A hurricane novela, Episode 1

Every year around hurricane season I feel like I'm watching a novela, with all its suspense and drama. Boat people in Mexico routinely check in on the daily VHF radio net, and although we're currently dirt dwellers, the Capt and I listened in this morning for news of Jimena, the hurricane currently heading more or less our way.

Magdalena Bay on the Pacific coast of Baja, setting of the other San Carlos

For now, Jimena appears to be bound for Magdalena Bay, evolving into a Category 4 as she spins toward another small town named Puerto San Carlos, where folks seem to get more than their share of hurricane wipeouts each year. I can imagine they're a tough lot, ready for anything.

"Quick, Rodrigo! Bring more sandbags, or we'll lose the church!"


Mag Bay is a whale sanctuary, with one of the best beaches in Mexico nearby at Santa Maria. A beautiful place, but unlikely to ever become a year-round expat mecca because the hurricanes, like schoolyard bullies, come around every year to try to beat it back into the Stone Age.

Our San Carlos, on the other hand, is a passel of pusillanimous pansies, mainly because we never get a direct weather hit, only a little spanking with some rain, cool winds and extraordinary but harmless lightning. Then we're back to our normal broiling temps. Some of us might get around to taking down our awnings...

If Jimena sounds familiar, it's because she already skirted the lower mainland where our blogger bud Steve lives on the beach in Melaque, being a brave and romantic fellow and a newcomer to Mexico. She didn't show Steve much excitement, but she was just a young thing then. Now she's a big girl and ready to raise hell.

The AccuWeather map this morning — We are 20 minutes from Guaymas, marked with an X

Our weather guy this morning says Jimena might bring us 50-knot winds, if she crosses Baja and the Sea of Cortez to make landfall on the mainland. But a direct hit on San Carlos is very unlikely. Here's the latest image on AccuWeather, one of many online resources we watch at during hurricane season.

Close behind Jimena is tropical storm Kevin, which, depending on who's guessing, will either help push Jimena across Baja and into our region, or get himself knocked down by Jimena's wind shear.

Tune in tomorrow...

Weeding time, confession time

Lately I've been feeling a lot like a galley slave, bent over my oars in the dark hold of the ship, whip cracking over my back.

The slave driver of the Roman ship stared down at his slaves and yelled, “I've got good news and bad news.”

“The good news is that you'll be getting double rations tonight.”

The mumbling of the happy slaves was interrupted by the bellowing of the slave driver.

“The bad news is that the commander's son wants to water ski.”

It's a working Sunday, with phone calls and emails from clients, ads to proof... Deadline is Tuesday. Since my office/workstation is in my bedroom, shared with a king-size bed, the walls begin to close in after a while. Whenever I talk to a grouch, or the screen begins to blur, or I find that nobody is answering the phone, I take a break. It's too hot to go outside, and I can't go too far from the phone, so I've been doing some indoor weeding.

I've gotten pretty ruthless about making things disappear, which is a good thing when you're a thriftstore junkie (Confession #1). Hit the closet, pull out things I'm resigned to never wearing and packing them up in a bag which I will probably donate. Although my friend Ale told me that you can take a bag of clothes to tianguis and somebody will buy them. That's why some tianguis booths have a table-full of stuff, she said. The booth vendor will hang up her own items, and charge 30 or 40 pesos for them, but the stuff on the tables will be five or ten pesos. And sometimes the table stuff is really choice!

Imelda Marcos I'm not, but I'll confess that I have too many shoes (Confession #2). I decided to give away any footwear that is uncomfortable. After almost four years of wearing sandals most of the time here in Mexico, my feet have reverted to the shape God gave them, and they do not conform to shoes with narrow toes anymore. If my feet aren't happy, I'm not happy. Once I wrote an article about Chinese footbinding, and now I think about those generations of women whenever I put on shoes that pinch my toes. They're over it in China now, but guess what's hot in Japan? Toe shoes! I ask you: is there a man on the planet who's worth that?

