Sweeping Up Dirt

Winter has arrived here in western Mexico.  That means we are typically hovering around 80 degrees in the day and getting down to a bitter 55 at night.  We've had a couple of days that were officially cold with temps only reaching 70, lots of clouds, and some rain.  Even I was obliged to put on a long-sleeve shirt and cardigan to stay warm and use three blankets on my bed as there's no such thing as indoor heating in these parts.

The brief rain was a welcome reprieve from our return to the dry season.  It's that time of year when you have to sweep two times a day to keep the dirt off your floors and everyone is suffering from dust-born allergies.  I’ve been walking all over town for my back rehab, and I frequently see people sweeping up dirt on the street in front of their house and placing it into a dustpan.  As you can see below, our streets are made of dirt and rocks.  I assume that people are sweeping up the dirt to keep it from entering their homes, but to an outsider, it looks like they’re fighting a losing battle. 

 Dirt road outside of town. 

This is what all the streets look like in town.  You can never sweep up all that dirt.

Every morning a large truck drives all over town spraying water on the roads to keep the dust down, which helps for about 20 minutes before our super-strength sun dries it out.  I’ve never been more aware of the placement of the sun and the hours when you can and cannot find shade on the street.  I’m like a heat (shade)-seeking missile that is constantly looking for shade and has learned the best hour to walk home for lunch to achieve maximum shade coverage.  When I first arrived in Mexico, I assumed I would be this lovely, constantly bronzed beauty after a few months thanks to my year-long exposure to sun.  During my first week here, I realized that the sun was way stronger than anything I had ever encountered in the US and that the shade was my new best friend, so I'm still pretty pale.

There's some of that beloved shade in front of our city hall. 

Now this is a house I could live in! 

Scenes from walking around town. 

Perhaps a future hotel in the making? And a rare cloud sighting!  

 Shadow art on a multi-textured house.  

Town views as the sun begins to set. 

You know what is not my best friend?  Church fireworks, which sound like a loud cannon and produce zero colors in the sky.  The first time you hear them, you have a desire to drop to the floor and seek shelter because your body thinks you must be under attack.  It’s hard to explain how loud and shocking they are unless you’ve heard them first hand or experienced combat in the time of cannon balls.  My brother was on the phone with me the other night when they went off and he did say the lord's name, but it was in concern for my safety.  Nothing to worry about – just a religious celebration taking place that rattles the windows!  The other morning the cannons went off a couple of times at 5:30 AM before we got a full 30-minute serenade at 7:15 AM.  There’s nothing like waking up to a noise so loud it shakes your bed before the sun has fully risen.

There's that church, on a cold, cloudy day. 

The next day we were back in business with hot, sunny weather!

I think it's fair to say I've started transitioning into old lady mode with my dislike for loud noises and late night parties.  My office had two holiday parties on two consecutive days and I could not bring myself to partake in the festivities until 1:00 AM (or later) with the rest of the group.  One day I made it till 6 PM and the next until a little before 10 PM.  I like to think I'm doing my part to help counteract the stereotype of a spring-breaker from the US, but really I've come to realize that I'm just an introvert (#1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 20, 22, 23) and I need time alone to reenergize.  

I am, however, still sufficiently young enough to enjoy a great animated movie and recommend that you see Coco!  I had the chance to view it with my dad during my recent visit to California, and it was a really sweet, educational movie about el Día de los Metros and Mexico.  If you haven't seen in yet, take a break during the holidays to check it out! 

The Saga of Los Bosques, an Activity Book for Kids

One of my friends sent me an email the other day saying how she loved hearing about my experiences in Mexico, along with this question: “Is there some crappier stuff you leave out?”  The short answer is H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks to the yes.  I don’t talk about that stuff much in my blog for obvious reasons.  Don't get me wrong - things are generally great and satisfying but life sadly is not filled with only tasty tacos and laughter.  The less awesome parts of my life as a volunteer are usually associated with physical ailments, loud noises and operating in a different work culture, where Autumn-E does not quite shine like a diamond.  As an example, let me share my saga of Los Bosques: Libro de Activities (a kid's activity book regarding forests).

View in a lovely, local forest. 

The never ending book of acitivities. 

  Example pages from the draft book. I think we need some more diversity with the cartoon kids here.

When I first arrived in my office, I was looking for an easy win and there was a lot of interest in developing some kind of environmental education activity for kids.  A lot of volunteers have had success with activity books, so I started drafting content and design ideas for a book to educate kids about the importance of our forests.  I designed a whole outreach strategy to accompany the release of this book which would include viewings of The Lorax in the local casas de cultura, and an interactive lesson plan to accompany the environmental education program I helped design and deliver to teachers earlier this year.  People in my office were totally on board with this idea and excited about this project.

