Midlife Mavericks: Women Reinventing Their Lives in Mexico, by Karen Blue

Karen Blue had a good career going in California when at 52, she quit, sold her house, and moved to Ajijic, Mexico. Her family and her closest friends thought she was crazy.

Once down here and settled in, she began talking with other women who had come down by themselves from the US and Canada. the result is a fascinating book, Midlife Mavericks: Women Reinventing Their Lives in Mexico. It describes the lives of quite a variety of women, of varying ages.

The book reads very smoothly and pleasantly, but if you are in the US and thinking about possibly living in Mexico, by yourself or not, be warned:

This book could be life changing!

That's why I just bought a copy the other day from Blue (that's what she goes by). I'm going to give it to one of my sisters-in-law, on purpose.

Do I think the book is an accurate description of life around Ajijic and Lake Chapala? Yes. Prices have risen since the book came out in 2000, and rentals are probably harder to find. But overall, the flavor of life as she describes it seems accurate to me.

My own life is a bit different, but then each woman's life is unique. Mine is different in that I am less active in the gringo community. I'm much more likely to be found at home, in front of my computer. As I almost never feel comfortable driving in Mexico, I don't run around nearly as much as most expats here. But I'm kinda a homebody wherever I am... it's just a bit more marked here. And I’ve made a real effort to develop friendships with Mexicans.

I would never have had the guts to come down to Mexico on my own, but even if you think you never could, this book is well worth reading!

It's available through Blue's website and via Amazon.com:

ATM Ate My Card… But Kind Mexicans Got Our Car Going

We had our challenges yesterday. Some days are like that.

I used the HSBC ATM at Soriana in Chapala, which is a big box store kind of like a small Walmart. For some ornery reason of its own, the ATM gobbled up my debit card. No money, no card. Nada. I did get a printed receipt that told me the machine had kept the card.

I knew I would never see that card again, but just in case – since the laws of reality operate a bit differently south of the border – I asked the guard who was standing nearby, interrupting a tender moment he was having with a pretty young woman. She flounced off, and he got a card from the nearby customer service desk and tried inserting it. The machine took it and gave  it back. Good, at least my card was far enough into the guts of the machine that the next customer wasn’t going to receive it.

Next I called the Mexican 800 number that was on the ATM for such occasions. Speaking Spanish on my cell phone in the echoing space of the store, I talked to two different young men, both very nice but both speaking very rapidly. The gist of it was that I should call my bank in Colorado and void that card.

I did that once we got home, and this is another case of the “good bad luck” that Kelly and I seem to have. Next week we’re flying to San Francisco for a quick trip, Kelly to a professional conference on natural building, me to make a circuit of family members and old friends in the bay area. There will be time for my replacement card to catch up with me in the US. 

Anyway, back at Soriana, Kelly turned up from doing other errands and he got money out with his card from a different ATM machine there. We did our shopping, loaded up the car, and paid the guy who had washed it.

Kelly turned the key. Nothing happened. We had gas. Our young friend Peter was due at our house pretty soon, and I hoped he wouldn’t have to wait on the street for us. (Peter’s blog on roaming around Mexico and other places just keeps getting better. Check it out if you haven’t. His recent post "Slowly, Mexico becomes a horror movie with a touch of farce" will curl your hair, guaranteed.)

The car washing guy and his buddy came over to trouble shoot with Kelly. They offered to give us a push and Kelly decided it was worth a try. They pushed us out of our spot and then forward towards a sloping exit. Cough, cough, and the car started. We were on our way.

What a relief! We were not going to spend hours in the hot Soriana parking lot.

We stopped in at a gas station to ask about buying batteries, as Kelly was pretty sure that was the problem. The guy there waved at an auto parts store across the street. The man at the store had the right battery and he and Kelly got it installed in no time, with pleasant chatting at no extra charge.

It worked. We got home before Peter.

Just that morning, a Mexican friend had commented that Americans are more community-minded than Mexicans. I do think there is some truth to that, but something about an emergency – small or large – seems to bring out the best in Mexicans!

Mexico the Next China?

Two or three weeks ago, a friend sent me the link to a Christian Science Monitor article which asks if Mexico is the new China. Since the population of Mexico has at least quadrupled since I was here as a child, I answered "yes" rather cynically in my mind.

But the article is about manufacturing, not population. It begins,

with skyrocketing oil prices, escalating labor costs in China, and an appreciating currency there, companies targeting the US market are doing the math and giving Mexico another look. So-called "nearshoring" could generate a reverse globalization that brings manufacturing back to Mexico.

The article is at
 http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0911/p01s02-woam.html

The point is that with fuel prices rising, it will make sense to diminish distances. Well, it is nice to see people realizing this!

I am a huge fan of the "locavore" movement taking root in the US, where people do their best to eat as locally as possible. We do that here a lot, with bananas, papayas, lemons, and more exotic fruits in our own yard, and an organic vegetable garden.

Just the other day, some friends were planning an outing to a pottery factory that is between here and Guadalajara. I blogged about going there over a year ago, as we have numerous large and small planters from it. Sadly, my friends discovered that the pottery factory is closing down.

Why? Because their main business was exporting to the US and they can't compete with Chinese copies of Mexican style pottery.

China the next Mexico? Mexico the next China? What a world!