I took an armload of shirts next door to my neighbor J, who's looking for comfortable work clothes for the maid who cleans the houses J rents. Culled out the books I've read or won't read, to drop off at the library. Dug boxes out from under the bed and from the bodega and pawed through them with a cold and calculating eye. And bingo! I found a couple of missing skirts and my birthday dress from last year! They fit a lot better since I became virtually vegan.

Why is this woman (Mary Louise Parker) smugly smirking? Could it be because she's starring in one of the most addicting series on TV?

Confession #3: I'm addicted to "Weeds" and the only (painless) remedy is to watch it all the way to the season finale, and then forget it at least until Season 6 starts and Nancy Botwin digs herself into even deeper trouble. So I reward myself after several hours of production work and phone calls with another episode or two. One night I watched all of Season 4! It was like reading a novel all the way through in one sitting, except I haven't usually felt so depraved for doing that.

I began by downloading Seasons 1-2 from a Torrent website that took several days and nights to do it and made my Vonage phone sound awful. Then I bought Season 3 from i-Tunes...faster, but it cost money and since I picked the HD version by mistake it was even costlier. And then for Seasons 4 and 5, I found cucirca.com and that was the best deal yet. Free, with pretty good resolution on my big screen when I don't sit too close, excellent sound. What I'm enjoying about the current episodes is all the Mexican influence. Cucirca does have annoying advertising tricks you have to work around, and after 72 minutes you either get cut off for an hour or have to sign up for the paid service.

Instead, I just go back to work.

Water on the brain

The Marina Terra Hotel pool

It's a day for water issues. This morning at 8, I head out with my towel to the local hotel where I have a pool membership I don't use nearly often enough. But the filtration system at the pool is broken again, and I'm directed to the Club de Playa, where I also have swim privileges. But that pool is being cleaned. By now I'm sweating copiously and uttering a few unladylike remarks under my breath, but I soldier on to the next stop, the water store, where I have my bottles refilled.

We're picky about our water bottles, preferring those with handles and screw-on tops. And we like to use our own, having been given in trade many times bottles with slow leaks that we don't discover until we get home. Or days later. I hate to find puddles in my car, on the floor in my kitchen. And most of all, I hate to waste water.

A friendly muchacho cleans my bottles (with soap) and refills them while practicing his English on me. As I'm driving away from the water store, I find the street has flooded just in front of the bank, where a water line has ruptured, I suppose. Gallons are spread out over the asphalt.

Mexico Bob recently sent me a Powerpoint slide show entitled "Sed," which in an entertaining way illustrates the water issue on a global scale. By the end of it I was indeed entertained, but also alarmed (not for the first time). Sort of like watching a good horror movie, a very rare experience. I was able to view it because I'd recently bought OpenOffice, which allows my Mac to read and process PC documents. In addition to providing me with some new facts about the earth's fresh water supply, its subtitles provided a little Spanish practice. Gracias, Bob.

I couldn't possibly entertain as well the slideshow does, but I'll share a few facts to chew on. Or, who knows? Maybe I'm the only person who didn't know all this. But if so, why do so few seem to care?

Our brains are 70% water, our bodies 60%. We can't go more than a week without water. Although most of the planet is covered with water, only 3% is fresh, potable agua and most of that is ice. That leaves us with 0.0007% of the earth's water to drink, flush our toilets, wash our dishes and laundry, and purify for bottled drinking water, etc.

While millions of people elsewhere live on three gallons of water a day, Americans go through about 160 gallons.

I have some friends with a ranch out in the desert, 50 miles from here, who discovered after they'd settled in that there's too much salt in their well water to irrigate most of their plants. So far all they can raise successfully is bouganvillea and olive trees. For everything else, they have to truck in water. They've been desperately investigating desalination, but so far have found nothing affordable, and if they did find anything, it would involved dealing with huge amounts of brine as a byproduct. In another ten years, possibly a lot more landowners are going to be dealing with this problem as salt water intrusion expands.

