Strictly a travel blog.

Having been persuaded by a few friends to try this, I am restricting my blog to a travel journal only. I embark for a little over two weeks in Mexico: 18 days, actually; enough time to stage a revolution in some countries, but hopefully in this case just enough time to learn some serious amounts of Spanish.

I go first to Mexico City for an editorial committee meeting (hence, company pays for the flight :), then on Sunday, I travel by bus to Cuernavaca, about an hour south of Mexico City. From the bus station in Cuernavaca, I hail a taxi and go to my host family’s home, where I will stay for two weeks while studying Spanish at the “Spanish Language Institute” (ASLI, http://www.spanishincuernavaca.com/).

The kids will be at Gramma Eloise’s house in Idaho for the first week, which is a school vacation. Then gramma flies home with them and helps Arthur out in the afternoons for most of the second week. This will be the longest I’ve been away from the kids since we got Anna. Before that, I went to Africa for a month when Alex was very young, about 3, and then to China for two weeks to get Anna when Alex was 5. But I’ve never been away from Anna for this long. Thankfully, neither child seems at all concerned about this long separation (sigh; they could fake it a little). And gramma is so great with them; she has all sorts of plans to keep them busy and spoiled. Thank you gramma!

That’s the plan. If I have interesting tales of my journey, I’ll share them here. This is my first-ever attempt at a blog. I have always kept travel journals, but never a public one! (In fact, I’ve never gone back and read through any of my old travel journals myself, so they have died an entirely un-read death.) If this one goes unread, too, I think I’ll be OK with that!

Now back to packing…. (I’m militant about packing light!)