Mexico or Bust

Back in the US

2009-05-20T13:00:00.003-05:00

Well, a lot has happened in the last few months. We have moved back to the US as of about three weeks ago. When we originally moved to Mexico it was with the plan to stay one year. After a year and a half, we decided that we needed to move back to the US, though the decision was not an easy one to come by.

Reasons why we had to come back

I'm pregnant (due end of October) and we wanted to take advantage of free childcare in the form of grandparents. Plus, hubby grew up with his grandparents in another country and he was only able to see them during his visits to Europe in the summer. He wanted his kid to live closer to his grandparents and see them often so they would have a closer relationship than he had with his.
Because I have friends with kids in the US, I started to realize that the tests and medical care that I was receiving as a pregnant lady in Mexico were not the same as the tests and care my friends in the US were receiving and I guess I sort of panicked and wanted to be sure that everything was being checked. Also- hubby was tired of me having to translate everything the doctor said and was terrified that something would happen to me and he wouldn't be able to understand what was happening. (I had a girlfriend on standby to help with translation during labor and stuff, but he just felt more comfortable being in an English-speaking country).
Though we were able to run our business from Mexico, we were not able to make the kind of income we were making in the States and so we were not saving as much. We didn't dip into savings, but we didn't create any additional savings either. This could be because we weren't working as much (by choice) or because it's harder to land small bread and butter jobs when you can't meet with people face to face. It's odd, a company is happy to spend $40k without seeing you, but if they're going to spend $5k they want to see you 15 times.
The Swine Flu was making lots of news and though Quintana Roo claims not to have any cases of it, there are lots of Americans who contracted it on trips to QR, so someone isn't telling the truth. It's very bad for pregnant women to have any fever, let alone a severe one, and once you have symptoms they don't want to let you back in the US. We decided it would be better to have swine flu in the US.

So basically, it was time to leave. Our friends in Playa have bet that we will only make it one winter here, and they may be right. We certainly loved living in Mexico. I finally got fluent in Spanish and had a dream in Spanish and Hans got involved in mapping some of the cave systems. We've already decided that if they kid is an "easy" kid we'll be back some time in the near future.

I won't be updating this blog anymore, since it's about living in Mexico, not New Jersey. I haven't decided if I'll do another blog right now. I'm enjoying connecting over Facebook, which is alot easier than coming up with something interesting to write! So, thanks for reading and good luck in your travels and your life.

Acroyoga Workshop

2009-02-23T13:37:00.002-05:00

Well, what have I been up to? Since fasting I have gone on a trip to Merida (pictures coming, but hubby took the camera with him to the US for two weeks and I hadn't gotten the photos off of it first). I also saw a few movies and bought a new bikini. Exciting stuff, I know.

I guess the problem is that when I first got here everything was a challenge or was new. Now I just go about my life. There isn't much to comment on. If I need to go to the bank or pay a bill or renew my car's visa or whatever, it's just something I do. It's not like this huge stressor, which I guess is due to my language skills being adequate.

Anyway. I did participate in a very cool acroyoga class taught by my friends Jill and Poncho. Jill is a yoga instructor and Pancho is a circus performer, so they taught us a little combination of acrobatics and yoga. It was extremely cool and very worth the time and money. They are going to try to do it again in a month, so watch the schedule over at Yoga by the Way if you're interested in participating next time.

Here are some photos, none of them are of me. I didn't bring my camera (it was in the US with hubby), but I got some of these from a friend who had posted them on Facebook. If I get some more with me in them I'll post them.

Big Oops- Day 10 on the old Fast- ONE DAY MORE!

2009-01-19T11:15:00.003-05:00

Days 7-9 went fairly smoothly. Mostly I'm just getting bored with the juice and juice options. I have no idea how people do ten days of lemon juice on the Master Cleanse! I feel like I reached the pinnacle of my fast at day 5. Since then I haven't felt any better or worse, just started to get bored.

I didn't have any huge spiritual realizations or anything. I did discover that I have pretty good willpower since I had to sit through three birthdays with cake, one BBQ with all sorts of food, one homemade pasta dinner, one breakfast at La Cueva del Chango (which is an awesome breakfast place) and a bag of Swiss chocolates brought back from Switzerland by a friend.

Around day 5 I started to think about healthy foods. For this reason, I think it would be a time to stop the next time I do an extended fast. Pushing past that 5th day just made me want to eat whatever food, although I am going to try to eat healthy food from here out.

I do feel lighter and the clothing that was tight post Christmas celebrations is fitting again, so that's a positive. My naturopath friend told me that she was fasting one day a week for a few months after her last fast, so I might give that a shot, too. It's certainly a nice break from eating all the time.

One day more!

Day 6- my super holistic day

2009-01-16T11:00:00.002-05:00

Day six went well. I'm starting to get a little tired of juice fasting. It's not hard, it's just a little boring and makes for some logistical difficulties when trying to hang out with other people.

A friend of mine just finished a massage course and she has been practicing reiki for a couple years (or more, not sure how long she's been doing that) and she needed a person to practice on. I was nice enough to let her give me a full body massage followed by a reiki session yesterday. :) It was very nice. She practices body alignment massage, which was wonderful!

Later in the day I went back to her house for a meditation session. We read some from a book that is an analysis of the Bhagavad Gita and then did about 25 minutes of meditation using "Who am I?" as the mantra. It was really nice.

THEN- we went over to Palapa Suuk and took another Yoga Nidra class, which was awesome. I may have found my new yoga studio! Palapa Suuk is VERY cool and spiritual. Most of the people there were Spanish speakers and I think the classes are given in Spanish for the most part. This fits nicely in with one of my manifestations for 2009, which is to make more Mexican and Spanish-speaking friends. I even ran into Hiram, a guy I had met at a bbq a couple months ago.

Three more days to go of this fast and I'm fantasizing about tofu and veggie stirfry with brown rice. Can you imagine? I'm looking forward to eating some of these veggies. I really think that juicing is a luxurious and wasteful way of eating! You throw out (or compost) so much veggie waste and to make enough juice for a day you end up using probably three or four times as much as you would normally eat. If everyone in the world tried to juice we'd certainly have a famine in no time! I'm looking forward to getting back to a more sustainable way of eating for both the planet and my social life!

And with that I will leave you with this little gem:

Day 5 Juice Fast

2009-01-14T23:09:00.002-05:00

Today was day five on the juice fast. Everything is still going smoothly. I have now missed two opportunities to eat cake! Two birthdays in two days, but somehow I'm still living, so I guess it is, indeed, possible to live without chocolate.

This morning I did the salt water intestinal cleanse that was recommended by my yoga/naturopath friend. It was interesting. It certainly works. You drink two liters of salt water and do various yoga postures and before you know it, you have to poo. I started the morning feeling very cleansed...

As for juicing today, same as always. The biggest pain is washing the juicer. And the social implications of a fast- I can't go to dinner with everyone- at least I can't eat with everyone.

Other than that, I received several compliments today about my skin, so I guess it's working it's magic. I am still waiting on the profound spiritual enlightenment, so I'll let you know how that goes.

Day 4 on the Juicey Juice

2009-01-14T10:02:00.003-05:00

Day four was pretty easy. It's getting easier and easier. I had yoga teacher training, so I took about 1/2 liter of juice with me. We had a special yoga teacher come in and lead us through a yoga nidra- or yogic sleep- meditation. Basically, we laid down and she talked us through a very deep meditation, in which it is ok to actually fall asleep. The goal is, through regular practice, to be able to stay conscious while your body is essentially asleep and the mind is producing delta waves. It was pretty cool. She's doing it again Thursday night and I am planning to go check it out.

I had one person tell me that I was looking radiant and another tell me I was looking pale. Both know I am fasting, so I am guessing that their opinions of my looks are based more on their own interpretation of fasting rather than any actual way that I looked.

Today is actually just the start of day 5 and I just completed my first Laghoo Shankhaprakshalana, which I performed with salt water. Very cleansing. I still haven't eaten yet today- or drank- as it were.

I spoke with my yoga/naturopath friend about how I was feeling regarding the spiritual stuff. She said the spiritual enlightenment doesn't start to kick in until about day 7. She said from day 5 on or so I should have increased energy and clarity. I will keep you posted. So far I feel fine.

Oops- Day 3

2009-01-13T09:21:00.003-05:00

I forgot to post last night about how day three went. Basically, this is getting easier- I really think the first day was the hardest. I told Hans yesterday that I have the same sort of feeling I have when I'm just on a healthy eating plan. I actually get hungry and then I am satisfied, but I never have that stuffed feeling that I get when we're eating out three meals a day (when we have visitors in town).

Anyway, I do think that this fast has broken me of my eating habits that were just that, habits. Oddly enough, the food I think about eating is all healthy stuff. I don't miss ice cream or cookies or french fries, but I do think that an egg white omelet would me nice, or a nice fish fillet with some steamed veggies. So, I think in that way, going back on regular food will be nice.

Do I feel spiritually enlightened and more one with the universe? No. Maybe a water fast would make me feel that way, or maybe that's just lightheadedness that people think is enlightenment- lol. It could also be that the people who report on feeling that way, already are that way- they are connected to their higher powers and fasting just helps them bring that out.

I'm glad I'm giving this a shot, but I'm not sure it's going to be life-changing. I do think that I will probably start to incorporate fasting into my daily life in that if I have a day where I eat a lot of food, maybe I'll fast the next, to give my body a chance to process all that food. It might be a good thing to do, for instance, the day after Thanksgiving or Christmas, or for two or three days after visitors leave.

I am pretty fired up about healthy eating and exercising when I come off this one, though. I'm just sticking to yoga for now, but I'm looking forward to running again next week.

I taught a yoga class last night and it went alright, no biggies, but I have to work on my confidence. A friend told me that if I need to look at my notebook or something, don't worry about it, just put them in downward facing dog so they can't see you and take a look. I tend to apologize for losing my place,which disrupts the flow. Well, so far so good.

Juice Fast Day 2

2009-01-11T23:26:00.003-05:00

Today went alright. It was supposed to be the hardest day for detox symptoms and I didn't really have any. I would get a little headache when I was hungry, but that's normal for me even when I'm eating food. I think the fact that I had already weened myself off of caffeine and meat really helped with the detox stuff.

The only real thing I ran into today was that I got bored with my produce mixtures and then I basically ran out of produce. I had to make a juice of celery, cucumber and beet, which wasn't my super favorite, but that was all I had. So tonight I made another trip to the store and I bought some more things to change it up. I got some swiss chard, jicama, watermelon and tomatoes.

Tonight we went to a friend's house for dinner. She cooked pasta and salad and they had chocolates for dessert. I drank my juice before I went there, so I just had water. It probably would have been easier if I had just had a nice juice, but it had been the celery, cucumber and beet mixture that was less that enlightening. Socially, fasting is a bit of a bugger, but it's only for the short term. I think I can handle it.

I'm certainly feeling better than I was when we were hosting so many family members and visitors throughout the months of November and December. You can't eat like you're on vacation for 6 weeks and not end up feeling crappy. I think my body just needed a little break from food all the time. However, I was telling Hans this morning that after juicing all these veggies, I'm sure that eating them again will be like heaven! There is something to be said for texture.

Energy-wise I've been alright, but I'm not running or anything high intensity this week. I'm going to stick to yoga and that's about it for activity. I haven't been sleeping more or less than usual, but I do think I'm waking up a little earlier.

I have to teach a yoga class at the studio on Friday night, so I have a mini-class meeting at my apartment tomorrow night so I can practice teaching again. Not looking forward to teaching at the studio- it's a little scary, but they say you have to teach if you want to be a teacher, right? Besides, I can't get my certification if I don't teach one of the studio classes.

Happy New Year and Juice Fast Day 1

2009-01-10T20:51:00.002-05:00

Well, it's been a little while since I last posted. We celebrated New Years on Cozumel, the island of swallows and fertility, with Anna and our friends Cat and Christine who both came from far away to be here. I have some photos to post and I promise to get them up here this week.

I have been learning a lot about yogic eating and lifestyle in my yoga teacher training class, so I decided to give juice fasting a try. I'm on my first day today and I'd like to do 10 days, but we'll see how it goes. This is my first attempt at fasting, so I'm not sure what to expect. Luckily, I have the guidance of a fellow yogi and naturopath and Anna's yoga teacher is doing a special series on fasting, which I attended on Thursday and will attend again on Tuesday.

Anna asked me to keep an online journal so she can see what I'm experiencing as she plans some sort of fast with her yoga group. So, here goes... today was the first day, so I got up and made myself some juice. I'm sticking to mostly veggie juices with a little bit of fruit added in just for sweetness. I had yoga this morning followed by yoga teacher training class, which lasted until 2:30. I had another juice around 11:30 and I was doing well until I got super hungry around 2:45. I came home and made some more juice, showered and watched a movie. I was still hungry at 5 so I made a big veggie juice and that has tied me over until now. We're going out to the coffee shop with some friends later and that may be difficult, but I can always come home and go to bed!

I think that the late afternoons/evenings will be the hardest seeing as I was already having juice for breakfast for almost two weeks in preparation for the fast. Apparently, the second day is supposed to be the hardest, so we'll see how that goes. I'm thinking of rewarding myself with small things in the afternoon/evenings like manicures or massages, etc. So far, so good, though. I will keep you updated.

Feliz Navidad from the Three of Us!

2008-12-23T12:07:00.001-05:00

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

The Almost-One-Year Anniversary

2008-12-16T16:57:00.003-05:00

Well, it's been almost one year since we moved to Mexico and what have I learned? A lot, to be sure. I've learned things about Mexican culture that I had no idea about, I've met new people, I've had an adventure. I've learned that I miss old friends from home and that it takes time and patience to meet new friends that are going to one day be old friends. I've learned that if I stop keeping up with my spiritual practices- praying and meditating as well as journaling- I start to feel loopy and disconnected.

I guess the overwhelming thing about coming up on one year here for me is that I realize how much stuff is no longer new and different here. When we got here, simple every day tasks were hard or scary. Now I hardly notice when I go pay bills (except for the pain in the butt of going to the Oxxo or the actual phone company). In fact, the sort of things I do note don't even make it onto the blog because they've been judged mundane by me.

For instance, yesterday I accomplished a lot more in Spanish than I could have dreamed of when we got here one year ago. I went to a bank and got two checks that had been written to me cashed without incident and on the first try. Then I went to a print shop and ordered 2000 4 color brochures to be printed off-set and even selected the paper weight and navigated the deposit process. This would have been a very big deal even 6 months ago, but all it amounted to (before this blog post) was a casual mention of the fact that I got the checks cashed without incident this morning on my run with Solomon.

I even have a couple of acquaintances that don't speak good English, so I relate to them in Spanish. Of course, most of my friends are English-speaking, even if that's not their first language, it is still the language that unites the most people here.

I guess I need to go on some trips, see something new. Once yoga teacher training is over I intend to make some plans to see various places in Mexico, like Mexico City, Chiapas, Mazatlan... you name it.

We've signed on for another year at our apartment and Hans has bought an underwater scooter. Tonight he is going to talk with Bill Phillips about assisting on some cave surveying, which was one of his goals for living here. I've been diving less, but that could be due to the fact that I've been working a lot and yoga-ing a lot.

I guess that's it for this somewhat meaning-less post! Just to say that we're coming up on a year and I guess I've just had less to blog about! Ahhh, well. Maybe I should break out the camera and start posting random photos from every day. I dunno. New Year's Resolution this year is to get fired up again- fired up about meditation and prayer, job, life, love, you name it. Vrooom. FIRE IT UP, BABY!

Allie and Anna's Right Jolly Good English Tour 2009

2008-12-15T10:49:00.003-05:00

I have this obsession with not just traveling, but really seeing how it is to live in other places. That's why I love visiting places with people who live there or have lived there. So this got me to thinking... Now that Anna is no longer pushing papers and making phone calls and generally stressing out in the high-powered world of Maritime Law in New York City, she has the opportunity to go home to Newcastle, England for an extended holiday during the slow season here in Mexico. Why not go with her?

So, Anna and I are now planning our Right Jolly Good English Tour 2009 (she hasn't actually had a say in the name of the tour, so don't blame her for that ridiculousness). Basically, since we're both earning dollars and will be spending pounds while we're there (yikes!), we're doing this on a major budget, which means staying with friends instead of staying in hotels. This kind of stuff is totally up my alley (or Allie- see what I did there?).

Everything is still in the initial planning phase, but the idea is to spend 2 weeks (for me, 6 for her) in England going around and seeing things. Here's the tentative plan:

Stay for a few days in London (actually just outside London) with Anna's friend Sinead. Whilst we're there, we're going to take a tour out to Stonehenge because she's never seen it, I've never seen it and it's pretty close to London.

Then it's off on a cheapy cheap flight to Madrid to see the city and stay with Anna's friend Claire (Madrid is technically not England, but just bear with me). Then we'll head up to Barcelona (also not technically England... suspend disbelief and stay with me) and catch another cheapy cheap flight to Newcastle.

From Newcastle we're going to somehow aquire transportation through asking her brother or cousin to drive us around or borrowing her mom's car. We don't want to rent a car in England because they apparently ask for your first born at the car rental place and then they want your arm and/or leg at the gas station (seriously, I think gas is around $10 US a gallon there right now).

With said transportation, we're planning to go to Robin Hoods Bay because it's pretty, then spend some time in Leeds, where Anna went to University, with her friend Stu. From Leeds we intend to take a steam railway and see the Bronte House. We're also considering heading to Edinburgh for a day, since it's close to Newcastle and Anna has a friend there, too. Of course, we're also planning to see lots of Newcastle.

I'm really looking forward to this! I've been to England once, which was just to catch a bus between Gatwick and Heathrow on the way to Northern Ireland where I was visiting a penpal. I've never really seen anything except the highway, so this should be great fun.

This will probably take place in September, so I have about 9 months to save money! In the mean time, still enjoying Mexico and I will be updating the blog with more observations about life here shortly. I promise!

Magnum: Professional Wrestler and Friend

2008-12-04T12:38:00.005-05:00

When I lived in NJ I used to work out with my friend Grant Hansen. He's a great personal trainer and an all around cool guy. He always hosts a cool Christmas party and even owns his own karaoke machine!

Anyway, the other day I got an email announcing an upcoming cage fight between Freak Nasty and Magnum. Grant has always been into professional wrestling- he even knows the plots! So it shouldn't have come as much of a surprise to learn that Grant is now doing his own wrestling as Magnum! If you've never watched much WWF (like I haven't), you might not know that it's sort of like a soap opera- there are story lines that affect the wrestling matches.

Then I got some pictures in my email and he had even more on his Facebook page. I am so impressed with him for doing this that I just gotta share. Check out how fabulous he is as Magnum! I feel so cool to know such a rock star!

