Autumn Happenings

They say time flies when you are having fun, and that is my excuse for not blogging in over two months. I am just having too much fun here in Mexico! Not that I am living it up and partying a lot, or running around all the time doing things. Actually it's the opposite, because I am pretty much a stay at home happy person working on projects, surfing the web, enjoying the beautiful view of the ocean out my 10 windows of the kitchen and living room that face the water, and there is also the patio with the hammocks and dining area to sit and just stare. Plus, my daughter Emily traveling in Thailand at the moment with Luke, said she won't blog about her trip anymore, unless I blog now.

In the photo above, I am celebrating my 61st birthday at the Restaurante El Salvador in Rincon de Guayabitos the town next to mine. It was our first time there, and although I wanted Coconut Shrimp, the restaurant that makes it, Vista Guayabitos up on the hill (with the fantastic view of mountains, towns, ocean, island) was closed to the public so we tried a new place. The presentation was lovely, as letters were carved out of carrots to say Happy Birthday which was something I had never seen before.


The saturday night before my birthday was also celebrated, with a gathering of friends at a house on the beach in Guayabitos. Here are some of us: Larry, neighbor?, Susan, Eddie, me, Victor and Roberto, with Agneta the host taking the photo. Gifts, cakes made by a local lady at a Pasteleria in town, wine and pot luck dishes with shrimp tacos made for a wonderful celebration.

The day of my birthday, Monday October 27, was totally uneventful, for Victor worked all day at his Consultorio (doctor office) treating patients. I went to Spanish class, relaxed at home, and ate leftovers from the shrimp meal on Sunday, plus lots of leftover cake too. Whoops, I take that back! My "kids" called me on the computer to wish me a Happy Birthday. Thank God for skype and Yahoo.


Victor has been getting busier weekly in his new office in town. Putting up a giant sign on top of the building has helped, for it is visible from two sides and people in cars, trucks and buses driving past on the busy highway can't miss seeing the red lettered sign. There isn't much of a newspaper here, so it is word of mouth. One or two days he sees patients in a town south of here, San Pancho (San Francisco) and is beginning to see people from south of there, such as Bucerias and Punta Mita. Come summer time he will be ready for a rest, but he is likely to be doing more volunteer work then at a public health clinic in town. Hopefully this will be the last requirement to satisfy in order to be licensed in Mexico, which has been a long long costly, time consuming, stressful haul,,,nearly 3 years in the making.

Our cats are growing (even Sharmaine is filling out, but not caught up to chunky Sheila). Possibly their weight gain is due to the extra goodies they catch, besides the two meals we give them a day. Here is Sheila with one of her catches....she brought this very long tailed lizard into the bathroom. This is their favorite place to play with their catch. We have a little cat door they come in and out of, and everything is brought in to us. Butterflies (yes, sadly I admit this), moths, lizards, bugs, frogs, and no snakes yet thank God. This one did not survive. Now with winter approaching, less wildlife is out there, and thus we get a rest from their activity of having to bring it all into the house to play with.

Sorry to say, this poor little thing had that long tail of his bit off, and I had to toss him out of the bathroom overboard to the gardens below us. Farewell little plaything for my cats...I am sorry your life had to end like this, but it is out of my control. By the time my cat had captured you and brought you in the house, you were a lost cause. So I shut the bathroom door and wait til it is over, for it is too hard to try to catch you and the cat running around wildly. In your next life maybe you will return as a cat and my cats will return as a lizard, and you can get revenge!

Lost my font I was using, don't know where the option went to choose fonts.
Now that I am blogging, I am really enjoying it. Looking at my photos shot, I recapture my life over past two months via the documentation of it by photography. What a wonderful thing!
I love this shot taken out my bedroom window of the scene looking towards the mountains, away from the ocean out the front of the house. The ever present burglar proofing (shards of broken pop bottles lining the tops of walls) and the common sight of laundry drying in the sun. Most people do it this way here, and it is amusing to see the various ways people hang the clothes. Some people have no real yard or space to put up clotheslines, and as I walk down the streets in town I see laundry hanging from anywhere it can be hung. Over the fence in the yard, on the roofs is common, or draped just anywhere. A necessity of life is clothing, and ideally, clean clothing when possible.

