It's 19:30 and I'm supposed to be heading home right now (I'm at work) but I know that if I don't write my entry for today now, I won't do it at home, and I want to register the things I've done with my family so far.
Yesterday my sister and my mother woke up quite late (1:30pm). They softly recriminated not waking them up. "I don't wake up people" I said, I consider sleeping too important to interrupt it. The breakfast I had prepared (chopped fruit with granola and yogurt) became our lunch, and then we went to the Azotea del Círculo de Bellas Artes because the day was sunny (yet cold). This place I re-discovered with a Couchsurfing guest and it's always a hit taking people there for great views of Madrid.
I couldn't help but notice, however, that my sister and my mother react a little bit like myself, it's like "Oh it's nice" but not "wow this is spectacular" as other people react. We're not difficult to impress but we are not that emotional I suppose. We had a glass of wine and munched on the complementary peanuts, which we shared with the pigeons and other small birds, gorriones which were scavenging the floor of the terrace. My sister commented that they were incredibly unafraid of people. It's something I've observed in the cities of developed countries: animals seem to be less afraid of people. I sometimes joke that they're many generations removed from being hunted as food while in Mexico they are not, but sometimes I think there's a grain of truth in that statement.
I think, in general, animals that dwell in cities fare better the more friendly they are, and thus we are inadvertently selecting for less fear of humans (undesired pests such as rats will be the exception). It's super interesting for me to observe just how cute and friendly squirrels are in Canadian cities, while in Mexico they are skittish and kinda wild, evidently less domesticated.
After the Azotea we walked to Retiro park. My sister wanted to go to yoga with me, and I was looking forward to it, so we simply walked around the lake when my mother had a bad case of the shits. I told her the nearest bathroom was 10 minutes walking and she deflected to a hidden corner of the park to take a dump. She came back as if nothing. I debated with myself wether this was a virtue or the opposite, in the end I appreciated that she could unload the burden without making a huge scene, for most people that would be horrifying. My sister was supremely embarrassed, however.
Then we took the metro home, changed into sports clothes, and I asked my sister to sign up for BiciMad, the local city bikes. She went through a bunch of hoops, including uploading her driver's license, which I thought was super strange because none of my guests had to do that, but I chalked it up to requirements for Mexicans. When we got to the bike station, it turned out that she had actually registered for a scooter company, "no I swear I downloaded BiciMad" she said opening the Google App store, and the sponsored result was on top of the app she was supposed to download. I have unreasonable lack of patience with my family, always this sinking feeling... "gosh it takes a fraction of a second to notice, I asked you at home when we were chilling so that you weren't in a rush, in the whole process you must have noticed it was about electric scooters", but I said none of this. "Ok, download BiciMad, you have to be quick or we won't make it to yoga" I said. Long story short, we made it on time.
The class was mild, but it was just what my sister needed after a year and a half of not practicing (since I left Mexico, she used to go with me). At the end of the class we spoke about the experience, she said "I feel a sense of loss, I could have advanced all this time I stopped practicing", I said "I thought the opposite, I was quite amazed at your practice given that you hadn't practiced in 1.5 years, it looks like your practice has not degraded one bit.
We went back home to have dinner (a bland chicken with sweet potatoes that my sister remarked tasted like mom's food, which is never a compliment, but I agreed). I had prepared it over the weekend because I knew at some point we would need something convenient to eat at home, they aren't too keen on my night-time diet of steak and salad. My sister was pumped up from yoga and wanted to wake up early to go to Mysore class at 7am (self-practice with the teacher assisting you one-on-one), so I told her: if you wake me up on time we'll go.
Not expecting her to wake up because of her jet lag, I myself woke up 20 minutes before the agreed time and waited for her alarm to go off. To my surprise, she soon got out of bed and peered out of the door into the living room where I was sleeping: "Time to wake up markito" she said. "I'm already up, let's get ready". I made coffee and showered, and we had so much time left that I proposed walking instead of grabbing a bike.
The Mysore practice was very nice and pleasant with my sister, and there was only one person more in class, so we had a lot of attention from my favorite teacher, a small and lithe venezuelan who usually teaches me handstands because I never wake up early for Mysore. When we came out of class the receptionist tried to convince me to remain with them: I cancelled my subscription because I knew my family would be here, my yoga would be being with them, and also because they changed many of my favorite classes and teachers and it wasn't so appealing anymore. The receptionist has always been friendly with me, but I know better than to think anything about receptionists being friendly, this time however I think I noticed she likes me, her pleading went well beyond her duty, stating that she would plead that the classes would change their time to accommodate my schedule ("don't do that please, I don't want to be responsible if it doesn't accommodate some other person's schedule!" I said), and when I said goodbye she said "adios guapo!" (goodbye handsome). These things always surprise me because I'm utterly unaware until it becomes obvious, and something that also surprises me is how you see people whom like you under a different light, they become more attractive. Perhaps I should be obvious with whom I like so that I become more handsome to them.
Then I came to work, and now it's time to go back home to my family.