Globos in Ajijic

On a recent Saturday afternoon, Kelly and I sat on a rooftop in Ajijic, at the home of some friends who live right in the village. We enjoyed the company of a variety of other people, but there was another reason we spent most of the time on the roof rather than two floors below, where the delicious food was.

Globos!

The annual balloon competition takes place every September, around the Independence Day celebrations. Believe it or not, this lovely thing is made mainly of tissue paper. People work together on their globos, whether it's a family, a neighborhood or a business.

We were several blocks from the soccer field where the globos were being launched, and that was fine with me because while most of them got off to a good start, I'm not very Mexican in my ideas about what is safe.

They go aloft -- and some go very high indeed -- due to being little hot air balloons, and the heat is supplied by kerosene-soaked cotton or rags that are set on fire just before blast off.

I'm glad that all this takes place in the middle of the rainy season. Here is the pretty one above, crashing and burning.

.

 

This is one of the more elaborate globos. To see a whole slide show of the many photos Kelly took that day, see http://www.flickr.com/photos/kellyhart/sets/72157607290460439/show/ and click on "slide show" at upper right.

September 11 Thoughts

I may have mentioned here that my father was a noted science fiction writer, Cordwainer Smith. That was his pen name; as a college professor and political scientist, he kept that identity secret and went by his real name, Paul M. A. Linebarger.

Well, recently I re-did a large website that I have about his science fiction and added a blog. This afternoon, I posted an uncharacteristically personal (for that website) entry, and as I was washing some dishes just now, it occurred to me that some of you readers might enjoy it:

http://cordwainer-smith.com/blog/september-11-thoughts-of-my-father.html

Introverts, Extroverts, Paranoids, Drama Queens...

We're all here. I'm sure we have our Mexican counterparts but right now I'm thinking about us foreigners. The drama gets pretty intense at times.

Okay, I'll fess up that Kelly and I are the introverts and the extroverts -- both of us. We do enjoy going out now and then, we like talking with people and meeting new people. But when it comes down to it, both of us tend to be happiest working on our many projects: writing, gardening, learning new things.

For example, when Kelly's sister was here, she got us started with Wild Goose Chi Gong. I really took to it and am learning more, bit by bit, via DVD. This form of Chi Gong is known as a "medical" type, and I must say that seeing the health problems of other foreigners here has me on a fitness kick, losing weight, getting more exercise, and almost completely eliminating wheat and all sweeteners from my food.

That leaves the paranoids and drama queens. I'm sure I could qualify for one or another title now and again, but I was actually thinking of various other people and events over recent months. (Add drama kings, it's certainly not just women.) I will spare you the details of these sagas.

I was chatting about this over lunch with friends today, a couple who have been here several years longer than our nearly three years. The woman commented that one of the main things that she loves here is the sense of  community among the foreigners.

People tend to know each other, help each other out, make allowances for each other's foibles (however massive), and be warm and friendly to a degree she doesn't see in the US. Her husband pointed out that we all came here from someplace else.

I'm a bit nuts, some of them are a bit nuts. And maybe you'd fit right in too!

American living abroad? You can vote.

I didn't realize till we looked into it that any American living out of the country, whether civilian or military, is entitled to vote in national elections in the state where they last lived in the US.

Get all the details, and fill out a form to apply, at

http://votefromabroad.org/

They give various tips, including the comment that may reassure some of you: Voting only in federal elections only cannot be used to affect the determination of federal or state tax liability.

Please spread the word on this. It looks like the election in November may need our votes.

Kelly's Photos Around Our Lake Chapala Area

I'm busy on a new website (about learning Spanish... will write about it when I get it up, within a few weeks, I hope) and so I have been neglecting a lot of my ordinary activities... like writing here.

So when my husband Kelly mentioned that he was posting a bunch of his newest photos to flickr, I thought, "Aha,instant blog entry."

Take a loook: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kellyhart/

And I'll be back here again pretty soon!

Mexican Oil, Mexican Corn: Two Reports

My husband sent me two links today. One is to an NPR article about the politics and problems besetting Mexican oil, and the other is to an article about many aspects of food here. I think they are both blog-worthy.

The Mexican oil article is rather disquieting. Looming Energy Crisis In Mexico Stirs Debate is the title, and things don't get any cheerier after that. I think of Mexico as a country that HAS oil, but while that is true now, Pemex has been enough of a cash cow for the government, according to the article, that reserves could run short as soon as seven years from now. Funding that could have gone into improving long-term oil production has been diverted in a variety of ways. Of course "could run short" is not the same thing as "will run short." We'll see.

Here's another bit: "Despite being a major oil exporter, Mexico imports 40 percent of its gasoline because Pemex does not have the capacity to refine its own crude." I knew that importation was occurring, but I didn't realize it was that high a percentage of the gasoline. Oddly, while gas prices at the pump up north have done their big climbs, our prices have only gone up a little. That's because the federal government here in Mexico subsidizes gas prices at the pump.

Turning to corn, Corn Patches and Dispatches:Notes on a recent trip to Mexico is an article that ranges from milpas (cornfields or small farm fields) to Wal-Mart. Some (but not all) of the comments were interesting too.

Mexican Cat Misty

There are plenty of Mexican cats, since spaying and neutering are pretty rare here. One of them lives with us:  Misty, shown here exploring a bouquet. She came into our lives through an unlikely series of events. In 2005, we were living in the charming small town of Bernal, about an hour from the city of Queretaro. We rented a house, fixed it up, and thought we were going to live there indefinitely.

