Hot Summer and Scorpions, Here by Lake Chapala

It always surprises people in the US when I tell them that our hottest season is about now.... April, May, and early June, until the rainy season begins sometime in June.

It's been plenty hot this year. Lately it's been getting into the high 80s and low 90s every afternoon for weeks now. Being at about 5000 feet, it does cool down at night, into the high 50s or so, but our lows have been gradually rising. The net result is that our one-level brick house has been getting a bit warmer, day by day. I'm sitting at my computer now just after 8 in the morning, and it's already rather warm here at my desk. Our big window fan is sucking in the fresh morning air from the yard, cooling things down a bit, at least with the nice air flow. We don't need air conditioning.

I wouldn't say this is any hotter than other years... memories are pretty subjective. We stay cool enough, most of the time. Our house is uphill enough from the town that we get whatever breezes come off Lake Chapala, about a kilometer away. We swim every afternoon now. Kelly has taken up wearing shorts regularly for the first time in his life! Who says people can't change?

Once the rains begin, it cools down enough that we will start sleeping under blankets again, and we'll get to stop watering the yards and garden so much. The highs will often be the high 70s and low to mid 80s, which I consider perfect.

Watering has been a challenge at times, because the city water was off for a couple of days. Getting enough water can be tricky at the end of the dry season, but part of the situation this year is that some new water mains are going in, a good thing in a town where the water system is sometimes called leaky. We take shorter showers and all that, but we did acquire a quarter-acre yard with lots of plantings. Everything is getting the minimum for now.

This is our first year with our vegetable gardens. We've had trouble starting seeds in the beds because of the midday heat, so we started seeds in yogurt containers and transplanted them. We've had great lettuce, just now trying to bolt. We've been eating lots of squash. We just pulled our broccoli plants yesterday, as we were getting more aphids than flowerets -- these plants were great producers when it was cooler. Our tomatoes are still green but getting quite large. Our lemon tree keeps us in lemons, and we have some bananas coming along.

Now, about the scorpions...

They come out of the ground when it gets warm, and for whatever reasons, they love to come indoors. We spray, with some pet-friendly stuff, and that helps. But in recent weeks there has been at least one scorpion a week in the house. One week there were four, and I muttered about moving to Alaska.

This morning, we had just finished making the bed when Kelly said "Get the dogs away," with an urgency in his voice. I figured it was a scorpion just from his tone of voice, before he even said the word.  I called the dogs and got them outside. Kelly scooped the huge scorpion into our dishpan and flushed it.

This time was a little different, though -- Kelly had been wearing just socks and he had felt a very slight sting. His foot showed nothing, though. He put our ice pack on the floor and rested his foot on it while he had his morning tea.

So he was lucky. I killed another one on the front porch just now.

And so it goes in our tropical paradise!

Learn to Speak Spanish... or Go to Jail?

A couple of foreigners who live in the Lake Chapala area committed a serious driving infraction. I'm not clear on whether they did this in one vehicle or two. In any case, they found themselves stopped by the local traffic police who insisted they go to court.

When their day in court arrived, they claimed that they couldn't have known they were making an error because they didn't read or speak Spanish.

The judge sentenced them to learning Spanish or spending a year in jail.

Their classes were to begin  within a week and they were to report to the court on their attendance each week.

I read this in a local English-language magazine (El Ojo del Lago, May 2008, page 40). It could be an urban legend, or more likely it really happened.

Don't risk jail! Beyond that, life in Mexico is MUCH better if you speak the language. Rocket Spanish is a great downloadable program for beginners especially.

Sometimes Blogging Slides Down the To-Do List

It's been that way for me lately. Just busy with other stuff, mostly a new website I will announce here later. (Not on Mexico.)

Luckily I can refer you to a couple of other bloggers... same ones I mentioned recently:

Here is an interview with a variety of foreigners living in Mexico about what their biggest adjustment was:

http://www.mexico501.com/interview-biggest-adjustment/75/

And here is our friend Peter again, this time with an excellent article on five things Mexicans could teach Americans:

http://peterbrice.com/five-things-mexicans-could-teach-americans.html

Taking Long Distance Buses in Mexico

If you've ever endured a long distance bus ride in the United States, you may not be inclined to think that taking one in Mexico could be a much nicer experience. But it really can be.

While Americans will typically fly or drive their own cars in the US for long trips, Mexicans are much more apt to take buses. Not necessarily the "chicken buses" of so many stereotypes, either... a long-distance Mexican bus ride in first class or luxury class can be very pleasant, with comfortable reclining seats, a reasonably clean bathroom, movies, and so on.

In any city of any size, you just go to the large bus station and it's like an airport, typically with local buses going from one part and long-distance ones from another. (In Guadalajara, local and long-distance buses have separate stations a taxi ride away.) You will see a variety of companies competing for your business, wherever it is you want to go. Chances are a bus is leaving pretty soon for that city. It can all be a bit overwhelming! I favor the higher class companies, in the perhaps erroneous assumption that they are likely to have better drivers.

Catching a bus from a smaller town can be a matter of going to a bus station or you may just ask around and find out where to get on the bus. When our friend Peter came to visit recently, he took the bus from Zamora, where he teaches English, to a highway intersection just outside of Jocotepec, a small city near us. Then he took a cab to our place. This was a second class bus route, no bathrooms and lots of stops, but he said it went fine. When his visit ended, Kelly took him back to that same highway intersection just beyond Jocotepec, and someone else was already standing there waiting for a bus. Peter had learned that one would come by about every half hour.

There are dozens upon dozens of Mexican bus companies. Here's an example of the website of one that does a lot of Guadalajara routes. You can play around with possible routes and see the times and costs:

 www.etn.com.mx

I know travelers who particularly like this company. Check out, for example, Guadalajara to Puerto Vallarta.