Oh- and he won his cage match.... perhaps Freak Nasty will have to come for vengeance or who knows... more will be revealed as the plot thickens!

Yoga Teacher Training Taking Up All My Time!

2008-11-19T16:31:00.007-05:00

Well, I was gently needled by my pal Grant to update this site! Sorry I dropped the ball there for a while, I've been just going with the flow here. Actually, I haven't been doing much of interest here lately just because I've been going to Yoga teacher training twice a week for 4 hours each pop, plus regular yoga classes (we have to take them and write down the order of the postures our teacher leads as a study in Technique). It takes up quite a bit of my time, especially since, for whatever reason, it seems to be gray or cold on Sundays lately, so there goes my beach day. I am learning a lot and I do really dig the classes, but I used to have a nice balance between my personal yoga practice and my life. It seems like now it's more about yoga and less about life!

I also decided that it was time to add a third language to my head, so I've been taking German lessons three times a week. That's just for fun and because I really like languages. So far I've only taken a couple weeks of German, but I can make simple sentences about myself and others. I can even say "I give the glass to you" which involves the fancy use of "dir" instead of "du" for "you." It was between French and German for my third language and, ultimately, I picked German because I didn't want to mess up my Spanish (French and Spanish are very close) and my friend, who is a language teacher, is actually German, so it would be her first language she would be teaching me rather than one she learned. It's been cool. Tonight we're going to Manne's Biergarten for our lesson and I'll be ordering my food from Manne in German! Woot! Looking forward to planning a trip to visit Cat in Berlin!

My parents, sister, brother-in-law and niece are coming to visit next week. They'll be here for a little less than a week. I'm really looking forward to their visit! My sis and bro-in-law will be staying with us and my parents will be staying at the Holiday Inn Express Playacar, which happens to have exceptional handicap accessibile rooms. Mexico can be tough in a wheelchair, but at least my mom can roll into the shower and then plop into bed at the end of the day! She says that the Holiday Inn Express Playacar has better accessibility than some hotels in the states!

Of course, I'll be missing some of my yoga teacher training while they're in town, but it's ok. I'll be able to make it up later. This week we've been studying Patanjali's 8 fold path and memorizing the muscles of the body for a quiz we have on Saturday.

I've also picked up a little bit of work here. I'm designing a brochure for a new development that is being built in Chetumal. There are so many oportunities here and it really does seem like if you have initiative you can make money. For instance, in the US I would never dream of opening a store and being successful. Here it seems like "if you open it, they will come." And of course, there's lots of design work to be done for all these places that are opening.

Other news: We went to see the new James Bond movie the other day. I think the last time I saw a James Bond movie was like 1996 or something and I'm pretty sure it was an old one on TV. Consequently, I didn't know that the new one is actually a sequel to the last one. It essentially didn't have any plot that I could really discern. Just action sequence after explosion sequence after fight scene. Add to it that Daniel Craig is the male version of a Butterface ("...she's cute, but her face...") and, honestly, if his face is going to be so broken, he should spend less time wearing a shirt! Plus, what about that signature line??? It wasn't my favorite movie. Ahh well, Crepúsculo (or Twilight) is coming out soon here.

Speaking of Vampire Addictions, I have discovered Diesel eBooks where I can download and read any book I want without waiting, ahhh, I love push button technology! Thanks to Diesel, I have now read 7 of the 8 books in the Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Series. I can't believe I got so thorougly sucked in to these easy reads, but they're pretty entertaining. They're the books that True Blood is based on. I've also kept up to date on True Blood by watching the episodes online. If you thing Vampire Bill is cute, you should also check out Ny-Lon (New York - London) where he plays a British banker who falls in love with an American girl. He's very cute with his little accent. As Anna would say, Bless.

Majahual, a nice place to visit

2008-10-29T10:40:00.004-05:00

Last week we learned that a funny thing happens when you forget to pay your electricity bill, they cut off your power. Please excuse the lack of posts, we were trying to work from Coffee Cafe, but getting actual work done can be a challenge in a place where your friends are regularly showing up and stopping to chat. The power is back on now, thank goodness.

It had been raining for about 40 days here (I was looking for materials to build an ark), but the sun popped out last Friday, so I thought I should jump on the chance for some holiday time. I decided to head to Majahual with a couple girlfriends for a mini-break (as Bridget Jones would call it).

Majahual is about 3 1/2 or 4 hours south of Playa del Carmen, just at the southern end of the Sian Ka'an Biosphere. The drive is easy and, apart from the topes (speed bumps) that mark small towns that you have to drive through, relatively uneventful. You just go past Tulum and keep going south until you reach a sign that tells you where to turn for Majahual (also written Mahahual) and follow that road. You can't miss it, it's the first beach town you reach along the road.

You may remember Majahual was devastated by Hurricane Dean. They had a cruise ship pier that was lost in the hurricane (the new one opens November 1) and the area has really suffered from lack of tourism. It's just a little too far from the Cancun airport to pick up much American tourism, but they did seem to be picking up a few Europeans (mostly backpacking around or coming up from other Central American destinations).

We stayed at the Maya Luna Eco Hotel which, despite the fact that there's no mention of it on their website, is actually located a couple kilometers from the town of Majahual. The hotel is nice and romantic. We had a beachfront bungalow that had a king size bed and a single bed, with a roof top terrace for $60/night. The best restaurant we ate in was actually at that hotel as well (I highly recommend the pineapple stuffed with shrimp and cashews- yum).

The main reason we wanted to go to Majahual was to see how the diving was down there. We had a friend who used to work in diving in Cozumel who was now working down there, so we made arrangements to dive with him. He rounded up a boat captain and a crew member and picked up some tanks and met us at the hotel.

The reefs are some of the best I have seen in Mexico. We didn't make it out to the Banco Chinchorro (because there wasn't any gasoline in Majahual at the time, so they couldn't fill up enough to take us out to the Banco), but we all agreed that it didn't matter, the reefs were so unspoilt that we had a lovely time just a few minutes out from our hotel!

Majahual is protected by a barrier reef that forms coral fingers, rather than a wall like in Cozumel. There is a profusion of healthy-looking soft corals and small marine life. We didn't see that many fish, but we did see quite a few crabs and lobsters, one turtle and one stingray. Mostly we just enjoyed the beautiful reef (and it'd been quite a long time since I dove in the ocean, so it's nice to relax my brain after so much cave diving). I certainly have a different feeling about ocean diving and safety after cave diving. Ocean diving just seems so much easier!

We spent the afternoon having lunch and a couple drinks in town. The beach is beautiful and I would recommend this location for people who really need to vacation away from other people and love their peace and quiet. There are a couple hotels in town and a couple restaurants, but that's about it. They have a malecon where people can walk along the waterfront that was clearly developed for the cruise ship people.

It's amazing to see the difference between how quickly Cozumel rebuilt after Hurricane Wilma and how slowly Majahual has been able to rebuild after Dean. Just goes to show the level of toursit dollars a place like Cozumel brings in. If Tulum is too busy for you, try Majahual.

Talking American Politics Abroad

2008-10-16T08:01:00.000-05:00

Generally when I go out with friends, I am the only American in the bunch (unless you count that Anna is British, but also American as of this past summer). I like hanging with people from all over, but you're often called upon to answer for what ALL Americans think, did, voted, etc.

Last weekend we went to dinner with a few friends, there were two French Canadians, one Austrian, one Swiss, one Russian and Hans and I. It's pretty interesting to talk to Europeans about their political systems and the problems they have (mainly because I can't recall learning anything about modern European history in college), but you often end up explaining what's happening in the US. I'm no poli-sci major, in fact, news and politics didn't become interesting to me until the last 8 years or so, so I don't know the answers to tough political questions. I can't tell what the political machine was thinking when Bush got elected or we went to war, but I know it feels like a bit of a clusterf*** now.

A couple days later I got trapped talking to an Italian lady at lunch about Americans. She basically let me know that we shouldn't be as arrogant as to think that everyone everywhere should speak English (uh, preaching to the choir, lady, besides we were having said conversation in Spanish), nor should we come to Mexico and buy property and think that we actually should be granted any sort of rights because we own property (I wasn't actually following her logic on that one). Then she went on about how the only hope for the world was if Obama was elected. Strange.

That got me thinking. It seems like everyone I have run into abroad (at least non-Americans) are pretty strongly pro Obama. Today I ran across this website that shows how the world would vote in the US election if they could. I guess that explains it.

American tries to sue God

2008-10-16T07:41:00.002-05:00

I just came across this news story on the BBC news website, my main news source (I figure if something important happens in the US, they'll report on it). Apparently this Nebraska senator tried to sue God for all the death and destruction he has caused to the world.

*sigh*

Only in America, folks.

Yoga and more Yoga

2008-10-15T09:18:00.002-05:00

I haven't been partaking in anything extraordinary lately. I've been doing my yoga teacher training, so that takes up quite a bit of time. We go twice a week for 4 hours and are also supposed to do 5 or so yoga classes a week with our teacher so we can experience her teaching techniques. It's really pretty cool. I've been learning a lot about different styles of yoga and what goes in to being a good teacher. There's a very cool spiritual side to yoga that isn't often clearly explained in your regular yoga class- they'll usually say something like "Open your heart" or "Make this a mindful practice" but they don't really go into what they mean. I've enjoyed learning about the ways that other people experience the spiritual side of things.

October has been VERY rainy here. The last three times I made plans to go to the beach it was nasty and rainy all day. I think we had something like 8 rainy days in a row a week or two ago. I would hate for that to be my vacation here. But I see the tourists on the 5th smiling in their ponchos. I guess vacation is more than just sunny weather- they're doing the best with what they've got! It's funny, we never thought twice about coming down in October, but then we were always going on diving vacations and you can dive if it's overcast.

Hans has started some very organized exploration over at the Pit, an extremely deep cenote and cave system a little south of here. He has been working with three other guys to devise a rescue system to haul an unconscious diver out of the cenote (which has a large drop to the water- like 30 or 40 feet). Today he is going out there with a vertical rescue expert to review the pulley and harness system they set up over the weekend. This type of diving is pretty intense. It requires tons of planning, including running drills to practice worse case scenarios. It looks like we'll be in Mexico for another year at least so Hans can complete some goals he has set.

Yesterday I was talking to a girl in my yoga class who is a naturopath and massage therapist. Her husband is in real estate and they have two children. They're able to have a nanny who comes 6 hours a day, 6 days a week. What a major luxury! In the US, people in those fields most likely could not afford a nanny. It's funny to think how hard you have to bust your butt for a nice standard of living in the US. Of course, lots of people bust their butts for a much lower standard of living here- for instance- her nanny has 6 of her own children that she leaves at home. I guess that's the life of a nanny, though.

SNL is really on top of politics this year!

2008-10-08T14:49:00.003-05:00

I haven't watched SNL in quite a long time on account of it not being funny for quite a long time, but the latest political skits have really been great. Here's an awesome one that makes fun of the VP debate. It might be a little old, but I'm only able to watch these things online, so I'm not always up to date.

Diving at Cenote Xunaan-Ha

2008-10-08T08:30:00.007-05:00

On Friday we took a day off and went over to Cenote Xunaan-Ha with Anna, Patrick and Katy to do a little cave diving and practice some of our drills from our cave class. I really like Xunaan-Ha for a couple reasons: it's near Chemuyil, so it's a short(ish) drive, the water in the cenote is very clear and doesn't have muck on the surface (like Chac Mool does), the cave is small and bright, and the people that work there are the friendliest cenote caretakers I have met yet.

When we got there the caretaker had just thrown out a handful of ripped up tortillas for the coatis. I had never seen a coati (well, maybe in a zoo or something, but certainly not in the wild). They're in the racoon family and are about the size of a cat, but with a much longer tail. Their noses are flexible and they sort of move out of the way when they put their mouths to the ground. The cenote caretaker told us that they live in a large group and sleep in the trees. She also said they're pretty fierce when they need to defend themselves, and judging by the length of their claws and teeth, I believe her.

Anna and I wanted to do a little more practice with the reels and Anna needed to perfect her backwards fin kick. I needed to do another lost line drill, too. We decided to do a short cave dive with Hans and then practice our skills in the open water. We got suited up and ready just as an ATV tour group pulled up. Luckily, they were just there to swim, not dive, so we just hopped in and went on our dive.

Hans has been looking for the downstream side of the cenote since we discovered Xunaan-Ha. Most cenotes have an upstream and a downstream cave. The upstream cave is usually brighter/cleaner and generally more travelled. The downstream is often darker because rotten leaves and other debris float downstream and color the formations brown. Hans had previously poked his head into what he thought was the downstream cave entrance only to discover that it wasn't. He brought his sidemount gear so that he and Patrick could do a little exploration.

Anna was told that she wouldn't pass her full cave class if she couldn't do a backwards fin kick. Patrick, cave instructor extraordinaire, gave her a lesson on the mechanics of a backwards frog kick on the back of his truck.

Then Anna tried it a little on her own. Sorry Anna, but these photos were just too funny to leave out.

It was a nice dive and Anna and I both accomplished what we were looking to accomplish regarding practicing. I did another lost line drill and found the line this time, although I was wearing Katy's new 7 mm wetsuit, so I was quite a bit more bouyant than I am used to being. If I get a suit like Katy's I'll need to probably wear a little weight. I had trouble being truly negatively bouyant.

Of course, Friday was the first sunny day in like 8 days and we went underground. I am starting to look so pale that I look like a new arrival here! Anna and I are planning to remedy that with an afternoon on the beach tomorrow.

Arráncame la Vida

2008-10-01T10:55:00.003-05:00

Well, this movie was so good I had to go see it twice! Actually, two different friends wanted to go see it, so I saw it once and then saw it again because I wanted to and also because it was actually a little difficult to understand and I wanted a second shot at understanding some of the dialog I missed the first time.

The costumes, architecture and acting are all lovely. They really cast this movie well. I only wish they had shown a few more wide angles of some of the buildings and towns. There was a particularly beautiful scene when they showed a panorama of the beach in Veracruz. I leaned over to my friend who was watching it with me and who is from Veracruz and asked her if that's how the beaches really look in Veracruz and she said, "Yes, 40 years ago."

Now the beach in Veracruz is on my list of places to go before I die! I want to see those beautiful mountains that close to the ocean! Anyone have any recommendations for beaches over there? That might be a nice 2 or 3 week house swap!

The first time I watched it, I thought I was missing things because of the language they were using. See, they never taught me cuss words and other things in school (although I have been learning these things rapidly since living here). But what I really think it was was that there are various scenes where there is a lot of ambient noise, like at a party or concert, and I have trouble understanding people speaking over extra noise. The second time I watched it, I got more of the subtle humor, and I picked up a little more of what people were saying when they were talking in groups and whatnot.

The music was also great! I bet the soundtrack is wonderful. There are lots of old tunes in Spanish that I'm sure are as recognizable to native Spanish speakers as "Let's Misbehave" is for Americans.

I will probably watch this movie for a third time when it comes out on video just so I can see it with subtitles and see if I had missed any other subtleties. I have to say that this movie was harder to understand than some of the other Spanish language movies I have watched in the last few months. Next up is Segundo Aire.

Seriously, I didn't fall off the face of the earth!

2008-09-29T13:35:00.003-05:00

Things have been a little quiet around here lately, but it's because I've been pretty busy both with classes and just getting back into the swing of things around here.

For four of the days last week, I shadowed Anna's full cave diving class as a refresher. It was really great to go over the info again and practice some of the skills. As always, doing additional scuba training always makes me have a healthy respect for the sport, especially at such a technical level.

On Saturday I had my first meeting for my yoga teacher training class. We will be meeting twice a week for theory, history, etc. in addition to meeting regularly (suggested 6 times a week) just to take the regular yoga classes. At the end of three months, provided I do everything we're supposed to do and pass the quizzes, I will have a 200 hour certificate with the Yoga Alliance. I don't think I'm going to do much teaching around here (there are only about 5,237 yoga teachers in Playa del Carmen), but I am interested in using my certification when I get back to the States to teach yoga in Spanish. Then again, you never know and I am open to whichever direction life takes me.

In the meantime, I'm just sitting here biting my nails while I watch the American economy spiral downwards out of control. It's a little disconcerting, especially considering our jobs rely on the American economy to be healthy so people are spending their marketing dollars. Who knows, maybe that yoga certification will come in handy in more ways than one! ;)

I recently met a couple of new Mexican friends. I'm always on the lookout for friends who speak Spanish. I went to a BBQ with my German friend Angelika and some of her friends. It was a lot of fun to hang out talking about movies and music and general stuff. Everyone there was between 27 and 34, so it was kind of cool to see the differences between cultures for people of the same generation. For instance, the Mexicans and I knew of Menudo, but the Germans didn't. Everyone but me knew of Take That, I can't think of a single song of theirs that I remember.

Tonight I am going with my Spanish teacher to see Arráncame la Vida. I have heard great things about it. I love historical movies and it's been said that this was the most expensive movie that has been made in Mexico. I haven't spoken to anyone who didn't like it yet. I only wish I had time to read the book before I saw it, but I don't want to miss it on the big screen.

Music in Spanish that I reallly like

2008-09-18T08:12:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago (yes, I've been that delinquent in blogging), Fned wrote a post on the French music that she likes and she posted the videos in her blog. I loved that idea! I've been a fan (hubby would say addicted) of music in Spanish for some time now. It's a great pass time for practicing my translation skill, and besides, I just liked the sound of some of these songs even before I knew what they were singing about. Here are some of my favorites (thanks for the idea Fned)!

La Vecina by Los Amigos Invisibles
This isn't the official video, I couldn't find it, but it has good enough audio quality. This is a Venezuelan band that now lives in NYC. I didn't get a chance to see them before I left, but I own the album this is off of and it's ALL good.

Lo que pidas by Julieta Venegas
Ok, I know JV is like a Mexican Madonna in terms of popularity, so I don't expect this one to surprise anyone. I just love this song, and it's good practice for listening to subjunctive tense constructions.

De amor y de casualidad by Jorge Drexler
This song is just so sweet. Imagine your dad writing you a song about where you came from. Just so sweet. A mix of love and chance. This is also not the official video, couldn't find it.

Me Gustaria by Javier Garcia
I love this song. This whole album is also good, by they way. I never imagined it having anything to do with a murderous stripper, but you know, I guess I have a naive way of looking at things...

Agua by Jarabe de Palo
Of course, this is another one that probably everyone knows, but I love Jarabe de Palo. This album was one of the first that I bought when I got into music in Spanish. Such a nice song.

I think 5 is enough for today. What are your favorite Spanish songs?

