So my trip to Mexico is over. I am actually sitting in my house in Da Nang right now after what was a surprisingly nice trip back over the Pacific ocean. The trip back across the pond was a lot better than the way over and a lot of this can be attributed to the absence of a 13 hour layover in any airport, let alone LAX, which has improved a great deal but IMO is still one of the worst airports in the world - at least out of all the ones I have seen.
When leaving Mexico, I was going to be leaving a bunch of dogs behind that I had started to become quite fond of. There was 101 of them that I never really got to know that well, but I did spend many hours with them staring at their features. We'll get to that in a minute though.
The really important part of this post is that after nearly a month apart, I got to get reunited with my own floofer, Nadi and it was quite a fantastic meeting.
It was a pretty interesting reunion because when I first arrived at the person's how to pick her up, the person that has been dutifully watching her and taking care of her for the entire time that I have been gone, she didn't appear to even recognize me. She walked out of the house a bit non-plussed and sniffed around and when she took a minute to spend a bit of time at my feet, that was when her eyes opened wide and she started to turn back into a puppy. She was jumping all over the place and running around in circles and crying a little bit.
I can only imagine what has been going on in her head the past 22 days, but some of it was probably feelings of abandonment. I had left so much stuff at the friend's house that it took me two trips to bring it all back. When we got into my building and into the elevator, I could see that it was all coming back to her, we were home. She settled right back in and even though she badly needs a haircut, I thought she was doing just fine.
The haircut can wait, but the bath could not. She was quite stinky and I don't want to grief my friend who watched after her (for free by the way) but I didn't really like that she was so disheveled and dirty. But then again I have always maintained that Nadi doesn't really care if she is dirty or not.
I showered her with treats for hours after my return and got all of her beds washed and things were just great. She kind of lacks the energy of the dogs that I left behind in Mexico, but that is ok because she is 3 times as old as almost all of them.
There were so many dogs at the place in Mexico that they were often in competition with one another to get pet and that was kind of funny. Nadi, as you may know, doesn't really like to be cuddled or even pet for too long, but most of these dogs in Mexico were the opposite of that. I can appreciate both styles but I have to say, I am kind of happy that Nadi doesn't really appear to be terribly emotionally needy.
But lets have a look briefly at 101 other dogs that I "met" while I was in Mexico.
Rotating this image would take more work than it is worth, but this puzzle was something that my parents were working on when I arrived. My parents have this thing that they do when they are traveling around where they stop at thrift shops and Goodwill stores and if there is a puzzle there, they will buy it. It is only a dollar or two in most instances but this one, while cute, was quite the challenge.
There was a lot of downtime while I was in Mexico for 21 days and I spent a lot of that time on this puzzle. While at first the pieces made my head spin because out of everyone in my family I have the worst neart-vision eyesight. I managed to get focused and get a plan and on the 2nd to last day that I was there, I left just two pieces yet to be placed so that my mother could finish the puzzle.
This was really tough. There were times that I was searching through hundreds of puzzle pieces looking for one that had a "bit of white on one of the nubs" ant it would take probably 10 minutes or more to locate a single piece out of 1000 pieces. But as is the case with any other puzzle I have done in the past, it started to become a lot more interesting once I got nearer to the end of it and there weren't many places to put pieces any more.
By the time I was finished with it my parents joked about how they have another one and they wanted me to get started on that one. I like puzzles, but finishing one and immediately starting on another one is not something I was going to do. It took weeks for me to get this one done and that was with a lot of help from some of my family members.
I do not have enough space in Vietnam to do something like this so I think that will just be something that I reserve for when I am in Mexico. It can be our fun little project. I do like puzzles though. it gives us something to do with our hands other than scroll through a phone.
You do need quite a big table to get a 1000 piece puzzle done and since space is quite the rare resource in Da Nang, I think it would be best for me to leave this hobby on the other side of the Pacific. I don't even know where someone would acquire a puzzle over here anyway. I've never seen one anywhere in SE Asia now that I think about it.
Leaving all of those doggy friends in Mexico was a bitter pill to swallow. I like them all a lot and my family members seriously spoil them. However, it should come as no surprise that my favorite doggy is Nadi and now I get to be around her all the time. I think she enjoys that as well.
I arrived in Vietnam on a Wednesday, and if you follow my blog at all you already know that Thursday is bowling day. So now I get to head to the lanes jet-lagged and out of practice and as the rules go, I am required/allowed to bowl for the championship because I was the champion when I departed.
I am going to get destroyed but will have a good time doing so.