At first,  I was simply relieved that the trip had gone well. Kelly drove our motorhome with our two dogs in it, and I rode with a Mexican friend who drove our car. We had our two cats in crates in the back seat. We stopped in motels where our friend had his own room and we and our four pets had another. It was a bit grueling. True, the borders are getting more dangerous, but we had no problems.

Then once back here in the town where we used to live, we got caught up in fixing up our house, unpacking, seeing friends, and all that, while still trying to keep our home-based business going. It is great to be back in a place where I have so many long-standing friendships.

“Do you miss Mexico? Are you going to live there half the year?” were questions we got a lot.

Yes, we miss our friends in Mexico, we miss walking down the street to Agustin’s wonderful Viva Mexico restaurant in San Juan Cosala, we miss our swimming pool and playing badminton in our yard  year-round in the heavenly climate. We miss the warm-hearted smiles of the Mexican people. We miss the lower cost of living. But all of these are offset by various pleasures here.

We may go back for a vacation some other winters, but this year I am on a new Library Board here in Colorado, and that will keep me here. We did sell our house there, and we don’t like a bilocational lifestyle, specially not with dogs, cats, and organic gardening.

Viva Mexico! We had a wonderful time there and you are always in our hearts.

Looking Back at Mexico from the Snowy North is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

2 Comments from the old blog:

• At January 20, 2009 11:41 PM,  Alexis said…

  Hi Rosana,
  Thank you for commenting on my blog and giving me the link to this post. I love the way you connected the amazing plane landing and rescue to our hopes for this nation. I sense we are standing on some common ground. How lovely!
  Cheers!
  Alexis

• At January 22, 2009 8:10 AM,  Jim said…

  Thanks so much for sharing the song and video. It is WONDERFUL
  Jim

New Hopes for the US is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

When I was still in Mexico, I didn’t really know how the people I know here were faring, or thinking, about the economic downturn. Now I have some clues:

• A dog-walking relative in San Francisco has lost two clients, including one of his favorite dogs, when their owners lost jobs.
• An astute old friend who owns about ten rentals has been steadily improving them, putting in really nice kitchen appliances and other attractive touches, foreseeing a time when there would be more people wanting  relatively modest but very nice homes, where they would stay a long time.
• A couple who are semi-retired with enough retirement money for the basics are wondering if they will be able to afford the extras, like a trip to New Zealand that the woman has long planned. “Everything is totally uncertain,”  she said, a sentiment I heard from just about everybody.

Last night I went to a Doomsday Cabaret, in Sebastopol, California, a town I used to live in. Earlier in the day, I had stopped in at the public library there, which I used to run. The two librarians there recognized me instantly and we had a great gab about various people we knew in common.

So it was fun to feel the strong sense of community at the evening cabaret, which I went to with my sister-in-law Alexandra. She knew many (most?) of the people attending. The flyer announcing the event read in part: “Dress for the apocalypse! (or any way you see the changing world conditions)… nihilists, cynics, idealists, fanatics, conspiracy theorist, zealots, and economists all welcomed.”

A variety of acts developed the doomsday theme, often too close for comfort. And very strong were also the themes of love and community. At the end of the show, one of the organizers said that putting the show together had been their way of coping with the current issues. They plan to do more. Nobody doubts they will be needed.

My favorite line of the evening came from a brilliant woman named Lou Montgomery, and I’ll leave you with it:

When I’m in freefall, I must admit I tend to default to a darker place in my imagination.

Uncertainty in the US, and a Doomsday Cabaret is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

As we drove from Idaho to Colorado, we’ve been enjoying the scenery, of course, and I’ve been enjoying how very little trash there is along the roadside. At one point, I was driving when we heard a very loud sound. I pulled over and we discovered that we had a flat tire. I was amazed that neither of us had felt any jerkiness. Some local guys stopped and helped us with changing the tire and told us there was a Les Schwab store a couple of miles away. So we went there, and while Kelly took care of business, I chatted with a Mexican-American couple who were also waiting.

The man is from Mexico and his wife is of Mexican descent but was born and raised in the U.S. They were speaking Spanish with their kids, and the woman said (in English — most of the conversation was in English) that that was how she was raised too: Spanish at home, English at school. By the time we had chatted for quite a while, I asked her if they had experienced discrimination. She said she had as a child, when they lived in a small mountain town where there were few Mexicans, but that her kids had not… they now live in a city. Her husband had experienced discrimination once at work, she said. He grimaced at the memory. We all left the store about the same time with friendly goodbyes.