Why Move to Mexico?

I'm riding on other bloggers' coattails twice in a row here. Mark just posted an interesting article in which he interviewed several foreign bloggers about why they live in Mexico. I'm one of them.

My answer was pretty short -- as I recall, I was half asleep late one evening and catching up with email. Still, it sums up my feelings reasonably well. If it wasn't fun, I doubt we'd be here!

Peter Starts Blogging, with Lemons and Limes

Our friend Peter, who is teaching English in Zamora, was by here for a few days over spring break, and I helped him set up a blog. It's at peterbrice.com and has a post I was thinking of writing myself, about limones y limas, that's lemons and limes... or is it limes and lemons? Maybe you''ll know after you read his blog!

Here's our tree, finally slowed down after its wild abundance of January and February. Then five or six a day was average, now it's just under one a day.

Learning Spanish

I've been reading the very interesting blog of David Rodriguez for a while now, and we have emailed a little. He is a Spanish professor and I asked him for a guest column on learning Spanish. He kindly obliged, and this is what he sent. I can vouch for his advice to read the Bible in Spanish -- I have a paperback of the New Testament with English on one side and Spanish on the other, and it's fun to read.

So you want to learn Spanish! Or, maybe you just want to improve your Spanish. Well, you will if you put your mind to it. I’ve been teaching Spanish for twelve years now and I’ve noticed that persistence leads to fluency. The secret to learning Spanish is to think in Spanish. You should always be learning Spanish. Continue doing whatever has been working for you, such as college courses, listening to audio recordings while you drive, or computer programs. But try a few new things, too. You need to expose yourself to Spanish in different settings.

Watch the news in Spanish. If you keep up with current affairs, watch the news in Spanish. You’ll be surprised how much you will understand. The pictures and films will give you a context that will help understand what they’re saying.

Watch DVDs in Spanish. What’s your favorite movie? I imagine that you’ve probably seen it a few times so you know exactly what the characters will say and what will happen next. Most DVDs of recent movies allow you to listen to the movie in Spanish. Turn on the Spanish subtitles while you’re at it. Just beware that sometimes the subtitles don’t correspond exactly to the soundtrack.

Read in Spanish. What’s your favorite hobby or topic? Search for it on wikipedia.org and read it in English. Most articles are fairly short, so reading it won’t take long. Now look in the left margin for the link that says Español. Click on it and you will be able to read the same article in Spanish. And this is proper Spanish and not this horrendous Spanish produced by some computer translator.

Read the Bible in Spanish. This is a good resource for learning to read Spanish because most people are familiar with parts of the Bible, Genesis, for example. You can find it on the internet for free. The nice thing about reading the Bible is that all the lines are numbered. You can look up the corresponding line in an English Bible and figure out what you just read.

Study Spanish grammar. That’s right, grammar. Most Spanish students hate to study grammar, so if you do, just skip over the grammar explanations, and study the Spanish examples provided. That’s all you really need. Memorize some of the sentence constructions and substitute your own words to suit different situations. I have some Spanish grammar pages on my website if you’re interested: http://davidrodriguez.us/espanol.html

Of course you should continue to practice speaking Spanish whenever possible because perhaps the most difficult part of learning any language is developing your ear for understanding what is said.

On the Shopping Bus to Guadalajara

The Chapala Red Cross provides a useful service and makes some money by arranging for a bus to go once a month to the Plaza Mexico mall in Guadalajara. Tickets are sold in advance at the Lake Chapala Society, and we foreigners go in for Walmart, a bit of mall shopping, and doctors' appointments in the neighborhood, as the Del Carmen hospital is nearby, and many doctors have their offices nearby. This happens on the 3rd Thursday of the month generally. We leave Ajijic at 9 and get back somewhere around 4. I've mentioned this before in this blog.

Well, now the Red Cross has added a second bus each month on the first Thursdays, and I recently went on its maiden voyage with a friend. (Definitely not the maiden voyage of the actual bus, but hey, its air conditioning worked and that was most welcome. Guadalajara is hotter than our area, as Lake Chapala has a distinct effect of moderating the temperatures.)

By the way, the Red Cross here is not like it is back home. It provides essential services that local governments cannot afford. It helps in disasters but its clinic in Chapala, staffed 24/7 with medical personnel including doctors, provides basic health care. Its ambulances are the only first response in its area. Find out more, in English or Spanish, at http://www.cruzrojalakeside.com/ Tax-deductible donations (in Mexico, the US, and Canada) can be made via Paypal too.

We went to Galerias, a three-story upscale mall in Guadalajara, anchored by Liverpool and Sears... in Mexico, Sears is much fancier than in the US. I was on a hunt for all-cotton queen sheets, not an easy task here since queen bed are rare and so are all-cotton sheets. But I found some at Sears. they had a nice Laura Ashley set for about $120 US, but the ones I found were about half that and made in Mexico. The young man who helped us was dressed to the nines in a nice suit, and I told him he looked ready to go to a wedding. He laughed and said it was about the presentation.

The sheets were my big splurge of the day. My friend found some darling outfits for her young daughters, on sale in one of the numerous chic little shops. Some Irish friends of hers live nearby and they came over for lunch with us.

"Is this really Mexico?" someone asked. Oh yes. It's easy to forget that there are many wealthy people in this country, but a quick stroll through Galerias proves that consumerism and designer name goods are alive and well here. Want to see for yourself? Here is the website of Galerias.

It doesn't take much of that to bore me silly. My eco-husband would have hated it. I said as much to a vivacious Canadian lady I met on the bus, and she said her husband would have taken a taxi home rather than spend much time there.

