A Blog about teaching English in Mexico

Clicking on the title of this post takes you to a thoughtful blog with the subtitle The days and times of an English teacher in Mexico City. I've sometimes posted a little about teaching English in Mexico -- this is not something I have done myself but may well do on a low-key level later. I know that at least some of the regular readers of my blog are very interested in teaching English as a second language. This blog gets you right into the mind of a teacher. Not casual or light reading, not basic how-to, but interesting for those who are into this topic.

Can't think of anything but hurricanes at the moment

I have a bunch of Mexican blogging ideas but can't really focus on anything right now, with Hurricane Rita just beginning to come ashore in Louisiana and Texas.

Here's a blog by a devoted teacher from New Orleans:
http://blogs.chron.com/exile/

and this one is from a domain name registration company I use, directnic. I happened to go there during Hurricane Katrina to renew a domain name. I had forgotten the company was in New Orleans. To my surprise they managed to stay up and running, and are still there. Some rugged characters and a unique view of what's going on:

http://mgno.com/

I have also been following this blog, by a young woman who is a professor of mass communication in Baton Rouge:

www.hurricaneupdate.blogspot.com

The picture on the right of the four pictures at the top of my blog was taken near the Gulf of Mexico, on a river a mile or so inland, in the state of Tamaulipas. When it looked like Hurricane Rita might go closer to Mexico, I wondered about that place. Now it's not really at risk.

Delightful art from a Mexican artist

I just came across a very enjoyable website of art by an artist from Monterrey, Mexico, who currently lives in Houston. I wrote a nice blog entry about it but for some reason my niece's computer crashed... we are in Idaho visiting family... and so I want to get this posted while the computer is behaving! Go take a look by clicking on the title of this entry... whimsy, fun, much more.

A podcast in Spanish from Queretaro Mexico

Here's something quite different from the various other blogs I've been finding -- this is a podcast, which means it's created in MP3 files, created by what seems to be a variety of people, mostly young, from the city of Queretaro, the capital of the state of the same name in Mexico and about an hour away from where we rent a house in Bernal. Clicking on the title of this blog entry takes you there.... oops, not to Mexico, just to the podcast!

In case you're not familiar with podcasts, as I wasn't till recently, they are basically sound equivalents to blogs, or you could call them a form of radio broadcasting that anyone can do. If you have any MP3-playing software on your computer, clicking on the title of any entries in the Queretaro podcast will automatically start the podcast playing.

I love how the internet and all these various electronic toys (camera, MP3 recorders, etc.) are bringing people with similar interests together worldwide. Kelly and I were reminiscing the other day about our lives pre-email. We're all living through a remarkable revolution, one that we don't always notice.

We've sold our house in Colorado!

When we were in Mexico earlier this year, we talked about selling our house in the United States, having a big garage sale, putting whatever we didn't want to part with into storage, and living in Mexico for a year or so before deciding what to do next regarding housing. We have rented an inexpensive house already in Mexico.

But when we got back to our Colorado community, it didn't seem quite so straightforward. We have a beautiful home, a dog and two cats. We've been here nine years and have deep roots in the community. For a while, I was sure I couldn't give it all up.

We talked, we thought, we considered what we want to do with our lives. Kelly became clear that he really did want to sell. I had moved to being better than 90% sure, and we were proceeding as though we would offer the house for sale when we finished several more things around the place.

The Crestone Music Festival is one of my favorite events of the year here, and this year was no exception. Early in August, there's lots of good music, good food, and it's a great time to catch up with friends. Kelly and I were updating a variety of people about our plans.

I told an out-of-town couple we know that we were going back to Mexico and that we were thinking of selling our house. "Let's talk," the man said. I assumed it was just a friendly comment, but three days later we were under contract with them to buy our house!

Kelly and I are very grateful that we didn't have to go through the whole thing of showing the house to potential buyers, keeping it ultra-neat, and all the roller coaster of emotions we have experienced at other times in selling. The buyers had been in our house last year and they are very happy to be getting it. I found that my last reluctance dissolved when I saw their joy.

So now it's their house, but part of our agreement is that we can stay here as long as the end of November. We still have some things to finish on the place, and we'll have time to store our stuff, shift some things on our business, and so on, before heading south to Mexico again. It will be quite a new adventure!