Incident on a Mexican bus

A couple of days ago, Kelly and I were returning to the small town of Bernal in central Mexico, where we are living, from the city of Queretaro, an hour's bus ride away.

Queretaro has a huge and quite new bus station. If you drove into it thinking you were in the United States, you'd be sure you were entering an airport of a small city. It has three main concourses: one for first class and deluxe long distance buses, one for second class buses, and one for relatively local buses. We go to the last one for our trip to Bernal. Within the building, there are snack bars, seats for waiting, and reasonably clean restrooms that cost 2 pesos (about 18 cents) to use that you get to through a metal gate. There are several counters for the various bus companies, and when the people who work there are not busy with customers, they call out what towns and cities their bus line is going to. (The number of bus companies in Mexico is beyond counting. You can go everywhere by bus.)

To get to where the buses leave, you have to have a ticket and get it punched. There are a few vendors in the departure area, but the need for a ticket keeps down the numbers, and those who are there seem to have permanent stalls.

Kelly and I were in a Flecha Amarilla bus for Bernal and the city of Toliman quite a ways beyond it, sitting not far from the front, on the passengers' side of the bus. I prefer this side as I'd rather see the passing view than the highway. Though these local buses don't have rest rooms, they are quite nice -- many made in Mexico by Mercedes Benz -- and the comfortable chairs have high seat backs.

Kelly had just gotten on, while I had been on for about twenty minutes, doing a little needlepoint as we waited. As the bus pulled out of its slot and turned to get in line to leave the huge departure area, my attention was on putting my needlepoint into a side flap of my purse. The bus was moving slowly.

So I was surprised when a man about 30 years old began speaking to the passengers as he stood in the aisle. I was pretty sure (but not 100%) that he was saying that he was not going to rob us, rather than that he was going to.

There is a tradition of robbing bus passengers in Mexico, though in recent years there has been a major crackdown on this. It is more likely to happen between cities at night. Passengers are advised not to wear flashy jewelry. I had a brief moment of thinking that neither my gold wedding band, which I've worn for 33 years, and a nice silver ring with a garnet in it which I've worn almost as long, would come off my fingers since I do weigh more than I did long ago. It's funny how these little fear-thoughts pop up.

Anyway, the young man's next sentences reassured me that I had understood him correctly. He was telling us that there had been a car accident on the way from another city and that a three-year-old child was injured and in the hospital (or maybe that the child needed to be, I do miss fine points) and not covered by IMSS, the Mexican national social security health care system. The man was asking for any bills that we could spare to help with the emergency. My bills were tucked into my purse, but I had coins handy in another side pocket, and without my thinking about it, my hands were reaching for some coins. I handed the fellow 15 pesos, under a dollar and a half.

I wasn't positive whether he was telling the truth or not, and I wasn't sure if he was desperate enough to be difficult if we didn't come forth with some donations. What I cared about in that moment was to create a human bond with him. As I handed him the money, I asked him the name of the child. A little surprised, it seemed, he said a long name which I couldn't follow entirely. I said I would pray for the child, and added "Que Dios le ayuda," or may God help you. He said thanks. As I had wanted, the connection had been made.

By now I was sure the guy was for real. Kelly later said that he too figured that the guy was sincere. He would have had to be an extremely good actor otherwise.

Several other people in the bus made donations too, and the fellow left, thanking us and saying thanks to the driver and to his assistant as well. The bus continued out of the station, and our ride continued without incident. One of my favorite sights that day was a funky little roadside stand selling accordians.

Later, we were talking the incident over with our friend Rob, who has taken that same bus trip many times. He commented that sometimes bus drivers let people on to buses, vendors with snacks or whatever. He guessed that the fellow had obtained permission from the driver to speak to us, adding that Flecha Amarilla was pretty strict.

I imagine that the young man was asking for help on as many outgoing buses at the station as he could. I hope he got enough money and that the child is okay.

In the flow towards our Mexican FM-3 visas, Part 3

Tuesday we had come back to our village from the nearby city of Queretaro, with fistfuls of application forms for our FM-3 Mexican visas and an imperfect understanding of exactly what we needed to do.

Wednesday we spent the day doing it as best we could. Because we didn't yet have a copy of the every-two-months electricity bill showing that it had been changed to Kelly's name (not mine as well because only one person is allowed on the bill), we were going to have to get our landlord to write a typewritten letter explaining the situation. When I went next door in the morning to tell him this, he said that the bills had just arrived in town. We walked a few blocks to a shop where practically nothing was for sale but there was a huge stack of bills on the counter. We found ours and tra-la! It had Kelly's name on it, so happily Francisco didn't have to write a letter. (We paid about $4 US for two months.) We needed a utility bill as proof of address.

Then there were the application forms to be filled out correctly by typewriter. Luckily, our American friend Rob has a self-correcting portable typewriter and better Spanish than us. The three of us figured out my forms around the kitchen table, then Kelly went over to Rob's to do the typing. It was a relief to me to have some time alone, as all this paperwork wasn't the most fun. But I wasn't free of it... I sorted out our papers into piles, went around the corner twice to get papers copied, printed out application letters we needed in Spanish.

Meantime, Kelly and Rob had run into trouble on Kelly's application form. There were some 11 physical characteristics that had to be marked. Rob had a teenage boy doing some gardening in his patio, and the boy solved those mysteries. He just looked at Kelly and the form and knew exactly what to put.

We had a respite when we went to visit another American couple who are living here part-time now. With us and Rob, that brings the entire American population of Bernal to five in residence, with four others I know of who are in the US at present. The funny thing is how rarely I even think about nationality anymore! People are people, and we have so many friends here.

