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The waiting Monday | Day 345 of my 2023 Journal

Cecilie Conrad·Dec 11, 2023· 3 minutes

It is nice to sometimes just have a practical day. We needed papers to travel with the dogs, so Silke and I walked to the local vet; smiling, professional, and friendly, she helped us with the paperwork, and we had the pleasure of meeting a real wolf in the waiting room. We were also very happy with my Spanish skills; this situation would have been complicated without the language.

Walking to find broccoli+ with Storm. Nice.

Red flowers for sale everywhere as a symbol of Christmas, small local market, talking with my son, walking back, making lunch.

In the streets, we observed the garbage system. Mexico City is surprisingly clean. You would not think so in a city of 22 million people, many living under the poverty level, many living in the streets, and thousands living off pop-up shops in the streets. I wonder, by the way, about the system of this. There must be a mafia or a law to allocate these spaces to the vendors. I wonder which it is? As I see Mexico City, it could easily be an official thing, the government helping the street vendors not to fight over spaces and share the time. In the morning, there is instant coffee and bread for sale; during the day, it is the tortillas with all the fried meat; in the evening, it is snacks and stuff (food, but other food or less food). In the night, it is mostly gone.

Back to the garbage, I am surprised there are hardly any bins in the street, yet they are impeccable in most places. And the garbage guys (bless them) hand-separate the trash into categories and load it on the huge trucks working like snails cleaning the streets. It is overwhelming.

It was also a day of waiting, as Liv and Erik would arrive in the early evening. So, after lunch, Silke and I went out to buy her an extra pair of jeans, as it will be a while before we travel to warmer climates again. We enjoyed the walk, found a pair of jeans, and sat down to have a cacao and a chai as we were watching closely the arrival of the rest of the family.

We returned to cook a welcome meal and paused before the Uber delivered our oldest daughter and her Erik, safe and sound from Costa Rica.

And so, the evening was spent in reunion, stories and smiles and laughter shared until we were extremely tired and went to bed to sleep a lot. 

With love

Cecilie-Underskrift-300x133

Cecilie Conrad

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Unschooling and Parent consulting, conversations, blogposts, and podcasts on family life and learning

Hi, I'm Cecilie Conrad. I'm a trained psychologist, mother of four, radical unschooler and full-time traveller. I have lived with unschooling for over a decade and help other families find their own path – whether it is about homeschooling, unschooling, or the bigger question of how you want to live as a family.

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