Later, in a buffet restaurant, a black man sat with some gray in his hair sat down at a table next to us. I couldn’t resist the chance to chat with him, and after talking about living in Mexico and traveling in RVs and suchlike, I said we wondered how he felt about the direction the country was going. He felt that the elderly and the poor were been badly treated.

That night, we stopped in the middle of Utah at a motel. I woke around 3 in the morning to sounds I couldn’t place. It kind of sounded like a car was being bashed in and there were angry-sounding male voices, too faint to make out. I got up and peered out the window but saw nothing. After listening for a while, I felt very uneasy and I woke Kelly. He listened too and decided it was a movie from the room next door, adding that the repetitive sound was machine gun fire. I wasn’t convinced it was a movie, as the same sounds went on and on, for maybe 20 minutes. I knew the odds of it being something dangerous in the neighborhood were miniscule but I was still not a happy camper. “Maybe it’s a video game,” Kelly murmured, and that seemed possible. “I’d rather listen to brass bands in the night,” he added. That’s a sound we often hear at our home in San Juan Cosala.

Eventually we went back to sleep. In the morning we noticed that the pickup parked outside the room the sound had come from said Halliburton on it.

Everywhere we’ve been on this trip, we’ve noticed that there are so many cars and so few people out and about. After over half a year living in Mexico, it kinda seems unnatural to us.

Traveling in the US is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

It felt good to just sit quietly and look around the room. With the artwork off the walls and things gone from the shelves, the house was in transition also. We really like the people who bought our house — a couple within weeks of our own ages with whom we have a lot in common — but they had hit the nail on the head in an email yesterday, when they said we must have mixed feelings about leaving this house.

Sure, we do, more than other houses we have left. We built this one ourselves, mostly Kelly, from unique design concepts. But as I sat there, with so many images running through my mind, I was in a place of peaceful acceptance about the choices we’ve made and a curiosity about what lies ahead. I’m deeply grateful that my beloved cats can still here in this house a while, till we are ready for them elsewhere.

When we were in Mexico last winter, we decided to sell the house, get completely out of debt, and return to Mexico and see about living there full time. When we came back here, I found that it wasn’t so easy for me to give up this community where we’ve lived for nine years, where we have such deep ties. The climate is hardly my favorite, with lots of sub-zero weather in the winter, strong winds in the spring, mosquitos ruling the out of doors for a couple of months in early summer… late summer and fall are nice. If I were starting over, I wouldn’t choose this climate. But much of my stress turned to joy when we recently bought some land here for another home. Community is one of the greatest riches there is, and I am so happy to be coming back here later.

Now it’s about time for me to turn off the computer, take the last things out to the motorhome, and take off southward with Kelly, and for the first time in Mexico, with our dog Larry.

We’re heading down into New Mexico today. And soon into Mexico!

Reflections on Leaving a Home is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

But a bright spot has been the friendships that Amy has made with two or three other young mothers, Mexicans whose children go to the same school. They speak little English and Amy little or no Spanish, but they all have managed to communicate.

The other day, one of the Mexican women indicated to Amy that she wanted to take her out for coffee the next morning after they dropped their kids off at school. Amy happily agreed. But the next day, when the two of them set off to have their visit, the Mexican woman realized with some embarrassment that she had forgotten her purse. She indicated it wouldn’t be far out of their way to go by her house to get it, so that’s what they did.

When they got to her house, she invited Amy in. They went in the tiny house… and it was filled to the brim with women and young children. Surprise! Sorpresa! It was a baby shower for Amy. No matter the language problems — everyone had a great time.

Once Amy crossed her legs and one of the older women immediately came over and uncrossed them, speaking rapidly in Spanish. Amy didn’t get quite why, but in the last month of pregnancy, Mexican women don’t cross their legs!

Mexican Friendliness to a young American in LA is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

I’m glad to still be in Crestone around now, actually. There’s a wonderful local nonprofit called Neighbors Helping Neighbors, and on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, they put on a free Thanksgiving-style potluck for the whole community. It’s one of the social high points of the year, with hundreds of people coming over the afternoon. I greatly enjoyed telling people that we are buying some land here. And that will be a done deal tomorrow!

This weekend, along with eating with friends on Thursday, we’ll enjoy the annual Winterfest, with crafts and all sorts of things for sale in several venues around town. Our target is to leave by December 1st but it’s okay if we run over by a few days.