So I've been thinking about ways to save water. I know anything I come up with would be an infinitesimal drop in the bucket, so to speak, but if enough of us came up with more ideas, and actually put them into practice, maybe we could reach critical mass and it could become cool to save water.

• If you brush your teeth with the tap running, you use four gallons of water. With the tap off, a quarter-gallon. Suppose you had a clean recycled bottle of water, say a quart, in the bathroom that you use to rinse your mouth, and a glass to swish clean your toothbrush?

• By hand-washing dishes, you're just filling the double sink a couple of times at most, if there are a lot of dishes. I know this is not for everyone, but I'm curious how much water a dishwasher uses.

• In Brazil there's a big media campaign with a droll animated video urging people to pee in the shower, that it saves three gallons each time you don't flush. (And yes, I do that. The trick is to do it early on in the shower.)

• I'm wondering how much water Felipe is saving now that he has reduced the amount of grassy area in his lawn just by redesigning it (very attractively, I might add) and paving part of it with stones. Not to speak of the amount of sweat he's saving, not having to mow so much.

• I read years ago that a shower uses less water than a tub bath. That didn't make sense to me. If I stand under a shower for ten minutes, as opposed to a quick five-minute shower with the water off while I'm lathering up, there's bound to be a variable in there somewhere. But a tub is a tub, it holds only so much water (unless you spend three hours in it and refill every half hour or so, but who has that kind of time?)

• Just curious... how much water is reclaimed by each air conditioner, that ends up just flowing outside. It doesn't look like a lot, but what if we could save it?

I've only begun brewing ideas to save water, and I'll share others that I come across. Of course, there are those in the MAWGM (Might As Well Get Mine) camp who maintain that the world is going to run out of water no matter what puny contributions we make toward saving it, so why let everybody else use it up while we deny ourselves? But you could look at it another way: one day the skills we're talking about here might come in handy for survival, when rationing looms.

If you have some good ideas to share, post them on your blog and if they apply to me, I promise to try them. I noticed Steve has water on the brain, too, but his post today is a lot funnier.

She went and got hitched

If, like me, you're following the fascinating author Elizabeth Gilbert whose jackpot hit "Eat. Pray. Love." has made the rounds of most American women (at least the ones I know), you may already to she has 1) a new book coming out, "Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage," and 2) she got married.

From remarks in the original book, I got the impression theirs will not be the traditional joined-at-the-hip union; her husband spends time in Australia and Brazil, and she has probably not given up her love of solo travel either. I'm curious whether her newfound writing success (sigh of envy) will have her choosing to go first class instead of backpacking it as she did before. After all, she's reached the ripe old age of 40 now. And she'll have all that paparazzi to fight off.

Let's hope she does get to do some traveling because the couple has moved his import business, called Two Buttons, to New Jersey, of all places!

I never buy new books, being far too cheap to pay hardcover prices and having a great little free library here in town. But I think I'll make an exception in this case. Anyway, I have time to save up, it doesn't come out until January. And I feel profoundly sorry for anyone of the male persuasion or otherwise, who dismisses this author's work as chicklit. You're just going to miss out, amigo.

Still crazy after all these years

Image from Uphaa: "Odd things around the world"

This week marks the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, and I've noticed here and there in the media a halfhearted nostalgia for the olden days.

"If you can remember the Sixties," says the Capt, quoting Robin Williams, "you probably weren't there." But I can remember some...um...high points, and I definitely was there. I have the gray and wrinkles to show for it, along with the memories. Now it can be told: I lived in communes and on open land from time to time, went barefoot as often as possible, grew my hair long. Danced at Altamont, the Left Coast's not-so-utopian version of Woodstock, to the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil," unaware some poor fellow was being knifed by Hells Angels fifty yards away. Lived in a two-story treehouse on Lou Gottlieb's open land, cooked over an open fire, hitchhiked, lived on beans and rice with chapati, sweated gallons in sweat lodges, burned a lot of incense, and stayed up all night playing guitar and singing. Consumed illegal substances. Protested the Vietnam War, PCBs and nuclear power. Rooted for alternative energy and dreamed of a farm powered by solar panels and biofuel, surrounded by animals (not for food but for company). Wrote an article about Morningstar Ranch for an alternative commie pinko newspaper, got an unpaid job there and eventually became its unpaid publisher. Never arrested — just lucky, I guess.