The mall was not the only attraction. Walmart and Sam's Club were in its parking lot, and right across the street was Costco and another general groceries-plus type of store called Mega. I got into Costco with someone who had a membership. Had I wanted to buy anything, I could have gotten a day pass, but I just looked around while my friend had a longer visit with her Irish friends. One nice thing about having a small house is that there isn't room for a lot of stuff.

It's good to get to know the resources here in Mexico, but I won't be in a hurry to go back. Coming and going, it was almost ten hours. I'd rather be blogging. Yeah, I blogged about this, but believe me I don't need an all-day shopping trip to find things to write about!

Hillside Fire on a Dry and Windy April Night

I looked out our back kitchen door last Thursday evening, and there was this fire. Actually, the flames were quite a lot higher then. I immediately called Kelly to come and take a look. Gusts of wind rattled our trees as we stared at it. It seemed that we were not in real danger, but we talked a little about it. The flames were less than a kilometer away, we guessed, in the steep hills directly behind San Juan Cosala.

By the time Kelly got his camera out, it had died down to this, and soon few flames were visible. About that time the smell of smoke came our way, and we closed up the house for much of the evening.

Evidently a farmer had been burning a field in preparation for planting corn, something that has gone on here for centuries. Our maid Rosa told us that the fire department came. We heard from Roberto, our pool guy and close friend, that several years ago a fire of this sort went up into the mountains and burned for four days. A helicopter fought that fire with water from Lake Chapala.

Scary.It has been a very dry winter and we are now in the last couple of months of so of the dry season. It's in the mid to upper 80s every day. Everything is dry. Cultural differences between Mexicans and North Americans towards fire safety are pretty big. Scary. Oh, I said that.

Yesterday morning Kelly and a friend went hiking in the hills, and the trail took them right through the burned area, which Kelly thought might have been 50 or more acres. Given the dryness and the gusty winds, that's lucky. Behind the burned area you can see houses of the Raquet Club, a nice development inhabited mostly by foreigners. There was a lot of damage there last September from the waterspout.

Lucky. Oh, I said that.

Roll Your R's!

I admit it, I'm terrible at rolling my R's in Spanish. So when our friend Peter gave me the URL for a website where I could learn to roll my R's, I was curious to see if I could overcome this limitation. Dubious too, but willing to check it out.

Peter sent me to: http://www.wikihow.com/Roll-Your-%22R%22s

It's one long page with lots of information. I was comforted by something I read at the very bottom: If you can't touch your toes today, it doesn't mean you are doomed to never touching them. You'll just need to get in better shape. Well, it turns out that rolling your R's is something like that, unless you happen to have some relatively unusual conditions such as missing upper teeth or a cleft palate.

I can't count the number of times that well-meaning friends have told me to put my tongue on the roof of my mouth and then to let it flutter. That bit of advice just doesn't cut it. My friends, no matter whether Spanish or English is their first language, then merrily proceed to roll long and magnificent R's. I can hear them fine; I just can't create them. A variety of awkward sounds come out of my mouth.

This webpage gives a number of methods you can try for getting a good rolled R. None of them worked for me on the first attempt, which the author says is to be expected. This is something that takes practice.

A list of ten steps begin the page, and while I did bog down on relaxing my tongue on step 3 and tensing it on step 5, it's a nice basic list. Things get more complicated after that with several different approaches outlined. I was intrigued by some of them:

• The Butter/Ladder method builds on something I CAN do, which is give the normal American pronunciation of those two words.
• The dR method did nothing for me at first, even though it helped Lenin. Maybe it would work with time.
• The Tiger method seemed beyond me.
• The Vision Dream method held out some hope.

The page ends with some useful tips and some warnings.

It's clear that practice is called for. If I muster up enough motivation to practice, I will report back in the blog. But there are an awful lot of other things I don't know how to do that don't seem as frustrating to learn. Maybe I will roll an R some day, but please don't hold your breath. Hmm, wonder if that's another way to roll an R.

Visiting the Ninos y Jovenes Orphanage

Ninos y Jovenes in San Juan Cosala, Jalisco, is an orphanage which has existed for many years. Founded by Padre Macias, who was for a long time the priest at the church in San Juan Cosala, it is located on the edge of town, with the mountains right behind it. This photo, which Kelly took during the rainy season, shows the entrance to it. I don't know whose horses these are.

The orphanage is just a few blocks from where we live, so recently I have gone there a couple of times to visit the priest. Padre Macias, or Padre Beto as many call him, is in his early 80s and still sharp as can be. He knows some English, but we conversed in Spanish, which he was adept at slowing down for us. If he thought we didn't catch a particular word, he often tossed in the English one. Our young friend Peter was with us yesterday, and his Spanish is more limited than ours. Padre Macias told a couple of jokes. Kelly and I got one but not the other, and I think Peter missed them both!

The priest told us that Ninos y Jovenes currently houses about 120 students. Some 40 of them are indigenous: Huicholes, Coras, and others. When the indigenous students first come, they often don't speak Spanish very fluently since it isn't their first language, but within a few months, they are doing great, he reported... most of them would have studied it in school for up to three years in primary school.  The other students are from San Juan Cosala and other areas. Some of the students are indeed orphans, but others may have living parents who cannot care for them for one reason or another.

I have no idea how the orphanage operates financially, but I am sure any help would be most welcome. So far as I know, neither the government nor the church is a major factor. I have heard that there are some local people who help in various ways. There is a staff, including an English teacher I met briefly.

At the time of the waterspout, when there was some damage to Ninos y Jovenes, I linked to a website about the orphanage but my emails to that site have gone unanswered and the US phone number given there doesn't work any more. My guess is that the people moved to the Lake Chapala area, as they said on the site that they intended to do, and just haven't gotten back to the site.

If anyone reading this knows more about the foreign involvement with the orphanage, I would like to know more... both regarding people who volunteer and regarding any organized way of donating. Please email me at rosana at mexico-with-heart.com or leave a comment here. (I do know about Ruben, the local restauranteur who helps out.) Thanks! I found it very inspiring to meet and talk with Padre Macias.