One day, a small kitten turned up in the inside patio of a an American friend of ours, chased there by a huge tomcat. His houseguest fed the little waif, but it couldn't stay long as our friend was quite allergic to cats.

I enjoyed holding the pale orange kitten, who was quick to purr in my arms. When the kitten was offered to me, I could think of many reasons to say no, but my heart yearned for her. Kelly was inclined to be rational -- who needs a cat when they are planning to go back to the US for a few months? But our landlord (who lived next door to our rental) was willing to feed the kitten while we were gone and nobody else had turned up willing to take her. Tossing her back onto the street was not an appealing option.

So Kelly and I agreed that Misty would become ours. She was a dear little thing, and very entertaining as kittens are, chasing balls around our house and back patio. Other cats could easily get into the patio via rooftops, and twice we came home to find she had literally been scared sh*tless by one of the large cat bosses of our neighborhood. It was quite a mess to clean up, and Kelly created a little covered cat area in the patio where she could be outside, with her own door inside, and sheltered from the bullies.

Spaying Not Easy

We thought Misty was younger than she must have been, for very soon she went into heat. Once that was past, we looked into having her spayed. A vet in a larger town could do it for 1500 pesos, about $150 US. A retired vet in Bernal was going to do it for a more reasonable price, but after some time he confessed that it had been some years since he had spayed a cat, and he was concerned that his skills might not be up to it. By then, we needed to go back to Colorado, where we would sell our house, pack things up, and return to Mexico. We found a local horse-and-cattle vet in Bernal, who gave Misty a "birth control" shot not available in the US, but he had never spayed a cat. He said he would come by and give her the shot while we were gone, but he never did. Luckily, the housing Kelly had created for her kept the boys away.

Departure and Reunion

I was in tears when we left her there, but I had to agree with Kelly that it was the best thing to do. Once back in Colorado, we did succeed in selling our house, but everything took longer than we expected. It was half a year later that we came back to Mexico in our little RV, with LarryDog. This is when fate intervened by bringing us to Lake Chapala, where things unfolded and we ended up buying our house here.

When we finally went back to Bernal to get Misty, it was no surprise that she hid under the bed and wouldn't come out. We slept there that night, and I woke in the night feeling her climbing over me and purring gently. We were friends again, and she was a good little traveler back to Lake Chapala. Getting her spayed her was simple and inexpensive.

So now Misty lives with Moonlight, our part-Siamese cat we brought back from Colorado the next year, and our two dogs. Misty keeps them all in line. Just yesterday there was a startled yelp from our Rottweiler Lola as Misty whacked her for some infraction. Misty has had enough large animals bothering her; now, she's the boss.

Dogs at Lake Chapala

It's a dog's life, all right, as our sleeping Lola demonstrates here. She's the Rottweiler we got a year ago, at the age of about 6 months. We got her from a woman who had gotten her from one of the three animal rescue organizations (all foreign-run) in the Lake Chapala area, and then realized that three dogs was really enough for her!  We heard that Lola had been turned in to the Animal Shelter by the foreigners who had bred her, so she has never known life on the street. She is a total love, but her presence and deep bark do have a good deterrent effect on would-be ne'er-do-wells.

Many foreigners who live in this area adopt Mexican dogs, and it generally works out well. The main caveat would be to use your common sense about what size dog to get, relative to your ability to handle it and to give it enough exercise. Many of the dogs who have known hunger and the street life are immensely grateful to humans who adopt them. (It's hard to know sometimes if a dog is homeless or just belongs to a family that lets it run, but my impression is that while there are a lot of street dogs in this area, the shelters  and their spay/neuter programs have made inroads into the problem.) Many Mexicans are real dog-lovers too.

These dogs may come with some emotional baggage, so patience may be required. See another of my websites, training-dogs.com, for lots of information on training dogs with pain-free, positive methods.

Another bit of advice would be to take your dog to a good veterinarian for an exam. If you have other animals at home, you might do that even before taking your new friend home. In this area, we are fortunate to have quite a few very good vets who speak English.

If you are driving down, you can bring your dogs with you. We did this with LarryDog, our now-11 mixed breed from Colorado. Here, he's demonstrating a trick where he waits to eat the bits of dog food on his paws till he gets told "Okay!" He needed to be in good health and to have a vet's certificate saying so, plus he needed a very current rabies shot and paperwork to prove it, to get into Mexico. In typical Mexican-style bureaucratic fashion, you don't know if such paperwork is really going to be needed and in Larry's case, it wasn't. At the border, he was barking his head off, guarding our little motorhome from the uniformed Mexican official, and the man asked if the dog bit. Assured that he didn't normally, the man just asked if we had any drugs or guns, and when I said no, that was it for LarryDog's border formalities.

I've heard that going into the US is much the same. The requirements are pretty much the same, and as a middle-class Mexican friend of mine said, "It's easier for dogs and cats to get into the US than it is for people!" Quite a few foreigners have adopted dogs here and taken them north with little or no problems.

There are a variety of pet-sitting options here, from Doglandia, a boarding facility run by a very caring foreign woman, to in-house pet-sitters, to having a trusted maid or gardener either come by or stay in your home. The most popular sitters are often booked way in advance.

