Day after day of dry and dust and finally RAIN!  The . . . → Read More: first rain of the season]]> I’m in the middle of an op report (flexor tendon repair, if you were really wondering) but I had to stop, get up, walk outside and enjoy – if not only for the loss of power but also the draw of the rain…

Day after day of dry and dust and finally RAIN!  The amazing freshness of the smell, the drop from 112F/44C to 85F/29C, the renewal, the loss of internet (satellite ), the sound of the drops and tiny waterfalls cascading all over the grass roof, the puddles of toxicity collecting in the road, the deep grounding it produces.  We each individually gather together to watch the clouds gather, to watch the osprey and large birds riding the thermals and being chased by the downfall, to smell the first smell of rain, to hear the first patter and to exclaim and wonder as the smell gets stronger and the drops begin to fall.

We cannot help but wander in the great drops, feel the cool wetness and drink deep of the earthy smell.  As the frequency of the downpour decreases, we wander away and the littlest kids come out, whooping and jumping in the toxic puddles, creating ginormous rooster tails with their bikes and luxuriating in the lovely wetness of the rain.

I’ve been crazy bizzy with two Final exams and two “other” exams.  I’ve sent in one Final and one “other” and have finished the other and the . . . → Read More: That damn dawg]]> I’ve written about 3-4 posts in my head but unfortunately you guys never read them because by the time I get to the computer, POOF, they’re gone.

I’ve been crazy bizzy with two Final exams and two “other” exams.  I’ve sent in one Final and one “other” and have finished the other and the other Final and am waiting teacher feedback before I proceed with sending those in.  I’ve now started on internship (Advanced Sessions) and I can’t believe how HARD it is.  Luckilly, looking at the forums I see that I’m not alone – everyone seems to go through this in these sessions.  I am, however, finding it hard to believe that I will be even minimally employable as it seems that I have learned NOTHING over these last 12 basic sessions.  Sigh.  So that’s been taking up a bit of my time.

The rains finally stopped (after TWO MONTHS) and the snowbirds have arrived.  We’re REALLY GLAD we bought a house in Merida and can’t wait to spend next Winter there.

I know that Jonna is biting her tongue purple but I just can’t help noticing, each and every time we come back from Merida, what a non-Mexican area of Mexico we live in.  And Jonna, I’m not speaking to Playa, where you hear English constantly and the red/white striped tourists outnumber the locals in Mega and WalMart, but here in PaaMul.  Other than my neighbor from Durgano (who is rarely home) and the workers, you never hear Spanish.  As a matter of fact, our neighbor tried to take her daughter Trick or Treating on Halloween but no-one could understand what she wanted to do.  I semi-coereced Jesse into taking the little girl around but it was so sad for her, that she couldn’t participate with the other kids because she speaks no English (she’s 5 or 6), the mom speaks no English, and the ex-pats living here don’t speak enough Spanish to know what is going on.  And I am just as bad – my kids learned more Spanish staying in Merida for 2 weeks than they have in the (almost) 2 years we’ve been here.  I carry SO MUCH guilt about that but really don’t know what to do about it.  I won’t force them to learn Spanish but I really think something has to change.

Another realization that hit me after our last Merida trip is that I think I am now an ex-pat.  Until we bought (well, I guess technically we haven’t bought it yet) the house I really thought we’d eventually get back on the road and travel again.  We “settled” here in PaaMul because we have a place for the trailer, we can continue to live in the trailer, when we want to sell it will probably sell, we can walk to the beach in 15 seconds, it is a vacation paradise and Pikey REALLY needed to stop travelling.  I really thought we’d get back on the road though.  Jamie still thinks we can travel next summer, but I’m not convinced.  Plus we need to start work on the Merida house (assuming we can purchase it).  But coming back to PaaMul the last time, I realized that I have left the United States.

I was never really much of a patriot.  I’ve never felt a deep sense of pride in the US and its policies.  It’s a “good enough” country but the last few decades have been incredibly dirty and shameful.  I’m not sure I would adopt any other country though; Mexico is certainly no better politically, but the culture has a lot going for it.  And for all the minuses of Mexican culture I would still rather raise my kids in this culture than the US culture. So I’m feeling very much solidly ex-pat instead of “temporarily ex-pat until cicrumstances change.”  And that’s something I’ve definitely been pondering.

