Favorite photos from Christine and Fernando's wedding

Christine Breiner and Fernando Duarte, on their way to the wedding reception in lower Manhattan, July 12, 2014. Photo by Martin Orozco.

They met at MIT several years ago while playing co-ed soccer. He was finishing his doctorate in economics and she was a post-doc in math. He got a job at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and she got a teaching job at Fordham University in the Bronx.

They wanted to have a simple wedding. No more than 40 guests. No gifts, please. The week before the wedding, activities included a trip to the batting cages, watching the Netherlands-Argentina World Cup match with family (he is from Argentina), a pizza party on the rooftop terrace rather than a rehearsal dinner.

Fernando's parents and sister traveled more than 5,000 miles from Mendoza, Argentina, which is wine country, just a hop over the Andes from Santiago, Chile. (Moscow is closer to New York.) The photographer was Martin Orozco, Fernando's brother-in-law.


The ceremony was at the Anglican Church in the Bowery that Christine attends and where she does volunteer work, St. Mark's. Music was provided by a trio of oboe, piano and bass, and a song from Christine's friend Allison.

A reef dive with sea turtles in Akumal, Mexico

Today I swam with some green sea turtles as big as a table top. There were three of them sort of nuzzling each other on the reef, about 40 feet down, and a couple of remora clung to the shell of one.

These were big adults. They can reach 400 pounds. I swam slowly alongside one of them, an arm's length away. Its yellow and green coloring stood out from the russet and brown corals.

Even at our depth the clear water allowed the noonday sunlight to brighten its coloring. Later I saw some other turtles hiding in crevices in the reef. One was underneath the skeleton of a motorcyle standing on the sand.

Photo from AnimalsTime.com Green sea turtles swim beautifully.

We were only about a half-mile offshore of the town of Akumal, Mexico, about an hour south of Cancun. The town is famous as a nesting ground for loggerhead and green sea turtles. An ecological center uses staff and volunteers to make sure that when female turtles come ashore to lay their eggs, the nests are protected from predators and poachers.

When you say it, it's like magic: Tepotzotlán

Mural inside the town hall (ayuntamiento) of Tepotzotlan shows its Spanish and indigenous roots.

Big chair in the town square.

 Cindy keeps a list of places she wants to visit in Mexico, and there is usually a church involved. This time the church was just a 20-minute cab ride north from us in a town called Tepotzotlan (tay-po-tso-TLAHN).

I find it highly ironic that a young lady of Presbyterian upbringing should find Roman Catholic churches so attractive. But then the Protestants stripped their churches of the excessive adornment common in the 15th century. So it's somewhat new to her.

This particular church was built at the end of the 17th century to honor a co-founder of the Jesuit order of priests, St. Francis Xavier.  This church and this town were a major Jesuit training center in the New World.

The church did turn out to be stunning, but the town itself was charming. It is one of Mexico's so called Magic Towns (pueblos mágicos) and it deserved the designation. A lot of it has been preserved.

In most of these magic towns you get a good feel for how the indigenous culture and Spanish culture mixed while maintaining their separate identities. In the Spanish style town hall, the walls are decorated with murals showing indigenous heroes and historical figures.