Finding Rentals in Mexico

How do you go about finding a rental home in Mexico?

A reader asked me this a while back, and I imagine other people must also wonder about finding Mexican houses for rent -- or condos or apartments. Whether you are already planning to move to Mexico or retire in Mexico, or if you are still considering living in Mexico, in either case if you rent a Mexican house, you have a way to get to know an area without major commitment.

Here are some things you can do:

[1] Plan a trip to one or more areas of Mexico where you are considering living. This will help you get a sense of what each one is like and where you would most like to be. (Of course, you can rent sight unseen but if you do, be sure it is for a short time or that you can leave without losing much money if you don't like the place.)

[2] Before coming down here , do some homework online. In the Lake Chapala area, some rentals can be found from many of the realtors. Here are some of the Lake Chapala rental websites in alphabetical order. Many of them do like to keep already-rented listings on the pages, but at least you can get an idea of prices and the sorts of things that are available.

http://ajijicrentals.com/listings.html

http://www.casamexicorealestate.com/publicRents.php

http://www.chapala.com/chapala/coldwellbanker/tenant.html

http://www.eagerrealty.com/rentals.html

http://www.lagunamex.com/SitePages/rentals/rentals.html

http://www.lakesidehomesre.com/rentals.htm

http://www.remax-ajijic.com/rentals.htm

http://www.rtkenterprise.com/Hernandez/rentals.html

I noticed that quite a few said no pets, but often if you are renting directly from Mexicans, they will be much more open to your having pets than you might have found in the US.

If you are interested in another part of Mexico, just google "real estate" or rentals and the name of the city. If you find a list of real estate companies, go through them for ones that have rentals.

You could also try Craigslist: http://mexicocity.en.craigslist.com.mx/

Although that URL says Mexico City in it, there are listings for several cities. I received an email once from a reader who had found a rental in Guanajuato on Craigslist.

[3] Once in a community, talk to the people where you are staying, whether it is a hotel, B and B, or private home. Find out where the bulletin boards are that might list places for rent. For example, in Ajijic you would be sure to go to the Lake Chapala Society, and in nearby San Antonio Tlayacapan, there is a large board in front of Superlake, a grocery store carrying a lot of foods that foreigners eat. I'm sure there are other bulletin boards I don't know about too.

[4] Walk around in the areas that interest you and ask people if they know of anything for rent. If you speak even a little Spanish, you might find something really nice this way, and perhaps less expensive than if you go through a real estate office. But in any case, it's important to know that in Mexico tenants are often responsible for the costs and the work of repairs that would be done by landlords where you come from.

Note that during snowbird season (early November to roughly the end of March), rentals are harder to find and more expensive, so for the best deals come after that. There is sometimes another influx from up north during the summer too. The Mexican highlands can actually be cooler than most of the US in the summer, once the rains start in June or so.

I think renting is an excellent way to try out a community in Mexico, and I hope these tips on finding a rental in Mexico help you. If you have more ideas, please post a comment!

There is Hunger Here

A Mexican friend of mine went to Soriana in nearby Chapala the other day. It's a box store with a large parking lot, and there are always several guys there washing cars while you shop. We often get our car washed there.

When one of the men asked her if he could wash her car, she began by saying, "It's hardly worth it because of all the jacaranda trees where I live... my car never stays clean." But when she glanced at him, the disappointment in his face caused her to change her mind and say "Sure, go ahead and wash it."

When she was done with her shopping, she paid him what he asked, some 25 pesos, and she added a tip. The man's eyes welled up with tears and he told her that he had had no work in two days and his children had not eaten.

Yesterday, Kelly and I did some shopping at SuperLake, a grocery store on the main highway in San Antonio Tlayacapan which caters to foreigners. I've mentioned it before -- it's where I get a lot of things that a typical Mexican store doesn't carry, like tamari, brown rice, and black tea.

There is an indigenous woman beggar who is usually sitting on the sidewalk in front of SuperLake or the liquor store next door. I often give her ten pesos and over time, we have developed a friendship. She has had some health problems which we have discussed, and she has showed me the medications  prescribed by the IMSS, the national health care system. Here is a photo of the two of us on the sidewalk in front of the community bulletin board, taken with her permission.

So after hearing my friend's story about the man at Soriana, yesterday I squatted down and told my beggar friend that a Mexican had been talking with me about how sometimes people here don't have anything at all to eat. Does this happen to her?

She nodded. On the days that she comes and begs, she can always eat something, but on the days she stays home, sometimes there is nothing to eat. She said she has to pay, not for only food, but also for her rent and light bills, as well as bus fares, from what she earns begging. I know she lives a bus ride away beyond Chapala someplace, not in the fancy high-rent districts.

Well, I wasn't born yesterday and I knew that many poor Mexicans eat a substandard diet. But I was a bit taken aback by total lack of food. I asked if she had family that helped her. There was a bit of a catch in her throat as she said her daughter does sometimes. I got the feeling there was a sad story there, so didn't pursue it. I asked  if she got any money from the government and she was astonished at the idea.

I went into Tony's for lunch with friends, and told them what I've just written here. One of them said she never gives to beggars but will now. Lakeside has a small contingent of regular beggars, and most of them are not whining... the ones in the more anonymous atmosphere of Guadalajara tend to do desperate pleading which is pretty rare here. There's a blind man stationed in front of  Tony's who speaks English and I often say hello as I walk past him.