File Under: More Problems I Never Imagined

2008-09-17T08:16:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I had a terrifying experience. I was sitting on my deck in the morning, reading a vampire book, when I felt this strange creepy crawly, tickling sensation on my right elbow. I looked down and it was completely covered with these little white bugs, about the size of half (or even a quarter?) of a sesame seed. They were football shaped and there had to be hundreds of them on my arm. They weren't biting me, but they grossed me out immediately, so I freaked out and brushed them off my arm.

The next day, during the morning, I was sitting on my couch reading a vampire book (you see a theme here?) when the same thing happened. Same arm, same bugs.

The next day I was sitting at my desk reading the news in the morning when the same freaking thing happened, same arm, same bugs.

I started to think that I had scabies or something revolting (which was interesting because it wasn't affecting my husband whom I share a bed with). They weren't biting me and I couldn't see them anywhere else except on my arm. As soon as I brushed them off, they were gone!

I searched online and the closest thing I could find to it was some sort of disorder where people imagine there are bugs on them. Great. So I was either infested with some nasty, minuscule bugs or I was crazy.

The next time it happened, I called my husband over to witness it for himself. He saw the bugs, too, which meant (possibly) that I wasn't crazy and that this was happening. But why was it only happening to me and always on my right elbow and always in the morning?

Well. Flash forward to when I got back from Jersey (where I was magically cured of this weird phenomenon) and I went to pick up Chico from the kennel. The guy who runs the kennel told me that they had had to throw out Chico's food because it was infested with these weird white bugs.

A ha! It turns out that I am the one who most regularly feeds Chico, particularly in the morning since I'm an early riser. Every morning I would stick my arm into dog food bag (Beneful, if you want to avoid this happening to you) up to about my elbow and scoop out a cup of the stuff for Chico. Ew. In that 1 second, about 1000 nasty little bugs were crawling from the bag to my arm.

I don't even want to know how many of them Chico ate. Ugh. I see a trip to the vet and a poop review in his future.

File this under problems I never thought I would have before I moved to Mexico. I guess it's something about the nice warm weather that lets bugs breed like crazy. I had heard it before, but I never really took it to heart. I guess I have to second the opinion of many of my fellow Expat bloggers- if you don't like bugs, don't move to Mexico!

No, I didn't fall off the face of the Earth

2008-09-16T10:07:00.003-05:00

I had to go back to the US for a wedding, and as is usual for me, when I travel I like to forget about computers and just travel. I guess it has something to do with working on a computer all the time. It always takes a few days for me to adjust to being back in the swing of things when I get home and then I just don't feel like blogging for whatever reason. But I'm back now and I have lots of things to share!

We went back to NJ for a wedding, which happened to be the most extravagant wedding I have ever been to (and this is counting a wedding I went to for the daughter of a mayor in Jersey that was pretty over the top). The couple got married in St. Ann's Catholic Church in Hoboken, the same church that Sinatra and his family (and la famiglia- if you know what I mean) attended.

The reception had a cocktail hour followed by a three course meal. The cocktail hour alone had probably three times the amount of food that Hans and I had at our entire wedding. Everything came off perfectly and the bride and groom ended up married (which means it was a success in my book). They headed off the next day for a two week honeymoon in South Africa.

The maid of honor said the nicest toast at the reception, the main part of which I hope to be able to use myself someday (if I ever find myself in the position of matron of honor again). She said, "May your marriage be modern enough to survive these times and old fashioned enough to last forever." Aw.

But I'm back in Mexico now, gracias a dios. I really enjoyed this last trip to the states, which might be proof that I have finally gotten a breather from some of the things that bothered me about the US and am once again able to enjoy the efficiency and ease of life there, or maybe I just knew I'd be back in Mexico in a few days.

Either way, it was hard to leave. I truly enjoyed hanging out with Liza, even just hanging in her house or taking her doll of a son, William, to the park. I had a ball hiking with Liza and Sean and talking all things gossip (rest assured that we covered it all, politics, religion and celebrity news, with a little bit of our own stuff thrown in there). I went to lunch with Sean and a bunch of very smart women and we discussed our takes on the GOPs' choice of Sarah Palin and our reaction to her speech and the convention. It's interesting to hear educated people voice their well-thought-out opinions on these things, even if I don't agree with them. I miss those Saturday afternoon lunches with honest friends. But, I know that that is always waiting for me when I go back the NJ and that these people are only a phone call away.

Somehow, when I touched down in Mexico, my heart sighed and, even though it was hard to leave NJ, I felt like I was home again. I don't know if it will be my forever home, but it's my "right now" home and that feels good.

In other, less gooshy, sentimental news, I'm addicted to these Vampire books by Stephenie Meyer. Seriously. It's like they're my drug and I'm not kidding! When I was in NC a few weeks ago I was at a book store with my mom and she was recommending books to me. I told her that I refused to read anything that wasn't in Spanish because I had made a pact with myself regarding improving my fluency and reading in English was out. The lady behind the counter happened to hear me and told me she had accidently ordered the third book of the four book series in Spanish and would never be able to sell it. She made a deal with me that she would give me the book in Spanish if I would buy the first of the series in English. I let her twist my arm and bought the first one.

"You might want to buy the second one, too," she said, casually.

I thought about it, but I knew I had to go back to the states in 10 days for another wedding, so I figured I'd just pick it up when I got back, if I really wanted it.

Bad idea.

I read the first book in two days, which left me scratching my arms and tapping at my veins for the second one! I had to get my fix in the Houston Airport as soon as our flight touched down. I bought the second and the fourth right away, I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.

Anyway, I read the second book on the airplane and during my stay in NJ and finished it. I started on the third, this time reading in Spanish, which was good because it slows me down a little. Now I'm on to the fourth and I only have a couple hundred pages to go.

If you haven't already read them, I highly, highly recommend Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. They're written for teenagers and they're NY Times Bestsellers, so they're super easy to read, but the stories are really compelling. And, they're good for teens and preteens because there's no sex, well it's alluded to, but only after marriage, so it sends a wholesome vampire message. The author is Mormon, so I guess that's to be expected. I'm not usually a beach read type of person and I LOVED these beach reads. Twilight the movie comes out this fall- woo hoo!

I'll be getting back to my regular train of thought and posting on life in Mexico shortly (only 200 pages till I'm free of my addiction). Happy Mexican Independence Day!

The best cure for hot weather

2008-08-30T08:49:00.000-05:00

While I was in NC, we walked from the mountain cabin over to Kilwin's in downtown Blowing Rock for a little ice cream. My niece takes after me, with my chocolate obsession. I tend to get a little more of the ice cream in my mouth and less on my face, though, but only a little.

Gael García Bernal (otherwise known as "El Guapo") in a New Film

2008-08-29T07:57:00.004-05:00

I have a slight obsession with Gael García Bernal. When I lived in the US and had NetFlix, I watched all the films they offered with him in the cast. There's something about him that is just super-sexy. Plus, he's a really good actor, and, like Johnny Depp, he tends to select films that have a greater message or challenge him as an actor. He's also a pretty outspoken liberal here in Mexico. All of this adds up to YUM in my book. If you're not on board yet, just take a look at him in Pedro Almodovar's Mala Educación, he's a serious taco de ojo in that one, just disregard the parts where he's playing a transvestite.

Anyway. Since I have this obsession and all, I knew that he was slated to appear in a new film that he's directing called Déficit. Yesterday I looked at the listings for the local theaters, because we've been waiting and waiting to see Tropic Thunder, and there it was! Déficit is playing starting tonight (so is Tropic Thunder).

I definitely want to go see this one! It's been a while since I saw a movie in the theater in Spanish without subtitles, and that experience was pretty good. From looking at the trailer, I think I'll be alright. Sometimes the slang gets lost on me and sometimes the jokes go over my head, but I usually get enough to enjoy the movie and understand what's happening. That is, if I can concentrate on what he's saying! mmmm.

I'm really looking forward to this film because it's also supposed to be about class differences in Mexico. I learned a lot about Mexico from watching some of his other films, like Amores Perros and Y Tu Mamá También. The second one, in particular, touches on the differences in class in Mexico and life in Mexico City.

But mostly, I just like movies with El Guapo in them. By the way, he's done a couple in English and he even played an American in The King, which wasn't that good of a movie, but it was interesting to hear his accent being near perfect. There was something about his cadence that wasn't exactly right, but very, very close. Much closer than Antonio Banderas could ever hope to come. I was pretty impressed with the fact that they didn't change the script to allow for his accent like they did in 10 Things I Hate About You, where they had to qualify that Heath Ledger's character had lived in Australia to account for his inability to master the American accent at that time. Anyway, I digress.

I highly recommend you check out Gael García Bernal if you haven't already, but I will warn you that his movies aren't for children and can deal with difficult or controversial topics.

I've been interviewed!

2008-08-28T14:27:00.002-05:00

I was interviewed for my perspective on moving to Mexico at a young age and as a non-retiree over at Mexico Real Estate Investment. If you've been following my blog, you probably already know more about me than you want to know, but if you just can't get enough, you can read the interview here.

Mmmmmm is for Makkeroni

2008-08-28T11:14:00.001-05:00

One of the things I love about living in Playa del Carmen is that lots of Italian people live here, too. No, I don't speak Italian, but I do love to hear them sing/shout at each other and pick out what similarities Italian and Spanish have, but it's more than that. It's the food. Mmmmm, the yummy Italian food.

I guess my love of Italian food started when I worked at the best Italian restaurant in Charlotte, Mama Ricottas. Before I worked there I wasn't a big fan of Italian. I wasn't a big cheese person and I didn't really like pasta. I think it's because I only knew spaghetti and meat sauce like I was served at home and at friends' houses. I had never known the joys of pesto sauce or tomato cream.

I further expanded my Italian food horizons when I lived in northern NJ. In New Jersey they have developed their own twist on Italian food, as well as their own dialect for talking about it. The dialect was always most amusing to me. Having talked to Italians from Italy about how they pronounce Italian words, Jersey's Mutzarel for Mozarella and Managot for Manacotti made me smile even more. I soon caught on and started saying Lasan for Lasagne and Canole for Cannoli, apparently these are not the same... Warning- never try to tell a Jersian that they don't pronounce it right, they would even try to correct an Italian!

Anyway, in Jersey I enjoyed garlic knos (that's Jersian for garlic knots- see what I did there? Man, am I funny) and fresh mozzarella as well as crusty Italian breads. I also learned about grilled calamari (they call it calamat there) over mixed greens, mmm to die for.

I guess that people the world over love Italian food. I remember reading somewhere that it was the most popular ethnic food in the world. So it should come as no surprise that I was happy to find great Italian food in Mexico, go figure!

There are several good Italian places to eat in here, Makkeroni just happens to be close to our house and we really enjoy eating there weekly. We like eating there so much that I finally reviewed it for Playa Eats, where I write reviews of restaurants in Playa del Carmen.

One thing is for sure, Italian food travels. Maybe it's because one of Italy's biggest exports over the last 100 years has been its people. I have seen Italian restaurants in almost every country I have visited. Do you have a favorite Italian restaurant in Playa?

As Seen in the Houston Airport

2008-08-28T08:45:00.002-05:00

Can you believe they now have iPod vending machines?

Anna's Moving to Mexico!!!

2008-08-27T09:45:00.004-05:00

I don't know if any of you have been following the blog of my dear friend Anna. She is leaving tomorrow to embark on a tour of the Americas with her Dad, ultimate destination being Cozumel.

I have known Anna for 5 or 6 years now and we are truly kindred spirits. I met her on a dive trip to Cayman Brac in 2003 and she was incredibly easy to talk to and laugh with (something I'm always looking for in a girlfriend). Over the last few years, we really became closer friends. We have a lot in common. We both like working out and eating healthy, keeping up with celebrity gossip, traveling, scuba diving, a nice glass (or three) of good wine, visiting the occasional psychic, live music, sexy Uruguayan men, and, of course, Mexico.

Anna has worked on the side as a dive instructor for the last few years and she always dreamed about leaving her stressful, high-powered job in Manhattan and living an island life (like so many Americans who are chained to their desks). She didn't want to leave the US, though, until she got her American citizenship. As of this summer, she is both American and English, so now's the time for her to head out and get her third passport, or should I say pasaporte.

Anna's last day of work has passed, her apartment has been packed away, her dad has arrived from England to accompany her on the drive. Tomorrow Anna sets out to explore her new life South of the Border. I am so excited for her! Although, I must admit that some of my excitement is selfish- I can't wait to have a good, old friend living just a 35 minute ferry ride away.

Best wishes, Anna, on your drive! I hope you have a safe trip and I can't wait to see you down Mexico way!

Fire Dancers at Coffee Cafe

2008-08-27T08:35:00.002-05:00

I spend all together too much time over at Coffee Cafe. ;) It's a great spot for hanging out with friends, taking Spanish lessons, doing business meetings casually, and soaking up some cool music and great food and drinks (not to mention their air conditioning)!

A couple weeks ago we happened to be there on a Friday night and we got to see the Fire Dancers perform. They do a show on Friday and Sunday nights. I snapped a couple shots of them using my little point-n-shoot camera on the no Flash setting. I can't imagine how much cooler these shots could have been with a more hard core camera and a better lens!

Back Home Safe in Mexico

2008-08-26T14:02:00.009-05:00

I just got back from a really nice trip to visit family in North Carolina. I love going back to NC! I guess it has to do with not having lived there in the last 8 years, but I love the people, I love the weather, I love how clean the cities are. I promised pictures, so here are some of them!

This time the whole family gathered to celebrate my cousin Lee's wedding. We had a great time and Lee and Jennifer got married without a hitch. The rehearsal dinner and reception had a decidedly Southern theme, with delicious southern/soul food. They got married in Salisbury, NC, one of the main cities in the Confederacy, so there was plenty of history and beautiful architecture. Plus, Salisbury is the home of Cheerwine Cherry Soda (a regional favorite), so they served Cheerwine, Diet Cheerwine, and various Scuppernong and muscadine wines along with sweet tea at the rehearsal dinner.

I got to spend time with my favorite niece, Lexie. She was a flower girl in the wedding and was exceptionally excited that the other flower girl would be her cousin when Lee and Jennifer were finally married.

We spent the afternoon at a very cool park in Salisbury that had a carousel, a train, a petting zoo and a playground (and more things that we didn't even see or do)! Of course, Lexie had to ride her favorite (the carousel) and she got to ride the train with Daddy Mack, her grandpa.

I got some time to hang out with my sister and do a self-led tour of Salisbury. We discovered a few funny signs around town. My mom was mad we didn't take any pictures of the old mansions, but I waged that you've seen a big mansion. I'm not sure you've seen a sign like this one we found on a house that was evidently being restored to it's glory from it's former use... Can you guess what it was?

And this is not the store you shop in when you want to look fantastic, just when you want to look "not bald."

One of the things I like the most about weddings is getting to dance with my dad! I was an avid swing dancer around 2000-2003, and my dad even took swing lessons. But our love of dancing goes back further than that, my dad used to love to Shag Dance in the 60's and he taught me and my sister. It's a form of swing that was developed at the NC and SC beaches in the 50's and 60's, but was really big in the 60's. Any southern wedding plays plenty of shag songs, since pretty much anyone from the south who is a baby boomer knows how to dance to it. We had to dance to 'My Girl' by the Temptations when they played it, since it was the song we danced to at my wedding.

We also enjoyed watching all the kids dance together!

After the wedding, we all headed up to Blowing Rock, NC, where my parents have a vacation home that they had recently redone. They basically tore it down to the foundation and started again, so it doesn't look anything like the old cabin! The new and improved cabin is now 100% handicap accessible, and much better than their first attempt at converting a traditional home to a universal one. They will most likely be selling their Charlotte home in the future and living in Blowing Rock full time.

I had forgotten how beautiful the NC mountain are! I hadn't been there in God knows how long, and it was great to see some familiar places as well as the changes that had happened since I was in college there. I snapped some pictures of the mountains to show Hans, who commented that they looked just like the photos we snapped of Veracruz, minus the orange orchards!

I'm back safe and sound. I really enjoyed my week of semi-retirement (I say semi because I knew I had to come back to work). My parents offered for us to stay at their mountain house next summer, an offer which is more and more appealing the more I sweat in the heat and humidity here. Two months in the NC mountains sounds like a nice way to spend the summer if you can have beach any time you want it all year round.

Heading North

2008-08-14T07:52:00.001-05:00

I'm off today to go back to NC for 8 days. I'll be going to my cousin's wedding and then spending some time in the NC mountains at my parents' vacation house. Looking forward to some cool weather, I've been melting here. I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures!

Customized Blog Templates

2008-08-13T17:09:00.006-05:00

I actually like playing around in WordPress and Blogger and taking a template from something that's stock to something that's custom. I've done it for a few blogs for myself, but recently I did it for hire!

Check out what I've done for hire:
Kyle Hepp Photography: Photography in Chile

Check out what I've done for myself:
This blog, you're lookin' at it
Playa Eats: Food Reviews in Playa del Carmen

Of course, I also like to do web design in other content management systems as well.
Here's some work I've done in Playa in ModX:
Playa Resale: Consignment Store and Storage

If you're interested in hiring me to help with a new look for your blog, email me at mexpatlife(at)gmail.com!

Playa Eats: My Latest Endeavor

2008-08-08T07:50:00.003-05:00

I started a new blog about a month ago with Hans and Solomon to review restaurants in Playa del Carmen. We review the places where we eat, which isn't necessarily anywhere tourists would eat, but we like 'em. That's not to say that if we eat at La Parilla or Carlos n' Charlies that we won't review them, it's just to say that we've lived here some time now and haven't felt the urge to go to those places.

Solomon is a real "off the beaten track" guy when it comes to food, so many of his reviews will be of nameless restaurants, taco carts, changarros and more. He's not afraid to wander way up into the Colosio (a neighborhood north of Playa where there aren't many gringos, if any) to get food. Expect his reviews to include directions based more on landmarks, as many of his favorite haunts aren't clearly marked, or their cross streets aren't clearly marked (in Mexico.... imagine!).

Hans and I still occasionally eat on or around 5th or 10th Aves. I intend to post as many reviews that are accessible for tourists as I can. Part of that is motivated by wanting to know where to take family and friends when they visit, and the other part is just wanting to help people eat well when they don't want to stray out into the rest of Playa (or they can't speak Spanish).

Check it out, and if you know of a restaurant that we should visit, let us know!

A Beachy Weekend

2008-08-04T09:52:00.008-05:00

I try to go to the beach at least one day a week here, after all, if I'm not going to the beach, then why do I live here? This weekend I went twice.

On Saturday I went with Hans and Solomon and our dogs to a little beach south of Puerto Morelos. It's not the nicest of beaches, but we can take our dogs on it and it's closer than Tulum, so it was a winner. It's a rocky beach, so we didn't do much swimming.

The boys (all 4 of them) investigate a Trigger Fish that was swimming in the shallows. We weren't sure if he was stuck. He kept swimming in close. Ultimately, we decided that he was just swimming close to shore.

