Christian has taken great care of us. Tonight he drove us all over Tempe and Chandler so we could replace Lorena’s Note 3 and my Note for with two Pixel 2 XL phones. We have had these phones for four years–a record for us. They are very nice. The weather has been insanely good since we have been here and Christian found the one true taco shop in all of Phoenix (Los Taquitos on Elliot Rd) and even though I can hardly believe I am saying it, they are on par or maybe even better than the one true taco shop (Tacos Regio Monterrey) in Lewisville, TX. That is really saying something.
Month: May 2018
We are enjoying Tempe a lot. Lorena went with Christian to buy new tires for his car and to do some other shopping. The thing we notice is how “alive” this place is–maybe it is the time of year and the amazing weather (not too hot), but we are glad to be here right now. Christian is taking us to a new taco place he just found that is authentic in the way we measure Mexican authenticity. He said he had the “street tacos.” What else would you order in a truly authentic Mexican restaurant–especially for the first visit–so you can have a common metric against which to compare other “authentic” Mexican restaurants. Can hardly wait.
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Lorena took this picture in a mall parking lot, waiting for the stores to open. We are down in Arizona visiting Christian, waiting for our friends to get here from Chula Vista, and wondering why everyone does not want to live in Arizona with its fabulous weather, unique culture–heavily influenced by Mexico and Mexican food, and lots of things to do and see. I know we might think differently in the heat of summer in a few months, but right now it is very, very nice.
Thanks to Bonnie and Kiwi for holding down the fort for us back home.
This morning is Christian’s last required class for his PhD. He still needs to pass his comprehensive exams and write and defend his dissertation, but this is a seminal moment. His mindset right now is that he never wants to ever take another class, but part of that might be the whole “senioritis” thing. If he had been on a normal trajectory, this would be the last year of his undergraduate degree. Still, the sentiment resonates with me. I have often heard that after a certain point, classes just get in the way of learning things and really they are as much a mechanism for keeping track of who can get good grades on their homework, papers, and tests as they are mechanisms for learning. In as much as those measures actually measure learning, even imperfectly, that is a good thing, but there is a “sell-by” date on their usefulness for people who progress pass the fundamentals of a discipline.