In the evening, we signed the papers, double-checked things, and discovered we needed a copy of our landlord's ID (federal voting registration) along with our rent contract. He wasn't home till quite late, but not to worry, the copy place around the corner is part of the same family business as a hangout for local youth and I'd already found out they were open till 10 or 11.

When Francisco got home, he turned out to have a copy of his ID so we were ready for the morning. He kindly offered us a trip to within five minutes of Queretaro, leaving at 6:30AM the next day, but since it was going to be in a cattle truck taking bulls to a slaughterhouse, we decided the bus would be more relaxing.

We woke early enough to get out to the highway for the 8AM bus to Queretaro. As we waited, we chatted with a lively young woman who was waiting for a different bus. It turned out she was a chemical engineer who had come to Bernal overnight to go up on the rock. She's working now in a situation at a factory that doesn't really use all her skills, but work is work.

Once in Queretaro about 9:00AM, we took a taxi to the Instituto Nacional de Migracion, where the same helpful woman as on Tuesday went over our papers to be sure we had them all. We didn't quite, but no problema. We should have had a second copy of Francisco's ID for my file, and I needed another application letter. She waved away the copy, saying it would be okay, and asked me to write out my letter by hand. She hadn't asked us before for a copy of our marriage certificate, but now she did. I had expected they might want that, and a friend at home had found ours in my files and scanned it in for me.

She didn't actually read the papers at this stage. Someone else will do that. She had taken away our FM-T tourist visas and given us a temporary paper. We are to go back in one week. If all goes well, our FM-3 visas will be ready!

I told her that after she been so helpful to us earlier in the week, I had hoped that the day would come when Mexican citizens applying for visas to the United States would receive as hospitable a welcome. She smiled.

We noticed as we left that there were quite a few people waiting. Coming early is a good strategy.

As Kelly and I walked to downtown Queretaro, we commented to each other that we hadn't even thought when we left the United States in December that we would apply for Mexican residence visas. Now, with our tourist visas out of our hands, we weren't tourists anymore!

We had brunch downtown. I stopped in at Woolworth's Mexicana, and was greatly tempted to buy a pair of panties that said on them in English, "Love in Jail." But I don't like polyester underwear, so I passed them by. The Mexican use of English is a constant source of amusement to us, not unlike the entertainment we provide our Mexican friends with our Spanish.

As the comfortable bus rolled through the dry Mexican central highlands back to Bernal, I listened to the Andean music CD and felt grateful. And curious. What's coming?

UPDATE: Here's a link to a list of all my blog entries on getting our Mexican FM3 visas, in case you want to read the story in order.

Americans dreaming of a better life in Mexico

As my previous two posts mentioned, we went to the nearby city of Queretaro yesterday and stayed overnight. Last night we wandered around the downtown area. We saw a few other couples who appeared to be Americans.

We'd had a big Mexican lunch in mid-afternoon, but wanted a little something. It was a lovely evening, shirtsleeve weather. We eventually chose an outdoor cafe in a little plaza. As we walked to a table, we passed a couple who looked American and exchanged friendly nods. When Kelly took a photo of the Sopa Azteca I had ordered, the man came over and offered in English to take a photo of both of us.

Here's the soup, made with tortillas, avacados, and other goodies:


And here we are:



We chatted a little and ended up inviting them to join us at our table. We all had a lively conversation for a couple of hours.

They gave me permission to use their names in my blog but I'll just use their initials, B&B, here, as I didn't really give them fair warning how fully I might quote them!

They are in Mexico on a relatively short trip. They flew into Guadalajara and rented a car, and have gone to several small and medium-sized cities. This is not a vacation as such. It is an adventure, a search for a place they might like to live.

"Why?" I asked innocently, knowing full well what a loaded question that was.

They are very concerned about with how things are going in the United States. They don't like the President, they don't like the evidence that the voting machines were rigged, they don't like the war, and they think the economy is in trouble.

There's a recent blog entry of mine that quotes another friend of ours who speaks of the same concerns, with some of my own reflections on them. I hesitated to blog about these matters so soon again, but it was so interesting to talk in depth with B&B that I want to go on more.

They are not yet decided whether to stay in the US and "fight the good fight" or whether to leave. I suggested that being unhappy with things at home was not reason enough by itself to move to Mexico, and it came out that they have been here before and loved the country. Their Spanish is extremely minimal but they are studying with the Pimsleur method for Spanish. (The link takes you to my review of this approach.)

I got into playing Devil's Advocate in part. One of their main concerns was that the American economy may take a major nosedive. I pointed out that Mexico is inextricably interwoven with the US and that if things are bad up north, they will be bad here too. They said that American influence is everywhere. While I agree, I do think that Mexico is more deeply connected with the US than most places.

We swapped stories. The idea of living in a town with just a handful of foreigners, as we are doing, did not appeal to them, and I think that's appropriate with their minimal Spanish. We all agreed that Guanajuto is a special place, and compared notes of our experiences there.

"What did you think of San Miguel de Allende?" I asked, since many foreigners with little Spanish live there.

Neither of them had liked it. They are friendly and outgoing people, and various Americans had been cold or rude to them. When the woman had said hi to some American college students, one of the students had complained, "Is it so obvious that I'm American?"

Around ten in the evening, we strolled a couple of blocks to an Italian ice cream place Kelly and I had noticed earlier. I was surprised to notice that perhaps two dozen homeless people were bedding down for the night, mostly on pieces of cardboard and with blankets. One of the men said in English, "Hi, how are you?" to us. I noticed several elderly ladies, and one of them was crocheting by the light coming from a store window display. I once again felt grateful -- as I have many times -- that I am one of the privileged of this world.

After we parted from B&B, Kelly commented that we haven't had this kind of conversation about the US that many times on this trip. Actually, we've talked with surprisingly few Americans. We've seen more Canadians and Germans in the off-the-beaten-path places we favor.