I sent a draft book to my team for their review in August of 2016.  I slowly got feedback and sent another draft in November 2016.  I got confirmation that yep, it looked good to go and so I sent it to the powers that be to get our designer working on it.  Then nothing happened.  For 11 months.  I would periodically ask about the status of the book and if our consultant was going to be able to add some graphic designs to make this thing a reality.  The last time I asked, I heard that our 20-something landscape architect intern from Belgium didn’t think it was a good format for a kid’s book so it was put on the backburner.  As my brother would say, merrrrrrr.

Totally unrelated to this post, but this is a popular appetizer to share with guests. It's cheese with hot dogs, onions and I think chiles inside. You can also put it in a quesadilla. 

This is the fruit Annona purpurea. Also not related to this post but tasty!

Ok, so life isn't tasty tacos and laughter 24-7, but there are tasty tacos. Lots of tasty tacos. 

While I was in the US in October, I suddenly got a draft copy of a fully designed activity book!  I was super surprised and happy to see how colorful and beautiful it looked!  I could also see that some text needed to be updated, since it was written a year ago.  So, I set about the process for updating the book and getting feedback from my team yet again.  By the end of November, I got two people to commit to reviewing the book, which was great.  Except that they weren’t part of our team a year ago and now wanted to change more than just content.  My first thought was nooooooo - I was so close!  And then I took a deep breath, put on some Beck songs and settled in to wait for however much longer would be needed to finish the book.

If you’ve ever worked with me, you know that I don’t take a year to create a 10-page kids book.  I don’t take a year to create anything.  I love being productive.  I love feeling competent in my work and doing things that are meaningful and will hopefully have a lasting impact.  I really love having concrete accomplishments that I can eloquently describe to you.  

Things for me are a wee bit different here.  For starters, nothing eloquent comes from me speaking in Spanish.  If I’m lucky, I will be able to tell you that I got a 10-page kid’s book printed before my 27 months as a volunteer was up.  I have faith that will happen, but if you're going to be a volunteer, patience is key.  Patience and perseverance.  And access to Youtube for Beck videos to keep you pumped.  

One side note: I was talking with some family friends in California earlier this month and they thought everything I described in my volunteer work was great and important.  It was a good reminder that you can't necessarily compare your productivity as a volunteer in another country with your productivity as an employee back in the US, so, if you're also a volunteer, give yourself a break! 

Losing the Pet You Left Behind for Your Peace Corps Service

When I made the decision to be a Peace Corps volunteer, I made a decision to give up almost all of my physical possessions.  That included my cat, Luca, who I got from a shelter in California 15 years ago.  To be honest, I thought it would be easy to say goodbye to Luca because, although we had spent 13 years living together, I’ve never been one of those people to include photos of my pets with me in my holiday cards or talk about them like they are children (not that there’s anything wrong with that).  Thus, imagine my surprise when I found myself profoundly missing her and crying when I took her to her new home.  

Luca as a teenager. 

Once mocked for being a big ol' fat cat (with my brother Amery in MN)..... 

... she was quite svelte in her later years. And then she got way too skinny.  

My dad and his family graciously offered to take her into their home during my service, which was incredibly kind and much better than my original idea of searching for someone in Seattle to take her.  I went to the vet a few days before our scheduled flight from Seattle down to So Cal in January 2016 to get her travel papers and the vet noted that she had lost a lot of weight since her last visit.  I thought it was just due to old age as she was still eating all the time, but the night before our flight the vet called to say nope – she had thyroid disease and would need medication every day for the rest of her life.  Craaaaaaaaaaap.

When I called my dad to inform him of this unexpected facet of their new cat’s life, my stepmom said “No problem – I’ll happily give her medicine 2x/day, every day.”  Luca had lived alone with just me for almost her entire life, so it was a wee bit stressful for her to arrive in a new home with another cat, two dogs and three people.  She spent months in self-induced isolation in the computer room at my dad’s house before slowly (and I mean slowly) starting to come out and explore the house. 

Luca as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed youngster.

Lounging on her favorite chair in Santa Barbara.

She also loved a good nap on the bed.  

Or a good nap on anything. 

After a year in California, I started getting really good reports from my dad about how she was finally entering the room with people present and becoming more social.  She was even hanging out calmly in the presence of the dogs!  I was really proud of her for finally acclimating, so when my dad called in September to say that something was wrong and that she had lost a lot of weight and was acting weird, it was kind of devastating.  After a few visits to the vet, we got confirmation that she had advanced kidney disease and likely something else that would be really difficult to diagnose and treat.  She pretty much stopped eating, spent weeks sitting under a bed, and then started moving around a bit, but in very uncharacteristic ways. 