Flying with dogs internationally can be done, but I don't know anything about how easy it is. Neither of my darlings shown above would qualify for being squeezed under my seat in the cabin of a plane, and I would be very reluctant to subject them to a journey in a crate in the luggage bay.

You can get a decent array of dog foods and toys here, though I do miss the more holistic foods available up north, and I make part of our dog food. Interestingly, LarryDog suffered from a terrible itching problem in Colorado, no matter what we fed him, and that has gone away completely here!

Another time, I'll talk about cats.

Two Mexican Adventures

Bits of my past are reflected in the two websites I've visited lately.

I'm a Stanford graduate and the alumni newsletter often has interesting articles. But I must admit I was surprised to come across one about a group riding bicycles across the state of Jalisco, where I live. By the time I read the article, they were long gone, but still I found this an encouraging point of view on what some young people are doing: an ecologically-minded rock and roll band bicycling through Mexico!

As a long-time Quaker, I'm on the email list of the American Friends Service Committee, which for almost seventy years has done a summer work camp in Mexico. This year, it's in the Sierra Norte de Puebla. This link was written before the project began but gives you an idea of what they do:

http://www.afsc.org/latinamerica/int/mexicosummer.htm 

And there are photos here of what's been going on this year.

http://picasaweb.google.com/MexicoSummer/MexicoSummerProject2008

I know that most of my readers are not of an age to be candidates for this project, but maybe you have family members or young adult friends who might be.

In any case, I do like reading about young people taking on such worthwhile projects!

Mexican Fireworks

Fireworks are a way of life here in Mexico. Most of them are the really noisy kind, but sometimes there are displays that are quite beautiful.

In June, our town of San Juan Cosala and all other towns with San Juan in their names celebrated the saint's day for Saint John the Baptist. This was preceded by nearly two weeks of loud fireworks, often late at night or very early in the morning. We foreigners tend to grumble to each other about all the racket, and I even know Mexicans who don't like the noise. For myself, I found it easier to accept the noise when I learned that the traditional purpose is said to be getting God's attention. Hey, I work on that myself, though way more quietly!

Kelly went down to the plaza on the night of the pretty fireworks and got some photos. I combined some of them here:

This design is on t-shirts, sweatshirts, etc., at my Cafepress store. This is a nifty website, where you can sign up for an account at no charge (or a modest charge if you use, as I do, the premium account) and upload your photos or artwork. They can be put on several dozen different items such a various t-shirts (including an organic cotton one), sweatshirts, note cards, etc., which you or others can then buy. They are quickly manufactured when someone orders them. Very cool... I have been using this for other websites of mine, but plan to add a bunch of Mexican t-shirts over time!

A Blog I Like, From San Miguel de Allende

There's sometimes a bit of rivalry between the Lake Chapala area and San Miguel de Allende, in terms of which is better as a place for foreigners to live, but I think it depends on many intangible factors. We have more rain and lower real estate prices. They have one city where we are a series of towns along the north shore of the lake. I guess they have more art.

But all of us foreigners in these two places have ample opportunities to get to know Mexico and Mexicans -- yes, even in Gringolandia!

Here's a blog that I enjoy: http://mexicowoods.com/

There are a lot of other good blogs from San Miguel, too.

Chatting with a Long-Time Expat

The other day I had the chance to visit briefly with an American man who has lived in Mexico for over ten years. I asked him if he had any tips for adjusting to this very different culture.

He had a rather Buddhist attitude, I thought. He commented that Mexico gives us plenty of opportunities to practice patience!

Along that line, he pointed out that some things  can take one person a very short time and another person a very long time. Or you can have both experiences at different times. Anyone who has waited for something to be delivered, as we did for the past couple of days, will resonate with this.

Then this guy told me a joke:

A Mexican dog and an American dog were chatting at the border fence. The Mexican dog said, "Gee, you have it great! You never go hungry, your people take care of you, you have a nice soft bed... could you get me into the US too?

"I suppose I could," said the American dog. "I bet we could find an easy place to dig under the fence. But if we do, I'm coming in to Mexico to stay."

"Why?" asked the Mexican dog, astonished.

"Because you can bark."

This joke is not just about dogs.

Moving SOUTH for Better Economic Conditions?

I was surprised to get a comment on one of my older blog posts which included, in part, this comment:

My husband, a Mexico native, and I soon plan to move to Mexico...Our decision was based largely on the steady decline of the US economy as well as the family ties.

Well, I thought that was pretty interesting. I can easily understand a Mexican bringing his American wife and in this case two young children to Mexico because of family. After living here for a while, I've found myself treasuring my own far-flung family a lot more and staying in closer touch with quite a few of them. Family is so central to life and survival here, that it seems natural to me that a Mexican would want to be with family, all the more so if the economy doesn't look good.

What I found interesting was that they considered the US economy to be declining to the degree that they felt their work life would be better south of the border. Mexicans, whether with or without papers, work at a wide variety of jobs up north. I have no idea what the immigration status of this particular Mexican is, but certainly people with papers have a wider range of options in the US.

It's not that I have had my head in the sand for the past while. Yep, I've been following the news. I know what's happening in real estate and with gas prices. With food prices. With jobs.

I've been noticing that every time we use an ATM we get fewer pesos for our dollars... the peso, at about 10.2 pesos to the dollar, is at a five-year high relative to the dollar. A lot of the time we have been here, it's been about 10.7 pesos to the dollar. That's quite a change.