On Sunday I joined my friend Simone and her 2 year old son, Kay (pronounced Kai) at the beach in Puerto Aventuras. I had never been to that beach, so I didn't know what to expect. Boy, was it nice! It's a lagoon, so there are no waves and the sand is powdery. It's the perfect place to take children.

It's impossible to say 'no' to this little guy. He is so cute.

It's almost like the baby pool! The water gets deeper very gradually and there are no waves. You can see schools of little fishies. Kay was able to just walk into the ocean whenever he wanted because he was wearing the water wings and we were sitting right there watching him. This little guy is not afraid of the water at all.

Sometimes we short people have to take photos to prove we're taller than someone else. See, I am just towering over this kid! LOL.

The Quest for a Great Class

2008-08-02T08:10:00.004-05:00

I love taking classes, mostly dance or yoga, but I'm open to others. Since I've been here, where I can walk to most everything that interests me, I've taken several different classes. Some of them I went back to and some of them were, well, weird. Here's a quick review of the classes I've taken and what I thought:

Yoga at The Gym: These classes are awesome. I try to get there 5 days a week. They have classes every day at 8 am, on M-W-F they also have classes at 10 am and 6pm. On T-TH they also have classes at 7 am and 8 pm. There are two teachers, Ellen and Cindy. They both have different styles that compliment each other. Ellen teaches hardcore yoga, a mix of vinyasa and power yoga that kicks your butt. Cindy teaches vinyasa flow that is mellow and helps me recover from kicking my own butt in Ellen's classes!

Yoga/Meditation at Jardin de los Aluxes: This class is held in a beautiful palapa structure in a lush garden on 36th street, just past La Cueva del Chango restaurant. I went hoping for a really hard class, it ended up being a sort of strange mix of meditation techniques. The only actual yoga pose we did was corpse pose, but we did have to dance for 13 minutes and whistle along to a song. The whole time I was trying to keep an open mind and not judge the process until I could see how I felt afterwards. I'm not sure if the classes are always like that (although he did say that the group there had been doing the same class for the last 30 days as some sort of quest for child-like happiness, or something). I left feeling ok, but ultimately I was looking for a physically challenging yoga class, so I didn't go back.

Buddhist Meditation with Diamond Way: I used to do Zen meditation once a week with a group when I lived in NJ, so when I saw that there were meditation classes, or sessions, here, I thought I'd give it a shot. Diamond Way is different than Zen Buddhism in that they chant to Karmapa Chenu, one of their disciples or something. I was used to completely silent meditation, so I found the chanting a little weird and it sort of felt like idol worship to me. I figure I can do silent meditations on my own, so I didn't got back there, either.

Center 8 at Center 8 Studio: This awesome class kicked my butt. Seriously kicked it. I took it on Saturday morning and I'm still super sore two days later! The class started with lots of hip hop dance movements to get us warm, then we did a ton of lunges, arm weights, abs and a little visualization/meditation at the end. This is by far the hardest group class I've taken in years. I will definitely be going back. One of the coolest parts about this class was meeting some longtime Playenses, women who have lived here for 5-10 years or so. Several of them had kids, so it was cool to meet people who have roots set here, rather than just people young people who are here just having some fun.

Salsa Lessons at La Zebra in Tulum: This is by far my favorite place to Salsa dance around here, mostly because the dancing starts by about 8, so I can dance and still get some sleep. The places in Playa often don't start until 11:30, so it's gonna be a long night. I found the instruction here to be excellent and easy to follow along with. The band was great, and dancing right on the beach can't be beat. Plus, they have the best mojitos in the Riviera Maya. They have a sugar cane crusher right on the bar!

Change is in the Air

2008-08-01T10:18:00.004-05:00

Our formerly orange building will now be known as the white and red building. There are lots of changes happening here. Our property manager is a real mover and shaker. The owner of our condo contacted us and asked us to give 1/2 our rent to the property manager this month so he can buy some sun beds, hammocks and chairs for the court yard. We've already gotten a new palapa roof over the seating area by the pool (you can see it in the bottom left corner). Now we're getting even more of a facelift with the paint. Soon I'll be living in "that posh building with the pool" instead of the "sort of sad-looking sponge-painted building with the pool." I have to say, I'll miss the orange since it was, at least, different from the rest of the buildings around.

Solidaridad's Quinceanera

2008-07-29T12:50:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was the 15th Anniversary of the Municipalidad of Solidaridad. One of my friends is here completing her research for her masters thesis on the effects of tourism on local populations and has been studying Playa del Carmen in the last 15 years by interviewing people from the government and all walks of life. It was important for her research to go hear what the municipal president had to say and also to pick up the magazine that they created for the event. Since I'm always game to do anything different, I tagged along.

We got there early and got a good seat in the middle of the audience. The stage was pretty impressive. We had watched them building it over the last couple days and I think it ended up looking very sophisticated! This was quite a big night for many of the locals, who came out dressed up for the event.

After a few songs played by a large band, there were various speeches from local government officials. They then played a nicely-made movie about the history of Playa del Carmen which included lots of pictures of Playa then and now. I wasn't lucky enough to have seen Playa 15 years ago, but the pictures reminded me of Punta Allen- that's a lot of growth in 15 years!

After the speeches and movie ended, there were fireworks over the municipal palace and then we all turned our seats to face the another stage for the rock concert. The artist was a Venezuelan singer that I didn't know. We stayed for the first couple songs, but the picture above shows what we could see on the stage, so we got a little bored (plus the music was sort of cheesy), so we left.

I would say on a scale of 1-10 for interesting things to do, this fell at about a 3 or 4, but it's nice to know what's going on in the community. I did learn that the current municipal president is the first one to be a native Playense, which is pretty cool.

¡Felicitaciones Solidaridad!

Rio Secreto is SO worth it!

2008-07-28T16:43:00.003-05:00

I love to play tourist in my own hometown. Seriously. When I lived in New York one of the best things I ever did was take the Harlem Gospel Tour, which I highly recommend, but this post is about living in Mexico, so I won't go into that.

One of my friends has her daughter visiting her from Mexico City, so this weekend we took the Alltournative Tours Rio Secreto Tour. Rio Secreto is an underground cave and river system that is just south of Playa del Carmen on the Carretera Federal (just south of Xcaraet). The tour isn't on their website yet, but let me tell you, it's worth the $510 pesos ($50 US) per person. Even better, if you have your local Quintana Roo ID it's only $200 pesos ($20 US).

We made a reservation (highly recommended as another family we went on the tour with had been turned away the day before) and arrived at the entrance at around 1pm and after a short wait they put us in these really cool 4 wheel drive trucks and took us way out into the jungle. After about a 15 or 20 minute ride we arrived at the starting point for Rio Secreto.

It was really cool for me because I was the only American in the truck. The other group in our truck were Caribbean, so they split us into a Spanish-speaking group (for me and my party and another Mexican family) and a French-speaking group (for the Caribbeans). I love being in a situation where I can just attend in Spanish instead of constantly translating for Hans or anyone else. I know it's selfish, but it's so much fun.

I don't have any pictures because I forgot my camera, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway because you aren't allowed to take the camera into the cave with you. We were required to strip to our swim suits (we weren't even allowed to wear watches), and then take a shower before being given a helmet with a light on it and water shoes. From there, where they provided lockers for our clothing and whatnot, we went to the wetsuit station and got shortie wetsuits and life jackets.

Our guide, Laura, gave us some information about the history of the caves on the Yucatan Peninsula and their significance for the Mayan People and then we went into the nearest Cenote. The cave we were about to explore covers many kilometers and is connected to several cenotes on the property.

The first part of the tour was in a dry cave that is still growing. The formations are unbelievably beautiful. As a cave diver, I see lots of caves regularly, but this is the first still-living cave that I have seen in the Yucatan and the difference that 10,000 years makes in the level of cave formations is impressive.

Our guide pointed out various formations and told us their names. We learned that cave explorers are hungry people since she pointed out "fried eggs," "bacon," and "macaroni."

Inside the cave we also saw a tarantula, a cave spider, a cat fish and a blind crayfish. After about 40 minutes (a guess, since no one had watches) we came to a place where we had to swim through the water. Once we reached the other side, we all sat down in a circle and had a silent moment where we turned out our lights so we could see how black the absence of light is and how loud the absence of sound is.

After that, we worked our way out of the cave and then after a quick shower and change we headed over to the lunch spread they had laid out for us. We ate delicious ham sandwiches on croissants with cheese and fruit and your choice of agua de tamarindo or agua de jamaica.

All in all, the tour lasted about 3 hours or so. I would highly recommend this tour for anyone who likes to see natural formations. One of the kids in our group was nine and I would say that it would be good for kids as small as 4 years old as long as they didn't mind cold-ish water (it's 78 degrees year-round).

We didn't buy any photos because they started at about $25 US, but they were absolutely beautiful. I plan to take visitors on this tour the next time I have some. If you're from the area, I highly recommend you check it out. Alltournative runs a very tight operation, it's always well done.

Zeta Gas Never Ceases to Amaze

2008-07-24T13:42:00.003-05:00

We had been out of gas for who knows how long. See, I don't do too much cooking at home and we have a little electric hotplate and a George Foreman grill, so even when I have to, I can do it without gas. The cold showers were actually refreshing. I was being lazy about ordering a refill and it wasn't until someone reminded me that if we get a hurricane and lose power we won't be able to cook without gas if we don't have any that I finally bit the bullet and headed over to Zeta.

The lady behind the counter spoke incredibly fast. I think I got about 70% of what she was saying. That always makes me feel like such a dud. Anyway, we put in our request and she told us something about how the trucks aren't in this area all the time anymore, since they're servicing Cancun now, too, so she didn't know when they would come and she gave us a number to call in case they didn't show up tomorrow.

I set my mind on a few weeks of waiting punctuated by new requests to Zeta, and we went home to get some lunch. On the way out the door for lunch (remember, I don't cook much) Hans said, "Hey! It's the Zeta Gas guy! Talk to him!"

Turns out they were looking for our apartment number (they aren't numbered, so it's not that helpful to give that info out). Zeta Gas processed our request and sent the guys out less than an hour after our first, that's FIRST, request was submitted! Unbelievable!

I have to say that the efficiency in this country is mind blowing. You see, I just always assume that nothing will happen in any sort of timely fashion here, so when it does it's like Christmas! See what I'm doing here with my expectations? Low. I've learned that as long as I don't expect the system to work, I'll always be surprised!

I can't believe that the company that is generally the bane of my existence delivered my gas almost immediately! Gotta love it.

Some Photos of Cenote Dzitnup

2008-07-21T23:11:00.005-05:00

Ever since Michele wrote about Cenote Dzitnup, just outside Valladolid, I knew it was going to be on the list of places I needed to see. We headed over while Hans' parents were in town, partly because Valladolid is a cute Colonial city and partly because we knew about Cenote Dzitnup (but mostly because it was a good stop between Holbox and Playa).

Cenotes are sinkholes that are created when the ground collapses into an underground river. Sometimes the collapse is complete, resulting in an open sinkhole that can either look like a pond or can have a little island in the middle made up of the rocks and dirt that collapsed in. Sometimes there is an air dome and just a little part of the land collapses. This is the case with Cenote Dzitnup.

Cenotes on the western part of the Yucatan Peninsula are generally deeper than the ones found around Playa. Because the water runs deeper underground, they get more of these dome-style cenotes. This one is pretty awe inspiring and coincidentally the most-photographed cenote in Mexico (according to our host at Casa Hamaca, where we stayed the night before).

Those are tree roots hanging down through the hole. Mayans used to look for water by looking for that type of tree and listening for the Mot-Mot bird. The birds are attracted by the mosquitos and other bugs that they like to eat, and they happen to have a fairly recognizable call. They say "mot mot."

I am always amazed that there is so much natural beauty in the world in all different forms. I feel blessed to be able to see cenotes and the Caribbean sea in the same day. As a friend of mine always reminds me when we are sitting on the beach, "People pay thousands of dollars to come and see this ocean for a week, and this is just what we do on Saturdays." Kinda puts it into perspective...

Enanitos Toreros at Expo Riviera Maya 2008

2008-07-17T10:16:00.016-05:00

Last night was the first night of the Expo Riviera Maya 2008, essentially a State Fair, in Playa del Carmen. We rounded up a couple fellow expats and headed over for (what was for us) the main attraction: Enanitos Toreros, or Midget Bullfighting! (Ok, technically "Little Dwarfs Bullfighting," sheesh!)

*Warning: Mexico is not necessarily politically correct, so I advise you to stop reading this if you are, and are easily offended.

Since you're still reading, bring on the midget bullfighters!

Solomon had seen the posters out by his new business venture, Playa Resale, and as soon as he told us about it, we knew we had to see this for ourselves. I had never seen any sort of bullfighting before, much less midget bullfighting, but I had been to the El Cedral fair last year in Cozumel and it was a highlight of that trip, so I was keen to check it out on a grander scale.

This bus is one way you could get to the Fair.

As we approached the gates the policia stopped us and asked us if we were visiting or lived here. They then told us that there were lots of bad people at the fair, so we should behave ourselves and if we had any problems, let the policia know. In other words, "You ain't on the 5th Ave. anymore, Gringo, so don't get drunk and cause problems."

With that advice in hand, we headed in and took a look at the livestock. They had some impressive bulls and a horse painted to look like a zebra, several chicks and piglets and other farm animals.

On the main stage the Merida Town Council (that's what their sashes said) was putting on a "Welcome to Yucatan" performance, complete with poetry and dancing. We stopped and watched the dancing for a while. I've always liked the traditional huipil dresses, but seeing them on stage really drove home just how beautiful they can be (of course the women wearing them were all gorgeous, too).

While we were watching the performance, Hans decided to try a Marquesita, a freshly prepared crepe filled with cheese and your choice of cajeta (like dulce de leche), lechera (like really sweetened, really condensed milk) or Nutella. Hans opted for cheese and Nutella. Once they place the cheese and your filling in the middle, they roll the whole thing up into a sort of flute shape. The crepe hardens somewhat like an ice cream cone, but nowhere near as thick. They were tasty, but at the same time sort of... interesting... cheese and chocolate together, in one item. (But then I like peanut butter and chocolate and I'm sure there are many a Mexican who would think that was weird).

We had read on the poster that the midget bullfighting would be at 6:30pm, so we were pretty bummed that we had missed it. Then we consulted the schedule for the fair that was painted on a wall near the livestock. Apparently we hadn't missed it, it was scheduled for 9pm. So we headed over to the bull ring where we consulted a third schedule of events and learned that it was listed there to start at 10pm. Finally we just asked the guy selling the tickets and he confirmed that it would be starting at 10pm, we hadn't missed it!

We decided to wander over by the rides to kill time before the midget bullfighting. Hans and Sol got this great idea to have a go on this puke-erific ride. I politely bowed out and chose to shoot this video of the whole thing (in case it launched off it's axle, you know). I think I compressed this video too much- it's sort of poor quality, but this isn't the "important" stuff.

By now it was just about time for the midget bullfighting to start and we could see that people were starting to enter the bull ring, so we bought some tickets and got ourselves a seat. There were people walking around selling everything from beers and sodas to mangoes and these cornstarch snacks that tasted like Bugles.

We only waited a few minutes and the midgets came out. There were five enanitos and two tall clowns. Before you get all huffy, they don't kill the bulls. They aren't even stabbing them. They make them charge at their capes and then try to wrestle them to the ground. They also do silly things like the two clowns would dance close together and then separate at the last minute as the bull charged through.

Oh, and they're calves, not full sized bulls. They look like teenagers.

All in all, the midget bullfighting was... well... strange. It's not like anything I've seen before (though I've only been to one Rodeo in the US, so something like it might be more common there than I would know). I did learn that, despite my gung-ho attitude about wanting to see a real corrida de toros whilst living in Mexico, I don't think I would be able to stomach it. I got worried for the little bulls when they got tackled. I can't imagine how I would feel if they were really being killed.

I guess it's just one more item off my list of things to do in my lifetime: Enanito Toreros? Check.

If you want a more in depth look at enanitos toreros, you could check out the book that this artist wrote. The photos alone might make it worth the purchase.

Best Weekend Ever

2008-07-14T14:17:00.002-05:00

According to Chico, this was the best weekend ever. On Saturday we went to visit a friend who has rented a house on the beach in Tulum. There were about 5 other dogs running around on the beach. On Sunday we went to Sian Ka'an Biosphere (shhh... we snuck in our dog) and relaxed on the beach with our friend Solomon and his dog, Jake.

Chico thoroughly enjoyed his two full days of beach life, although he would like to add that salt water stings your eyes. Now back to his regularly scheduled nap.

Fun with Spanish

2008-07-12T08:00:00.000-05:00

Hubby has been learning Spanish and recently he made two funny mistakes that have been coming up as inside jokes again and again:

Speaking to the mechanic who changed our oil, trying to ask him how much it cost:
"Cuanto pesas? Cuanto cuestas?"
Translation: "How much do you weigh? How much do you cost?"
He just got a funny look from the mechanic.

Upon seeing our new neighbor, a full grown Mexican man, cowering behind his door, looking at our dog with eyes as big as dinner dishes, Hans tried to tell him that Chico doesn't do anything (no le hace nada):
"No sé nada! No muerde!"
Translation: "I don't know anything! He doesn't bite!"

I'm sure that between the two of us we've caused quite a bit of entertainment with our errors. Here are a couple I have made:

When trying to explain why I didn't want to make empanada wrappers from scratch:
"No tengo mantequilla ni arena."
Translation: "I don't have butter or sand."
I meant harina- flour

When working on commands:
"Sientate y sientete!"
Tanslation: "Sit down and touch yourself!"
Pehaps this more useful than it appears... lol.

Mexican Ingenuity Solves Handicap Accessibility Problem

2008-07-11T08:00:00.003-05:00

I love this guy's contraption! We saw him in Cozumel the other day. He has built a scooter that has a ramp on the back so he can wheel his wheelchair right up and drive away. No need to transfer out of his chair or ask anyone for help. He even has room for a passenger in the back. And, he's solved that pesky problem of too much sun that one can experience whilst riding a scooter.

He and his business partner were setting up a little jewelry stand that he had transported in the back of his scooter when I asked him if I could take his picture.

Cozumel has nice Blow Holes!

2008-07-10T13:41:00.006-05:00

By now you're probably thinking that I never work, but really, I only take time off and traipse around Mexico while I have people visiting. Since yesterday was my mother-in-law's last full day in Mexico, we decided to take a trip over to Cozumel to do a little shopping and sight-seeing.