As I did my shopping a little later, splurging on a package of that nice Mexican brie I have just discovered and loading up on luscious golden mangos that are now in season, I felt wealthy. As we put our groceries in the trunk of the car, I said hi to a fellow standing in the parking lot with his dog. I had chatted with him before. He's American and had been singing quite a lovely song in front of SuperLake once, begging in that way. Yesterday when I said hi to him, I reached in my purse for a coin. He said, "You gave me something before. I try not to ask the same people," and he went on to mention that he is homeless, which didn't surprise Kelly or me. Haven't seen any other American homeless here. I gave him the coin anyway. Any hunger is too much hunger.

Rocket Spanish: Just What Can You Learn from It?

Recently I received an email from a man who wondered if Rocket Spanish would be right for helping him learn Spanish. He had seen my page where I review Rocket Spanish. I should update that page because I now like the program even more than I did when I wrote it. But I'd rather blog than revise an old website page!

Last summer, driving from our home near Guadalajara to the US, my husband and I listened to the first lessons of the Rocket Spanish course. We are both way more advanced than that but we were really impressed with how easy they were to listen to and learn from. I think that a person could get a good grasp of a lot of what is needed to live or travel in a Spanish-speaking country. We even picked up some vocabulary. Click on the image to go to the Rocket Spanish website.

The program consists of a bunch of mp3 files which you can put on your ipod or similar device, or use on your computer. There is a printable ebook which matches the mp3 files, having everything where you can see it. The lessons don't just give you vocabulary-- they stand out from other such lessons because of the cultural comments that explain usage. I really like those!

Topics covered include discussions, asking and giving directions, descriptions, shopping, parties, family life, and much more. Each lesson gives you some basic dialog along with additional vocabulary. I like the really attractive page layout of the ebook, which makes it easier to learn, and I also like the informal style of writing.

The mp3 files do not cover the past tense. They stay in the present with a little bit of future and conditional. Suitable for beginners. You can get a lot done in Spanish in the present tense! I've found Mexicans very able to understand when we foreigners use the present instead of the past when speaking of the past. Still do it myself when I don't know a past tense verb.

But the package includes another nice ebook which is 176 pages and a LOT of that is about the preterit and past tenses. I think I am going to work through this myself. These people seem to know how to make the material lively and thus more learnable.

"Can one really learn Spanish from this course?" asked that email I got. My answer is that it is excellent for getting started if you will be living or traveling in a Spanish-speaking country. Many of the foreigners here at Lake Chapala don't know near this much!

But if you need to learn Spanish for academic reasons, or if you already are very advanced, this wouldn't be your thing.

Here is a link to the Rocket Spanish homepage. Take a look! They explain the various options and their money-back guarantee. 

Las Pozas of Edward James: Surrealism in the Mexican Jungle

Three years ago, Kelly and I spent a day roaming around the concrete fantasies -- wait a minute, how can a fantasy be concrete? By being  architectural, constructed of concrete in the jungle of San Luis Potosi...

Recently I made a short video from photos taken that day. Here it is:

I made the video late one night, and when I went to bed, the images of that magical jungle spot kept moving in front of my eyes. You can see a selection of images at my page on Las Pozas of Edward James,  and here's the link to my blog about going to Edward James' Las Pozas. This second one has a surreal photo-collage that I was inspired to make after being there.

That blog entry is also interesting for the comments to it. I mention Carmelo Muñoz, who was James' architect and building construction contractor, and a couple of his grandsons found the blog entry and made comments. Later renowned potter Ken Edwards chimed in with his tale of Edward James, and more recently someone who has been there recently commented on things as they are now.

Troubles with Being an Expat in Mexico? Take This Survey!

If you are an American or Canadian who lives in Mexico, the Mexican government would actually like to know about the good and the bad of your experiences in dealing with the various challenges of getting here and of living here.

They have set up a survey where they want you to answer a few pages of questions, like how hard it was for you to do a menaje de casa, how you get and pay for health care here and how you think the costs and quality of that care compare to the US (or Canada, I suppose, didn't notice) and so on. These are check-box type questions and there is room for your written comments at the end of the survey. It's all anonymous.

I took the survey last night and I must say it was satisfying to be able to tell someone in government about some of the hassles! Whether things will change substantially as a result of survey, who knows. None of us were born yesterday... but I do think it's well worth a few minutes of your time. I have used the survey software they use, for some work on another site of mine, and it's reliable.

Here is what the start page of the survey says: "The Mexican Government is conducting a perception survey among citizens of the United States and Canada living in Mexico in order to identify the main difficulties they faced during the process of migrating to Mexico and once they have settled in the country. Its purpose is to collect information, analyze the main difficulties, and propose policy changes to facilitate migration to Mexico."

Here's the link: Main difficulties faced by US and Canadian citizens when migrating to Mexico

Please feel free to pass on this article to others, or just give them them link to http://www.mexico-with-heart.com/blog/ and tell them to scroll down if the article isn't on the very top of the page.

Relax on Mexican Beaches, Right Now!

When people up North think of Mexico, the beaches of Puerto Vallarta, Cancun, Mazatlan, and other resorts often come to mind. When we drove down from the US in our motorhome a couple of years ago, we stayed in a couple of campgrounds before getting to the Mazatlan area and then in one at the north end of that city's long stretch of beaches. We spent several days at the most remote of these three places, luxuriating in the solitude and tranquility.

Naturally Kelly took a lot of pictures, and I took some too. The other evening, continuing in my efforts to learn video software, I made a two-minute program from a number of those photos. It's much more relaxing than anything I've done so far. I watched it earlier today, after I got totally frustrated with something, and sure enough it chilled me out!

So relax, sit back, and enjoy the grandeur of sky, sun, beach, and water...

Health Care, Health Insurance, Money, and Quality of Life

We've had several conversations lately with other foreigners here in Mexico about health insurance and health care, both here and in the US. Some aspects are not pretty, wherever you are.

Nobody wants to end up suffering.

So a couple of questions come up: what preparations to make and how to cope with the fear of what might happen?

