SON MIS LOCURAS

There was a cab driver juggling in Vegas while I was there this week.  In trying to describe what I’d seen in Vegas to my mom I found I didn’t know the word for “juggle” in Spanish.  Rather than consult a dictionary, I asked my sister if she knew the Spanish word for ”juggle.”  She guessed a guess that embarrasses me even now, days after its initial use.   For future reference to anyone who might be inspired to guess– “juglar” is not the Spanish word for juggling.  It seems there is no single word.  Dictionaries seem to use “trucos” or “juegos malabares.” 

Just don’t use “juglar.”  It’s enough to make me embarrassada.

We took three 18-year-olds to Paris for 10 days.  It was the first, non-Mexico trip for each of them, to a city which Vero and I had been to before.  In addition to learning that teenagers make a lot of noise (they just talk non-stop), I learned that they’re pretty funny, too.

• We were in Paris for one of that city’s semi-annual sales weeks.  This meant that the French word “solde” appeared in nearly every shop’s windows.  One of the boys with us observed, “It’s weird that during a week of sales everything’s already sold.”  This from the bookworm in the group.
• From the sneaker freak traveling with us came a constant refrain of “the world is not balanced.”  This observation followed his exit from shops which stocked inventory of collectable Nike sneakers which had sold out in the U.S. long ago.  As if to add to the strangeness of the sneaker situation, the shoes were on sale.  The kid bought three pairs.  “Hey, I scrubbed floors for a year to be able to afford this trip.”
• Since I find people’s vacation reading choices interesting, I’ll list the books our group read.  Sneaker Freaker, The Doors of Perception, The Man Who Was Thursday, Murder in the Montmartre, Death Comes for the Archbishop, Eleven Minutes, and a Tale of Two Cities.  For the most part it seemed to be classics reading season for the group.