Great news in the cat department, both here and in Mexico — our two cats here, sister and brother Midnight and Moonlight, can stay in our house till we come back. We don’t really want to take them to Mexico as there are so many feral cats in the neighborhood. And our Mexican cat, Misty, has had several visits from an American friend of ours there, and he reports she is a bit timid but quite playful and friendly too.

Packing is pretty much in hand now. It’s more the work stuff that is grueling. Temperatures are in the teens every night lately — an incentive to go south!

Last Hectic Days Before Moving to Mexico is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

We have some interesting challenges here in rural Colorado — we don’t want to leave our motorhome out of the garage overnight because bears come through the neighborhood from time to time, and they break into vehicles that have even a vague hint of food. So we’ll take Cando out first thing tomorrow morning, and today we’re working without our full space. We’ll set the alarm for six tomorrow morning, ugh.

Going through our belongings brings up varied emotions. Happy memories come up about when I bought something or maybe Kelly gave it to me for a birthday. Looking through my box of old clothes that don’t fit… Trying to decide which of my books on dogs and dog training I can part with… Wondering what in the world I was thinking of when I bought this or that…. Overall, the feeling of paring down is very pleasant.

Much as I think of myself as part of the alternative culture, I certainly do have some mainstream habits when it comes to possessions. I’m going through:

• Plenty of kitchenware
• Lots and lots and lots of books
• Quite a lot of clothing even though much of it is 10 years old or more and much comes from thrift stores
• Six file drawers of papers… actually, these can wait till after the sale
• A small dog crate that was Sunbeam’s. Larry is too big for it but I am already thinking small dogs in the future
• An amazing assortment of little stuff in the bathroom

I did bite the bullet yesterday and actually throw out an old Windows 98 laptop. The screen has lines going through it, it won’t go online or connect to a printer, so you’d think it would be a no-brainer. Guess I have more than a little packrat in me.

I mention this computer because I learned something worth sharing. Even if you delete your files, even if you reformat your whole hard drive, data can be recovered. Old financial records of Paul McCartney hit the internet after he got rid of a computer. There’s a market for interesting data from old computers.

So what to do? I found a free piece of software that would overwrite my old hard drive, and ran it. I’m not mentioning its name because there must be better ones out there. It was a nuisance to use, but there were credit card numbers, passwords, etc., on the old thing, so it seemed prudent.

We’re putting most of the stuff we keep into a storage unit near here and just taking a few things back to Mexico with us in Cando. Taking our medium-sized dog Larry will limit the number of things we can cram in — and help protect those things, I suppose!

We don’t know yet whether we will come back to the US and have a home here, whether we will live in Mexico for a good while, or ultimately both. Makes it challenging to decide what to do with stuff.

What about that mug I got in Ashland, Oregon, when we lived there? Easy, keep it… it has a dog-and-cat picture on it that reminds us of Dorrie, the Komondor who lived with our llamas, and Who, the shy barn cat.

What about the set of checked cloth napkins that commemorate an International Llama Association conference in the 1980s, which we used during the three summers that we led llama day-hikes on our ranch outside Ashland? Umm, the packrat rises up in me. I will never lead another llama hike, of that I am quite certain, but there’s so much good feeling connected to those napkins, and we do use them… a few times a year. I didn’t toss them out either.

Heigh-ho, off to sort things out! Our future is out there somewhere, shiny and bright, and somewhat less cluttered!

Ruminations on Preparing for a Garage Sale is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

In the post office, a woman who cleans it and a man who who is on the volunteer fire department were chatting about dancing. I see them both at some of the local dances. I greeted a couple of other friends while I waited in line to send some packages.

When I got to the door of the post office on my way out, I didn’t resist the bake sale that the Crestone Peaceworkers were putting on for KRZA, the public radio station in nearby Alamosa. I was acquainted with both the women working there — one is an incredibly gifted painter.

As I drove home munching on a granola brownie, I reflected on how much I feel a part of the fabric of life here. We were beginning to get a good bit of that in our little town in Mexico, but this is something that takes time. Living in Mexico will take some time to show us how it works there. And will we feel as at home there eventually? It’s not just knowing people, it’s also feeling some pretty deep connections.

Stay tuned. .. I will.

My Tribe, My Town is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

A woman working in the office said that she speaks Spanish well, and that her family here has relatives in the state of Chihuahua, not far from El Paso. Her boy friend’s family has relatives in Chiapas, almost to Guatemala, so between them they cover the north and south of Mexico. I asked her how recently she’d been to Mexico, and she said it had been twenty years. She didn’t look to be over 30.

I don’t draw any conclusions from these chats, but thought they were interesting.

Chatting with Colorado Mexican Americans is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico