mexico tries to enter the 21st century

The priest went a little long today at our teacher workshop, 4 hours long to be exact. We had a short break of about 10 minutes. I was not comprehending well today and probably not trying hard to understand so it was a very long, long, long, morning. American teachers would never stand for having to sit and listen for that period of time. These Mexican teachers took it all in stride. At one point, after about an hour into the lecture, we stopped to sing a few religious songs and of course there were the prayers to break up the monotony. My boss, Rosie, interrupted to ask the priest if he would bless our attempt to use more modern educational techniques this school year. The Mexican government is promoting change to try and bring Mexican education into the 21st century. She said it has been her experience that if someone with higher authority does not give the ok for change it traditionally does not happen in this culture. The priest seemed to balk at her request. I think he responded with saying that it is not Mexico's goal to be more like the US. Rosie is an American and it shows in her direct approach to things. I feel she is looking to me to implement some of my American teaching techniques. I don't think I will bother to ask the priest for his blessing, however. I included a photo of a view of inside the courtyard area at Libertad. I tried to find a pleasant area because much of it is not real pleasant.

Harry and I finally have a "two butt" kitchen, meaning we can both be in the kitchen cooking at the same time. It is our dream come true and I have included a picture. We are tempermentally unsuited to bumping into each other when trying to cook, being astrological fixed signs and all.

Had an interesting first day at Libertad. It is culturally a very different scene. Upon entering the building the first thing I noticed was a mission statement and a vision statement on the wall. At Mission the first thing you notice in the main office are Carla's certificates from the cooperative learning courses she has taken in the states. (she was a teacher college drop-out so I guess these pieces of paper were very meaningful to her) We were on Mexican time today, the workshop scheduled for 8:30 started at 9:30. I actually felt sort of stupid because I arrived on time. I must be acclimating to the culture. The meeting began with a prayer from our very own priest. Carla was the inspirational inspiration at Mission. Now we have a direct pipeline to the real inspiration. The school setting is humble at best. It takes up an entire city block but it is meager. There is a courtyard inside and the classrooms face the courtyard. My boss Rosie told me that many parents this year are having a hard time paying for school tuition and books. I do not know what this will mean for my salary which I have not discussed with the owner of the school who resides in San Diego. I think I will be grateful to have a pension from the states. Living on what they will probably pay me would not be possible. I like my boss, Rosie, I find her abstract random and probably an ENFP Myers Briggs. See my facebook page to take the test for yourself. (thanks Pete!) I decided to go back for a second day after a Russian immigrant teacher told me that she knows how it is to be a new commer and to call her if I need support. Lastly, my boss Rosie speaks even worse Spanish than I do. She comprehends better, but her pronunciation is terrible. I love her.

safe and sound and hot in Cabo.

Arrived back in San Jose to air conditioning that was not functioning in the main living area of our new condo. It was near 100 degrees with high humidity and needless to say a rough go for a day until... Our adopted son, Greg, alerted us that an air con repair truck was in the car park and we hailed them down and 5 guys and several hours later we were living in cool comfort. We were afraid what the repair was going to cost and were relieved when we were handed a bill for 600 pesos, less than 50 dollars. We pretty much unpacked our boxes and put things away properly in one day as we have not accumulated much "stuff." I really love this condo, so cozy and nice. It is also nice to be back here, so beautiful in a different way than San Miguel. The mountains and ocean views everywhere are calming. You had better be calm because it it so damn hot that being anything else would be suicide.

My new boss Rosie, called this evening and told me teacher workshops start tomorrow. She apologized and said since I had not heard from the school earlier if I had other plans for tomorrow that would be fine, I could report on Thursday. (This may turn out to be my kind of place.) I said my only other plans were to sit by the pool so I would report. I will be up early and on my way by foot to my new adventure by 8:00 a.m. tomorrow. Harry has been suffering the last few days with a kidney stone. He has been drinking lots of water and has been taking some heavy duty over the counter pain killers he got here in Mexico hoping to pass the stone. As I have always said, better living through chemistry, especially over the counter no prescription needed Mexican chemistry.

We have connected with some of our friends here but it is pretty much a ghost town. August and September are months when people who can get out of here do so. The grocery store was busy with parents and kids shopping for school supplies and watermelons today. I saw a mountain of watermelons yesterday at MEGA (Mexican Target) and today the pile had nearly disappeared. Some people had 5 watermelons in their shopping carts. Rain is predicted on Thursday. I will need to check the web to see if it is tied to a tropical depression or not. Greg told us last week there was a wind storm with 70 mile an hour winds, no rain, just wind.