But we know that this kind of conversation, this deep concern for the well-being of the United States and often fear for the future, is going on all over the United States and abroad. We imagine that quite a few Americans are roaming Mexico and other places just as B&B are, dreaming of a better life.

There is a certain irony in this, since so many of our ancestors came to the United States for exactly the same reason. A better life. It's also a part of our national character that I appreciate, our willingness to try something new.

As for B&B, they will soon go home, most likely put their house on the market this year whether they are leaving the US or not, and... ?

In the flow towards our Mexican FM-3 visas, Part 2

As I described in my last post, yesterday we went to the nearby city of Queretaro to see about getting FM-3 visas, to be able to live and travel in and out of Mexico more easily. The day flowed easily, with help coming from unexpected sources.

So this morning we were curious what it would be like to actually encounter Mexican goverment officials in this quest. From other foreigners, we'd heard that the office in Queretaro was a helpful one. But I'd read many different tales online and in books, about the quirks of Mexican bureaucracy. As we walked over to the Instituto Nacional de Migracion from our hotel, I was mostly curious and hopeful, a little daunted at the challenge I knew this would be to our Spanish, and a wee bit nervous.

The office had a take-a-number system, and we had about a 15-minute wait. A blond woman came in after us and sat down without taking a number. I went over to her, to tell her that she needed one. She looked like an American to me so I said in English, "Do you speak English?" She said yes.

It turned out that she had a number but had stepped out for something, but we started chatting. She is Mexican, with an American mother, and married to a European. This is not all that unusual here -- I think few Americans realize how cosmopolitan Mexico is! We had a lively chat in English, and I was almost sorry when it was our turn at the counter.

The immigration official we spoke with could not have been more helpful. I did have to ask her to slow her Spanish down several times. She spoke a little English, but I didn't realize that till near the end.

She had a check-list form and she marked which things on it we needed. We showed her our tourist cards or FM-Ts. You have to get them stamped after you pay a fee at the bank, and we had done that immediately after getting the FM-Ts last December. She said we didn't have the right stamp. We said we had done it. It began to look like a confrontation, so I said that if we had to pay the fee twice, we would. She said don't worry about it.

She barely glanced at the bank statements I had downloaded from the internet, other than to say they looked fine. They were on pink paper with a black ink cartridge that was barely printing a medium gray. No problem, she said, other than that we needed two copies -- one for Kelly's application and one for mine.

She said that Kelly was changing his status from tourist to rentista. Did I also want to be a rentista or did I want to be his dependent? Well, I'm a woman's libber from way back, but I had heard that if you were a dependent, the amount of income you have to prove is half what it is otherwise, so being a dependent seemed like the way to go.

I did have one question, though. There's a lovely phrase in Spanish, "Ojala que.." which could be translated "Would to God that..." It goes back to when the Moors ruled southern Spain and the "ala" in "Ojala" refers to the Muslim name for God, usually spelled Allah in English. This phrase takes the subjunctive verb, but my verb tenses generally fall where they may and so far relearning the subjunctive has not been a priority.

Anyway, my question was: Ojala que my husband will lead a long life, but if he died in Mexico and I was a dependent, would it be a problem to change my status to rentista at that point? She said no, I said call me dependent then. I did blanch a little when she said Kelly would have to write a letter in Spanish that he would be responsible for my moral character and actions, something like that.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, I made a passing reference that we found the quality of daily life better in Mexico. Without missing a beat, she said, "Claro," a commonly used word meaning clearly or obviously.

She went on down the list. We didn't have an electric bill that proved our address, but we did have an old electric bill for our house, in the name of our landlord's sister who lives in Californial because our landlord had never changed it when he bought the house from her. We also had an official paper that showed the bill is in the process of being changed to Kelly's name. That wasn't quite good enough. We will also need the rent contract, which we did have with us, and also a letter from our landlord explaining about the electric bill and including a photocopy of his ID. Ojala que the new electric bill will arrive tomorrow -- it's due about now -- and we can skip this step. I think the landlord's letter has to be typed.

I was pleased that she didn't mark birth certificates as something we needed, as we had heard that some foreigners have been required to have them recently. We don't have ours with us. We had gotten a friend at home to scan in our wedding license, but she didn't ask for that.

She gave us a couple of daunting forms that have to be filled out PERFECTLY by typewriter, no photocopies or mistakes allowed, in duplicate. I looked at them and gulped.

I asked if there were people who helped foreigners fill out the forms. I knew that there were in other cities, but didn't know about Queretaro. I said that for example, I didn't know if my nose was concava, convexa, recta, o ancha

A little impatiently for the first time, she turned the paper around and looked at the list of 11 characteristics and rattled off which one I was for each. I had to agree that my complexion fisica, given a choice of slender, medium, or robust, was robust, but after a lifetime of being told that I have a big mouth, it was nice to know that -- in official Mexican eyes, anyway -- my mouth can go down as medium.

There was also a form to fill out in triplicate for each of us that we could buy at a stationery store and pay about$40US each at any bank, for getting the application started. There would also be a fee of about $100US each when we came back in with all the papers.

I wondered aloud if we should just wait till we come back to Mexico to do the rest, specially since we are leaving Mexico in a couple of weeks. No doubt about it, I was in total overwhelm. The Migracion lady gave me a brief pep talk. In effect, she said, look, you have almost everything. You just need a few little things, then you can come and go as you please and it will be better. But I do recommend that you come back this week with your papers done, so there will be enough time. We thanked her and we left with our fistful of new papers.

We bought the triplicate forms we needed, filled them out over brunch in a nice restaurant, and paid our first set of fees in a bank before catching a taxi to the bus station on the edge of Queretaro and then the second-class bus back to Bernal. It was a pleasant ride.