The main town in Cozumel, San Miguel, is nice enough, but not necessarily worth spending a whole day there. A little Zócalo (plaza) sits at the end of the dock where the Ferry from Playa del Carmen stops which is surrounded by stores and booths that are selling trinkets and souvenirs. We walked around the square and then headed south along the Malecón (waterfront walkway). There we found much of the same: t-shirt shops, tequila stores, silver stores and cigar shops.

After a nice lunch at Las Palmeras Restaurant, which was surprising because it's at the end of the ferry dock and I thought it would be a tourist trap, we rented a Jeep so we could drive around the island.

It has been a long time since I have seen the "wild" side of the island. We always came to Cozumel for the reef diving and seldom had time to venture to the other side. Actually, who am I kidding? We just wanted to be lazy and relax by the pool drinking margaritas on our last day in town!

The beaches on the wild side seem to alternate between sandy stretches and rocky stretches. There are a few beach bars and one hotel, plus a bunch of cabañas at a surfing lodge.

As we were driving we noticed a stretch of rocky coast that had several blow holes, naturally, we had to stop and check them out.

The air was blowing out and being sucked back in with a great deal of force. You can't really tell from the video, but the sound of the ocean breathing was overwhelming. It was so cool, I had to stick my hand in one to feel the force of the suction.

After our blow hole experience we headed further south to the Reggae Bar for a drink and then back up to San Miguel just in time to catch the ferry home.

Spider Monkey Maddness!

2008-07-09T08:00:00.001-05:00

Last time my mother-in-law was in town we stopped by to visit the monkeys at the Jungle Place and she really wanted to bring my father-in-law. So of course, this week we made our way over to play with the monkeys and got some great videos. Here are some monkeys playing with my in-laws:

Here's another video of me getting a thorough grooming by my new friend Teva. Followed by me being used as a trampoline.

Swimming with the Whale Sharks in Holbox

2008-07-08T15:05:00.008-05:00

Last week we took a couple days off to head up to Holbox (pronounced "Hole-Bosh"), an island off the northern tip of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. It's about a 4 hour drive from Playa del Carmen to Chiquilá where you can take a ferry across to Holbox.

There are many things to do and see in Holbox, but our reason for going was to snorkel with the Whale Sharks. They are the largest living species of fish (since whales are mammals, not fish). Whale Sharks are actually sharks, they have cartilage instead of bone and their tail is oriented up-and-down rather than side-to-side, but they are filter feeders, which makes them similar to whales. The locals used to call them Dominoes because of the patterns on their skin.

The Whale Sharks come to Holbox every summer (July and August being the best months, though the season runs May 5 - Sept 15). The currents from the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico collide just off the coast, bringing plenty of yummy plankton to the surface. They can also be seen in Honduras at different times of the year. They have been spotted all over the planet, but since they can dive extremely deep, they're still being studied to determine their migratory patterns.

Holbox island is a retreat in itself. There are plenty of quiet hotels and gorgeous beaches. Because it is located on the Gulf of Mexico, there are no waves and the color of the water is milky and different from the waters of the Caribbean Sea.

We stayed in Hotelito Casa las Tortugas and highly recommend it for anyone looking for some serious downtime or a romantic getaway. The hotel is composed of several beautifully constructed and artfully arranged cabañas. We stayed in a simple room that had a queen sized bed and an extra single bed for $85 US a night. Our room had a bathroom and a balcony with hammock. My in-laws stayed in a two story efficiency with a little kitchenette for $140 a night. They also had a deck with hammock and ocean views. The hotel offers Whale Shark tours for $90 US per person.

The ride out to the where the Whale Sharks eat takes about an hour and a half. Along the way our snorkel guide pointed out the various lighthouses and fishing camps and showed us several sets of sea turtle tracks. Summer is also the time when sea turtles lay their eggs. Holbox is very active with sea turtle conservation, so there is undoubtedly lots to do for sea turtle aficionados.

Once we found some Whale Sharks (we probably found about 7 or 8 different ones) we would pull the boat near them and two people would jump out to snorkel, accompanied by the guide. It's quite a bit of work to keep up with them. They're just cruising along scooping plankton off the surface of the water, but to us they're moving at a decent clip.

The Whale Sharks we saw were about the same size as the boat we were on, so I would say they were probably about 30 feet, maybe larger. The captain and guide let us get in as many times as we could take. By about 11:30 we were pretty pooped. By noon we decided we should head back to the island.

I have swum with the Whale Sharks twice now and both times we have made the same mistake: deciding to leave the island on the same day as the swimming. Once we got back to the hotel we were pooped and all enjoyed some fruity cocktails and a snack at the hotel bar. The next time I go I will stay at least two nights. We didn't want to spend the money and wanted to get on to Valladolid to see a colonial town. It was very hard to say goodbye to the beach.

If you go to Holbox, I highly recommend you also take a tour of some of the surrounding islands. We took a 3 hour tour the afternoon we arrived which took us to Isla Passión (which is very small), Aguas Dulces (an awesome spring-fed cenote on a nearby island), and Isla Pájaros (for bird watching). In another week or so the pink flamingos will be in town, so it's a bird watchers fantasy.

Plan to bring bug repellent, as the mosquitos are very hungry. We also learned a trick for the sand fleas. Apparently, if you rub a little baby oil on your skin the sand fleas suffocate on contact and can't bite you.

We will definitely be going back, possibly this summer. Hans and I would like to go for three days to really relax and get some better photos of the Whale Sharks (I mentioned that hubby was photo-obsessed, didn't I)?

Love in the Streets

2008-07-07T09:23:00.002-05:00

This is an all too common sight here in Mexico. Yesterday, as we were leaving the apartment, we caught these two lovers in the act of making more babies. Unfortunately, if this dog has puppies they'll likely be scrawny street dogs themselves, unless someone in the expat community scoops them up and tries to find a good home for them.

In unrelated news, my in-laws have been in town, so we did lots of traveling (that's why it's been quiet here on the blog). We went to Holbox to swim with the whale sharks (awesome photos to come) and then stopped by Valladolid and Cenote Dzitnup and then Tulum. I'll be updating you on my travels soon.

Guayas: A Very Interesting Fruit

2008-07-01T16:30:00.002-05:00

Ever since I found the Guaya, Handmade Goodies blog I've been wanting to try a guaya. Since Jordana said it's guaya time, I decided to head over to the main square here in Playa del Carmen and see if the fruit ladies were selling any. Whadaya know, they were!

I bought the bunch you see at top for $15 pesos (roughly $1.50 US) and asked the lady to show me how to eat one. Basically, you stick a fingernail into the side of the guaya and the skin cracks open. The skin is thin, but tough and almost looks like a lime skin, but there's no thick, white part to it.

So you crack it open and it reveals this little orangish-pinkish colored fruit. It reminds me a lot of the process you use when eating a lychee berrie, in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if guayas are remotely related to the lychee.

Then you squeeze the pinky-orangy fruit into your mouth, much like a scuppernong (for my Southern readers). Sorry Northern readers, I can't think of anything similar except a lychee.

The fruit is probably 80% seed. There's huge seed inside that is white. The flavor isn't like anything I've ever tasted, really. It's sort of bitter sweet, or sweet and sour. I can't relate it to anything really, except maybe a SweetTart, but not as sweet.

The flesh is very stringy and the whole thing isn't really juicy or anything. It's sort of hard to separate the flesh from the seed, so I decided just to sort of suck the flavor off of it and just bite a little at the flesh. It's not the sort of fruit that will fill you up, it's more like a snack you would eat for the flavor- like candy.

Hubby thinks it's an acquired taste and he hasn't acquired it yet. I think I acquired it by the second one I tasted. I don't know if I'll run out and buy them every week, but they're pretty tasty and I'm glad I gave it a shot. Yet another cool, Mexican fruit.

Mmm, Pitahaya. Also known as Dragon Fruit.

2008-06-30T20:37:00.003-05:00

The other day I stopped by the Wal-Mart and saw something I hadn't seen before. It was called Pitahaya, according to the sign above it. I'm always adventurous, so I decided to buy one and see how it was. They had a few sliced open, so I picked one that was of a similar firmness to the one that was open.

When I got home I looked it up on the internet and it's also called Red Dragon Fruit. I think I've heard of Dragon Fruit somewhere, sometime, but I had certainly never tried it.
The flesh inside is smooth and juicy. It is sort of like a kiwi and actually somewhat similar in flavor, though the one I had wasn't quite as sweet. I ate it by slicing it in half and then scooping out the flesh with a spoon. I had read on the internet that they're better chilled, so I ate half as a snack and put the rest in the fridge for breakfast.

Apparently these delectable treats are grown right here in Mexico. I love that there are so many strange fruits I've never tasted here. Recently I saw a Mamey in the produce section but wasn't sure what it was. I thought it was a potato, but it's actually a melon-type fruit.

Yesterday I bought a bunch of guayas. Check back here for my review of that tomorrow.

Soy Adicta

2008-06-27T09:08:00.004-05:00

The other night we were returning our painfully overdue copy of the latest season of West Wing (seriously, I don't know why we don't just buy the damn thing) when a T.V. series that I've never seen caught my eye. Right there next to all the other American series was Sexo y Otros Secretos or S.O.S. It looked cute and it was in Spanish, so I thought "Why not!?!"

Last night I watched something like 6 or 7 episodes. It's like Sex and the City only the city is Mexico City and the Sex is more implied rather than giving us gratuitous boob shots as proof that it's happening. I'll admit some of the actors over-act a little bit, and I was left occasionally wondering if the way these ladies freak out about normal stuff is the way that Mexican women want to be portrayed (or if that's the way that Mexican men think Mexican women really are). I haven't met any groups of Mexican women who squeal and make as much noise as these ladies do in real life, but you know, suspend disbelief. Once I was able to let go (really it's only Sofia's character who is a little loony- I think she needs lithium or something) I really started enjoying it.

It's about 5 women who are in their 30's and/or 40's and each has a different thing happening in their sex life. They're all good friends and when they need each other they'll send SOS text messages to each other and then they all come together to offer sisterly support. These emergencies happen about once an episode.

Between the 5 women (and the episodes I've seen so far) they cover topics like: long time husband caught cheating, said husband cheating with good friend on separate occasion, teenage pregnancy, teenage sexual activity, being the 'other woman' whilst dating your boss, going into business with said boss' real wife, insane sexual promiscuity with fear of commitment in a 40+ year old woman, how to avoid your insane boss who is in love with you, raising a baby with your husband and dealing with leaving your job as a lawyer, and dating again whilst having a teenage daughter who is starting to be sexually active.

The show didn't come with subtitles, so I did a bit of a "sigh–what did I get myself into," but I found that I am able to follow along pretty well. I probably miss a sentence or so of every conversation, but I get the gist. And, as I've been watching more and more, I've gotten used to each person's tone of voice and the type of things they say, so understanding them has gotten easier.

One of the things I like about S.O.S. is that it's not shot like most telenovelas. There's no dramatic lighting and no ridiculous music. The camera is a little jerky sometimes and the editing is annoying, but I can tell they're going for a certain hip/modern style, so it's ok. The story lines are somewhat believable (at least they're not like "I'm your mom, I have AIDS and I'm pregnant with your husband's kid!"). The women sometimes act like teenagers themselves and they do an awful lot of squealing, but I'm seriously digging it! I'm addicted!

If you're in the market for T.V. shows in Spanish to become addicted to, I highly recommend it. I read on Wikipedia that they're already filming the next season, so my addiction can live on!

10 Things I Love About Living in Mexico

2008-06-26T11:33:00.004-05:00

Following on the heels of Cancun Canuck's post about positivity, I thought I would post on something that's not often focused on here in Mexican blogsville- the things I like about living here! Sure there are lots of blogs out there that tell the not-so-wonderful stuff about Mexico, dog poop, big puddles after it rains, calling for more gas, etc., and I agree with lots of them, I've even written posts like that myself (see ants living in our car, gargantuan Mexican cockroach, or waiting on the gas truck). It's important for people to know that it's not all roses here, but sometimes I think it's easy to focus on the negative so much that you forget the positive. So here is my gratitude list of things I love about living in Mexico.

1. The role the family plays in daily life. I love that on any given Sunday I can stroll down to the beach or to a local cenote and see several extended families enjoying the day. They often bring Grandma and she brings a big pot of something and a bunch of tortillas and they have their Sunday Dinner right on the beach. They will often build make-shift shelters from the sun and install Grandma and any babies that are too small to crawl around beneath them.

2. No junk mail. I already touched on this when I got a letter last week, but one of the good things about not having the most reliable mail system is that I'm not getting 10 lbs. of junk mail every day. I'm not a huge "green-living" enthusiast, but I always thought that all that junk mail was overkill on the whole deforestation thing. I love not having to check the mail everyday, or even every week.

3. Yummy foods I've never tried. I've been thinking about this for a while. I did a little research and it turns out that much of what we think is Mexican food in the states is either TexMex or CaliMex. I dated a guy from the left coast for a while and we used to trek over to the Mexican neighborhoods in Charlotte in search of CaliMex food and that's what we found- burritos. I have to confess that I had never even heard of Tacos al Pastor before we moved here, not to mention sopes, tostados or horchata. And I'm not even talking about Mayan food- that's a whole different thing! I'm just still here enjoying learning more about traditional Mexican food. Oh- and the candy...

4. Living really close to amazing, deserted beaches. I grew up vacationing at the North Carolina Outerbanks. The Outerbanks are beautiful in their own right, and when I was a kid there were long stretches of sand dunes that were pristine (now they are covered by multi-million dollar homes). But the Outerbanks can't hold a candle to the beaches in Tulum and points south. Just a little over an hours drive I can be laying under a palm tree (who needs an umbrella?) on a virgin beach with sugar-white sand and water that is 10 shades of blue. Is this really my life?

5. Everything is in walking distance. Well, this isn't totally true, but most of the things that interest me are within walking (or biking) distance. This is the first time that hubby and I have owned one car and not had any problems with who gets to use it. I can easily walk to the beach, to yoga class, to meditation, to the gym, to the grocery store, to the wine store (I figured that one out in our first week here), to salsa dancing, to regular techno dance clubs, to bars where our friends hang out, to coffee shops, to Spanish lessons, to tons and tons of restaurants, you name it. When we were living in the burbs it was a 1/2 hour drive to anything. When we lived just outside of Manhattan everything required you to go into Manhattan. This is the first time that I have lived somewhere that has most everything I want to do just around the corner.

6. Reduced addiction to air conditioning. Who woulda thunk that living somewhere hotter than New Jersey would break our addiction to A/C? Well the truth is that electricity is fairly expensive here (but still cheaper per month than running our pool in the summer in NJ). We have a decent ocean breeze and when we open our balcony doors the air blows clear through the apartment, so we only use A/C at night and on the occasional still day. It's nice to be accustomed to regular, humidified air and hubby doesn't wake up with a stuffed up nose everyday (although we think it has something to do with Jersey because even when we go back for a week he gets it- doesn't matter where we stay). At home we used to run the A/C all the time.

7. Lots of people from lots of countries. I love that on any given day I might be hanging out with a German, a Russian, a Swiss person, a French person, a French Canadian, a Dutch person, you name it. Playa del Carmen attracts a lot of Europeans and I love the international feel. It almost feels like we're all exchange students. The best part is listening to Europeans effortlessly switch between the 4 or so languages they're fluent in.

8. Chico can go practically anywhere we're going. At home our dog got the short end of the stick. He wasn't welcome at restaurants and the weather was often not nice enough to be outside so he didn't get nice long walks during the cold months. Here he goes to dinner with us regularly as most of the restaurants have outside seating. He gets to walk around town with us an pee on whatever strikes his fancy. Everyone brings their dogs, and leash laws, if they exist here, are not enforced. Chico's life is probably better here. The only place they're really sticklers about dogs is on the beach. Chico can't go to any beaches here in Playa, but he can go to the beaches in Tulum, including many of the beach clubs down there.

9. No carpet. I hate carpet. It's really gross and requires one to own a vacuum cleaner. I abhor vacuuming- I'd rather clean the toilet, don't ask me why. It was a problem in the states because we had carpet and we had a dog and a cat. The carpets needed to be vacuumed regularly. I love that we have tile throughout the apartment here. I love that if I spill some water I can just leave it, too, which is a plus over wood floors. It just feels like our apartment is cleaner because the tiles can't really collect anything- one sweep and it's gone. Plus I like the smell of the pinesol/bleach mixture the cleaning lady uses.

10. No "real" winter. I seriously do not miss wearing long underwear 9 months of the year or bundling up just to go get the mail. Chico gets many more walks because it's reasonable to be outside year round. I have to admit that I may actually miss fall this year, but winter, uh... I can visit it. Seriously, one week of winter per year is plenty for me. Plus, people want to visit you when you live somewhere warm and beautiful. There's less, "So when are you coming home?" and more, "When can we come visit?" Me likey.

Those are just ten of the things I love about living here. Do you have any to add about living in Mexico? What do you love about living where you live?

3er Mundialito Playa del Carmen

2008-06-23T15:05:00.012-05:00

On Saturday the American team showed up at Mamitas Beach ready to kick some serious booty in the Mini World Cup. Though not the general favorite, we thought we might have a chance, having recruited one more Mexican to round out our team.

The day started with a game against Israel. The US team was feeling ready. While most of the teams were made up of a small handful of people from that country and the rest Mexicans, Israel fielded a team of mostly Israelis. For perspective, Canada had only one Canadian on their team.

There were sixteen teams playing: Mexico, Germany, Holland, Uruguay, Argentina, Italy, Spain, Israel, Canada, England, US, France, Chile, Cuba, Brazil and Switzerland.

America held it's own against Israel, which is pretty good considering how bad they beat everyone else they played. About half of our team didn't even know the rules, so we think we had that going for us- maybe they were just so confused by our "technique" that they couldn't score! They did beat us, but only by 3 points.

Next up was Argentina. They won last year, so they were pretty amped, plus there is quite a large Argentine expat community here, so they had lots of fans to cheer them on. Here is a photo of the American cheering section:

Anne (who is Mexican but not afraid to shout "USA!") and yours truly. At one point the announcers even called out "Where are the American cheerleaders?" and I yelled out "Here I am!" Yeah, it was that bad. Anne asked me why there weren't any Americans there to watch the game and I had to tell her what I guess is the truth, Americans don't care about soccer?!?

Anyway, Argentina kicked our butts bad, 6 to 0. They were very rough and had bad attitudes. If the ball hit them in the arm they would fall down like it was the end of the world, hold their arm and roll around in the sand until the referees awarded them a penalty and they got to take a shot at another goal. (I told you I don't know the rules, but that's how it looked like it was working...). At one point they asked our guys to stop hitting them and we responded that we would only hit them as much as they were hitting us. It was a rough game and losing so bad made us feel a little depressed, but we rallied.

Just before breaking for lunch we caught a little Capoiera action on film thanks to the Brazilian team. It was generally agreed upon by all the women present that the Brazilian team should have to play without their jerseys.

