1st – 13th of February 2023

Querida Familia,

On the 31st of January 2023, we traveled to Mexico. It is the 3rd time Yannick visits the country and also a very awaited trip for Leilani, who had been missing her family very very much.

We bought our flights just two weeks before departing, so we couldn’t expect to get the best connection and we had to take 3 flights, the first one from Munich to Frankfurt, got delayed and we barely made it on time for the second flight from Frankfurt to Toronto. Once we were in Canada we had to enjoy a 12 hours overnight layover, and it is true that we are young, wild, and free, but we both agreed that sleeping on an airport floor in bright light and among tons of noisy people, having to change our sleeping spot multiple times and not being able to access our final gate for a peaceful rest, for this type of big trips is just kick-you-in-the-crotch-spit-on-your-neck-fantastic.

The last flight from Toronto to CDMX (Spanish abbreviation for Mexico City) was okay, we were really glad to land and get picked up by Leilani’s mom at the airport.

Leilani personally remembers coming home that day as a huge relief, after some hard months away from home without her loved ones, now she couldn’t be happier to be there, entering her beloved safe place, taking a recovering shower, and having some tasty Mexican food again. As for Yannick, it was nice to be back in that place full of memories of almost two years ago when their newborn love made him cross the Atlantic to catch up with an old friend he met in China even longer ago.

Yannick even got some more special presents from the grandparents, who now call him their grandson and have him very spoiled, to be honest. One of those presents was a very nice tejana (hat) gifted by the grandpa, which Yannick now loves and wears all the time, as you will see in many pictures. He walks with it around all the time and even collects compliments from strangers on the street for it, which leaves him dazzled since he lived in the belief that no headwear would ever fit him.

The first two weeks it was a warm catch-up with the grandparents, aunts, uncle, and cousins, who all came to visit once they knew Leilani was back in Mexico and we all gathered together at Grandma’s house to chat and enjoy her delicious food, something Yannick loves a lot because he also gets spoiled with his favorite dishes and secret extra portions to go.

Mexicans are very family-oriented people, and Leilani’s family is even more so; they are really close, and they sure enjoy doing things together all the time. As a side note here, when we say family, we don’t only mean parents and siblings, we mean mom, sister, grandparents, aunts, uncle, and 7 cousins, who we see often. 

One thing Yannick is still getting used to, is that when it comes to getting along with Leilani’s family is that they don’t plan things ahead, for example, Saturday morning you get invited to have breakfast at one of her aunt’s home, and the next thing you know you are driving to visit a whole other town, having lunch at Grandma’s, running errands with the uncle or going for a walk all together to the park, so we end up doing things all day long without any prior planning and us being the couple that came for a visit (could be that or could be that Leilani is the favorite child in the family) we are getting tons of invitations all the time, no kidding, we don’t even need to make plans to keep ourselves entertained anymore and since they are all nice and generous we are unable to say no to any invitation, so we basically just get loved and pampered all the way.

Besides all the family time we also did some shopping, well… more like Yannick did haha, we went to “San Mateo Atenco”, a town known for making shoes and leather products, and there Yannick got a really nice leather jacket, now he wants to wear it all the time in all weather conditions, for real. It can be a hot day outside and the man still wants to wear his hot leather jacket because he “looks cool” and yes he does, but now you will have to see Yannick wearing his hat and jacket together all the time, who would have known? He loves the Mexican style and takes the integration part seriously.

Later on that day, we went to a party, it was the birthday of the girlfriend of the father of the boyfriend of Leilani’s mom, yes we did not even know the woman and that’s exactly what explains why Mexican parties are so big, everybody is invited. Yannick got to dance for the first time to Mexican music and Leilani’s grandpa was very proud of him, we had some fun but we had to leave early because there was some drama with the party organizers.

Oh yes, we almost forgot, Yannick cut his hair! after growing it for almost two years he decided it was the time to do so, also he did a good deed and donated it to make a wig for one of Leilani’s aunts who is now going through chemotherapy, so Leilani and her family were very grateful and warmed by his nice gesture, and to make it even better for Yannick, everybody told him he looked way more handsome with his short hair, therefore he was pretty happy with the compliments raining on him and took the loss of his lion’s mane easier.

So far this is what our very enjoyable first two weeks in Mexico looked like, in our next blogs we will share some stories about our trips to Oaxaca and Jalisco, and who knows, maybe we also catch-up on other stories of our past visits.

Thank you for reading us.

Liebe Grüße,

Leilani and Yannick

Pictures from a walk with the family in the park in front of Leilanis Home