Preparations that Kelly and I have made include getting lots of exercise in his case and a moderate amount in mine...  I do wear a pedometer every day and make sure I get in a certain amount of walking. We eat very healthfully, mostly at home, and our large organic garden helps out here. Kelly is pretty much an ideal weight and well, I'm working on it. We don't smoke and we don't drink a lot. We stay off the highways at times they are more dangerous. I do various stress management things, like deep breathing and EFT. We both come from long-lived ancestors but that is now considered less important than lifestyle. (I've even thought of doing a website on food, exercise, and health, to learn more and increase my motivation.)

Another aspect of preparation is of course the financial. Expats around the Lake Chapala area range in income levels from miniscule to wealthy. So various options exist. IMSS, the national Mexican health care system, is something that foreigners can join for a few hundred dollars a year; there is a three-year wait for some things, and I am not sure what -- maybe pre-existing conditions. I have not looked into IMSS, because the level of care is so uneven that I would be reluctant to use it. Private insurance exists and US health insurance may work here... unlike car insurance! There are also health insurance companies that insure you worldwide, and I am going to look into those for us.

Cash is the option we have used thus far. Health care costs are so reasonable that even when Kelly broke his rib and had an ambulance ride, x-rays, and various doctor, medicine, and physical therapy bills, the total was under $600 US and the care was fine. 

Other people we know have used IMSS (some with very good results), private insurance, and cash. Some people use Medicare, returning to the US to do so as it does not cover Americans outside the US. Once in a while, we hear of people who returned to the US after living here, because that was the best solution medically for them.

I think that a lot of the practical preparations grow out of each person's way of dealing with any fear they feel about what might happen. In my case, the fear is one part of what motivates my dietary and exercise choices, and I'll admit to taking better care of myself now than I did when younger! Someone else may choose to carry better insurance.

I do think that we Americans can get so focused on the risks of the future that we don't quite remember to live fully in the present. I really feel for people in the US who stay on at jobs they don't like because of their health coverage, to take one example. I'm glad I've never been in that position.

None of us will get out of here alive, as the saying goes. May each of us actively work at staying healthy and at enjoying our time here on this earth. We can learn a lot from Mexicans about the second one.

I thought I had finished this article with the last paragraph, but I just remembered a very inspiring video I saw this week about achieving your childhood dreams. It's pertinent here because  it's a lecture by a man with pancreatic cancer:

Sandi Books, Suburbia, and Other Shopping in Guadalajara

Yesterday morning Kelly and I drove back into Guadalajara, as I had a doctor's appointment. We went in early enough to go to Sandi Bookstore, the largest English-language bookstore in Guadalajara. Being the book fanatic that I am, I had long been curious to check it out.

It's a very attractive store in a pleasant neighborhood, easily accessed when coming in from Jocotepec and thus arriving in the city on Avenida Lopez Mateos... there is a map on the bookstore website. There was a tiny bunch of parking places right in front of the store, and we got one.

The first thing I noticed on entering the store was the extensive collection of travel guides (Lonely Planet) for every corner of the globe. Wandering around, we saw a good collection of books for expats to learn Spanish and a selection for Mexicans to learn English. There were children's books. Much of the entire collection consists of textbooks in English, with the upstairs balcony full of medical texts in English. While I had a momentary vision of aging expats self-diagnosing in the aisles (something that wouldn't be beyond me), the main customers are no doubt Mexican medical students.

Back downstairs, I was surprised to see a book about Things Fall Apart, an important novel by Chinua Achebe about the destructive effects of Europe on West African culture which I had written a term paper on in grad school in the 1960s. Kelly, an archaeology buff, found a book but I actually walked out of there barehanded.

Ordering US Books from Sandi for Delivery in Mexico

The best news to me about Sandi Books is that they offer a way to order books in English for delivery here in Mexico. We chatted, mostly in English, with a very helpful woman who explained the process if you don't go to the store to do it: we email or otherwise contact them with a list of what we want ordered. They prepare a cost estimate and we go to a bank in our community -- in our case, it would be in Chapala -- where there is a procedure for paying that estimate. The prices are either identical to US prices or a small percentage above them,

Then the books are ordered by Sandi from the publishers, and normally they get them in 4 to 6 weeks. They then ship them to you, using a courier service I hadn't heard of and the name of which I have forgotten, but she said it was like Fedex or DHL. I asked, with some doubt, if they delivered to obscure little back streets and she said yes, no problem. The shipping charge was about 75 pesos plus perhaps something more for each book, and you would have paid for it in that estimate.

This isn't as easy as having friends bring things down, but sometimes it's quite a while between friends. I'll report if I try this.

Readers in the US may be wondering why I don't just buy from Amazon and have things mailed down. After all, we do have a post office box in Ajijic. Not only are the Mexican mails slow (we got a Christmas card one Easter) and unreliable, but you are more likely to be charged duty. I thought the customs fees were around 30% but one woman I know bought an expensive technical book and the duty was over 100%.

Suburbia: Kind of Like Macy's

We left Sandi Books and only got lost twice going a few kilometers to the Plaza Mexico shopping mall. Kelly dropped me off there and went off to retrieve his Canon Powershot camera that was being repaired somewhere else in the city. I went into the well-named Suburbia which is a department store kind of like a Macy's. I didn't think the prices were any cheaper than in the US, but hey, I am here and I needed some things. Topping my list was a new set of cotton sheets, but they had none in the relatively rare bed size we have, queen. Okay, another time maybe, or maybe I'll get some brought down from the US by a friend. I was also looking for some cotton underwear and they did have all-cotton panties for about $6 US each. I didn't need them that much, but the longer we live in Mexico, the more I want to find resources for things I will want so I don't have to get them in the US. I did try on a cute dress, also in my preferred cotton, which interestingly came from India, as did a nice cotton nightgown I didn't need right now.

