The interaction started fairly innocuously. I was entering the Skyclub in SFO a bit tired and a bit worried about the red eye flight that I had to take to go home. The lady at the front asked her usual “How are you doing”. And without any second thought, I came up with my usual “If I did any better….”. She laughed her head off and we chatted a bit.

It was late at night and there was only one flight for Delta left that night. There were a couple of us in the club. She came up to me at the bar where I posting some blogs from my trp to Tonga and introduced herself. America is her name.

“America iss your name?”, I asked incredulously.

“Yes. It is not that uncommon in Mexico!”

I did not know that!! Found out that America Juarez Ruiz (her full name) is from outside Mexico City and had a fascinating story of how she came to the USA as a tourist and eventually mmet her husband while struggling to find the right tram route in SFO!!

“So, if I were to visit Mexico, where should I go?” I asked.

She gave me two names of places that I had never heard of – but the pictures looked gorgeous – Grutas de Tolantongo and Teotihuacan.

Later Sharmila mentioned she might have seen those pictures in Conde Nast!

I know where to go soon!!

It was 1980. The exact part of the year escapes me but I was in eighth grade. We had moved to our new place the year before. Mom needed some test papers to be sent to her school (she was a school teacher) but she was going to skip school that day. She sent me to a colleague of hers who lived the next street over to drop the papers. Which I duly did.

I remember meeting that teacher (I call her “Masi“) and her husband (I called him “Kaku“) for the first time. I answered all their questions – but refused to come inside the house. Not that the “mishtis” (sweetmeats) were not inviting… it was just that my friends were waiting on the playfield for me to join them.

That day, if you had told me that forty five years later I will be driving a boat to take “Masi” around to spend a day on a lake, I would have told you that you were smoking the wrong stuff!!!

But that day did come around!!

Wish mom was alive to hear the whole story…