Since I can remember I've struggled with jet lag when flying west, preferring to spend the first days of my trips languishing around complaining of tiredness, dizziness, and a strong desire to do nothing other than eat yummy home-cooked meals (home-cooked by someone else I should add), sleep most of the day, and watch movies in bed. The beauty with being here for a longer period now is that I was able to do all that without the other voice in my head objecting, 'you really should be out exploring the magnificent culture, not wasting your time on the other side of the world watching Goodfellas for the fourth time'. This time the museums can wait another day (¡mañana, mañana!)
Unfortunately the first few days here were tough on the little one. After a couple of days of being slightly cranky, he burst into tears mid-morning on day 3 and barely stopped until well into the small hours the next day. As well as being an anxious time for his parents, it brought up the first of surely many cultural differences for me on this trip: attitude towards medicine. In Mexico, at least in my family-in-law, the mildest symptom is met with an instant and bewildering array of suggestions for what to do: drink this, eat that, lie down, stand up, go to the doctor, go to the witch doctor. Many were convinced that little Noam was suffering from the dreaded 'mal de ojo' or 'evil eye', a curse that affects babies when someone looks at them and thinks they are particularly cute but doesn't get to touch them. Obviously, being the cutest baby there is, Noam is particularly susceptible to evil eye, so a ceremony involving amongst other things, from what I gather, waving an egg in front of his face was under serious consideration. Being something of a sceptical person, I have pretty strong feelings when it comes to medicine vs. alternative medicine: trust neither, unless it's an emergency or serious long-term problem. Luckily I was able to hold out long enough, and eventually the baby began to act like his normal bubbly self again, without an egg or a doctor anywhere in sight. Like his Dad, he seems to have found the almost instantaneous change in weather, altitude, time, food and TV programming a little too much to handle all at once, and just needed to cry it out. I'm pleased to report we're both doing much better.