I talked to the vet directly as my dad and stepmom kindly said they would do whatever I wanted, but I had to make the decision about her care.  The vet was brutally honest with me and told me what she would do as the advocate for my cat, so this past week I made a trip home to say goodbye and be with her for her passing which was awful, heartbreaking and soul crushing for me. 

I feel incredibly guilty for not being there for her during her final two years of life, but I know that Luca went to the very best possible house in the world during that time.  My dad and stepmom loved her as their own pet.  My stepmom went above and beyond, administering her thyroid medication 2x/day and then giving her frequent hydration injections during her final months.  I cannot say thank you enough for their loving and diligent care of my beloved cat.  

One time a cat-sitter was in a panic because she couldn't find Luca.  She eventually found her in a kitchen cabinet above the refrigerator. 

She would often pull down my bath towels for a nap. 

On the lookout for birds in St. Paul.

I wasn't a fan of dressing up my cat, but I sometimes grudgingly let my friends do it. 

Luca was originally named Janet and was part of a trio of shelter kittens named after characters from Three’s Company.  I gave her the name Luca from the Suzanne Vega song, and she ironically spent the majority of her life living on the second floor of apartment buildings.  As a kitten, she was precocious, jumping on the curtains and bending the rods, running all over my studio apartment at night, and doing this weird thing where she would essentially nurse on your earlobe.  As an adult, she liked to meow really loudly, hide from all visitors, and sleep in my lap or on the back of the couch.  She loved to go outside but not in the snow.  My dad joked that she saw more of the country than he did as she traveled with me from California to Washington, Arkansas and Minnesota, and then back to Washington, and finally home to California.

She was all the things that a cat should be: loving but only when she wanted to be, demanding and finicky, a fan of feathers, grass and laser pointers, a watcher of birds from the window, and a warm, purring snuggle companion.  She was a really good cat and I’m going to miss her so very, very much.

Parades of Mexico

I recently attended a parade for el Día de la Revolución.  It took place a few days before Thanksgiving in the US, so, although it was totally unrelated, I did get a day off last week.  The day of the parade, I awoke to a message from my coworkers saying that the parade was about to pass the office and that you could grab a chair there for a great view.  I rushed to get dressed and ran out the door, taking time to lather myself in sunblock but not to eat.  As I approached the office and saw that the parade was nowhere in sight, I slowed down and ate some street tacos while chatting with my host family. 

 My favorite float in the parade. 

Two members of the band that kicked off the parade. 

I anticipated that at least one other person from my office would be at the office watching the parade, per the group text messages that morning, but alas, I was alone.  Since there was shade on the street, I decided to grab a chair and see if anyone else might eventually come.  They sadly did not, so when I got a call 1.5 hours later from some friends saying they were at my apartment with a very important Costco delivery of toilet paper and peanut butter, I headed out early.

Parades are super popular here in Mexico which is great for a parade-lover like me.  There are, however, a few things you should know about the parades here, which differ in some aspects from parades back in the US. 

• There’s often a 5- to 10-minute break between each entry in the parade, especially if you're at the half-way or later mark in the parade route.  That means you spend a lot of time sitting and waiting (and thus, should try to have at least one friend with you when attending a parade). 
• You can only see parade participants “perform” at certain places along the route.  Look for those really full sidewalks because that is where the dancers, acrobats, bands, boxers, etc. are going to perform, usually for 3-7 minutes.  
• The bulk of parade participants will be students from local schools.   You’ll see representatives from every local school decked out in full uniform, marching very precisely and very loudly playing drums and trumpets.
• There’s also a strong showing by local government and the military. The government workers usually march in matching shirts, in groups segregated by gender.

 Soldiers participating in the parade. 

 I'm always a fan of a hat attached to the hood of a truck. 

• Royalty is huge here.  You’ll find several people wearing crowns in every parade. 
• In lieu of traditional floats, people decorate the back of their trucks – quite elaborately – and sometimes have a rope for the princess/queen to hold onto for security.
• If you’re a kid, get ready for some sweets because all those trucks filled with royalty will toss out free candy!  
• Each parade usually takes about 3 hours to complete so come prepared with a hat, water and snacks.

 There's always lots of royalty in our parades. 

Well-dressed parade participants. 

 This is one of those 5-minute acrobatic acts along the parade route. 

 Brave gymnasts atop a truck. 

I appreciate the strong community spirit behind each parade that I’ve witnessed here in Mexico.  They usually terminate in the town plaza where vendors are set up selling food and beverages and someone is usually playing or performing music.  I headed back to the plaza after taking delivery of my Costco goods and arrived just in time to see a group of fearless youngsters building human pyramids on top of a large truck (another key feature of most local parades).  I also received a free bottle of water, which was much appreciated since the sun was super strong and it was 88 degrees in late November. 

