of neighbors; Bonita had to talk to Mediana to give her instructions about how to calm down her grandma (and her uncle!). Five minutes later (we were at a new bookstore that just opened when they called us with the news) everybody was there; Polaco, Flor, Vicky and us were pouring over there and trying to keep things cool to avoid more people running around as headless chickens. Pinka said hello (she was with us) and went to watch TV; I just sat there and made some comic suggestions and serious proposals about the locks and who should sleep there and everything. It ended all OK; yesterday we got all together at my house and played cards and talked. Everybody is calmed and my mother in law is looking better.

By the way, Pinka's basketball team made the playoffs and won their semifinal game; so now they are in the finals; except... there was a development after the game. They were originally in 5th place; only 1st through 4th were supposed to be in the playoffs. The 1st place team noticed but accepted to play and they got their butts kicked by Pinka's team (parity, lovely thing; anybody can beat anybody!). The parents protested after that and call the other team to complain; so the final game that was supposed to be this morning got cancelled until further notice (I think they will try to clean up the mess they created). So I will keep you posted.

Finally, I am a little hangover this morning; I drank some beers when my in-laws were here yesterday, and after they left we had Maria and Will visiting; as usual with them, we had a great time, conversation, drinks and the only change was the order of us falling asleep (usually Bonita falls asleep, then me for 5 minutes, then Will, and Maria neves does). This time I could not keep up, so they left early (1:30 am instead of the standard of 2:00 am). Great time.

Today we will meet with the family again (Polaco's birthday is on Tuesday, but since Arqui is here today, is a good idea to celebrate now). Before that we want to go and tour the bookstore we could not on Friday; let's see how it goes.

See you around.