Quite often I am struck by what it is exactly that attracts me to this country I live in that is so vastly different from where I came from in the United States. It usually boils down to this: because I am a visual person always looking at the details and beauty around me, I notice that the texture is what makes it interesting. Take the streets. Here, due to poverty and other reasons, the streets are not taken care of. There are many potholes and dangerous areas to drive, where your car could actually get damaged going down certain roads. One must watch carefully to avoid the deep holes and dogs laying in the street asleep, and the other obstructions. But I love the cobblestone streets, even though lots of them are not repaired and one must drive zig zag down the streets avoiding the holes. I tried to imagine these local streets paved like in the U.S. and there is no way, it would be the same. The texture of the street makes it interesting to look at, and creates beauty. An ordinary street in the U.S. paved perfectly is bland and boring, of no interest or appeal visually. A neighborhood full of white houses or a suburban development full of beige houses seems boring to me now, after living here in a land of color and texture and surprises. The other day as I walked home from Spanish class, I decided to walk down a street I had never been on. Lo and behold, I passed by a pickup truck parked in front of a house with the driver not in the seat. But, in the back of the truck were about six hogs! They were all lined up in a row and I happened to have my camera, so I shot them. Now this is not a scene I would have seen in St. Louis Park or in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Maybe not even in a small town of Detroit Lakes. I realize the differences are of the needs of daily life, the life of living exposed. In a tropical climate one needs coolness and fresh air, and thus we are not penned up inside, rather life is shared here. As I walk down streets and look around me I see people every where, living, going about their lives in the open. Remembering my life in a suburb of Minneapolis, and especially life in the cold winter months, everyone is shut off from each other. Here we see, we hear, we smell our neighbors. I hear their joyous celebrations when a band is hired for someone's birthday, and the music is carried from their home right up to mine. I have no windows to close, for it is like living outdoors here. I smell someone's cooking nearby, a wonderful smell and I wish I could go eat their food, for the smell of it is right here in my kitchen. The sounds of animals are heard, the dogs bark sometimes in a chorus in the middle of the night, the chickens and roosters wake me in the morning, and the donkey brays and it makes me laugh to hear his comical sound. Sometimes I hear people yelling or screaming or laughing or singing. There is a little tienda far from here, where when there is a birthday of someone in the neighborhood, at 6 a.m the Mexican Happy Birthday song is played over a loudspeaker for all to hear! We are sharing in the joy of their moment, in their celebration of life. If one has died, the funeral may be seen as a group of family and friends walking down the street following a band playing music. The funeral service is usually held in the street in front of the person's home, with chairs all set up in the street.

In November the holiday of Dia de el Revolucion 1910(Revolution Day) is observed November 20. In our town there is a huge parade lasting hours, and this year I captured a few more photos of it to add to my already big collection. Once again it is the color, the sounds, the traditions, the music that I do not tire of yet, for it is still new to me living in another country, another culture.

The happy family with infant dressed in Mexico colors of the flag

Lately I decided my easiest way to get vitamin D is to sit for 20 minutes in a tank top and exercise shorts barefooted in a chair on the patio while I study Spanish. The sun is setting so early now (5:15 pm, any second now it will dip below the mountain of the left side of the Bay of Jaltemba, and there it goes, going going gone). Now I see a faint pink cast of light over the town below me and the sky is turning pink at the horizon of the ocean. Gradually the colors change from pale to brilliant to duller hues, for the sunsets lately have been gorgeous. The beauty surrounding me makes me feel that I am incredibly lucky to be where I am at this moment.