What changed for me was having weekly deadlines to meet with the accompanying responsibilities, a son to raise and a subliminal awareness that at some point, the original idea became somewhat obscured by imitators, fads and fascination with the trappings. Stockbrokers kept long-haired wigs and headbands stashed in their Porsches for weekend visits to country communes where free love reigned supreme.

Now we are at a sort of milestone, 40 years since Woodstock, invited to dig up our peace sign earrings, tie-dye shirts and bell-bottoms (if we can still squeeze into them) for a nostalgic fling. If, as the Capt says, you really weren't there, if you weren't even a gleam in your daddy's eye yet, fret not! Wiki-How has a tutorial on How to Be a Hippie. Not only that, but How to be a Cool Hippie, and How to Be a Hippie (Not the Stereotype) and, if your heart's not really in it but you're off to some retro shindig, How to Dress Like a Full-Blown Hippie. Some of the instructions are hilarious, written by someone under 30 who spent a couple of days immersed in films and videos like "Hair," "Easy Rider" and "Alice's Restaurant," and listening to the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan and Country Joe & The Fish.

Makes me wonder what they'll do when Woodstock turns fifty. Who knows, by then maybe we'll be able to time-warp our way back to the original scene, dude. Far out.

Have you seen this bug?

Not to be an alarmist, but I'm just passing the word here, and an image of a particular Mexican bug we should all be on the lookout for. Go to Mexico Bob's blog, read "Chagas Revisited" for all the facts. Bob wrote about the vinchuca back in May, but yesterday he brought it up again after finding one in his garden. It's a major health threat in Mexico. A lot worse than narcotrafficantes. Or swine flu. It's not for nothing that it's called the Assassin Bug. Bob says, "It is about the size of a U.S. dime and it flies very well. There are also several species of this bug and they all look fairly similar but with slightly different coloration. The one pictured is the most common."

This has been a public service announcement.

Nirvana at the kitchen sink

Haden and Ataulfa mangos, my summer compensations

It's hot and humid, and the siestas are getting longer as the days get shorter. I'm just hanging in now, until October 15, when the weather magically turns to fall here in San Carlos. But there are compensations to summer, one of my favorite being mangos. Yesterday evening I visited my friends C & A, and brazenly asked, "Got any mangos for me?" After all, they tell me every year about this time, "We've got too many mangos! Come get some!" They have four mango trees in their yard, clustered together, lovely perfect fruit hanging from their branches like gold and green Christmas decorations.

I Googled C & A's mangos, which are smaller than the palm of my hand, and vaguely S-shaped, with big pits and smooth skin, and found they are called Ataulfo and originated in Hawaii. Inside, they're the same golden color as the skin. I call them "kitchen sink mangos" because they're almost too juicy and small to slice, and easiest to eat with the peel removed, standing over the sink. C & A squeeze the ripe mango into small plastic bags, and freeze them for homemade "popscicles."

Lately I've taken every opportunity to buy the homely big green Haden mangos, usually at tianguis or the big supermarket. My first couple of years in Mexico, I thought if they were green they weren't ready to eat, but my Mexican friends have set me straight. They're not as pretty as Ataulfos, but so delicious! The flesh is an intense orange and the flavor is sweet and mild but distinctive. They look very much like Tommy Atkins or Kent mangos, but the sign over them at the market identifies them as Hadens. Originally from India, Hadens are wonderful for cutting up cube-style because they have such thick sides, and can also be sliced to process in my drier. Then after slicing or dicing, the fruit around the pit remains to be enjoyed. The cook's dividend.