I promised myself and Harry that if the vibes tomorrow at Libertad, my new school, are crazy I will politely say I feel a case of swine flu coming on and express my need to quit immediately as not to infect others. I just pray that my crazy detectors are working properly, or at least better than they worked last year.

Micky, we hardly knew ya!

Two days left….

Illuminated towers of impossible stone tracery at night … five bands of mariachis (one at a birthday party) and vocal groups all playing at the same time across the street in every part of El Jardin – not to mention the fire jugglers … the baroque gone baroque in the shrine at Atotonilco (look it up on the web) … a chicken roaster with at least fifty chickens on it – ours came with a Spanish vocabulary lesson and warnings about the chiles …the wonderful botanical gardens outside town, hundreds of acres of cacti around a dying reservoir with much restoration going on …

I had seen a comment on them by some corn-fed broad from Iowa (I tracked her to her blog, which had her picture on it: lots of corn consumed, believe me!) saying you didn’t want to visit, it was just a bunch of cactus. I wanted to point out that the waves breaking on the rocks at Craster or Los Cabos are just a pile of salt water, but I contented myself with Bill’s oft-cited prayer for us arrogant INTJs: Lord help me to appreciate other people’s point of view, wrong though they may be!

… faces, old and young, some going about their lives, some about their business of selling you everything from tchatchkis (spelling, Marvin?) to wonderful crafts, some just begging; one little girl that Jeanne gave a few coins to, and who came back on another occasion while Jeanne was eating dessert, requesting the last piece, which she slid off the fork and popped into her mouth before vanishing -- such a face … steep, steep cobbled streets leading down to restaurants and everything else, and which must be climbed afterwards with a full stomach -- that Triathlon Tours guy is getting old now! … sitting on our rooftop with a pipe, watching the storms roll by over the mountains to the west … making new friends who’ve invited us to their beach palace near Puerto Vallarta … bells at all hours which set off the dogs, which set off the man who howls at the dogs, which sets off the big dog near us who howls for the end of the world …

Still., SMA is quieter than SJC and SLP. And why should a man of my religious sensibilities be plagued with such place names? Will no-one rid me of these cursed saints and their initials?

Well, bye for now, St. Micky. We’ll be back!

Farewell San Miguel

I am feeling rather sad about leaving San Miguel on Sunday. It has been a lovely, restful time here. It is a wonderful place to visit and probably a wonderful place to live. It has always been sort of my dream to live in a place like this. It all goes back to my Scottish grandmother telling me she woke up every morning and looked out her bedroom window to see Stirling Castle. When my sister Cate and I visited Stirling five years ago I was enchanted by the narrow tangling cobblestone streets and old old buildings. I find the natural beauty of Cabo amazing everyday and I never tire of constantly viewing the mountains, the ocean and the desert. But the towns of San Jose and Cabo St. Lucas are not architectually interesting or historic. San Jose has a little charm but nothing compared to San Miguel. SM is a tourist town like Los Cabos but here there are fewer tourists and the gringos speak Spanish, bad sounding Spanish but Spanish. They do not expect everyone to speak English just because they do. You feel here like you are really living in Mexico.

I am actually a bit nervous about going back to such intense heat and humidity. I will never forget the first few days I spent in San Jose. It was so hot all I could do was make it out of my air conditioned hotel room to the restaurant to eat and then back to my hotel room. It stayed that hot until early October when it began to slowly cool off. My new school does not have air con like Mission. I just pray to god they have fans. I know I will adjust ok and I have three new swim suits I can wear at the beach where I will probably try to spend as much time as I can. I do miss the mountains and the ocean. I doubt I will not have to stand out in the heat and load students into their fancy air conditioned cars. I will be teaching high school this year and these kids do not have families with fancy cars.

Guess I need to look for a charming, culturally flowering colonial city surrounded by mountains and desert near the ocean where the people speak Spanish. Or I could stop whining and just be grateful. Speaking of grateful, Betty, the owner of our new place just left Cabo after 10 days finishing up all the projects she had going on at our new condo. She had to put in a whole new kitchen because the rats came up the toliet and ate her kitchen last year. The lower level has a huge patio with palm trees and I know we are going to love, love, love being out there come October. Those of you planning to come down this year I know will really love the new digs. So no more whining, just sweating for a couple months while being very grateful.