I guess we get so used to one idea that when things change, our mental images may take a while to catch up. (Or in some cases, they never do. But I like to think I'm flexible!) So with a mental map that includes gazillions of Mexicans going north to search for a better life, this one little fact of one little family going south for the same reason stands out. And makes me think.

Would You Retire to the Mexican Coast or Inland and Higher?

We had such a good time in Sayulita recently that we can really see how people love to go there. Sayulita is up the coast a ways from Puerto Vallarta, and right on the beach.

But would we want to live there permanently? No, thanks, and here is why:

• We are much happier at over five thousand feet elevation here at Lake Chapala, as the climate is more comfortable. It was quite muggy when we were at the coast, though admittedly July through September is said to be the worst time of year for heat there. Our worst heat is March to May, and it is dry heat, much easier to take.
• We like being tucked in between mountains that take a lot of the bite out of Pacific hurricanes. Sure, we can get a lot of wind and rain -- this month, we have already had all of the nine inches that are the average July total. But hurricanes on the coast can do a lot of damage, and if the ocean level does rise even a little, it wouldn't take much to devastate a lot of beachfront.
• Our Lake Chapala area is more economical, at least in real estate. While Kelly's sister Alexandra was here, we were trying to get her interested in living here. I don't know if she ever will, but she did get a sense that she could find a nice rental in Ajijic that would suit her (and she has very good taste) for $400 to $600 a month. In Sayulita, it seemed that very few were available and that the prices might be as much as double what they are here.

This area and Sayulita are probably pretty comparable in terms of ease of access when flying in or out. The Guadalajara airport is about an hour's drive from our house, on this side of the city. I don't know exactly how far the Puerto Vallarta airport is from Sayulita, but it's not too far either.

I would give both the two areas top marks in terms of shopping, culture, access to really good medical care in the nearby cities, etc. With an edge to Guadalajara there.

Readers, if you have opinions on coast-vs-highlands, or related topics, please chime in!

Overlooking the Ocean at Sayulita

When we were in Sayulita recently, we stayed at Casa Carricitos overlooking the ocean... that link takes you to the page with rental information and pictures of the attractive interior of the house. We were so entranced with the out-of-doors that we never got around to taking pictures inside!

You can barely make out the house on the hillside, its flat roof showing. My sister-in-law Alexandra is enjoying the little-used beach just a short walk from the house.

The 180-degree ocean view from the terrace was the focal point of our time there. Here, Alexandra is flanked by friends Leslie and Nancy.

Guess it's pretty obvious that my husband Kelly and Alexandra are brother and sister!

Kelly kept his camera handy. Here, one of the countless land crabs is eating a flower. We loved the faces on the land crabs -- you can see the two eyes -- and since they would come into the house, we also appreciated that they tended to scurry away from us! 

But his biggest coup in the nature photography vein was getting the second of these pictures, as the lizard only showed that colorful bit for a quick moment:

The sunset went on for hours:

Many thanks to the owners of Casa Carricitos, Adele and Michael, for the gift of our stay there... they are friends of Alexandra's. We all had a wonderful, restorative time. And I didn't think I needed a vacation!

A Walk Around Sayulita

Kelly's sister Alexandra has been visiting us recently, and she has quite a few friends in the charming small town of Sayulita, which is on the Pacific coast, not too far from Puerto Vallarta. So we took off for a few days.

I'll do another article about the beautiful place we stayed. But first, here are scenes from a walk we took on our first morning. These two young women were working at a coffee bar where we got lattes. It was part of an outdoor restaurant where we had breakfast. Here are Kelly and Alexandra, smiling even though it's before their morning coffees:

I greatly enjoyed watching the rest of the clientele, as there were many young American couples, probably in Sayulita for the surfing. We don't see enough young Americans around Lake Chapala!

Wandering through the downtown after breakfast, we saw surf shops, plenty of boutiques and crafts stores, and many little restaurants.  I had read on the internet that there was a bookstore with books in English, and we set out to find it. A sudden rain came up, so we got a bit damp, but in the heat we felt refreshed. As for the bookstore, either it was closed for the off season, closed period, or we just didn't find it.

This hillside was a bit north (if I wasn't turned around) of downtown, and gives a hint of the lush tropical setting, with homes interspersed. We chatted with a young real estate salesman who said house prices were comparable to San Francisco, California, and that they had pretty much doubled in the past year. I picked up some free real estate magazines and saw that prices were way higher than around Lake Chapala. The fellow also said that people for whom Puerto Vallarta is too expensive are coming here.

This fish store had finished sales for the day and they must have scrubbed the counter, as this fellow was relaxing and watching TV. I asked his permission and Kelly got this photo:

Alexandra and I did some shopping, with Kelly browsing a bit too. I was delighted to find a small wooden heart covered with milagros (miracles), which are tiny metal shapes of arms, legs, hearts, and other body parts as well as animals -- you see them in churches and shrines around  Mexico where someone is asking for a healing or giving thanks for one. Here, I am discussing this with the young saleswoman. I had asked her in Spanish if they were real milagros attached to the heart, and she was astonished. "How do you know about milagros?" she asked, also in Spanish. I told her we had had the opportunity to travel in many parts of Mexico and had seen them many times.  I had another conversation in that same store. A different young woman was at the cashier's desk, and she was wearing a bright pink t-shirt which said in English, "Too Many Social Engagements, Too Little Time!" I asked her, again in Spanish, if she knew what her shirt said, and she had no idea. My rough translation was "Tantas Cosas Divertidas Que Hacer, Tan Poco Tiempo!" and she got a kick out of it, thanking me several times for telling her. I wondered to myself how many other foreigners had seen the shirt and not thought to tell her its meaning or had not had the Spanish to do so. It is so easy, and so rewarding, to chat with Mexicans, and in a place like this many of them speak some English.

