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.