Move over, Beach Boys!

The Captain is gradually evolving beyond playing music, into composing. Once in a while he comes up with a real gem, the last memorable one when he wrote about giving up sailing. He'd had a hard, wet, cold, miserable day on the boat and got seasick for the first time ever, but he soon got over his sailing slump.

Lately he's heard me singing the Beach Boys' "In My Room" a few times (in my room, of course), and last night he came up with this little Bloggers' Anthem, to be sung to the same tune. In case you haven't heard that ditty in a while, here it is…


In My Blog

There's a place where I can go
and write about my dog.
In my blog, in my blog.

In this place I carry on
a cyber-monologue
In my blog, in my blog

(bridge)
Share my fumbles and my tumbles,
write about my day.
My explaining, my complaining,
all I have to say.

It won't matter if my mind is
lost and in a fog.
In my blog, in my blog.
In my blog, in my blog.
In my blog, in my blog.

It was a teenage wedding and the old folks wished them well...

My horoscope:
You have something to smile about today...

Good old Google! After some frustration and some help from a couple of commenters who suggested the shorebirds wading in our yard yesterday might be ibis, I was able to identify our young honeymooning couple.

On a birdwatchers' website based in Pennsylvania appears a photo of what looks to me like the same bird, which was labeled a white ibis (Eudocimus albus), even though the white is limited to their breasts and bellies. The US Geological Survey web site, USGS, says the dark coloration indicates these are immature birds, and they'll eventually turn all-white. So they might have had a teenage wedding recently.

The photo here is the one spotted in Pennsylvania. Compare with the photos in yesterday's post, and draw your own conclusions.

Shore looks like shore to me...

Last night I got my wish — it rained gently and steadily all night long, cooling off our part of the world and turning it into waterfront property just for the morning. It drains off fairly quickly, but whenever it rains this much we have a very different vista when we look out in the morning.


A pair of shorebirds that looked like herons except for the curve of their bills was wandering around the Capt's truck, breakfasting on drowning bugs. One of the neighborhood feral cats hunkered down close to the ground watching them in utter fascination. I could just hear his thoughts: "Now those are some big boids! But how do you catch one, without the other one beating you up? Where's my gang, when I need 'em?"


I Googled images of shorebirds of Mexico, trying to ID our misguided visitors, but sometimes even the Suppository of All Knowledge (as the Capt calls it) will let you down. Anybody out there got a clue?

P.S. The Capt finally got a recording of us that plays all the way through. The catch: he got to put it on his blog. Go there if you'd like to hear it.

Technical Difficulties, Do Not Adjust Your Set

The Capt is now going through the learning curve with the software he's installing on his new laptop, and the new hardware bells and whistles, including a mounted camera with a skewing feature he can use to get a funhouse effect. He got everything to work except the one program he wants most: GarageBand. So he sent me this shot after the last time GarageBand crashed on him. You'd think with all that cranial capacity he'd have no problem, wouldn't you?

While he's messing with his MacBook Pro, I've been fiddling with Facebook. I decided to link my blog to my Facebook page, reasoning that if Steve did it, it must be a good idea. That's the kind of little sheep I am! After wading through dozens and dozens (sigh) of tiny icons and buttons, I finally did it (just click on the blue Notes tab). Friends were asking me for instructions, and it was reassuring that I wasn't the only one who had to struggle with this procedure, but daunting because I can't exactly explain how I finally succeeded. It was...um...sort of by accident. I hate it when that happens, I don't learn anything!

Next I started adding some of my music favorites to Facebook, but only a little sample of the song would play. How disappointing! So I'm putting the YouTube link on each one.

When I told my maestra Lolita she should get a computer for her music, she said, "Oh, nooooo! I know what would happen, I would never get off of it!" Though she finally gave in and bought one, so far she has had to compete with her grandson for it. But I can tell the hook has been set, because she wants to get another one. And then life will never be the same.