Diego Rivera's Hometown

We have taken two day trips outside of San Miguel, one to Guanajuato and one to Atotlnilco. Guanajuato is a city about the size of San Miguel but with a totally different character and Atotlnilco is a religious shrine built in the early 18th century. We found Guanajuato to be a lively university town, built into a valley surrounded by hills with lots of students and lots of traffic. Some of the traffic goes underground in old river beds beneath the city center but not enough of it for me. The city is a World Heritage site because of it's pristine colonial buildings. Guanajuato is the birthplace of Diego Rivera, the famous muralist who became a Marxist in the early 20th century and thus is not well revered in his home town. The house where he was born is now a museum. We were not all that impressed with him either. I never have been a great fan of his, believing his wife, Frida Kallo, was the one in the family with the real talent. My theory has been he divorced Frida because he couldn't take the fact that his wife was more talented than he was. Diego was a big guy, as can be seen by the photo of Harry (the little guy) standing next to him outside the museum. In the museum gift shop there were more Frieda Kallo prints for sale than Diego's. I guess people agree with me here. We were glad to get back to the peacefulness of San Miguel after a day in the Guanajuato.

We happened by a house for rent on our many by foot travels around the city and decided to call the owner and take a look just for the heck of it. We had low expectations being that it is just two blocks from our condo in the "really nice" area close to the town center. It was even in our price range. We were very surprised at the size of the place and I liked the view even better than the one we have here, if that is possible. The house has three bedrooms, three baths and two roof top gardens and I mean gardens. ( a perfect size house for guests) It is a bit shabby but would be just fine after a little spruce up. Rents here have taken a nose dive like in Cabo, so there are nice places to rent for well under $1000 a month. For fun we also toured a beautiful condo complex in an area of SM that reminded me a little of Greenwich Village. These condo homes were in the one half million dollar range and up. They were nearly 3500 square feet, 4 floors and you could have an elevator built in if you wished. Ah yes.....I would most certainly go for the elevator.

I unexpectedly got an email back from a gentleman I had written to about teaching jobs here in San Miguel. I say unexpected because I have learned never to have high expectations attempting to communicate in cyberspace. We met with him today. It turned out he is the American Consul here so he was very knowledgeable. He gave us some good advice and counsel that would have taken many days to learn for ourselves. We got really lucky. We could have used someone like him in Madrid last summer as we tried in vain to find the right jobs.

Both of us agree this could be a very interesting place to live for a time, especially for the person in this marriage who likes nothing better than to yell "taxi". Different cultural events go on constantly in San Miguel and for me the charm factor of this city is a ten on a ten point scale. It would also be much cheaper to live here than in Cabo or the states. Example: we bought a beautiful roasted chicken, that came with a bag of roasted vegetables, salsa gravy, and two baguettes for $3.50/500 pesos in the Mexican Greenwich Village part of town today.

This week starts the 31st annual Chamber Music Festival as groups from all over the world come to perform. We bought tickets for a Haydn and Beethoven concert. Tomorrow night some of the groups will be performing free concerts in the town square. I just hope they plan to stop ringing those darn bells while this is going on.

Musical Charm

On Sunday San Miguel was oozing with musical charm. It started in the main plaza. While sitting reading our kindles suddenly the church bells started pealing like crazy. We had noticed that there were a lot of mariachis in the jardin just standing around so we thought there was going to be an evening concert of some kind and the bells were signaling the start of the concert. (Bells ring constantly in San Miguel so it is hard to know what they are signaling, if anything.) I then heard hoofs pounding on the cobblestone street in front of the church and looked up to see a beautiful horse drawn white carriage carrying a bride and groom. I was not alone as I jumped up from my park bench to run across the street with my camera ready. As the pair began to exit their carriage I turned and saw another bride and groom who had just come out of the church. They were being serenaded by a large mariachi band. The crowd gathered around them and began to sing. I felt like I had stepped into the filming of the Mexican version of Mama Mia, but I did not see any movie cameras. The newly married couple came down the steps to the street and got into a cute little red truck parked next to the horse drawn carriage and drove off. Bride and groom #2 then took their turn up the steps heading for the church doors. A different group of mariachis encircled them before they entered the church and the crowd again began to sing. The church is the very one I sent a picture of in an earlier blog and my daughter-in-law, Joanna, assures me when you click on the photo it does enlarge. I was very tempted to squeeze my way into the church but I figured Harry would wonder what the hell happened to me so I didn't.

On our way to dinner that night as we neared the restaurant, we heard more singing. A large group of people were slowly walking down the middle of the street towards us. The group was led by a very old VW Beetle followed by a little donkey who was decorated from head to tail in flowers. I only wish I had had my camera. This is my kind of place!