School Closes Again

The flu has hit Cabo this time around. In May there were no cases of flu here but there are many cases now. I walk by the hospital on my way to work every day and I noticed earlier this week people were streaming out of the hospital wearing masks with their arms bent the way you do after having blood drawn. My team mate Patty's grandson was hospitalized briefly last weekend, a blood sample was sent to the mainland and it was confirmed he had the H1N1 virus. The locals say several people have died from flu, including children. Wednesday this week is Mexican Independence Day so we have a holiday, but the powers that be decided to cancel school on Monday and Tuesday as well.

Harry arrived in England on Thursday after spending an overnight in NYC with Alexis and Curtis. They went out for Mexican food. Alexis is working two jobs, by night managing and waitressing at Baby Bo's in midtown and working at the Welfare Rights Initiative Project at Hunter college by day. Curtis continues his job with the 311 help line in NYC and he is going to start school this spring at La Guardia Community College. He is taking a trip to his Trinidad homeland next week. He has not been home in many years and is super excited. Lex has taken a pass on Monolo Blonics as her graduation present and is hoping to plan a little trip to Europe this spring before she starts grad school next fall. (Monolos are not good on cobblestones)

Harry says Olga is falling a lot of late. She went over backwards on their first evening together and Harry could not pull her up. She has put on a lot of weight since we saw her last and they had to wait until the carers arrived to get her up. She wears a call for help alarm pendant around her neck so when this happens she can press it and the para-medics come and get her back on her feet. She has caretakers who come three times a day. She refuses to leave her home for a more secure and safe setting. Harry has plans to walk up in the moors where the heather will be in full bloom and to golf with his old school chum Harold. Our friends David and Eileen had him for lunch yesterday in their newly refurbished cottage in Edmund Byers where we have stayed the past three years we have visited. It looks very likely that David and Eileen going to come to Mexico to visit us this winter here in Cabo.

Patty and I decided yesterday we want Harry, the lover of all things Dickens, to come in and teach Great Expectations, the senior novel, for us this semester. (He agreed to do so when I proposed it to him on the phone last night.) I thought he could be a bit of an actor using a thick English regional dialect of some sort so the kids could get used to a hearing a different English accent. He could come in as the retired college professor, unlit pipe and all, teaching a couple days a week. It would free Patty and I up a bit and lessen our heavy class load in terms of planning and student contact hours. It will undoubtedly be a volunteer job as there is not a lot of extra money floating around at Libertad or anywhere else in Cabo for that matter. People here were so hoping this next high season would be better this coming year but now, with a new flu outbreak, who knows what will happen.

I will be home, probably for a week, until this scare passes, or longer if things get worse. There is not a lot of vaccine down here (if any) and I don't think flu shots are readily available either. I'll be washing my hands a lot. My friends Mary Ellen and Doreen and I are driving into Cabo today to go to Costco. When Harry and I went to Costco in Cabo last May all the workers were wearing masks and they greeted us at the door with one of those sanitary wipes. I wonder what things are going to be like now that there really are cases of flu here.