Soap Opera lessons, latin-style

Life may sometimes feel like a soap opera, but there's no question that soap storylines can be more outrageous and complicated than anything in real life. And in the world of soap opera dramatics, Spanish-language soaps - telenovelas - reign surpreme.

Last week, the cast and crew of a Mexican telenovela, Entre el amor y el deseo (Between love and desire), came to Vancouver to film which was equal parts crazy and fun. I had been given the storyline before they arrived so theoretically should have understood what was going on, but I couldn't make heads nor tails of this complicated family tree:

Luckily, the Province newspaper did the heavy research and wrote the Cliff's notes version, here. Meanwhile, I met up with some of the cast and crew while they were visiting Vancouver: here's a photo of me with actress Margarita Gralia. Any guesses on her age?

Apparently, she's 66!