The last game of the day was against England. They were another team that had maybe 2 British players. They had spent the morning tying with Argentina and then getting beaten by Israel, so I’m sure that they were looking forward to an easy game.

The guys on the British team were super nice. They came over and introduced themselves and shook hands. We all had a nice laugh over the fact that if they beat us by 7 points Argentina wouldn’t progress to the final (due to the fact that they tied with them in the morning). They beat us 11 to 0 but somehow Argentina progressed and not them.

By the end of the day we had lost a couple players, but we still managed to smile. Mostly, I think the guys were proud that they lasted all day physically! Only the young Mexican guys were accustomed to playing lots of soccer.

Having lost two games, we (thankfully) didn’t have to play on Sunday. Apparently, Argentina lost to Israel and then Israel lost to Italy. I heard that the game between Italy and Israel was excellent, with Italy winning by 1 point.

Congratulations to everyone who played and big ups to Italy for winning the whole thing. This was the 3rd Annual Mundialito, we’re planning on training from now until the next one, viva Estados Unidos!

TODAY'S SPANISH LESSON:
Anne helped me understand a pun that the announcers made. The referees during the game against Argentina wore black and yellow striped jerseys.

When they came out the announcer said:
“Que bonito son los arbitros! Parecen abejitas. Salieron bien rayados!”

The first part basically means: How pretty the referees look! They look like little bees!

“Salieron bien rayados!” means something like “They came out here really lucky.” Or “They came out here just in the nick of time” but has a double meaning of “They came out really well striped.”

I can’t wait till I don’t have to ask what the pun means!

Cavern Diving at Cenote Chac Mool

2008-06-20T10:42:00.007-05:00

We decided to play hooky yesterday afternoon late in order for Hans to do a rebreather checkout dive in preparation for this weekend. Assuming that the Americans will lose the Saturday games in the Mundialito, Hans made plans for Sunday to go assist with a Free Diving competition as "deep support" so he'll have to be under the water in case any of the free divers pass out. If one passes out under water he will attach a lift bag to them and send them up so surface support people can work on them.

He hadn't dove using his rebreather in quite a long time. The rebreather recycles his exhaled air by running it through a chemical "scrubber" that removed the CO2 and then returns the breathable air to the loop with a little added oxygen (or something like that, don't quote me on it). The problem with them is that they're large, and if you're into cave diving they are quite often the wrong tool for the job when you want to get into small spaces.

Anyway, we went so Hans could practice his buoyancy, since it's a totally different process than diving regular scuba set up (or open circuit). I went along to practice my underwater photography skills, which are currently undeveloped, because I'd like to take photos of Hans and Patrick assisting this weekend.

So we headed to Cenote Chac Mool. It's just a little ways South of the entrance to Puerto Adventuras and is actually a set of three cenotes. There's a nice cavern line there and we didn't want to complicate things by taking all this extra equipment on an actual cave dive, so Chac Mool it was.

There's lots of algae growing on top of the water, which is different from your usual crystal blue cenote, but makes for some pretty cool pictures. You might have to click on the picture to see the swirly patterns on the surface of the water.

Because we were already sort of "task loaded" (had too many pieces of equipment) we decided not to bring the ginormous flashes that stick out from the side of the camera. As you can see, more light would have been nice, but we got some cool silhouette photos.

I like how these have a sort of other worldly quality- like space or something. The light was pretty cool, too.

Please note that if you are open water scuba trained, you can hire a cave guide to take you on a cavern tour. Make sure that you are properly trained before you even think about entering an overhead diving situation. Also- I'm no expert and I'm not saying it's ok for you to do this, so don't sue me if something happens to you and other legal, covering my butt for posting these pics, stuff.

I got a letter!

2008-06-19T08:57:00.004-05:00

I remember when I was about 13 years old I started writing letters to my friends over the summer. We only lived 20 minutes away, but there was something really cool about going to the mailbox every day to check to see if there was anything in there for me. We made collages and sent them, or decorated our letters with wax or by burning the edges.

Then I went to Australia for a year as an exchange student (this is all before the internet, folks) and letters were how I connected with my friends and family back home. They would take a couple weeks to get there, but they were always a welcomed surprise. We always wrote long letters, 4 or more pages, because we were far apart and there was so much to cover between letters!

When my sister went off to college, we started writing letters to each other, too. We got along pretty well until she was a teen and I was still a kid and she didn't want to play Barbies with me any more. When she went off to college we connected through our letters and that was the beginning of the friendship that we now are so lucky to share.

Once I started working from home and Hans was working on site with a client I would wait for the mailman to come so I could go see what we got. Mostly it was junk mail, but really it was a break from my computer. It meant that I could sit down with my Anthropologie catalog and veg out for a few minutes before getting back to work.

The mail system in Mexico is spotty at best. When we got our cable set up they told us we were responsible to come and pay the bill on the 17th of each month whether or not we got a bill. I told family and friends not to send me something if they really wanted me to get it, so naturally, I only check the mail box once or twice a month.

Today I went to check the mail and I had a cable bill (it came!), an electric bill (man, electric's expensive here), a phone bill and A LETTER! I got a letter! Yeah- it's just a little thank you card from my cousin, but still... it got here! Wow!

I know some people order stuff online here and receive it fine. I dunno. I sort of like not getting mail. I sort of like not being able to order online. I like the challenge of finding the things I want here on Mexican time. So far, I have found that if you want it bad enough you'll be able to find it.

Anyway, it still feels good to go to the mailbox and see a little envelope with your name on it an a ton of airmail stamps. Nice.

Sopes: Possibly the Meaning of Life?

2008-06-18T06:30:00.001-05:00

A couple weeks ago my cleaning lady came early and brought with her all the items she would need to show me how to make Sopes. Sopes are a traditional Mexican antojito (basically "snack" or "appetizer") constructed of a thick, homemade tortilla whose edges have been turned up to create a sort of boat for holding all the condiments. On top of the tortilla goes refried black beans, (in our case) shredded chicken, strings of Oaxaca cheese, tomatoes, that powdery, sprinkle-y cheese that they put on everything, Mexican-style sour cream (runnier than the sour cream in the states) and homemade tomato hot sauce. They can have anything you'd like on them, but that's what ours had.

I should have been taking pictures, but I was so amazed at the whole process that I failed to get the old camera a-clicking. Next time we do a cooking project, I'll be sure to get some photos, but for now, I just wanted to say:

Sopes, oh how I love you, let me count the ways...

1. Your yummy, warm and crunchy/chewy tortilla bottom is the perfect base for all things wonderful and diet-busting about Mexican food.

2. Refried beans so carefully placed seem to make the difference between just an ordinary sandwich and a delicious Mexican one. Sope, you would not be the same without your refried-beany goodness.

3. Oaxaca cheese is quite possibly the best, most meltable cheese that could adorn your luscious corn tortilla flavor. In fact, a handmade tortilla with Oaxaca cheese is a delicious snack just by itself, but don't worry Sope, I won't cheat on you.

4. Sprinkle cheese, I wish I knew your name, you add your cheesy flavor to this already awesome creation. You make Mexican food so, so good. Without you the Sopes would not be as pretty as can be.

5. Homemade tomato hot sauce, where have you been my whole life? Thirty one years is too long to live without knowledge of your existence. Now my life is complete.

6. Media Crema you are the proverbial cherry on top of this delicious concoction. You crown this small joy in life with extra fat and flavor, and you make me smile.

Now that I have participated in the making of the most-delicious (and, coincidentally, the only) Sopes that I have ever eaten, I can't get them off my mind! I will be trying restaurant-made Sopes soon to see if they're just as good. They take quite a time dedication to make, and while they're not exactly waste-band friendly, they are muy rico and satisfying in a way that only warm, homemade corn tortillas can be.

If you are in the States I recommend you find your way over to the nearest Mexican part of town and get yourself an order of Sopes. Order at least two, because one will leave you wanting another. If you live in a part of the country that suffers the misfortune of not having a Mexican part of town, you can make them by following a recipe like this one. You won't be disappointed, addicted maybe, but disappointed, no.

New Look!

2008-06-17T18:05:00.003-05:00

You may have noticed that we've got a new look around these parts. What happened? I got accepted to host some BlogHer ads and they have certain requirement for where the ads have to be placed, so I moved to a three column design.

It's kinda funny, too, that I work as a web designer but was totally using a stock template with some minor color tweaks. I would love to say that it was my undying passion for design that made me want to change, but that would be a lie. I've been lazy about my own blog, but if I'm going to put some ads there then I'll change!

Expect to see some ads appearing on the right side of the page some time in the near future. Hope you like the new look!

3a Mundialito de Futbol: Let the butt-kicking begin

2008-06-17T09:50:00.005-05:00

Our good friend Robert, the owner of Coffee Cafe, got this great idea a few weeks ago to sponsor the US team in the upcoming Mini World Cup that is being put on by Quinta Magazine and Mamitas Beach. The thing is, none of the Americans on the team actually know how to play soccer, but that's just a small detail.

Somehow Hans got roped in to play. He's been practicing running on the beach and kicking a ball (since the games will be played on the beach) and the last two days the "team" has gotten together in the AM to practice. We're all pretty sure they're gonna lose, the question is just HOW bad they're gonna lose.

This is the third annual Mini World Cup and last year there wasn't even an American team. Argentina walked away with the cup last year, but not before they came to blows with the Italians. Latin Americans take soccer seriously, so the US is just in it for the fun of it (and because Robert got this great idea...)

Each team has to play three 30-minute games against another team. Whoever wins two of the three advances in the tournament. We aren't expecting to last the day, but we couldn't help thinking that if we could just get paired against Canada, or even (gulp) England, we might have a chance.

Last night we went to Coffee Cafe to see all the jerseys (copies of the real jerseys worn in the World Cup by each country) and to learn who would be paired against who. They had divided the 16 teams into four groups lead by Mexico, Argentina, Spain and Italy. They then proceeded to pull the rest of the countries out of a hat and place them in groups. Each group would have A. B, C, and D teams.

As they started pulling, and we started praying, they pulled all the B teams (and since A plays B and C plays D- per group) we did a collective sigh of relief since we weren't A or B. We wouldn't play our first game against Mexico, Argentina, Spain or Italy. There might be hope for us still, although they had already picked England (and they'd be playing Argentina- wha ha ha ha ha- but I digress).

Time to pick the C teams. The US got picked to play in Grupo B, with Argentina and England. Now we just have to wait and see who we'll be playing against. Then Canada got picked to play under some other group, so we knew we were in for it.

Israel. They US team will be playing against Israel. Have you seen the kinds of Israelis we get here in Playa del Carmen? Try young, just out of the Army, in awesome shape, tall, muscular... you get the idea. Here's their team captain if you need some help imagining:

Anyway- the game play starts this Saturday, June 21 at 9am on the beach at Mamitas. Please come out and show your support for our fledgling American team! (Don't worry, we only need 4 out of the 8 team members to be Americans and we have one German and three Mexicans, so maybe we do have a chance)! I'll be there documenting the whole thing.

Oh- and as a plus, because my little camera died, I got a press package thanks to the fact that I was toting Hans' fancy semi-pro Canon SLR. Gotta love that- at least they didn't think I was a tourist!

Crococun Zoo

2008-06-15T10:27:00.008-05:00

For my birthday this year I asked Hans to surprise me by making plans to do something we don't normally do. That meant that laying on the beach and scuba diving were out, as was working or watching t.v.

On Friday night he gave me a rough schedule: 9am I could go to yoga class, 10:30am we were going to run on the beach and kick a soccer ball (he's preparing for the Mundialito- the mini world cup that's coming up next week... more on that later), then lunch and after lunch there would be an "activity" followed by wine and cheese at Winery & Plus and then dinner at El Asador de Manolo (yummy, fancy Argentinian restaurant on Av 10 between Calles 22 & 24).

So, after a brutal workout- beach running is hard enough without the pinche soccer ball- we cleaned up, grabbed a slice of pizza from Pizza Pazza and headed north. We passed the horseback riding, so I knew it wasn't that, then we passed the ATV tours, the jungle ziplines, Puerto Morelos and I started to figure it out.

About half way between Puerto Morelos and Cancun on the Cancun highway sits the Crococun Zoo. This is a crocodile farm and petting(!) zoo. We walked up and they took us right away, there were no lines or anything. It cost us about $20US per person (cheaper if you're a kid or have a local I.D.), plus we each bought a little bag of food for the animals.

The tour started with some parrots that are local to the region. They had a beautiful parrot with a yellow head named Lorenzo who could talk. He laughed at us and whistled and even said his own name.

Then we headed over to see the baby crocodiles. Our guide was a vet specializing in crocodiles, so he was very knowledgeable. He pulled Paco out of the water and handed him to us. He's a 7 year old croc and could live something like 60 or 70 years.

Paco is the boss in his tank, so when he's in the water, the other crocs won't even think about getting in with him. Our guide pushed one of the other crocs in the water with Paco and he bolted out to safety. Apparently, Paco defends his ground!

Next up were a series of snakes. Some of them they let us hold, like this boa constrictor. Some of them are seriously poisonous, including two vine snakes that looked exactly like vines. The guide said that if we had vines in our yard we had these guys in our yard, too. Yikes!

While we were holding the snakes, some Spider Monkeys came over, so we fed them one of the little bananas in our food bags. The Spider Monkeys are generally rescued since it's illegal to keep them as pets here, though people often try to keep them because you can charge entry to see them. One of the cenotes we dove in had two captive spider monkeys who were really suffering and being mistreated, but I digress...

Next up were some interesting lizards and turtles. This guy was pink in color, but not native to the Yucatan. This guy came from Costa Rica and (I hate to say this) would make really beautiful boots. He has these pouches on the sides of his mouth called "food bags" where he stores food for later, so they only feed him every few days.

I got to hold a baby sea turtle, which was very cool, but we didn't get any pictures. Then we headed in to the adult crocodile pen. Luckily, this portion of the tour did not involve touching, petting or holding. I think I would have had to gracefully decline holding an adult croc!

Next we visited a pen with some white tailed deer. These are cousins to the deer we get in the states. They're smaller and more silverish-brown than brown-brown and don't have any spots. Some of them had antlers that were covered in velvety fur. They were very interested in eating the branches that the guide gave us. The guide told us we could touch, pet and hug the deer if we wanted to. I'm not sure they were that in to hugging us, so instead we just petted them and fed them.

After the deer we visited some more Spider Monkeys that had just been rescued. These guys weren't free to roam about the park yet because they needed to learn how to interact with people properly, so we fed them some bananas and peanuts and headed on our way.

On the way out we visited some animals that are a cross between a raccoon and a possum. They were very cute and very interested in the sunflower seeds we had. I can't remember their name, though.

The Crococun Zoo is totally cool. I would highly recommend it for anyone who can't sit on the beach another day or as a perfect alternative to visiting ruins if you're sunburned. I would definitely take my 4 year old niece there, although she might be a little freaked out by being that close to baby crocs.

After the zoo, we headed down to Puerto Morelos and had an ice cream on the beach. Then it was back to Playa for a nap and then dinner. Unfortunately, my camera stopped working. We looked up the error message it's giving us and it's got an irreparable error with the flash, so RIP little Sony digital camera. :( We're heading to La Zebra beach club in Tulum today, so I'll take what pictures I can take without a flash, but I think the salsa dancing photos won't work tonight. As my British friend, Anna, would say, Bugger.

Sexo y la Ciudad

2008-06-14T18:15:00.007-05:00

I've been a lazy blogger and haven't blogged about seeing Sex and the City with Heather (the one who lives in paradise) and a bunch of her girlfriends! Apparently when she said she was dressing up, she wasn't kidding! About half the girls showed up in dresses and the other half, like me, showed up sorta spiffied up and ready for a night on the town.

The movie was really, really good. Much better than I had imagined it could be. I never really watched the show while it was on, so I didn't know what to expect really, but it was really entertaining and I appreciated that they caught us up on each girl and what had happened during the show so someone like me could just jump right in.

I think the reason I was never into the show was because I had just moved to New York when it came out and I was busting my butt there and I just couldn't buy it. I couldn't buy it that Carrie was a journalist and had a $1 million apartment and a $500,000 shoe collection. I also couldn't buy it that they could all go to lunch whenever and never had to go to the gym, etc. I think I was too tied in to the real NYC experience. Now that I'm removed from it all (and also no longer in my early 20's- you know- doing all that soul searching), I think I'd like to rent the whole series and get addicted!

Anyway, I forgot to bring my camera to the theater (see, bad blogger) so I stopped by and picked it up before meeting the girls again at The Dirty Martini Bar. Here's a slightly fuzzy pic of me and Heather:
I took this photo before the light was really low and I had to turn on the flash to make the pictures nice. Here's a couple of the chicas who came out. I think this photo really shows the cool atmosphere of the bar, too.
Of course, Michelle from Life's a Beach came out!
And finally, here's a shot of some of the chicas right before I left (which was pretty late, incidentally).
It was a really fun night with some fun girls. Hopefully we'll all do another movie thing, or maybe even just another bar thing! lol! Good times, good times.

Goodbye Ross and Sandy!

2008-06-11T08:52:00.005-05:00

Over the last six months we've done our fair share of cave diving around the Riviera Maya and in the process we've met lots of wonderful people who also share a passion for cave diving. Most of our dive friends also work in the diving industry- wait, ALL of our diving friends work in the industry. They get to live in exotic locations and dive beautiful reefs and cave systems, but the other side of the coin is that they also don't make that much money.

Ross had been living and working in Playa for about a year when he was offered another opportunity. He, and his lovely girlfriend Sandra, are leaving today to go run the diving portion of an extremely high-end resort in Mozambique for the next 6 months followed by some traveling around Africa.

On Monday they had a farewell party over at La Hora Feliz and lots of diving peeps came out to see them off. (Of course, across the street at La Fe there was another farewell party for another diving couple who were off to Egypt and the Maldives).

This sort of thing doesn't do well for our wanderlust. Both Hans and I daydreamed for about 10 minutes on going to Mozambique, but the reality is that we have the sort of jobs that require us to be available and working regularly (Hans even had to stay up working all night one night last week when there was a problem with one of our servers). So jetting off to Mozambique just isn't in the cards for us right now (besides, we just got to Mexico!).

So, farewell Ross and Sandy! We hope to see you guys again and best of luck in Africa!

What's in a name?

2008-06-09T13:40:00.002-05:00

I saw this over at Fned's blog and I loved it! I've always liked that joke about your stipper name being the name of your first pet and the street you were born on, for me that would be Snowball Mattheson! Wha ha ha! For hubby it's Baron 49th! Anyway, here's the list as per Fned's blog:

1.YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car): Snowball 4-Runner

2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavor, favorite cookie): Belgian Chocolate Chocolate Chip (see a theme here?)

3. YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name): Akas

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal): Blue Giraffe

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born): Overby Charlotte (Lol- it looks like Over by Charlotte, but it's pronounced like Over-bee)

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first): Kas-al

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (”The” + 2nd favorite color, favorite drink): The Green Chardonnay (blech! Can you please open a new bottle?)

8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers): John Clifton

9. STRIPPER NAME: (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/scent, favorite candy): Cucumber Runts (GROSS!!! LOL!)

10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names ): Karen William

11. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (Your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter): Can't remember 5th grade teacher, so using 4th grade teacher: Houser Houston

12. SPY NAME/BOND GIRL: (your favorite season/holiday, flower): Summer Peony

13. CARTOON NAME: (favorite fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + “ie” or “y”): Papaya Shortie

14. HIPPY NAME: (What you ate for breakfast, your favorite tree): Smoothie Magnolia

15. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (”The” + Your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”): The Spanish-Speaking Sunshine Tour

Diving in Casa Cenote

2008-06-06T15:49:00.006-05:00

Ever since it was mentioned to us by our cave diving instructor, Steve, we've been meaning to head down to Casa Cenote to check it out. A couple months ago we drove by just to see it, but it was a Sunday, so it was mobbed by locals who were enjoying a nice day in the sun and we weren't prepared to dive there, so we just drove by and went home.

We finally got an opportunity to dive there this week with Patrick and Katy. Patrick just got back from 6 weeks in Austria and Katy just got back from two months in Russia, so this was going to be their first fun dive back in Mexico. Patrick was nice enough to drive, so we piled in his pickup with all our dive equipment and headed down.

Casa Cenote is a long, dog-legged cenote that is connected to the ocean via a cave that runs under the little road separating the cenote from the beach-front houses there. You can literally see the ocean from the cenote and even feel the flow of the water out to sea while you're swimming. Here's the view from the road looking at the Cenote.

It cost us 20 pesos each to dive there (not sure what it would cost to just swim there) and we parked to the side of the cenote and started setting up our gear.

Katy and I were diving backmount, so we were buddies, and Hans and Patrick were both diving sidemount, so they were independent divers. Hans took the opportunity to show us just how sexy a sidemount helmet can look when modeled with perfection.

Once we finally got all our equipment ready, we headed into the water. You have to swim quite a ways up the cenote if you plan to dive on the "upstream" side. (See hubby's blog for more on the whole "upstream, downstream" debate). Once we found the place where we wanted to enter the cave system, we tied off and headed in.

The water was quite interesting. Because it's connected to the ocean, there's salt water entering the cenote from one side and fresh water entering from the other. Unlike your normal Mayan Riviera cenote, there are mangroves surrounding Casa Cenote, so there was also a layer of water about one foot thick at the surface where the water was tannic, stained reddish by the leaves and other organic material rotting. As you enter the mouth of the cave, the water is blurry because the halocline (a natural separation between salt and fresh water, much like oil and water) is being disturbed by the force of the fresh water exiting the cave. So after a few minutes of navigating in low visibility, we finally got well enough inside the cave for the water to clear up.

We chose to follow a different route than Hans had chosen when he came and dove Casa Cenote before by himself. The first part of the cave was a little boring (what?!? I'm spoiled by living here!) but after our first T intersection it got a lot more beautiful.

You could tell by the sheer amount of percolation caused by our own bubbles (percolation is when your exhausted air bubbles cause silt and other debris to rain down from the roof of the cave) and the easy silting of the cave floor that people don't dive there very often. You could also tell that by the looks we got from the Mexicans as we were entering and exiting the water that they thought all our gear was a little overkill.

We ended up inadvertently completing a circuit because we made a left and one intersection and after 20 minutes or so ended up back at the first intersection. So we called the dive and returned the way we went in. We didn't have a map, so we were just going to go on the line until we reached our air consumption limits.

On the way out the water flow was amazing! At one point we all stopped kicking and just rode out on the water flow like we were drift diving in Cozumel! I have never been in a cave in Mexico that had that sort of flow! (It's a fairly common thing in the caves in Florida). I felt like one of those turtles in Nemo, Duuuuuuuude!

It was a nice, chill dive with some very good friends and there's no better way to follow that up than by heading across the street to the Casa Cenote Restaurant for a Margarita and some chips with Guacamole and salsa.
Casa Cenote was cool and I'd definitely like to check out the section that connects to the ocean. I'm not sure if there's a time that you can go when there's not such a strong current out to the sea, it could have to do with the tides, but if there isn't then I may just be satisfied with swimming in the ocean out to where the cave comes out and just taking a look from there.

If you're looking for a cool cenote to snorkel in then Casa Cenote probably isn't it. There weren't many fish, and none that were particularly beautiful, and there aren't any sort of cave formations that you can see. You can, however, see the ocean and go back and forth from swimming in the ocean to swimming in the cenote, so that might make it cool.

If you're just looking for a nice cenote to swim in I would suggest Cenote Azul or Cenote Cristalino (both fairly close to Playa del Carmen). Of course, there's always Gran Cenote or Dos Ojos for snorkeling with beautiful formations.

Salsa Update

2008-05-30T08:32:00.006-05:00

I went to Bodeguita del Medio last night and met up again with Yvonne and Gustavo. I got there about 8pm when they were just finishing the class and they were learning a rather difficult-looking turn sequence. Yvonne said that the first hour of class is really basic, just the basic step, but at the end they teach a more difficult move. I think I'll go next Tuesday just to learn whatever they're teaching and to get to know some more people.

In the US the end of the lesson signals the start of the night, but not so here. The end of the lesson is where "all the good salsa dancers" meet and then they head to another bar for drinks and hanging out until 11pm when they come back to Bodeguita to dance.

We stayed at B de M because Gustavo had a dinner he had to attend there, so we danced to salsa songs whenever one came on (the band plays a mix of latin music for dinner, not all salsa). It was pretty cool.

Oh- and I have to change my previous assessment- it seems they DO dance more of the linear/New York style salsa here than I thought before. I guess I just danced with lots of Cuban style dancers on Sunday. I am so happy that they dance linear!!!

Hanging out with Yvonne, Gustavo and Javier was good practice for my Spanish, too. Javier speaks some English, but he said it's hard for him. Yvonne is German, but has been living here and interacting in Spanish for so long that it's easier for her to speak in Spanish than English these days. Gustavo speaks both, but he's happy to speak in his native tongue if everyone understands. So I spent 4 hours speaking in Spanish, it was awesome practice!

Anyway, around 11pm the good dancers came back and the band fired up a set of salsa. Wow. I remember the first time I went to a real Swing club and saw them dancing and I thought, "I have to learn this" because it looked like so much fun. This was the same. I'm probably still more comfortable with Swing than Salsa (I never have to really think about my feet and whether I'm dancing to the beat in swing, in salsa I sort of do), I know that with regular-enough practice it will become second nature. I'll totally be going back there to practice.

I only stayed til midnight because I hadn't intended to stay out all night. B de M closes at 2AM and everyone then heads over to Capitan Tequila because they're open til 4AM. I don't know if I'll be one of those people who stays up til 4, but I definitely will stay til B de M closes.

I'm looking forward to dancing some more! Yvonne is going on vacation for 2 weeks and then she's back for a couple weeks and then she goes to Germany for two months, so I gotta get my face known with her friends so that I'm not relying on her as my "in" with the good dancers! lol.

You Know You're Getting Old When...

2008-05-28T14:20:00.002-05:00

A couple weeks ago when we were in NJ, Hans used his mom's car to drive out to check on our house. It's a 40 minute drive from his parents's house, so he had plenty of time to listen to the radio.

Suffice it to say that we don't listen much to the radio here (in fact, there's only two stations that we can pick up in the car and one is just talk), so we're not all up to date on the latest pop sensations. Add to it the fact that neither of us care enough to listen to NY radio online or watch American Idol or anything.

So he came home telling me how much he liked that "I Kissed a Girl" song. I was like, "Uh, you mean the one that was all over the radio when we were in college?" I mean, it's only 12 years old...

Apparently that's not what he meant. He meant this new one that's so totally not anything like I had in mind! LOL! It's not that I don't like it, it's just that when I went to look up the old video there were all these comments about how the old one sucked and it wasn't even the same lyrics as this new one...

Man... kids these days! They don't even know the originals.Although, I do have to admit that when I hear "Pressure" by Queen & David Bowie, I sing "Ice Ice Baby" in my head... I guess I'm just not old enough to remember...

More about Salsa

2008-05-26T14:42:00.002-05:00

Before last night I knew there was a difference between Salsa on 1 and Salsa on 2 (namely the beat that you start on, but otherwise they're pretty similar) but I didn't know anything about this Cuban style stuff. Here's a little sampling of what I am talking about that I didn't know before:

Luckily, I have good follow skills (thanks years of swing dancing) so I can basically fake it once I see the basic step, but it just wasn't what I am used to, so my skill level was lower.

Here's a sample of New York style salsa. This is the kind I am used to doing and really enjoy. Please note that I totally look as sexy as this lady and could totally rock a half shirt like that... lol.

Salsa at Zebra in Tulum

2008-05-26T11:25:00.004-05:00

We got back from the US last week and got right back into the swing of things here. Life goes on and now we don't have to go back to the states until August (for a wedding), followed by September (for another wedding).

Yesterday I had another variation on the theme of "perfect day." I slept late (ok, for me that's like 7:45, maybe 8, but still... late's late) and then met up with a couple girlfriends down at Mamitas Beach.

We sunned and swam and gossiped and had a good time for a few hours and then headed over to El Diez for some lovely steaks (try the Vacio... mmm) followed by an order of Flan topped with Cajeta, which is like dulce de leche. Then we went to our respective houses, showered and met up with some more friends to head down to La Zebra in Tulum for some salsa dancing.

I have been looking for the place to salsa dance since I got here. They don't seem to have any dance schools like we do in the states for ballroom dance, so it was just a matter of finding out where the good dancers go and learning the more advanced stuff off them.

We went with Yvonne, a friend from yoga, who is good friends with Gustavo who is an instructor at Bodeguita del Medio. We had tried Bodeguita one Wednesday night and there were like 50 women and 1 man, but apparently on Tuesdays and Thursdays the crowd is better. They have a lesson, but it's extremely basic, so it's not much use for learning about styling or whatever. ANYWAY... I learned that the good dancers go to Bodeguita and when they close around 1AM they head to Capitan Tequila.

La Zebra in Tulum is so nice. They have a nice beach front location with an elegant and romantic restaurant and bar. When you walk out onto the sand, there's a round, elevated dance floor (bisected by a couple palm trees) and a nice stage to the right. I didn't catch the name of the band, but they were excellent.

A fun time was had by all! I got to dance quite a bit, although they dance a lot of Cuban style salsa here and I learned New York style salsa (danced in a slot rather than in flowy circles and all over the place). I figure I'll learn more about Cuban style the more I stay here. I danced several times with a French guy who was a pretty good dancer (he learned in Cuba) but phew! I thought the whole "French people don't wear deodorant" thing was a stereotype... it seems to be not completely stereotype...

All in all, we decided that though this was one variation on the theme of perfect day, we'd like to try another variation: leave Playa around noon and head to Tulum, lay on the beach there, then dinner, a nap on the beach, then salsa dancing.

It's a shame that I didn't bring my camera. I seriously forgot all about it- I guess I just wasn't thinking about this blog! When the band took a break the professional dancers put on a show, which would have been cool to have a video of for the old blog... plus Anne, Becky and I all looked ravishing, so that would have been nice to have documented. We all decided to come back soon and I promise to bring my camera then.

In the meantime, I'm totally going to check out the Bodeguita again. I am so happy to meet some good dancers! It's such a cool way to meet people and I'm always on the lookout for more Mexican friends, how else is my Spanish going to get better!?! :)

Off again to the GWN

2008-05-15T08:07:00.004-05:00

So we're heading out again this morning for another trip to the Great White North. We'll be in Jersey for a baptism this weekend (and coincidentally by BFF's husband's b-day dinner) but we'll be back on Monday. Why are we going back so soon? Well, we only found out about the baptism about a week before we left for the last trip and Hans is the Godfather, so we sort of have to be there. We didn't want to extend our trip to be 20 days or whatever, so here we are home for a week and then back to Jersey. And I just got re-acclimated to the heat!

Because I know my mother-in-law is dying to know...

2008-05-14T09:45:00.002-05:00

You may remember my whole hair trauma when I arrived in Mexico. Now that I've been here for about 4 and 1/2 months, I think I've finally figured it out... (fingers crossed)!

When I was in Jersey last week I bought so many different leave in conditioners and other salon-level hair products that it looked like I was planning on opening my own salon when I got back. I tried them all in Jersey, but, of course, my hair acts normal there in the normal water and low humidity. So I was excited to try them in various combinations when I got back to Mexico. Here's what seems to be the best method for getting normal, non-frizzy, non-greasy looking hair while in Mexico (provided you have fine hair that likes to wave but not curl convincingly):

I really like Aveda products, but sometimes they can be really heavy on the hair. Since I wash my hair pretty often here due to swimming in the ocean, diving and sweating at the gym, the Damage Remedy Restructuring Shampoo from Aveda is really nice. It doesn't seem too stripping and it's made from natural plant extracts, which is cool.

Oddly enough, if I follow it up with the corresponding conditioner, it's too heavy. So, I've found that the Redkin All Soft Heavy Cream Conditioner is better. And the best part is that it's available in Mexico. (I haven't seen anywhere, including salons, that sells Aveda here).

The most embarrassing part of the hair regime is that I actually really love the Create Weightless Smooth leave in conditioner by Jonathan Antin. You may remember him as the complete and utter jackass that was starting his own salon on the Bravo series, Blow Out. I was addicted to that show because he was such an immature, sniveling, L.A., bratty hairstylist and it was fun to watch how crazy he would get. I felt truly sorry for the poor people who had to work in his salon and deal with his crap.

That being said, his hair product line totally kicks butt. And it's vegan (which I'm pretty sure any haircare product could also say- I never see eggs or meat or dairy listed in the ingredients of other hair products).

Anyway, this combo actually lets me air dry my hair without it looking like a frizz ball. NICE. and when I'm in Jersey and I blow my hair out (because, let's face it, I'm not using a blow dryer unless it's under 90 degrees or I'm in air conditioning) it looks great, smooth and shiny.

And with that, I leave you with these...

Here's Sascha Baron Cohen as Bruno (the flaming gay Austrian reporter) interviewing Jonathan:

And this one's just priceless:

The Smell of Things

2008-05-13T08:43:00.003-05:00

Ever notice how much the smells in a particular location create a sensory association with that location? I was thinking about how one of the things I actually love about NYC are the smells and then I got to thinking that it's not just NYC it's lots of places.

In New York I love the smell of the pretzel vendors, a sort of smoky, dry, charcoal and bread smell that is divine. I also love the smell of the nut vendors. They sell candy coated nuts of all varieties that smell lovely and sweet (and incidentally better than they taste). The smell of the subway, or better, the PATH train. It's a dry and warm smell that's particularly nice in the fall and winter when it's a welcome respite from the weather outside. Then there's the halal and falafel vendor carts, a nice middle eastern, curry-type smell. Oh, and let's not forget the shish-kabob vendors with their luscious lamb kabobs. Now that I'm typing this, I'm trying to think if all my smell connections with NYC have to do with food!

In North Carolina there's the smell of the ocean when you've just drove 4+ hours to get there. There's the smell of the inlets and the salt. There's also the smell of the earth that's just apparent when you're outside. When we get to my parents' house it's always nice to take in a big sniff of their yard and it's greeness and aliveness.

Of course there are food smells there, but they're really linked with childhood. The smell of Silver Queen corn ready to eat, my mom's biscuits, my mom's vegetable soup in the winter, mom's chili (you see a theme here?). Then there's the smell of my grandmother's egg house and cooler. They had an egg delivery business so one room was dedicated to the boxes for the eggs. The cooler was it's own building that was refidgerated for the extra produce they grew and had a wonderful smell of fresh produce. That smell coupled with the wonderful cool sensation of stepping out of the near 100% humidity into the refrigeration was marvelous.

Also associated with childhood is the smell of asphalt and gasoline that I associate with the school bus. The smell of old-style carbon copies that reminds me of report cards. The smell of the library (this can be repeated by going to any small, old library) and particularly the card catalog (an old relic these days, I'm afraid). The smell of honeysuckle and magnolia blossoms. The smell of the woods. The dusky smell of the crawl space under the house where there were always hordes of camel crickets.

I wonder what smells I will associate with Mexico down the road. Already I love the smell of the taco vendors (even though I haven't actually tried a taco from them- it has been reported by a friend that they are very good). I love the smell of arrachera grilling and the smell of pastor meat. Of course, these are food things, but I wonder if I'll be nostalgic over other smells that I don't even know about now.

People often talk about the light in Mexico. I can see how that would be something one would miss. I know I would miss the weather. I have gotten used to wearing shorts and tank tops all the time. I've gotten used to going to the beach once a week (at least).

When I was in New Jersey for one short week I missed Mexican accented Spanish. All the Spanish I heard in our old neighborhood was more Cuban or Central American sounding- where they clip off the s's. I know for certain that I will miss certain Mexican foods when I'm back in the states (although someone assured me that now that I know what I'm looking for, if I go to the Mexican part of town I can get some very good authentic Mexican food).

What smells do you associate with Mexico? What smells are special to you?

We're Baaaaack

2008-05-12T15:29:00.003-05:00

So we've been back since Thursday, but I just haven't felt like blogging! Couldn't say why...

Jersey was a good trip, we saw lots of good friends, shopped, ate, shopped, ate, went in to New York City twice (which was once too many times for me), fantasized about living in NJ for about two days until we snapped to our senses and remembered why we wanted to move to Mexico in the first place! I really love the people there, I have lots of very good friends, but I can't stand lots of other things about it. I guess we're just not ready to move back in the near future (but then we sort of knew that without visiting)!

Oddly enough, we have to go back to NJ this Thursday for a baptism. Hans will be the Godfather (his third such anointment) for his best friend's baby and we need to be at the baptism this Sunday. So, we're popping back for another quick visit.

Other than that, it got HOT while we were away! The temperature has seriously stepped it up a notch. I guess that's it for me for today... I've got to get back to work. Taking a week off means work piles up and now it's back to the daily grind (in paradise, I'll add).

Heading to the Great White North

2008-04-28T09:55:00.002-05:00

We're going back to Jersey for a week. As you can see, it's not exactly white right now (looks like it'll be more wet and gray) but it's definitely gonna be freezing! I haven't seen 50 degree weather (much less a HIGH of ONLY 55) since 2007! lol

But seriously, I feel like I have no idea how to bring the right clothes for this. I generally wore long underwear under my clothes from October to April and I'm not sure where my long underwear is now... I don't even know if I brought it! And I have sweaters that I brought, but it's hard for me to conceive of how cold it will be (or how not cold). All I know is that the most miserable I have been in my life was when I had to commute outside every day to work in Manhattan. Life improved substantially the first winter that I could decide to brave the weather outside or not!