Back in Bernal, we stopped by the house of an American friend who knows about getting forms filled out. He wasn't home, but just as we arrived at our door, he pulled up. He has a self-correcting typewriter and much better Spanish than we do, and will help us with the forms tomorrow. The flow continues.

Note: This is probably far more detail than most people will be interested in, but I imagine that foreigners planning to get an FM-3 may find it fascinating. Do remember that your mileage may vary. One nice thing about Mexican bureaucracy (or not-so-nice, depending on your experience) is that there seems to be more variation in how things are handled than Americans are used to.

We could have waited till we were out of Mexico to apply for the FM-3, but there were a couple of reasons we preferred to do it here. The Queretaro office is the one we will be dealing with in Mexico, since our base will be in Bernal, a town in the state of Queretaro. If we did all this in the United States, we would have to use the Mexican Consulate in Denver. An example of the variability I mentioned in the last paragraph is that each consulate is allowed to set its own standards. We'd heard that Denver was requiring larger income amounts than most places. Also, Denver is a 3 1/2 hour drive over the mountains from our house in Crestone.

Another choice would have been to wait to do all this till we come back on another tourist visa, but we are doing it this way because technically you can't bring the same vehicle back into Mexico on a tourist visa in the same year. This isn't always enforced, maybe usually isn't, but we didn't want to risk filling our little motorhome Cando full of stuff we want in Mexico and be stopped at the border.

UPDATE: Here's a link to a list of all my blog entries on getting our Mexican FM3 visas, in case you want to read the story in order.

In the flow towards our Mexican FM-3 visas, Part 1

Yesterday we went to the nearby city of Queretaro overnight, to do some shopping, get to know the city better, and see what we could do about getting FM-3 Mexican visas, to replace our FM-T tourist visas. With the FM-3 from Mexico, we will be able to stay in Mexico indefinitely if we wish, or come and go easily, where only six months at a time is allowed on tourist visas.

We were going to catch an early bus from our village of Bernal to the city. The buses run once an hour and they take about an hour. But as it turned out, we weren't ready till shortly before the 11:00 AM bus. We left the house, each with a small overnight bag, and started walking briskly towards the highway.

As we walked, we said hello to some neighors whom Kelly knows but I hadn't met. They have a weekend place here and live in Queretaro. They followed us down the one-way street the wrong way (not that uncommon here) and called out to ask where we were going. When we said Queretaro, they offered us a ride.

So instead of the second class bus, we had a smooth ride into Queretaro with a delightful couple, chatting in Spanish about all sorts of things. They live not far from downtown and insisted on taking us right to the hotel we were planning to check out. As we circled through the downtown area, it seemed that every couple of blocks, the wife would mention that we were passing this church or that cathedral. I got a feeling of what it would be like for those churches to be living centers of one's spiritual life rather than touristic places of interest.

Queretaro is a very nice city, both historic and modern, growing rapidly around its edges. We stayed at the hotel we'd planned on, and spent our time in the downtown area, walking here and there to mail a letter, buy an inkjet cartridge for our printer, buy some sandals, and generally get the lay of the land. We had been there once before with some other friends, but this time, with a map in hand, we got a good sense of the whole downtown area.

Around 2:00 PM, it was time for lunch, Mexican-timing. We wandered around looking at various places. Some were just sandwich-type places, others were too ritzy. We were looking at the menu board outside a likely-looking place when the owner, a gray-haired man, came out and chatted with us in English. We decided to try his place. We had a tasty bowl of vegetable and pasta soup in chicken broth, then a plate with a tender piece of chicken and some rice, beans, and salad. The beverage included was Agua de Tamarindo, or lightly sweetened tamarind water -- a huge pitcher, very refreshing. Dessert was a small dish of ice cream. This was the comida corrida, or daily special, and it was 30 pesos ($2.70 US) each.

The owner had learned his very good English in Baja California, and as we chatted with him, we mentioned we were in town to see about getting our FM3 visas. As soon as there was a lull in the customers, he went into an office and made us a copy of a page in English, listing what we would need to get the visa! We were astounded. He explained that he'd had to help some foreigners get their visas before. Okay, there was a good reason we were in that restaurant!

There were a couple of things we didn't know about -- copies of every page of our passports and particular sizes of photos, black and white, face front and sideways, no earrings or glasses. Our host told us where we could get the photos taken, and gave us his card if he could help us any further.

So after lunch, we went over to the photography studio he had recommended. The woman said that she could have the photos ready for us by 11 the next morning. We explained that we had come in from Bernal and that we were intending to go to the immigration office early. She thought a moment and then said that the studio closed at 8:00 PM, and if we came at 7:30, she could have the photos ready for us by then. So we did and she did. The copies were no problem -- downtown is full of copy places.

UPDATE: Here's a link to a list of all my blog entries on getting our Mexican FM3 visas, in case you want to read the story in order.

A Musical Sunday Afternoon in Bernal, Mexico

As we were strolling across the plaza in Bernal, the small town in central Mexico where we are living, early this afternoon, the sound of an Andean flute was nearby. Under one of the trees, in deep shade, we saw that a three-person musical group had set up and was playing. We chose a spot in the shade of a nearby building -- it's in the upper 80s at midday, but not unpleasant as it's quite dry -- and stood and listened.


"The flutist is very good," said Kelly, himself a saxophonist. Many people were enjoying the music.


I was transported. There is something about Andean music that really speaks to me. We used to speculate when we raised llamas that maybe we'd had past lives with llamas in the Andes, and hearing the music has a similar effect on me.

I was glad I was wearing sunglasses, as inexplicably my eyes were filling with tears. The music just went through me.