I gained back at least 3-5 kilos over October and have been working to get rid of them.  This morning I though I might have finally lost 3 of them but the scale pissed me off by showing that I somehow GAINED a kilo since yesterday!  ARGH!  I’ve been exercising every day, last week and this week I did TWO workouts a day, I’ve started running but I have no idea what is with the crazy weight GAIN.  I really don’t fluctuate much and thought this morning I was back to 80.  I’ve been at 81 for a number of days and after yesterday’s double workout I was SURE I’d finally gotten back to 80.  Nope.  Up to 82.

That’s about it.  I really do need to get a dog so I can blame the lost posts on him though.

Municipal markets are in every . . . → Read More: Culiacán]]> Baja is a different county.  It is hard to recognise that the penninsula is simply two more states of the United States of Mexico, because it is so incredibly different.  We’ve only been in mainland Mexico for 2 days, but it feels like we’ve travelled to a different country.

Municipal markets are in every town.  Very much like the markets of all the cities in South America; they simply do not exist in any of the cities we visited in Baja.  The terrain is very different.  Baja has chocolate and red and orange stark earth mountains with little to no vegetation.  Sinola (the state we’re in now) has beautiful "typical" Mexican mountains; shrubbed and olive green and the valleys and countryside is very agricultural.  It is humid here and we’re gradually getting used to it.  Baja is so very very dry and we got so very used to it, that it became normal.  Perhaps it isn’t so much that it is humid here, but that we got very accustomed to desert climate.  City water in all the cities was "clean" and we didn’t worry about drinking it.  Here, the agua purificada (sold in large, 5 gallon bottles) tastes strange; with an almost dirt-like taste.  There are people EVERYWHERE here.  In Baja, the cities were few and far between and the people the same.  Here in Sinola, the roads are full of vehicles and the roads are full of cities.  The roads in Mexico are GARGANTUAN after the teeny tiny narrow roads of Baja.  We’ve even driven on kilometers of FOUR LANE HIGHWAYS!!!  Almost all roadway (even the freeway "libre" (non-toll)) has a shoulder (!!!) and many of the roads and freeway are four-lane. 

Jamie warns me not to let the kids in the bathrooms at night; between the freaky lizards, the flying cockroaches and the millions of spiders (honestly, the spiders are simply amazing here), he knows they’d have nightmares for weeks.

I’ll answer emails tomorrow; sorry about the delay.

This would be an absolute paradise but for the past three days of high clouds.  I heard from a fellow camper, who spoke with someone (or someone who spoke with someone ) on a ham radio that the clouds are from a storm hitting San Diego.  And . . . → Read More: Playa Requeson]]> Picture is of the road into camp…

This would be an absolute paradise but for the past three days of high clouds.  I heard from a fellow camper, who spoke with someone (or someone who spoke with someone ) on a ham radio that the clouds are from a storm hitting San Diego.  And pretty hard.  San Diego has hard a very difficult winter.  I can only hope it gets better for them.  The sea is tourquiose here, the sand is white, we find oyster and scallop shells (along with many other) and it is warm, though overcast.  It rained a bit today, enough for the girls and I to move to a palapa (palm leaved hut) and wait out the drops.  When we left Mulege (about 20 miles to the north; we don’t move far when we enjoy an area) we didn’t think we’d stay long at the beaches.  The day before we left, we drove down (there are about 8 or more beaches that people stay at) and figured this would be the best for our trailer and need for space.  It was one of the least populated beach for the ability of our trailer to manage the road in.  The boys are filling their days alternating between smashing glass bottles at the dump area, near a local fish camp, and crashing through the mangroves when the tide is out. 

There is little sea life to be seen here; I think all the fish are further out of the cove.  I checked the local fish camp’s catch this morning; about 7 or 8 sting rays, a large amount of red snapper, one trigger fish and a bunch of other fish.  Bass maybe.  Pike, Sissy, Ellen and I watched them emptying the nets, cleaning and carving up the fish and rays and Pike got a couple fish souviners (currently sitting in our fridge). 

We are camped on a sand spit which connects to an island at low tide.  THe island is covered with volcanic rock and many many shells.  I can’t figure out if birds are dumping the shells there or humans.  We have two immediate neighbors; everyone seems to be camped on this side of the spit as a wind break.  Our neighbor to the west has a windmill on top of his rig but reports it generates very little electricity.  He also has a Datastorm unit and we asked him to send a message to Dad that we’re here.  We have been playing "tag" with our neighbors to the east; they camped next to us at Scammon’s Lagoon.  Like just about each and every other camper we’ve met, they are from BC.  For some reason, BC must empty out like the tide each winter, with a great amount of the population headed for Baja.  It is rare to see an American outside a caravan.