El otro lado

San Diego. The other side. It's so completely the other side, like entering a different world. A rich and plentiful world, where shops have aisles and aisles of things you never knew you needed, but they're so nice and bright and pretty and they'd look good in your house/on your body/in your fridge. And you find yourself leaving each shop with several of these items in your possession, wondering how that happened and marvelling at how much lighter your wallet is. I bought four pairs of shoes in less than an hour today, and am still reeling. I think being on a strict budget at the moment made me just go: aaaargh, stuff it, today I'm going to indulge! They were all cheap shoes, sandals and the like. So that's how I'll justify it to myself.

Speaking of shoes, whose tiny shoes are those on the right???

The other day Ahmed, Maya and I went for a walk down to the sea, and the tide was a long way out, so that the end of the US-Mexico border fence, which is usually quite a way out to sea, was sitting rather dejectedly halfway up the beach, with a good 20 metres of sandy beach below it. Was tempted to just go and stick a foot on 'el otro lado' and poke my tongue out at the beach on the other side, but I'm sure some hidden border control guard wouldn't have found that funny.

Ahmed's flight from San Diego left at 10.50am on Friday morning, so to avoid any complications and delays at the border, we left Maya with Guadalupe on Thursday night and stayed the night in San Diego. Wow, crossing at 5.30pm took us exactly 15 minutes!!! Such a short queue, and no questions from border control. Wow.

We had a lovely evening, mainly spent at Borders and Barnes & Noble, two huge bookstores, and then had one of those rare, uninterrupted sleeps that all new parents dream of.

When I got back to Playas on Friday, Maya was happy as a flea. She's always very relaxed after Guadalupe has been, and always seems to sleep better afterwards. Must find out what Guadalupe's trick is... Ahmed tries to tell me she just wakes up in the night more with me because she wants to chat, but I don't buy that theory! Actually I can't complain. She goes to sleep every night at 7pm and wakes up at 7am, with one or two calls for room service in between.