My next stop was a GNC store, widely found in Mexican malls. I got some vitamin C and vitamin E at okay but not great prices, but struck out on a multi-vitamin/mineral supplement without iron similar to the Twinlab one we take. So that will be a purchase for our next mule from the north. Just as I was leaving the store, my eye fell on a deodorant that is the exact kind I prefer, something I usually get from a health food store in the US. So I bought one of those.

After a visit to my doctor who says my ear is just about totally healed, I found Kelly in the mall. He had picked up his camera just fine, only getting lost once. We headed home, with compassion for those who have to endure big city traffic daily, wherever in the world they may live.

Driving into Guadalajara from Lake Chapala

Recently Kelly and I drove into Guadalajara, and I took some video of the trip in with my little camera. It's pretty mundane but often people up North want to know more about many of the details of life here, if they are thinking of moving here.

This trip was through Jocotepec and then into Guadalajara on a four-lane highway. I'm sure it's far more common for expats to go into the big city via the highway from Chapala, but this at least gives you a taste.

Lost and Found in Mexico: An Award-Winning Film

When North Americans fall in love with Mexico, and with their own lives here, it affects them in many ways. Some blog or do little videos for places like YouTube. A large number of my friends here have taken up painting. Some are active in fundraising for orphanages, animal shelters, and other causes. Still others roam the country or just laze contentedly by the pool, happy to have their major achievement years behind them.

Until I heard from Caren Cross, I didn't know of anyone whose response to Mexico was to make a film! She describes herself on her website as a "first time filmmaker who became obsessed with wanting to figure out why she and others had abandoned their lives in the U.S. to live in a small town in the mountains of central Mexico." That town is San Miguel de Allende, and your can see an excerpt from the film on her website:

http://www.lostandfoundinmexico.com/trailer.htm

And while you're there, you can find out more about her and the project. By the way, if you watch the short trailer from the film, you may notice that the lip movements are not in synch with the words you hear. I asked Caren about that and she said it's a problem that can occur in transferring a film to video.

Lost and Found in Mexico will be playing at the Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara, which takes place from March 7 through the 14th. Copies can also be purchased from the website.

Being married to a long-time film and video producer, I know how much has to be done behind the scenes to make a project like this happen. (Kelly is doing more website creation these days... that local history video of San Juan Cosala is the first video he's done in several years.)

Do take a look at her site, specially if you are wondering if living in Mexico might be for you!

At Home in Mexico

Yesterday, Valentine's Day, marked the second anniversary of buying our home in Mexico. We had a long talk over lunch about being here, all the various pros and cons, and what we see in the future. While we are not totally clear that we will be staying here for the long term, we have no other plans. For now, there is noplace that we would rather be.

To celebrate, I made another slideshow video called At Home in Mexico. This one one is almost entirely photos from around our big yard and little house in San Juan Cosala, near Lake Chapala. The music is more Caribbean than Mexican, but I liked it!

 

Another Good Mexican Medical Experience

About a month ago, I wrote about going to the Ajijic Clinic with an ear infection and how I was generally pleased with the care I received.

Unfortunately, the infection flared up again later in January. I tried another GP here in the Lake Chapala area, and also liked him. He had me take another round of a different kind of antibiotics.

But that didn't solve things either. So my tender pulsating ear forced me to face my dislike of traffic in Guadalajara and get myself to an Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) specialist. There seem to be none in the Lake Chapala area.

I had enthusiastic recommendations for two different ENTs, and I chose simply on geography. There is a monthly bus excursion from Ajijic to Plaza Mexico, one of quite a few shopping malls in Guadalajara. My understanding is that the Walmart in the mall pays for the bus. The trips are arranged by the Chapala branch of the Red Cross, you buy your tickets in advance at the Lake Chapala Society, and your 50 pesos round trip benefits the Red Cross. Buses leave the lake area around 9 AM and get back around 4 PM, I think.

I chose the ENT whose office is a couple of blocks from Plaza Mexico, just beyond one of Guadalajara's excellent hospitals, the Del Carmen. Since I don't imagine I will ever drive in Guadalajara, that monthly bus would give me a convenient option to forcing my honey to drive me around. I'd heard that quite a few lakeside residents use the bus for medical appointments.

I called yesterday and was able to get an appointment with Dr. Andres Badial for today. Kelly drove me in, and he went with me to the appointment. Dr. Badial was very personable, took plenty of time, really listened, asked lots of questions, checked out my ears and fixed me up... suctioning out a lot of gunk from the ear removed the loud tinnitus that has impaired my hearing for these weeks! I am to go back next week for a follow-up. The cost of the office visit: 500 pesos, or about $45 US. His English was completely fluent. (His office phone in Guadalajara: 3813 4334.)

As Kelly and I walked back to the shopping mall, he commented that this level of care was an example of the high quality of medical work that we are beginning to get used to here in Mexico.

Mexico: the Trick is Living Here... A Review

Julia Taylor didn't plan to live in Mexico. She had a career as a salmon biologist and a life that was going just fine in Washington state. But when the U.S. government refused a permanent residence visa to her husband, a Mexican citizen, the young couple moved to Cuernavaca and started a new life there. And luckily for the rest of us, she wrote.

Mexico: The Trick is Living Here is part how-to guide and part story of Julia's experiences. Now in its second edition, this downloadable ebook is very enjoyable reading. If you are thinking of living in Mexico, especially on a modest budget, I'm sure you'd learn a lot.