On the edge of downtown, we walked past a store that was closed while the walls were being painted. These things were piled on a table in the middle of the room. I like the surreal quality that the rain-splotched window and the reflections of plants across the street gave to the pile, specially since we had been chatting the night before about how surrealism is an essential part of Mexican culture.

Learning Spanish: Words I Don't Plan to Use

I recently came across a website that you shouldn't go to if it will gross you out. The alternative dictionaries site has two pages of coarse Spanish slang and usually indicates which country or countries the slang is used in.

The link takes you to the page where all the words are listed. I was dismayed to see quite a few words I thought were innocuous on the list, but happily when I read their definitions, few of the ones I checked were used in coarse ways in Mexico.

Here is a sample entry, which I might actually use:

mala semana (adj., fem) (noun, fem.) menstruation note Literally, means "bad week". It is pronounced "MA-la say-MAH-na".

Don't say I didn't warn you.

For actually learning usable Spanish, I continue to be a big fan of Rocket Spanish... the link takes you to their sales page.

A Watercolor by Lake Chapala

When our friends Janet Woodman and Kizzen Laki were here from Colorado back in January, Janet did this watercolor from the malecon in the city of Chapala, looking west along Lake Chapala.

I was going to put it up on the blog then, but somehow it slipped by me. I just now noticed it on my hard drive and said, "Aha!" So here it is.

I sometimes wish I could draw or paint; Janet says she gets a lot of pleasure from it. (She did add that she had people watching her work over her shoulder much of the time in Chapala.) I've even wondered about taking a very interesting intensive art class, given mainly in the winters by local resident Karl Barnhardt, teaching you to draw no matter what you know to start. In just a week! But then I thought, I don't have time for all the writing I want to do, better stick to what I already do. At least for now.

Living in Mexico: I Did an Online Interview

Recently I did an online interview about living in Mexico. I just wrote answers to a variety of questions. Here is the link:

http://mexicorealestateinvestment.org/2008/06/16/interview-with-rosana-hart-author-of-mexico-with-heart/

It's a website about real estate investing in Mexico, done with a lot more thought than you typically see in that field, it seemed to me. You might want to look around a little while you are there!

At a Mexican Baby Shower

Yesterday I  had the opportunity to go to a baby shower for a young Mexican woman I know. The printed invitations requested punctuality, so I turned up at 4:15 for a 4 PM event and was still the first guest to arrive. The pregnant woman wasn't there yet, as it was a surprise for her, though when she and her husband arrived, she didn't seem astonished. Maybe a hint had leaked out.

I wonder if all Mexican baby showers are so much fun... I think that the sister-in-law who organized this one has quite a talent for it. Maybe some of the things we did are commonly done; I have no idea!

When we arrived, a name tag sort of thing was pinned on our clothing and it was explained that if you saw someone crossing her arms or legs, you could take the tag off and pin it on yourself. There would be a prize at the end for whoever had the most. I was pretty diligent but habits are habits, and soon I lost my tag. A few minutes later, one of the young Mexican women caught my eye and significantly nodded toward the woman sitting on the other side of me. Sure enough, her arms were crossed, so I gained a tag back -- only to lose it an hour later in an unguarded moment. Two women were very good at spotting people and soon were festooned with tags all over their blouses.

Before the mother-to-be arrived, some 20 or 25 other women did (along with a bunch of babies and small children), and we were issued blown-up balloons and instructed to put them under our clothing to simulate pregnancy. We wore these for the entire party, in solidarity I suppose. The party was outside under a large canopy, at the home of the grandparents-to-be. A few drops of rain didn't bother anyone, and all the brightly wrapped gifts were on a table set up safely away from rain. 

Once the guest of honor arrived and had been greeted warmly, we played another game. I was chosen to be one of three women sitting in chairs, in a row. Three other women were blindfolded, brought over, and handed unopened jars of baby food and spoons. Getting the drift, I said to the blindfolded woman standing in front of me, "Eres tu mi mama?" That gave her a chance to hone in on where I, her baby, was. At a signal, they opened their jars and started feeding their "babies." She and I won that game hands down. She could sure spoon it out of the jar fast and skillfully. Only a little went up my nose or onto my blouse, and I gobbled up the rest fast. If I had been the mother, no way would we have won! We each got a kitchen spoon as prize.

After a rousing game of musical chairs won by another gringa to her surprise, rolls of toilet paper made their way around the tables. We were each to take the length that we guessed would go around the pregnant belly of the mother-to-be. Almost all of us guessed too long, but two women tied for the prize of some plastic glasses, so it was divided between them.