So, if you are planning a future trip to Mexico and you want a taste of local flavor, I highly recommend visiting when you can check out a local parade.  Looking for a calendar of holidays and celebrations in Mexico?  Check out this link from Frommer's. 

The Six-Month Countdown

I’ve decided that here in my part of Mexico, we have two seasons: the season when water enters your apartment (the rainy season) and the season when you have to sweep up dirt coming through your windows every day (the dry season).  My kitchen ceiling still bears the scars of the rainy season, but we are clearly back in the dry season, as evidenced by the constant, thin layer of dirt inside my home.  It’s kind of weird (and kind of comforting) to know that I will not have to pass another rainy season here, only because I hope to never live in fear of constant indoor flooding again.  

When you hit the half-way point as a volunteer, it’s natural to start looking at your time left and perhaps initiate a countdown, no matter how much you love your post.  I was doing a pretty good job resisting that until I went to the US for 6 weeks.  Upon my return, I was suddenly very aware of how little time I had left (only 6 months left in my 27-month service).  

You can see my new pump in the blue bottle, which I can no longer lift to put into it's special pouring device (i.e. where the orange bottle is now). 

Water damage on my ceiling. It looks a lot worse in person. 

Ok, dropping 5 eggs between your stove and counter is not unique to Mexico but it was uniquely difficult to clean up. So. Much. Yolk. 

There’s definitely an element of anxiety associated with the countdown, mostly related to money, health care and the loss of daily access to fresh, homemade salsa and tortillas.  As I lay in bed at night, my mind starts racing with thoughts like these: 

• OMG, I have no source of income, no car, no possessions, no place to live, etc. as of May 27, 2018.  
• What if I can’t find a job? 
• What if I can’t find a job for a really, really long time? 
• What if I can only find a job in a place that is far, far away from my family?
• What if it’s a job that pays like $60k less per year than my last job? Is that ok?   
• Should I start looking for a job now? 
• What if I get offered a job before the end of my service? I really want to stay till the end.  But what if that’s the only job I ever get offered again? 
• Will I be able to afford health insurance without a job?  
• How am I going to see everything I want to see in Mexico in the remaining months?  
• Would it look bad on my resume if I just traveled and lived off savings for a few months after my service ended?  Can I afford to do that and pay health insurance?  
• How am I going to get all this awesome stuff I've accumulated out of Mexico with only two suitcases weighing 50 pounds each?  
• Oh god, what was that noise? Was that inside the house or outside the house?  
• Ahhhh! Something just touched my hand!!! It's a demogorgon! Oh wait, that was me.
• Is that a tree limb shadow in the window or some new, giant breed of killer lizard that can open windows and wants to eat my brains?

You get the picture.  During the day, I can usually keep those thoughts at bay as Mexico is always offering distractions.  This past week I got to meet two employees from US Consulate who are stationed in the closest big city.  They had a meeting with our town’s mayor and then found me at a local restaurant – where I was dining with 20 other people – for a quick hello.  They were both dressed in linen suits which was definitely out of place for our small mountain town, but they were also both very friendly.

My large lunch took place with project partners and funders from France and Mexico City.  I’ve never seen so many different types of local cheeses, cookies, beverages and treats heaped upon a more grateful group of people.  I personally found my new favorite cheese during this fete.  It’s called “queso borracho,” which literally translates to “drunk cheese,” but translates in your mouth to delicious, non-alcoholic cheese that should be spread on blue corn tortilla chips and eaten every day.  I imagine it would be extra awesome if eaten while listening to mariachi music, but I had to settle for street tacos when I went to a mariachi gala in the town plaza earlier this week. 

That's me telling some of our project partners who I am and why I'm here.

You can see my beloved queso borracho in the back. 

Those "empanadas" are filled with a kind of gelled milk filling. 

 Enjoying the music of an all-female mariachi band.

A few days later I arrived at the office to find that we had no running water.  Apparently, the gardener left the water on in the backyard all night and emptied the big tank of water on our roof.  Thus, whenever I needed to use the bathroom that day, I had to walk about 5 minutes to the closest public restroom and pay for the privilege of peeing.  And every day since I’ve returned, I’ve had to navigate a never-ending maze of sidewalks and streets currently under construction, which does not make for the best commute to work for someone who recently had back surgery and really, really does not want to twist anything or fall.

That door you can see is for the bank and it's still totally open for business. You just have to step over/around all this stuff. 

Sooooooo much sidewalk construction. 

So there you have it - with 6 months to go I'm obsessing over what I'm going to do with my life, trying not to fall while walking around town, and working really hard to stay mentally focused in the present.  I know that everything is going to be fine and I’m going to find another great job in a great place, close to the people I love, at exactly the time I want it, but if you also want to tell me that/put that out to the universe, that can only help ;)