After a while, I went closer to watch the flutist and I bought one of the group's CDs. Their name is "Bronce Latino" and they are Mexicans who have learned the music in South America. They are based in Mexico City. From what they said, they have played in Bernal before.

Eventually we went on about our business, and when we got home, I went upstairs to our office to catch up on some email. The group was still playing, the sweet notes wafting into the room. Later, Kelly went back down with the camera. I was as happy to listen from here.

He wandered around the little downtown area a while:


Don Quixote in front of a store


We've been meaning to eat at this little place, set up right in the street every weekend.


The dog was steadily growling at Kelly.

Spider in the Night

Last night I got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. Since seeing a scorpion in the bathroom one night last week, I've been carrying a little flashlight with me if I get up in the night. Our neighbor assures us that the scorpions here are not such nasty characters as the ones in the US, and he should know as he's lived both places a lot. Comforting.

Anyway, before going back to bed, I wandered over to the window and stood by the new screeened window panel gazing at fluffy clouds illuminated by the moon. Lovely! The town was quiet. What tranquillity.

Then I noticed that about three inches away from me, on the same side of the screen as me, was the largest spider I have ever seen. I jumped back, uttering an involuntary cry. I turned the flashlight on and watched it move rapidly down the screen.

It was all too easy to imagine how long it would be, at that fast pace, before the spider would have crossed the living room and joined us in the bedroom which has no door.

I briefly considered grabbing a yogurt container and scooping it up, but I am a klutz and Kelly is not. Laziness won out. I woke him up and he did the yogurt container bit, with a twist I hadn't thought of. He climbed the steps to our upstairs patio and dropped the spider into the yard next door, where nobody lives. We both felt fine about that.

We curled up and went back to sleep. We may be in the mountains, but this is still the tropics! I was reminded of that fact again this morning when I got an email from a friend. Our town in Colorado is due to have snow, possibly heavy, in the next few days. Here in Bernal, it's been shirtsleeve weather most evenings lately. I do prefer this, spiders and all.

Some other Americans moving to Mexico

I got the following email recently from a friend who is further ahead of us in the process of moving to Mexico. (Used by permission.) He and his wife are buying a place in Mexico and are currently in the US getting ready to move south.

We read with interest your thoughts on living in Mexico. Of course, we have been going through the same kinds of thoughts. We don't have a lot of attachments here in the States which makes things easier. We do have neighbors that are friends etc. but we have made as many or more friends in Mexico as well.

We see Mexico as a better quality of life generally for us. We are on a limited, somewhat fixed income being just a few years away from social security. We know our dollars (pesos) will go farther there.

We also see more opportunities to travel and experience more activities. The bus system is so good. The coast is close by as well as big cities and resort areas. We can travel to Puerto Escondido for about 30.00 and stay for a couple of months for a few hundred dollars. Compare what a trip to Malibu and the cost of staying would be!

We have no health care here other than the prospect of medicare, so the IMSS medical will be an advantage as well as the low cost dental.

Also, the people down there are so nice and friendly.

Last, we are feeling that 700 miles south of the border is a lot safer than living 50 miles from NORAD ;-) We have been greatly disappointed with the way the US is going and will be happy to be out from under their oppressive foot. Certainly a lot of good reasons to head south I think to spend the last 20-30 years of life ;-)

Something I was thinking about this morning and should add to the list above is the food - wow! I can't believe how tasteless the food here in the US is (fruits, vegetables, fish and more) compared to Mexico. If nothing else one can enjoy eating more and be healthier at the end of the day. I think you will really be surprised at the difference when you return after eating there for four months.

There's a lot there that reflects my own thoughts and feelings. Let me start with money, always an interesting topic. In Mexico, our basic expenses are so much lower that we can happily travel more and treat ourselves to more meals out, more crafts, and so on. I do get social security but it's a very small amount, and Kelly will start getting his (even less) later this year. To get an FM-3 visa to live here in Mexico without leaving the country every 6 months as people on the FM-T tourist visa must do, we have to show a monthly income of around $1500 to $1800 for two people. (The amount varies depending on where you apply for the visa and in many cases drops in half if you own a house you live in, in Mexico, and can show the title.)

We'll be able to show that amount by combining social security with what we make from our business at home, but geez, I don't know how we would spend that much! Luckily, they don't make you show that you've spent it all. I find it completely understandable that the Mexican government doesn't want a bunch of poor Americans here, when they already are trying to assist millions of poor Mexicans. And I think that plenty of frugal Americans are already here living simply on way less than those amounts.

Friends and family: Kelly and I do have a lot of close ties in the US and we plan to keep up our ties. If we live here in Mexico longer than the year sabbatical we are currently projecting, it will surely be with trips back. AND we too are making many wonderful Mexican friends. (Hi, Luis!)

Quality of life and travel: yep. We are thinking about spending part of next winter in the Yucatan.

Health care: yep. The IMSS is the Mexican federal social security health system, which foreigners are welcome to join for a certain price a year. I think it's under $300US per person per year. This provides basic health care which varies in quality from place to place, but for major surgery, etc., can be an excellent deal. MANY Mexican doctors trained in the US and speak excellent English. Many people (both Mexicans and foreigners) have the IMSS for emergencies but mainly pay out-of-pocket for going to doctors.

Safety and how the US is going: It has been very relaxing to not be thinking much about politics and issues in the US for the past few months. Kelly has been following the news more closely than I have. I will be interested to see how we feel when we go back to the US next month. When I take a long-term view, I can't help but feel that the quality of life in the US has been declining for some time in certain ways -- such as the insane costs of housing and medical care -- but I'm also aware of how many creative and caring people are doing their best to create better ways of living. Kelly is very much involved with that with his greenhomebuilding.com website, and I am in less obvious ways. I may well want to live in the US for much of the rest of my life. We'll see how we feel after we've spent more time in Mexico.