There were more games, all of this accompanied by lots of jolly conversation and laughter. I really enjoyed being there, being included. I knew few of the women, but it didn't matter. I joked and chatted with the ones near me, but when a group of Mexican women get into rapid, joking repartee, I only understand a word now and then! I had the chance to chat quite a lot with a sweet young woman with a baby and a four-year-old, as she was the second guest to arrive. Her husband is working in Canada, on a program organized in Chapala, and she is hoping to join him with the children.

There had been snacks on the table all along, and then food was brought out -- plates of tortillas with pasta and sausage in a mayonnaise sauce piled on them. I had a little, and as it was approaching 7 PM by now, I decided to get out before the presents began being opened, which seemed likely to be a lengthy affair, as it was to involve guessing what the things were... we had already provided written clues. There was also something on the wall that looked liked a version of "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" was in the works. So I said my goodbyes and thanks, removed the balloon from under my blouse, and was given the little memento you see.

As I walked home, I thought about all the different women who had gathered together. Young, middle-aged, and beyond. Slender, medium, and large. Quiet and lively. Mexican and American. Mothers and not. There's a saying here, "Cada cabeza un mundo," or "Every head a world." I had really felt that, and also the sense of connection that was palpable at times, from the fact of being women together, celebrating a woman's event.

Home Exchange Program Offers Glimpses Into Expat Life in Mexico

A while back, I got an email from the folks at Mexico Hospitality, a new service starting up all over Mexico.

It sounds like a great way for people anywhere to exchange homes. I poked around the Lake Chapala section of the site, where homeowners have signed up. I knew several of the people. You can sign up to offer hospitality to people when you are still at home, to exchange homes, or both. Very little money changes hands, just a suggested donation to homeowners.

Interesting Even If You Wouldn't Do It

We won't sign up for a couple of reasons. We don't have much of a guest space... I doubt that our vintage Toyota motorhome, guest quarters for family and close friends, can compare with the charming spaces you'll see on the site. And I'm not keen on the idea of people I don't know swapping with us, where the various quirks of our dogs and cats might not get the level of attention I give them! Letting strangers into the house while we go to theirs wouldn't bother me at all, though... it's just the pets! The site explains how it all works in a most reassuring way, and it's up to you to communicate with the other people before deciding anything.

But apart from all that, I think the site is really very interesting if you are thinking of living in Mexico, or specifically retiring to Mexico, because you get a real "slice of life" feeling from what the various expats write. Most have pets. Most are busy. Most have lovely homes, you can tell from the photos. And who knows? There might just be a perfect exchange that would turn up! If that happens, please come back and post a comment.

Some Bad Luck Brings Out The Characteristic Kindness in Mexicans

Recently my friend Suzanne Forrest, who lives in Ajijic, had quite an adventure when she went to the charming mountain town of Tapalpa. Here it is in her words, with her permission:

Do you remember the old rhyme that starts "for want of a nail, the shoe was lost?'"  Well, the last time I had my car serviced the mechanic put in the wrong size oil filter and that was the cause of all that happened next..

Last week I drove several friends from my Mexican Train group to Tapalpa for a little outing. We stayed in a lovely brand new cabana built to rent to vacationers from Guadalajara, Colima etc. The second day of our visit while we were touring around the area my car hit a rock in the road and began losing oil. It turned out that the oil filter had been knocked off.

We were in the middle of nowhere and none of us had a cell phone!  Well--don't let that happen to you. It is the first lesson I learned from this experience. But we were amazingly lucky that a police car just happened to come down the road. The policeman radioed for a mechanic but the only one in Tapalpa said he couldn't help us for a number of hours. So the policeman, and later his commandante, who he radioed for help, figured out the problem and took one of my friends into town to buy a replacement oil filter and oil to refill the tank. Then the police replaced the filter and accompanied us back to town to see that we were all right.

The next day, however, when we went out in the car, the new oil filter fell off and again we lost our oil! This time the owner of the cabana came to our aid with some of his friends and they discovered that a large bolt that attached the oil filter to the motor was broken. Later the mechanic told us that it was because the oil filter that the mechanic in Ajijic had put on was too big that it broke when I hit the rock.

Anyway, Carlos Barba, the owner of the vacation cabanas, spent hours trying to find a replacement for this part. Since we knew it would be days before  the car would be fixed, three of our group made arrangements for a driver to come down to Tapalpa to pick them up. One friend and I stayed behind.  The next day when Carlos arrived to tell us the status of my car, I was so eager to greet him that I fell over the rockers of a rocking chair and broke my shoulder.

So then this poor guy had to get an ambulance for me. I must report that the little village of Tapalpa not only had an ambulance, but paramedics who stabilized my arm, got me onto a stretcher, and drove my friend and me to the hospital in Guadalajara--and didn't charge us a peso!  So if that isn't a testimony to the kindness and wonderful care one can find in Mexico I don't know what is. And I know some beautiful vacation cabanas with a very obliging owner if anyone is interested. They are Cabañas del Pastor in Tapalpa, Mexico. The proprietor is Carlos Barba. His cel phone is 333-189-2675.

Walls and Birds in Riberas Del Pilar

Riberas del Pilar is in between San Antonio Tlayacapan and Chapala, and between Lake Chapala and the two-lane lakeside highway or carretera. It's a rather suburban type area, in that it has no central plaza, nor is it densely built up. The homes there are often on larger pieces of land than you'll find elsewhere. I know quite a few people who live there, and the church I go to -- St. Andrew's Anglican -- is located there. So we get over that way quite often.

