The piñata made it to Canada

The story so far: Back in October we went to Mexico City and James got a piñata, sadly it had to stay in Mexico City because there are no piñatas allowed on Air Canada.

This time James came prepared and brought an extra suitcase, one that looked big enough to hold a pinata and bring it in checked luggage. The last day, after our trip to Tepoztlan, we went to the market and bought a Chapulin Colorado Piñata. Sadly, the pinata was too big for the suitcase and extreme measures had to be taken.

There was a sawing session in my parent’s kitchen where James “took care” of the Chapulin Colorado.

The head had to be chopped off, and an arm too. We were finally able to pack it in the suitcase and put it in checked luggage. It may also have helped that this time we took American Airlines.

There was a connection at Dallas/Fort Worth where we had to claim our luggage, pass it through customs and check it back for it to arrive to Toronto. Everything went according to plan, except that James’s suitcase was not appearing in the carrousel when we were waiting for it. Almost all the bags on the airplane were down and there was no sign of James’s suitcase, which had a hammock, apart from having the pinata.
Finally it came down with stickers that said that it had been opened in the United States for extra revision. All luggage goes through x-rays and I can just imagine the inspectors’ reactions when they saw something that appeared like a decapitated midget’s body. No wonder it got selected for further inspection.
I’m pretty sure the inspectors had a good laugh when they saw it was a pinata and a hammock a total tourist suitcase!

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Jay’s piñata

365days – day 24
Originally uploaded by Jay.

Here’s the complete product. Jay’s piñata. I am ashamed to confess that I haven’t finished mine. I’ll work on it during the weekend and will have an updated picture for my readers soon.

The difference between glue and bread dough

After the pinata making party I had on the weekend, I wondered how come one can make glue with flour and water, and what the difference is with dough bread. How come when you make bread you can’t just stick paper with the dough? I was really confused.
So I asked my scientist in residence, Eva. I knew she would have a well-founded answer.
Here’s an abstract of her post:

Off the bat, I knew that flour has starch and the starch makes the glue sticky, but then I started wondering too. Why is starch sticky? And why isn’t bread dough more like glue?

Click here for the complete explanation.

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Pinata making

pinatas1
Originally uploaded by Maria in Toronto.

Since there are no pinatas allowed on Air Canada and we couldn’t bring one from Mexico, we decided to make some ourselves. So yesterday some people came over to participate in the pinata making activity.
First we covered the balloons with newspaper, when it was almost dry we added the decorations.
We didn’t finish last night because we had to leave the piñatas dry, but we will finish this week, all in time for James’s birthday!

There are no piñatas allowed on Air Canada

Chupacabra
Originally uploaded by Maria in Toronto.

Or at least that’s what we were told when we were checking in for our flight back home.
Early Sunday morning we woke up and went back to the San Angel Market to get a Chupacabra piñata that had caught James’s eye before we had left for Ixtapa. It was either that or a Luchador piñata. He went for the Chupacabras.

We were booked for flight 992 from Mexico City to Toronto. We thought the flight left at 1:40 (that’s what the Air Canada website AND my travel agent said) so we arrived there at 11:30. We lined up in front of the Air Canada counter for an hour. The people who were going on the flight to Montreal had preference because their flight was leaving earlier, so the Toronto line wasn’t moving at all. When people started to complain we were told that the flight didn’t leave until 2:20. Well, everyone thought it was leaving at 1:40 but somehow the time had been changed. We had time to wait more, I guess.
We finally made it to the counter where the attendant was nice enough to ask “Excuse me, miss, is the gentleman planning on travelling with the pinata?”, I was about to reply “Oh, just ignore him, he just walks around and lines up for hours carrying pinatas for fun”, but of course I couldn’t, so I replied that yes, he was taking the pinata with him.
Attendant: “Oh, well Air Canada does not allow pinatas on their planes”
Us: “Really, well, we could check it in with the luggage”
Attendant: “No, they’re not allowed either, basically pinatas are not allowed on airplanes, it’s Air Canada policy”
Me: “Well, I guess we’ll throw the fiesta right here at the airport since we can’t take it to Canada with us”
Attendant: “That would be fun”.

So we ended up leaving the pinata, we went to the arrivals area and gave it to two small kids that were walking by with their parents. We explained that we weren’t allowed to take it with us on the plane and they were quite surprised. I was quite surprised too, since I’ve seen my share of people bringing pinatas home.
Oh well, I promised I will show James how to make a pinata and we’ll make an even nicer one.
Goodbye chupacabra, we’ll be missing you!!

UPDATE:
James got this reply from Air Canada Customer Service
Good question. It did take some digging and we can confirm that a Pinata is considered a restricted article on Air Canada . We could not address if other airlines restrict this article. We have found that some pinata’s and other paper mache products were actually very flammable. Some pinata’s also contain small articles that are restricted like pull crackers and the contents in general could not usually be verified by the passenger. In the end, it was just as easy to restrict this article completely.

We hope this information helps and we want to assure you our staff in Mexico were not just being difficult. We regret this information was not known prior to purchasing the item and we would like to thank you for writing in.

So basically, Air Canada is no fun.