Repeatedly, I found myself nodding my agreement with her comments. Here's a bit about driving that had me chortling, not at what she is saying but at how well she captures the feeling of it: She asks the question of whether it is okay to pass on the right, and then answers her question:

While I only pass on the right when I'm in a total traffic snarl, other people pass on the right at any time they want to and this is okay with me. I simply allow them to cut in front of me afterwards and continue on my merry way." Note the chipper attitude implicit in that reply. It is important to be totally at peace with the new driving rules. [page 24]

Here's a related pithy comment that reflects on one of the more challenging cultural differences we Notherners encounter: "The police in Mexico have no commitment to the truth but they do have the power to define it." Okay, that's sometimes true up north, but much more here.

She warns against using IMSS, the inexpensive and badly overworked national health care system. It almost killed her husband after he had a broken arm in an accident. I've heard other horror stories like this about IMSS and also good things. Me, I plan to avoid it!

Of course, there were places where our experiences have been different or where I disagreed with her conclusions but that is natural when you have two different people writing about as complex a country as Mexico, from different parts of it! She is much more cavalier than I am about eating unprocessed vegetables, for example. Another topic we would handle differently is that Julia describes having your social security payments deposited into a Mexican bank. While this is one option, she doesn't mention what I believe is a much more common one, that of having the payments deposited in a bank in the US and then using an ATM card (debit card) to draw out cash.

She and her husband have a son who was born in Mexico and there is a section on how to do the correct paperwork to get U. S. citizenship for a baby born of an American parent in Mexico.

The ebook talks about teaching English in Mexico. Julia goes into many details of working and paying taxes, including getting an FM3 resident visa. Her experience was even more tedious than ours, and that's saying something! She doesn't talk in this section about getting an FM3 like we did, as people with income from outside of Mexico. Hers is the working type. (There are various types of FM3s.)

She interviewed Canadians and has a good section on the tax and other implications for Canadians of establishing their residence outside of Canada.

The ebook isn't chiefly about retiring in Mexico, though she mentions it quite often... it's a mixture of her own experiences and information she has gleaned from numerous interviews she did for the book.

Kudos to Julia Taylor for her ebook Mexico: The Trick is Living Here. Do read more about it through this link!

San Juan Cosala Historic Tour Video

A couple of days ago, Kelly went on the historic tour of San Juan Cosala that I had taken last year. I had run into Gerardo Tolantino, the tour leader and an English teacher here, and asked if it would be okay if Kelly videotaped the tour. He said yes, and here are some selections from the tour:

One of the most interesting things to me is that San Juan Cosala was the first town in the whole Lake Chapala region. It's even older than Guadalajara!

New Videos on Mexico

I've just been having great fun producing a couple of videos on Mexico. I went to a site called animoto.com and uploaded a bunch of our photos. I uploaded some royalty-free music I had for the first video below, and used some of theirs for the second. Their software did all the rest.

Here's one on Mexico in general:

And here's one from our Manzanillo and Colima trip:

If you happen to have a YouTube account, I'd love it if you would rate the videos, or comment, to help them get noticed! To go to them on YouTube, here is the link for first one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvBhJHR3H9k

and the second:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NdzYwYbxzA

If you would like to try something like this yourself, here are some animoto how-to tips from my Internet Marketing blog.

Around Manzanillo

When we were in Manzanillo for a weekend recently, we stayed in the older part of the hotel district... outside the city itself but closer to it than most of the tourism area.

We had breakfast with our friends from Colorado, whom we had arranged to meet there:

On a walk to a nearby cafe for lunch. I was intrigued by the semi-rundown, semi-posh quality to the neighborhood. I liked the look of this apartment complex, but as it was across the street from the beachfront hotels, it was not prime real estate. There's a "For Rent" sign on one of the balconies, and only one of the other places showed any sign of human occupation. Maybe these are getaway places for Mexicans who come more during the holidays.

Manzanillo is a major port, and there is a naval base. On a late afternoon walk, I was captivated by this street sign was in front of the naval base. There were lots of young Mexican men around, but we didn't see any bicycle groups!

This huge ship, at least a block long and carrying literally hundreds of containers, had glided out to sea while we were in the water and couldn't get a shot of its immense presence compared to the palm trees and buildings:

But this does show the containers piled high on piers:

Coming into the city you can see how the container cranes rise above the urban landscape. Manzanillo is an interesting combination of busy commercial port -- it's Mexico's largest container port -- and tourism attraction. We know more Mexicans who come to Manzanillo for beach trips, from where we live by Lake Chapala, than ones who go to Puerto Vallarta. It's more economical here, it seems, and also a shorter drive, not requiring going through Guadalajara.

It's always good to relax after a vigorous outing...

... or enjoy the sunset from our hotel room. That's a kite, not birds, flying.

 

On the drive back home, we stopped at a couple of roadside stands. At the first one, we bought several green coconuts for 2.5 pesos (about 20 cents US) each. At the one below, we loaded up on melons...

... after accepting tastes of several kinds and chatting with the stand owners. They have been there 27 years and their family grows the melons nearby.

Historic Tour of San Jan Cosala Coming Up

On Monday, January 4, there will be walking tours of the history of San Juan Cosala, taking about an hour. I took this tour last year and it was terrific. Gerardo Tolantino, who will lead both tours, was born and raised here in San Juan Cosala. He speaks good English -- in fact, he teaches English -- and he is a really fine person. I always enjoy talking with him when our paths cross.

The historic tour will be given twice, at noon and again at 2 PM.

There will also be a  crafts show, folkloric and pre-Hispanic dancing, mariachi music, and refreshments. Cost for the tour and refreshments is 100 pesos, which will benefit the soccer program for teenagers. Since Kelly and I have a teenage friend here who is passionate about soccer, we've come to see how very important this program is.

You can get tickets on the plaza in San Juan Cosala shortly before each walk, but if you know you are coming, it's helpful to the organizers to have an approximate head count. You can call any of these English-speaking volunteers for more information or for tickets:

In Ajijic, Marion 376-766-0665

In San Juan Cosa