I am concerned that the huge costs of the war are going to have some very difficult effects on Americans in the future. As a Quaker since the Vietnam war, I'm no fan of wars in general. Not only will the US be dealing with the debt from this war for a long time to come, but as with Vietnam, there will be eventually be many people back from the war in a huge amount of emotional and/or physical pain, and I deeply hope that they will receive better help and respect than the vets of my generation did.

I have always felt myself to be a citizen of the planet AND of the US, and that position does lead me to sing the blues sometimes. Life isn't totally easy anywhere! Corruption and financial problems are everywhere. So are creativity and solutions... or at least potential solutions.

Ah, nice to have food to turn to after that last bit. I must admit that I do miss organically grown food here... the only place I've seen any was in San Miguel de Allende, a city full of foreigners. But it's also possible that quite a bit of the food we buy in the markets is organic and we can't tell. I've asked vendors in markets where they get their food, and the answer is almost always that they bought it at the wholesale markets in the nearest city.

We'll be growing some of our own food in our little back yard when we come back. I'm not a big beef-eater at home, but I really like the leaner, tougher, more flavorful Mexican beef.

Some Quotes on Mexico

I just came across these today--

In Mexico an air conditioner is called a politician because it makes a lot of noise but doesn't work very well. -- Len Deighton

My driving abilities from Mexico have helped me get through Hollywood. --
Salma Hayek

It is important for me, as a popular artist, to make clear to the governments of the United States and Mexico that despite the strategy of fear and intimidation to foreigners, despite their weapons, despite their immigration laws and military reserves, they will never be able to isolate the Zapatista communities from the people in the United States. -- Zack de la Rocha

The most that somebody in Mexico City will get paid for a job in construction is 100 pesos [about 9 dollars] a day. -- Alma Guillermoprieto

NAFTA has been good, has created jobs in Mexico, has created jobs in the United States, but the problem is that income in Mexico has not improved in all the years of NAFTA. So we better start thinking of other ideas that can reduce this difference. -- Vicente Fox, President of Mexico

I think it's very important that the United States keeps out of the local electoral process in Mexico. -- Vicente Fox, President of Mexico

[All quotes are used under fair use copyright. ]

Just another day at the office

In many ways, we lead very American lives here in Mexico. We both work on our websites several hours a day, taking turns with our one laptop and internet connection. Some days work is pretty much all we do. But often other things come along.

Take today, for example. Kelly often gets up before me nowadays and gets online first. I got my turn when he went out in mid-morning, to say goodbye to a Mexican friend who is moving away tomorrow and to go to the glass store to arrange for glass delivery tomorrow, assuming the glass arrives at the store this afternoon and gets cut. Kelly is remodeling a very old metal door-and-window frame that our landlord had lying around. Kelly has already roofed the patio, and when the glass is in place, that whole area will become more of an indoor space.

While he was away, I tackled updating a website I have about my father's science fiction, cordwainer-smith.com. About once a year I check over my older sites for bad links, out of date comments, and so on. Since we're getting ready to be in Mexico more, we're going to stop carrying some of my father's books ourselves and just link to Amazon instead. So it was a lot of nitty gritty work of that sort.

I stopped briefly for some brunch that Kelly cooked up after he got back. His outing had been successful, and we chatted about that over fruit salad and quesadillas. I went back to my website for a while, and just as I was beginning to go nuts from too many details, I heard Kelly at the door downstairs, welcoming our friends Pancho and Diana, with their young daughter Cheka, who's three or four.

They stayed and visited for an hour or more. Our cat decided the best place to be was under the bed, and all of Cheka's efforts to coax her out were a failure -- except for one brief moment which inspired further efforts from Cheka. We all shot the bull, and Kelly and I learned some Mexican slang which I will not repeat here. Kelly pulled out a photo album and we showed them our families and home in Colorado.

We'd offered them water or juice but didn't really have any good snacks on hand, till one of the old-lady vendors came to the door. She sells some delicious sweet breads that I buy from her in the plaza, and just a couple of days ago she had learned where we live, so now she comes by sometimes. Her timing was perfect, so we bought some of the bread to offer our guests. It happened to be right in the middle of Cheka and me pretending to offer Pancho a toy snake to eat on a plate with salt and salsa, so there was general jollity going on. We told Pancho he had to eat his snake first.


Cheka terrifies me with the snake.

After they left, the cat stayed under the bed just in case. I took a nap and woke to purring beside me. Kelly had had a turn at the computer and he let me go back to my website, as he had some other projects around the house in mind.

Later, while I was cooking dinner, I took a bucket of water a few doors down the street to water the geraniums and bougainvillea that a friend has in front of her house. She's only here on the weekends. After dinner, I went a couple of blocks down the street to a little grocery store run by a young man from Mexico City. I bought a few things, we chatted in English, and I visited his friendly dogs.

On my way downhill, I chatted with a Mexican woman going the same way. It hit ninety degrees here this afternoon, and the evening was delicious. She said that last May they had a spell of December-like weather. On my way back up hill, a very pretty young woman asked me if I knew of any work, which I didn't.

Determined to wrap up the website in one day if I could, I bumped Kelly off the computer. He was quite willing to go out into the delicious evening himself, so he went for a walk. Less than an hour later, I heard him calling me from the street. Our friend Juvenal was teaching a group of young women some traditional dancing (probably Chichimeca, as that is his background) in the jardin, or main plaza. We could hear the drumming from the house. Kelly had no trouble luring me away from the computer, and as we walked back down the hill, we guessed that they were preparing for a festival coming up here in a couple of weeks.

It was pure magic around the circle of half a dozen dancers. Someone was drumming, Juvenal was dancing, playing his guitar, and singing, while the women pretty much knew the steps and were dancing in a circle. Here and there, people were sitting enjoying the dancing and the evening. I greeted Juvenal's wife Ana and another friend, and watched. Now and then Juvenal would admonish the dancers to have an attitude of thanks and appreciation in the dancing. When they finally quit, we said our goodnights. As Kelly and I strolled out of the plaza, he commented that the dancing felt like it had never stopped from the most ancient of times till now.

Back home, I finished up an email to my sister and thought I'd blog about all this. That website work can wait till manana.

Nerja and Bernal

It was the sixties, 1966 to be exact. My boyfriend and I had been saving our money for months and I had dropped out of graduate school in Anthropology for the adventure we planned. Finally we left Berzerkeley behind us, crossed the US, took a Yugoslavian freighter to Spain, and settled down to live in Nerja, a lovely town of about 5,000 people in southern Spain, near Malaga.

We rented a large, furnished house for $50 US a month -- the dollar ruled in Europe then! From our upstairs bedroom window, we could look out at the Mediterranean, which was a potato patch away. In the summer, the house got too expensive for us, so we roamed around France, then came back and lived in a diffent house in Nerja. This time we were in a very old house in the heart of the town, unfurnished other than the few bits of furniture we acquired.

What did we do? We unwound. Both from very high-achievement families, it was the first time in our young lives -- we were in our early 20s -- that we were completely free to do whatever we wanted to, as long as our money lasted -- and we made it last and last. We both wrote. We took Spanish lessons. We spent a month in North Africa.

After 15 months, we returned to the US and some time later we went our separate ways. I went back to Berkeley, this time getting a Master's in Library Science. Work, marrying Kelly, raising llamas, and all sorts of other things followed.

I've always remembered my time in Nerja with a special happiness. There was so much about that life that I loved... the people, the sense of community, walking everywhere except when we roamed around by bus or train, the music of the Spanish language, the delicious climate, the ocean, the joy of living in another culture. I can still smell the fresh bread that came out of the village bakeries around dawn, mixed with the smell of rosemary. I still remember Dolores, who cleaned our house once a week, listening to my boyfriend and me speaking English and asking us, "In your country, do even the children speak that way?"

Now it's almost 40 years later and here I am, living in a small town of about 5,000 in another Spanish-speaking country. The standard of living here in this prosperous town in Mexico isn't that different from how I remember Spain then. The house Kelly and I have rented is $108 a month, another bargain. We look out at a beautiful rock outcropping, hills, and distant mountains instead of the ocean. We make friends, we walk a lot, and I often think of Nerja.

How much certain experiences in our lives turn out to shape our later paths!

Reflections on Living in Mexico

"This trip has really been different," Kelly and I agreed yesterday. We've been in Mexico for four months, which is over twice the time of our trip a couple of years ago and longer than any other trip. But it isn't because we've been here longer that it's different. It's because once we got to this town two months ago, we have basically stayed put, with only a few overnight trips. We are living in Mexico now, rather than traveling or being tourists.

We know people -- friends we have made and people in shops we visit. As we stop in to see how Jonas' new grocery store is doing and pet his dogs, as I buy another piece of clothing from Maru, as we go to the Sunday market every week, as I discover that we can buy white printer paper right here in the village even though we could only find pink in the nearby larger town, we are beginning to fit into the fabric of life here. It's still early days. If we left, only a few people would remember that we had been here. But seeds are being planted now, and it's up to us what we make of them.

We talk quite a lot with each other about how it feels to be here. I'm impressed with how well we are handling the noise of the town, coming from a very quiet rural area in Colorado. It often gets into the upper 80s in the afternoons, and that is no problem for us. I am sometimes stressed by the roarings of cars along our street on Friday or Saturday nights late, but last night they didn't bother me. We both woke around four this morning, when two or three men walked slowly up the street -- we're on a hill -- carrying on a lively conversation all the while. We wondered where they were coming from and what they were talking about.

A couple of days ago, a Mexican friend stopped by for a visit. She speaks excellent English, which is a nice change, and she was encouraging us to move here permanently. Kelly's reply made it sound to me like he was more open to that than I am right now -- I've been missing my friends in Colorado lately -- and I found myself shrinking back a little. Later, I asked him about his comment, and he said that he was feeling open but not committed.

Thinking about living in Mexico is like any new relationship! Will being here turn out to be what we want for the longer term? We don't know yet! It's difficult to stay in the space of not-knowing, but there is a lot of vitality in it, a rich range of possibility.

From Mexican Village Market to Sunday Brunch

Every Sunday morning, there's a small market in a plaza in the village we're living in, Bernal, Queretaro, Mexico. I (or Kelly and I) grab a tote bag or two and some pesos and head over there around nine or so. If we arrive muchh later, the produce has really been picked over. Once I asked the lady who runs it with her family what time they get here and she said very early. She said that they leave their own town around 4:30AM to get the produce in the city of Queretaro and then come here, an hour away. No wonder her teenage son is often yawning. I doubt he goes to bed early on Saturday night!

This last Sunday, I was alone and the produce was exceptionally good, so I loaded my bag to the very top and had to carry my half kilo of eggs in their plastic bag in my other hand. So I skipped my usual stop at the tortilla place, where half a kilo of fresh-ground corn tortillas would have set me back 3 pesos, about 27 cents. I also skipped the plastics lady with her son who appears to have Downs syndrome and is always very friendly (I meant the son but the mother is too), the used-clothing vendor, the CD vendor whose wares are likely not made by the original music companies as they cost about $2US each, and a couple of other vendors. Like I said, it's a small market.