What I won't do for cherries and chocolate!

The Capt calls it Errorzona. I call it Aridzona. And when we find we have to make the five-hour drive to that once-familiar land that seems less like home every time we go there, we both want to say, "Let's call the whole thing off."

But this week's trip was unavoidable. The Capt's laptop died, so he ordered a refurbished aluminum MacBook Pro which he couldn't wait to get his hands on. There were meds we had ordered from India, pistons for the Westie and, most crucial, we were out of chocolate.

It's nearing the end of the monsoon season, and the nopal (which we gringos call prickly pear) are topped with bright ruby fruit in abundance. The barrel cacti are sporting crowns of red and yellow flowers.

New experiences helped make an otherwise cut-and-dried trip into something that almost resembled a vacation. We found a hotel we hadn't stayed in before, the Quality Inn at the airport in Tucson, with just about everything we were looking for in accommodations: a bathtub, wifi, a fridge and microwave, a good bed, and a sparkling clean swimming pool not shaped like a kidney so I could swim laps without bumping into curving walls. The price was right: $44 a night.

Near the airport is the Pima Air and Space Museum and when we passed by we spotted dozens of old airplanes dating back to WWII, fighter jets and something that I thought might be an early space shuttle. At last, a museum the Capt could relate to! Maybe on our next trip I can talk him into a trade: if we go there, can we also visit the Old West and Indian exhibits at the Arizona State Museum?

Passing the Davis-Monthan Air Force base, we saw acres of old planes at the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG), also known as the "Boneyard." If they could all take off at once, they'd darken the sky. But it's doubtful they will ever fly anywhere again.

Then, as thought to remind us how far we've come, a gas station had a display of conveyances from the Old West. An old buckboard, a surrey and a covered wagon.




Of course we made the mandatory stop at Trader Joe's and acquired six of their dark Belgian Pound Plus bars, enough chocolate to last at least until October. True, I'm avoiding sugar, but chocolate doesn't count. Two squares a day is my limit, but it's de rigeur! Especially when I'm working.
In the evening while watching TV we prepared a mailing for our publishing business and noshed on cherries and sweet, seedless red grapes. Oh, joy!

I thought my little Escort was loaded to the max, but on the way home we stopped to declare our purchases at the aduana, and saw this truck in the parking lot. That's a washer and dryer teetering on the tailgate! Hope he got home OK.

La Barca de Guaymas

Mexico Bob's most recent post ("Learn Spanish by Singing") is about a Guanajuato song, with video and translated lyrics. So I'll take the ball and run with it.

"Barco de Guaymas," (Boat from Guaymas) as I promised Bob, is also a tearjerker. It was one of the first Spanish songs I learned and my maestra Lolita has led a choir doing it in four voices, so beautiful! In the video Roldolfo Coronel sings, and the visuals are scenes of Guaymas and its "burb," San Carlos. The church in the last frame is where I sing with the choir.

It's a rare public musical event in Guaymas that doesn't include the singing of this tune.

My translation in the first verse is a little rough — If you have a better one, pass it on! Note: they use the feminine "barca" here for poetic license, but it's usually "barco." Also, the point of view of the singer changes from "I" to "you" so it may have been written to be sung call-and-response style by two voices.

Al golpe de remo se agitan las olas ligera la barca
As the stroke of oars that agitate the waves lightens the boat.

Al ruido del agua se ahonda mi pena solloza mi alma.
The sound of the water deepens my woe, my heart grieves

Por tantos pesares, mi amor angustiado
llorando te llama
From so much heartache, my anguished love,
crying, calls you

Y te hallas muy lejos... y sola, muy sola
And finds you very far, and alone, very alone

Se encuentra mi alma.
Finding my soul

Alegre viajero que tornas al puerto
Happy voyager who comes back to port

De tierras lejanas
From faraway lands

Qué extraño piloto condujo tu barca
Such a strange pilot, steering your boat

Sin vela y sin ancla
Without sail and without anchor

De qué región vienes,
From what region do you come

que has hecho pedazos
What has made pieces of

Tus velas tan blancas.
your sails so white?