One Sunday recently, we were there together and Kelly went for a walk while I was at church. First, here are a couple of walls he photographed. He was attracted to the texture of the red one. It had been plastered over something, rocks maybe, but he wasn't sure what. Notice the mural on the second one.

 

He wandered down by the lake and got these photos. Herons or egrets? Kelly thinks egrets but isn't sure. If you know, please comment. Whatever they are, these two photos below  are now up in our kitchen rotating art gallery.

Above and Below San Juan Cosala

A longtime professional photography and videographer, Kelly loves to roam around with his camera, a Canon S5IS Powershot. Here are pictures from two different walks he took from our home in San Juan Cosala.

Last September, the mountains above the town were hit by a huge amount of water in the form of incredibly heavy rain, a waterspout or tromba of water from nearby Lake Chapala. Here, our friend Jack picks his way through a much changed landscape in one of the arroyos in the mountains.

Another day, Kelly caught this action along the lake shore.

The Plaza in San Juan Cosala

The plaza in San Juan Cosala is rarely this empty. It's recently had a lot of work done to make it more attractive, and it's really very nice!

A friend of ours from San Juan Cosala who is currently working in the US asked us for a photo of the plaza. It happened that Kelly walked through the plaza very early one Sunday morning and got this picture... that's why it's so quiet.

Esta es para ti, amigo al norte!

Being an Expat, in France or Mexico

The other day, Sam posted a comment on a recent blog entry which got me thinking. It says in part,

I'm a Mexican living in France since 2005, so I really know the feeling of being an expat. Every now and then I wonder if there are foreigners living in Mexico that might be feeling a bit like I do here. A quick google search brought me to your site.

That got me thinking about my years in Europe, mostly in France and Spain, over 40 years ago. (Geez, how does that happen? I won't dwell on that topic today.)

Ah, France... I was first there as a university student. I loved the country, the food, the architecture, the culture. I wasn't that wild about the French people, though, as most of the ones I met were pretty aloof. I actually had better French then than I have Spanish now, but my pronunciation in both languages leaves a lot to be desired. The French were not kind about it. I remember meeting my younger sister at the airport in Paris when she came to spend a vacation with me. We got in a taxi and I told the driver to go to "Huit, Rue de la Harpe."

"Non, mademoiselle," he said curtly, "Huit, Rue de la Harpe."

I thought I'd said that, but evidently my pronunciation of that elusive French u was not acceptable. So much for showing off to my sister how fluent I had become in French! The driver and I repeated the address to each other several more times -- I don't remember if the taxis had meters there and then but if so, I'm sure the the meter was running -- before he deigned to drive us to the left-bank hotel at that location.

With that kind of memory of the French contrasting so strongly with the warmth and friendliness of the Mexicans, I've been wondering what it's like to be a Mexican expat in France. I hope Sam comes back and posts something about that.

Also, Sam, I wonder how you feel there. Is it much like how I feel here? Sometimes I love being here and feel blessed beyond measure, sometimes I wonder if I will ever feel really at home here, and sometimes I am achingly homesick for the US -- increasingly, I fear, for a US that doesn't exist in the form I miss. (That, too, is a topic for another day. Or not.)

For some reason, Sam's comment reminded me of a blog post I did three years ago, when Kelly and I were renting a house in Bernal, Queretaro, and it got me thinking about the time I had rented a house in a small coastal town in southern Spain. It's one of my better blog posts, I think, so here's a link to Nerja and Bernal.

I also hope this post today will get comments from some of the various Americans and Canadians who live in Mexico. How would you sum up your feelings?

A Week in the Life Of

Today I'm going to give you an idea of what our lives were like this week, hoping that this will be helpful to people thinking of retiring to Mexico or simply living here, whether it's by Lake Chapala as we are or anywhere else.

After I wrote last week about how hot it was, we had our first really significant rain, complete with thunderstorm that had me turning off our router and unplugging my laptop. It's been cooler since then, hitting the mid 80s or so, cooling down at night. We're rarely using our fan at all. Nice!

Meanwhile, we're eating out of our garden quite a lot. Our lettuce is bolting and we will replant, but I am letting some of the plants go, in order to collect seeds... we use non-hybrid seeds so we can do this, bringing them down from the US.

We've got our first-ever artichokes, and in fact two of these are steaming right this minute. We've been eating squash, snow peas, broccoli, cucumbers, and more.

In the technological world, we had computer challenges this week. Our "spare" laptop running Windows Vista had some problems. We found a retired foreigner who loves to fix computers, and it is now in his obviously capable hands. But then, with no spare in the house, my laptop did some weird things. Freakout time! Even worse, it happened while Kelly was in Guadalajara at the dentist where he was having work done on an implant. (We do normal dentistry here at Lake Chapala.)

I've run a complete scan on my computer and it's not a virus. I will do further work but not till after my whole "My Documents" finishes uploading to an inexpensive online service I found called datadepositbox.com. Computer problems south of the border are even more of a challenge than up north!

It's been quite a social week for us, as we've been out and about some plus we had people over twice. Once, some good friends we hadn't seen for ages came over for dinner. Yesterday, we had a great time with a young family we are getting to know. Speaking almost entirely in Spanish for some four or five hours is great for our fluency! And whenever kids get into our swimming pool, I think of the family from Guadalajara that originally built this place and the pool, as their kids were growing up. Do I hear e