We’ve arrived. Or, ya llegamos.

In the days before we left, people kept asking us: “Aren’t you excited?”

Really, it hadn’t hit me yet. I was too busy worrying about saying goodbye to friends and living in the Hotel California, AKA the downtown Dallas Westin. (How can the elevator button in the lobby not WORK?)

Finally, yesterday, when the plane was making its descent into Mexico City, I peered out the window and thought, “This is home…?” The air looked like it does when you fly into Southern California, only thicker, and browner. A sea of buildings stood packed into grid-like squares, leaning so close together that it looked like there wasn’t any air between them. Everything went on forever — the red-tiled roofs, the high-rise office buildings, the occasional spherical top of a cathedral. There was so much of everything. So much density. I thought: “How do people breathe here?”

Then I grabbed my notebook and wrote, “WE LIVE HERE?!?!”

A few hours later, I had learned the Spanish word for those little airport carts (“carrito”), and we were in a van cab headed to our new apartment in Polanco.