The cost for all this food was 71 pesos, which is about $6.45 US. And here's the receipt:



It seems to be a large family who runs the produce stall, sprawled out over several tables. I didn't think to bring my camera, not knowing I was going to be blogging! Any one member will weigh each item and put it carefully in a plastic bag if I have left it loose, while telling someone else what the item is how much it cost. This Sunday, the teenager was weighing and a plump boy (amazing how many kids are plump here nowadays) of about nine was writing things down.

This teenager likes to try out a little English on me. Once when our bill came to 60 pesos, he said "sixteen" -- this is a common pronunciation problem I've encountered before. At the end of our transaction, as usual I said "Thank you," and as usual he said "Very much."

It's about a ten-minute walk from our house down to the downtown area and then back uphill several blocks in another direction. It takes me longer to get back home with my load. As I walked along this time, I thought how nice the fresh papayas and mangos would be with pancakes, one of Kelly's specialties on Sunday mornings.

Then it occurred to me that my loot would make a nice picture, so here it is:



That's a papaya next to the bananas, and the funny looking thing next to the broccoli is a root vegetable you may be familiar with, jicama. Tasty in salads and often served here as a snack with lime juice and hot sauce sprinkled on it. The dark green thing in the top center is a slightly spicy green pepper, the kind used in making chile rellanos, which we also use in cooking or even salads. You don't see any tomatoes, cucumbers, grapefruit, or carrots because we had some at home.

After the photo op, I did my usual produce washing. Bananas I just rinse off, and I don't do anything to onions except peel their outer layers off before cooking, but just about everything else I rinse and then dump in a bath of tap water and MicroDyn, a form of colloidal silver widely available in grocery stores and pharmacies. (There are other brands but this is the one I always seem to see.)Everything sits there for about 20 minutes, and the things that float I turn over about midway.

I am more careful than some people, since I had pretty intense training in self-protection from 3rd world bugs both from my father, who grew up all over the globe many years ago, and from a summer I spent on a work camp in Africa when I was in college.

I keep two basins, bought from the friendly plastics lady and probably made in China, just for my Microdyning projects. Here they are. What looks like it could be soap on the first basin is just the flash glittering off the wet broccoli.



Once the time is up, I drain the produce and it's ready for use. In the sink to the right of the bins you can see our homemade way of keeping the smell of the drains from coming into the kitchen, a little plastic bottle we happened to have with us that we jam into the drain. But we still get smells pretty often, because we have to take the bottle out to let water go down the drain. It's a funky kitchen and we may redo the whole thing eventually.

It so happened that Kelly had had the same Sunday morning thought that I had, and here is the result, complete with a little lime on the side, a very Mexican touch:

A Bernal, Mexico, Photo-collage

I enjoy playing around in Photoshop Elements, a simpler version of Photoshop, and the other day I made this collection of photos. Many of them have already been up here. The rock is La Peña, the stunning backdrop to life here. The photo where it's red was at sunrise, and the other photo with it was at sunset. The church is in the main plaza. That's a Coca-cola sign on the old building.

I haven't been able to post lately due to software

The program I use for blogging, blogger.com, has had massive problems for the past week. It seems to be working now in Internet Explorer though not yet in our Mozilla or Firefox browsers. I'll get back to posting ASAP!

Later -- I couldn't get this entry to go up. Let me try again... If I have to change software, It could be a while.

Rosana

Around Town and Around the House in Bernal, Mexico: Some Photos

It was very busy here, from the Equinox celebration through Easter and beyond. Mexican tourists flocked to Bernal:



Here's a view of the charming central plaza, called the jardin, which Kelly took in a quiet moment from upstairs in one of the buildings.



Our friends the Estrella family from Tequisquiapan, about whom I've blogged before, came to Bernal one Saturday afternoon. After we had a delicious meal of gorditas in a little cafe near the jardin, Luis and Kelly played music for a while on our upstairs patio.



And here's a shot taken at the same time, with Andrea, two of their boys and a friend, and our view of the town. The vertical line in the picture is our hot water heater overflow. Our hot water heater is not automatic, and has to be turned on and off as needed, though we keep the pilot lit.



We have been transforming our ground-floor patio quite a bit, whitewashing the walls with colored whitewash:



Here are the walls with our landlord's tall ladder, which Kelly used to do the tops of the walls, and a young cat who has come into our home. She is buddies with our landlord's cat and is in the process of learning how to get into the open living room next door, via the flat roof. Our landlord will care for her when we go back to the United States.



It's definitely spring here. I was going to contrast our spring with a snowy picture a friend sent me from Colorado last week, but I couldn't find it on my computer. He said it was supposed to get up to 45 that day. We were having a cold spell and it got down to 45 that night.

Audio Tools for Learning Spanish

I've just added a few pages to the website about audio tools for learning Spanish -- that is, CDs, cassette tapes, and downloadable MP3 files. I did a lot of internet research and came to the not-so-original conclusion that the best audio program is Platiquemos Español. This link tells you why I think that. There are reviews of some other programs too.

Also, Kelly has a little electronic Spanish translator, and the link takes you to a page I wrote about these things in general.

Improving our Spanish happens almost automatically here, but I am gearing up for some kind of regular study. Yesterday we tried to get the water bill to our rented house in our names but were told that it could only be the owners' names. Fine, no problem, we can still just pay it.

Then I asked the gentle, soft-spoken manager in the busy Water Commission office some questions about how abundant the water supply is and so on. Neither of us could hear or understand all of his Spanish, but we did get the drift that while there is adequate water for the town we are living in, Bernal, this is not so for some regions around Ezequial Montes, the county seat. He added, and we understood him fine here, that they are working to develop a culture of water. By this he was referring to the importance of conservation among the people.