Y fuiste cantando
You left singing

Y vuelves trayendo, la muerte en el alma
And return bringing death in the soul

Yo soy el marino
I am the sailor

Que alegre de Guaymas,
Who, happy, from Guaymas

salió una mañana
Left one morning

Llevando en mi barca como ave piloto
Carrying in my boat like a pilot bird

Mi dulce esperanza.
My sweet hope

Por mares ignotos
In unknown seas

Mis santos anhelos
My blessed yearnings

hundió en la borrasca
foundered in the tempest

Por eso están rotas mis alas
Because of this my wings are broken

Y traigo la muerte en el alma.
and I bring the death of the spirit

Te fuiste cantando
You left singing

Y hoy vuelves trayendo la muerte en el alma.
And today return bringing death in the spirit.

Rethinking the English-Teaching-in-Mexico idea

The beach and the margaritas are what Alicia remembers best about living in Guaymas

Whatever became of Alicia, the Prague Blogger, who was all set to come to Guaymas and teach English? I was looking forward to meeting her, but I suffered a housekeeping lapse and lost her blog address. Today I found it on Brenda's blog, and learned that Alicia was here for two months last year teaching English to four-year-olds and is now back in Prague. From reading her archives of last year I get the impression she appreciates more than ever what that beautiful, historic city has to offer. (Maybe I even get just a twinge of envy.)

Aside from the vast difference in our ages, Alicia and I have a lot in common. She's a singer and writer, too, and has dreams of doing some acting (normal for an LA girl). She has tried since 2004 to finish the NaNoWriMo month-long novel-writing challenge... so have I. She even likes Tom Waits!

Mexico was not a good fit for Alicia, and I'm sorry I missed meeting her but I have an inkling of what her job in Guaymas was like, based on what I've heard from other teachers. The private schools here do not treat their teachers well. I know of at least three who only lasted half the year, and left for various reasons. The students, mostly privileged "baby Juniors," i.e. offspring of the town's wealthiest citizens, appear spoiled and unmotivated. She made no disparaging remarks about the school itself, just that the climate, the town and the students were disappointing… But of course, Prague must be a hard act to follow!

Here's what she said last August (whew! the worst time of year here) when she had been teaching for a couple of weeks:

Now that I am here in Mexico I am realizing a few things. Things like – Mexican people are not eager to learn English, not like the Czech people. No one speaks English here, and if they do they do so reluctantly. Even at my school there are not a lot of people, even in the administration offices, that speak English. I was kind of shocked that a school that promoted a bi-lingual education had no English speaking staff to speak of.

It's true. My maestra in Guaymas taught English for 30 years; one daughter and one granddaughter teach English, too. And yet the rest of the family speak only Spanish, as far as I can tell, or are "reluctant" to use what English they know.

English is hard to learn, eccentric and confusing. Norteamericanos, even when they're guests here in Mexico, enjoy mocking and embarrassing non-English speakers who get tangled up in our grammar and pronunciation quirks. And yet, Mexicans who aren't too thin-skinned to muddle through and learn even basic English have an edge finding work in this gringo-centric community. Which I suppose is not a big concern of the Juniors here. Los papás probably have cushy jobs already lined up for them.

Teaching English is one of the few job opportunities for a gringo in Mexico without the right papers. The owner of the same school Alicia taught at offered me a job at the doctor's office one day, and gave me a handful of business cards to pass out to my friends. Of course, she didn't mention that the high turnover at her school was the reason she was so anxious to hire someone. I told her thanks but no thanks. I'm too busy learning Spanish!

P.S. I have the Prague Blogger back on my blogroll, so I can follow her exploits. She went back to work teaching English but now she's working four part-time jobs. I remember doing that, I called it my "patchwork life."