Anyway- aside from the weather worries, I'm looking forward to seeing friends and have a couple dinner commitments already planned! I'm also looking forward to Barnes & Noble, Whole Foods and general clothes shopping. Woo Hoo!

To be completely off topic, we went to see "There Will Be Blood" the other day. Wow, what a weird movie, and so bloody! What's up with the Oscar winning movies this year being so strange and violent? Is that a comment on something we're going through as a country? Totally strange.

Public Service Announcements and other Ads

2008-04-25T12:03:00.002-05:00

I really haven't felt like working today, so I spent some time reading and napping and thinking about how I really have to work, maybe Sunday... then I decided to watch a little television. I've never really sat around and watched daytime television in Mexico before. I mean, sure, I've been sick on the weekend and stayed in and watched tv, but for whatever reason, I've never watched daytime tv during the week.

In the past I've noticed that the commercials here are very much like the commercials in the states, but what I noticed today was that they can be really different.

For instance, I watched one commercial about how some bottled water company had brought 2 million liters of water to children in impoverished areas of Mexico where they don't have access to clean drinking water.

The next commercial was of a little girl playing with these giant parasites. She was having fun on a swing and drinking water out of a hose with them. It was an ad for a medicine that you can take to eliminate parasites.

The next commercial was various shots of people in Mexico interacting, buying things from each other, helping each other out, etc. The last part of the commercial talked about how if we work together and appreciate our diversity, together we grow and our democracy grows. A public service announcement against racism.

But it's not just on TV. One of the things that I think is so cool about living in a country that is still improving the basic standard of life for it's people is that they have tangible goals that politicians set and accomplish. Paving roads is a big one.

During the time that Cancun was electing their municipal president (like a mayor) they had all these billboards on the way to the airport from Playa that said stuff like "I promise to fix and pave your roads. All of them!"

A couple weeks ago we inaugurated our new municipal president, but before we did that, there was an assembly in the main park to talk about what had been accomplished in Playa with the last president. It was stuff like increasing the amount of green spaces and improving roads.

I guess it's not a huge thing, but it's one of the small differences I see between here and the US. At home the major topic around election time is taxes. Imagine how different life would be if the US had more tangible things to focus on like bringing water to impoverished areas and paving roads!

Agua, Por Fa'!

2008-04-23T12:03:00.002-05:00

This morning I got up and went to the gym for my kick ass yoga class followed by a little running on the treadmill (caminadora in Spanish, if you need to know). My yoga class is hard and it's sweaty. She usually turns off the AC and fans and just opens the door to the garden and let's us sweat. So usually I just sweat like crazy and then hop on my bike and ride home and shower at home.

Today I got home, hopped in the shower and watched as the last little bit of water trickled out. Turns out that there are six units in our building and 4 of them are behind in their maintenance payments so our water got shut off. Of course, we're up to date and one of the units is vacant, so that means that we're the only ones who have paid. Awesome.

The building manager says the water *should* be back on by 4, but I'm not holding my breath. I think I'll be heading back to the gym to shower in a little while. File this under: More Problems I Never Imagined.

Cheezburger Time!

2008-04-21T10:55:00.004-05:00

Ok- I just spent too much time over at the I Can Haz Cheezburger site on Mexico Way's recommendation. They have some seriously funny shiz-nit over there. Here's a sample:

Back in Action...

2008-04-21T09:02:00.005-05:00

I didn't mean to be MIA, but we had basically two weeks of visitors! We had a nice visit from Paul (a diving buddy from Jersey) who came down to stay with us and dive some caves. He got certified to cave dive last November here in Playa, but he hadn't had an opportunity to do any cave diving without having to do skills and drills and pass a test at the end, so this trip was really just about having fun.

Unfortunately, I developed a cold just as he got here. I tried to go diving with Hans and Paul on the first day and couldn't descend past about 10 feet due to a sinus block (the air couldn't move around in my sinuses, so it created pressure in my sinus that felt like someone stabbing me with a screwdriver in my forehead. ouch).So I sat on the surface and listened to the birds and watched the ants move along a branch of the tree above me while they dove at Chac Mool Cenote.

I tried again a couple days later and had the same problem, so this time I hung out at Cenote Cristal and Carwash. Not fun when you really want to be diving. (Although I did learn some more Spanish by listening to a local family that came by to swim talking to each other).

Then, just as soon as Paul left, our friend Anna came over from Cozumel where she had been leading a trip from our dive shop back home. She had had to certify people and whatnot, so it wasn't truly a vacation for her, her vacation started after her students left. We hung out for a couple days in Playa going to the beach and asking people in the dive industry about what they know regarding visas to work and what the likely pay rate is.

Then I headed to Cozumel with Anna to enjoy some nice reef diving and general hanging out on Coz. We stayed at the Village Tankah, which was wonderful as usual. We had the Tree room which is on the top floor and is just screened in with a palapa roof. Really nice.

The currents were a little crazy on Coz the first day we dove. We hopped in at Palancar Caves (a personal favorite dive site) and the current was running south, which is opposite of how it normally runs. So we got blown down to Punta Sur and got to do the Devil's Throat (a deep swim through that goes straight down, like a throat). The next dive was just nuts! I'm not even sure where we went, I think it was Palancar Gardens, but the current was running left and right and up and down and forwards and backwards. At one point I got caught in an up-current and got thrown into the reef and then up and over it. It was the first time that I've ever dove in Cozumel and been witness to how strong the currents can be!

So after that non-relaxing day of diving we went to dinner to celebrate Miguel's birthday (he's officially a viejo -old man- now). You may remember Miguel as my model buddy. The next day the diving was back to normal and we had two nice dives with regular strength currents.

It was really great to catch up with Anna and talk about plans for the future and what we want out of life. I think we're kindred spirits in terms of the types of things we value and also our need to escape from the US right now! :)

Back to life as normal. I've made a commitment to get to yoga 6 days this week and I'd like to hit it 6 days next week because after that we're going back to Jersey for a week (which means, we'll be eating all the foods we miss here). My yoga teacher is offering a yoga teacher training session that starts in September. I'm about 95% sure that I'm going to take it. I've looked into teaching yoga about 5 times in the last 10 years and I never had the time to dedicate to it in the states.

File Under: Problems I Never Imagined

2008-04-14T10:04:00.004-05:00

We live in Mexico and we like to cave dive. That means that we take our SUV into the jungle regularly and leave it parked there for a couple hours while we dive in the caves. When we get back from diving, we put all our wet gear into the back of the truck and go home. To accommodate the wet stuff, we removed the back portion of carpet and replaced it with those sort of honeycomb shaped restaurant floor mats, so the water can run through and out the back.

Earlier in the week I got in the car to go to the bank and noticed that there was a line of small ants busily crossing the dashboard. They're the small, fast kind of ant (luckily they're not fire ants or really big enough to bite). I know that ants come after water and there's not much we can do about not having water in the truck and still diving, you know?

When Hans got home later that day I showed him the ant trail. We had some ant powder in the house, so we got it out and determined that the ants were living under the carpet by the driver's side. There's a hole in the carpet with a grommet and they seemed to be coming in and out of that, so we poured the ant powder in the hole and on the shifter and a couple other key places that were on their path.

The next morning we woke up and there was a trail of ants moving across the dashboard, but this time they were all carrying eggs. Moving time! I guess someone fouled up their previous hole. We poured some more powder along their path in hopes that they'd track the powder with them wherever they were moving (which appeared to be inside the passenger side door).

As of the last couple days, there appear to me no more ants. I don't know if this will last or if the babies will hatch and we'll have a new batch of ants to deal with. But for now, no ants...

We asked around to our cave diving buddies and apparently ants are a pretty normal infestation for cars that go into the jungle a lot. One of our friends had a proper ant hill under her seat and had to have her car professionally fumigated! Some other friends finally rented a detached garage to store their scuba gear in after bringing home more than they wanted to from the jungle. ew.

Another Great Article about Integrated Schools

2008-04-07T14:43:00.003-05:00

My mom forwarded me another great article on Charlotte Viewpoint about the history of integration in the schools in my hometown. My mom also pointed out that the author of the article has her son enrolled in a high poverty, predominantly black school in Charlotte, so she's actually walking the walk. It really makes me sad that the schools I went to are so very different. For more on that, see this rant.

Feeling Better

2008-04-07T09:11:00.003-05:00

I'm back at it again! One of the things I like about living in a place where produce is so cheap is that when you're feeling like you're getting a cold you can pick up a bag of oranges and juice them. We have a nifty electric orange juicer, so I had three glasses of fresh-squeezed OJ on Saturday and by Sunday I was starting to feel better. I napped for a while on Sunday again and then headed out to the beach and proceeded to get burnt. (And also miss my family because we always go to the beach in the summer and I went to the beach by myself yesterday, which is sorta lonely... more on that later).

After I got burnt I watched The Golden Compass online, which was pretty good. Actually, better than I thought it would be. It was either watch that or go see The Spiderwick Chronicles dubbed into Spanish (I'm saving Eastern Promises because Hans wants to see it and he was diving yesterday).

Anyway, while I was watching The Golden Compass, this add came up behind the movie. Look at that girl's face... wtf? I guess it's an ad for Shell Oil? I don't know because I didn't click on the link, and I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to read the ad anyway...

Feeling Under the Weather

2008-04-05T15:48:00.003-05:00

I've been feeling a little sick the last two days.

Today I dropped Hans and Patrick off at the ferry for Cozumel because they were going deep diving with a couple of clients from Protec who had brought Megalodon rebreathers, too, so they were all excited about it.

They had to catch the 8am ferry. After I dropped them off, I came home and lay on the couch (I already had a headache) and slept until 11:30 or so! The last couple days I've also had a sore throat. I chose not to go to yoga on Friday night or this morning (besides, that's probably where I got this bug- either yoga or the treadmill). By noon I was feeling pretty bad. I took my temperature and I had a mild fever- like 99.2- so nothing to be overly worried about, but probably where my headache was coming from.

Anyway, just not feeling great lately. I'm sure it's just a little bug and it'll be gone in a couple days, but for today I'm going to lay on the couch and watch tv.

You can take the American out of America, but you can't take America out of the American

2008-04-02T07:40:00.003-05:00

Yesterday we had our cleaning lady come for the first time. When we lived in the states we had a cleaning lady that came once every other week (and cost three times as much as our twice-a-week cleaning lady here). She was awesome and cleaned the house REALLY clean in three hours. She was systematic and FAST and had lots of houses that she cleaned per week. With her income she was building a 2 story, 6 bedroom house in Colombia for her family.

Yesterday our cleaning lady showed up at 8AM and wasn't done until 1PM. That's five hours, folks, on a 1000 sqft apartment. Neither of us was really sure what she was doing the whole time, but the apartment is clean and smells clean. It just took her forever.

When she got here she was wearing a skirt and blouse, she changed into her cleaning clothes and then before she left again she changed back. She attends night classes, so I guess she was going straight there, which leads me to the title of this post...

Our cleaning lady charges a flat rate. In the states our cleaning lady charged an hourly rate (which happens to be our lady here's flat rate), so if she stayed 4 hours we paid extra. When we noticed how slowly the lady was cleaning here yesterday Hans said "Well, an hour is an hour is an hour, why rush through and do two houses when you can spend 5 hours at one?" But then I reminded him she's getting a flat rate!

So any healthy, capitalist American would come to the following conclusion: Right now, if she cleans 6 houses a week she's making around $120 a week. If she cleaned faster she could clean two houses each day and double her money.

Hans reminded me that she's making an average to good monthly wage here and that she might think that she's able to make that without really busting her ass, why push it? Her needs are met! Especially if her husband works, too.

It's funny because that's one of the things I wanted to get away from about the American culture- the drive to work harder to get more money so you can work harder and get more money so you can work harder....

Before I moved to Mexico I remember reading a story about a Mexican fisherman who would get up in the morning and go fishing. By lunch time he had caught enough fish for the day and would come home, sell the fish, eat lunch with his wife, spend the afternoon playing with his kids and napping in the shade and in the evenings he would go down to the bar and play music with his friends.

One day he met an American who asked him, "Are there more fish out there that could be caught?"

And the Mexican said, "Yeah, but I catch enough before lunch so I stop fishing and come home."

The American said, "You should fish all day and catch more fish so you could increase your earnings."

The Mexican asked, "And then what would I do?"

"You could then buy another boat and hire another captain and catch twice as many fish and earn twice as much. Then you could start to sell your fish to the large corporations."

And the Mexican asked, "And then what?"

"You would keep adding boats until you had an armada and then you could build your own fish factory and ship your fish world-wide! Then you, of course, wouldn't be able to fish any more, you could move to the US and run the company. You would be making tons of money!"

And the Mexican asked, "What would I do with all that money?"

"You would save it!"

"What would I be saving it for?"

"So one day you could retire, move to a Caribbean island, fish in the morning, eat lunch with your wife, spend the afternoon playing with your grandchildren and napping in the shade and in the evenings you could go down to the bar and play music with your friends!"

Sangre de mi Sangre or Padre Nuestro

2008-04-01T09:04:00.003-05:00

Last night I went to Plaza Las Americas to see my first movie completely in Spanish without subtitles, Sangre de mi Sangre or, as I think it's called in the U.S., Padre Nuestro.

I was a little nervous about seeing a film in Spanish because before I moved here I had only watched a handful of films without subtitles and I had to watch them like 3 or 4 times to make sure I understood what was even happening. I think I was understanding somewhere near 75-80% of what they were saying.

Sangre de mi Sangre is a Mexican movie about a couple of boys who catch a lift in the back of a semi to New York. Their stories are radically different, one is a thief and the other is an honest guy. I don't want to spoil the movie for people who might go see it (because it's really good, if heavy), but suffice it to say that New York is probably easier to be in if you're a thief.

The movie is really well made, the acting is top notch and the shots of New York were really realistic. All too often movies make New York look like the land of milk and honey. I'm sure it is for some, but it's more realistically a place where the weather is unbelievably cold and all the doors are made of metal, locked and covered in graffiti. Ok, not that bad, but that is an element of NYC, and being an honest guy just trying to find your dad is not going to win you the help of anyone.

Anyway, I did really well with understanding the dialog. There were a couple parts I didn't catch completely, but got the sentiment- like all the slang and cussing in the kitchen of the restaurant where the dad works, some of the witty one liners that other people laughed at in the theater, and one part where the main character is talking about what he did with a prostitute (my friend said it was good I didn't understand that because it was awful).

I have to say that my comprehension level was much better than it would have been 4 months ago because I've been living here. Before I got to Mexico I didn't know specifically Mexican words and sayings, like basically all the cuss words, "Que Padre" or "es padrisimo" or anything referred to "Padre" (which basically is like "cool"), "chavo" which is like "guy" (I knew "tipo" which I think is more Spain-Spanish), etc.

So I would say that my first Spanish movie viewing experience was successful. I had a really good time and I would highly recommend that movie. It's not for people who need happy endings or don't want to see the gritty side of NYC life, but if you're into artsy movies with a message, it's great.

Glutton for Punishment: Mazapan

2008-03-31T23:26:00.005-05:00

Ok- as Ms. Fned and Ms. MarsBattyAngel suggested, I found my way to the food store and picked up a package of Mazapan.

On first inspection I thought, "Mmmmmm cacahuates!" Not only is that one of my favorite words to say in Spanish, but it's also the one that means "Peanut," or "food of the gods," if you will. We can't keep peanut butter in the house because I tend to eat it on everything: celery, carrots, apples, spoons, fingers.

These little, sweet delicacies are made from cacahuates, so you might think they'd be sort of oily, like the center of a Reese's Cup. Nope. When you open them you have to be careful because they can turn into a powder that spills everywhere. I can imagine Mexican parents telling their kids, "Ok, I'll buy you the Mazapan, but you can't eat it in the car!"

The consistency is almost solid, but sort of powdery. The flavor is confectioners sugar with a hint of peanut. They remind me of the interior of one of those Buckeyes- the peanut butter balls they make and dip in chocolate... I think they're from Ohio, the Buckeye state.

I actually thought that the mazapan wasn't that bad. A little sweet, but not bad at all. In fact, if they were coated in chocolate, yummola!

This is fun... of course, now I have to head to the Oxxo for Doraditas now that Mexico Way recommended them! Somehow I see myself gaining weight this week... hmmmm...

Time for some Mazapan!

The Anatomy of a Bubu Lubu

2008-03-29T13:07:00.005-05:00

The other day we were in traffic behind the Bubu Lubu truck and had plenty of time to analyze the Bubu Lubu mascot and speculate on what exactly a Bubu Lubu was. We determined that despite the fact that the truck did not appear to be refrigerated, Bubu Lubus must be some sort of ice cream bar. Why, you might ask? Well, today I was at the Mega and I saw one while I was waiting to check out, so I had to buy it.

Behold, the Bubu Lubu dude.

He's clearly wearing gloves and a scarf. He also appears to be made of snow, right? And his hair do is sort of avalanche-ish? Right? But seriously, he's wearing glove and a scarf!

It's not ice cream, despite the deceptive packaging. It's actually a chocolate bar, or in this case, a pair of chocolate bars.

On the side of the truck it looked like they were vanilla ice cream with a layer of strawberry sauce and then coated in chocolate. Behold the actual Bubu Lubu interior:

If I was a nice blogger I would have gotten out the nice camera with the macro lens so that the Bubu Lubus would be in focus rather than the background, but I'm not nice. Anyway, Bubu Lubus are actually a sickeningly sweet combination of marshmallow and strawberry jam coated with chocolate. Hans and I split one with Chico eating the remaining bite and we had to toss out the second one. They're seriously too sweet for adults.

However, this was the closest I came to even seeing a Peep this Easter. They don't do the commercialized Easter Bunny thing here... refreshing!

Finally a Full Cave Diver!

2008-03-29T09:04:00.008-05:00

As I mentioned earlier in the week, I was tied up the first four days of this week completing my IANTD Full Cave Diving class with Steve Bogaerts.

A couple years ago I completed my Cavern Diving and Intro to Cave Diving certifications through the NACD with Michael O'Leary. I did both of those certifications in Florida (another part of the world with lots of water-filled caves underground). I thought the class was interesting and taught me a lot about safety and good diving technique, but I wasn't wild about the caves in Florida. They're smaller, tend to have a decent amount of water actually flowing in them (so it's a little more challenging to swim against), and they were never dry caves, so there aren't any stalactites or stalagmites to see.

The Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico is one of the best places in the world for cave diving. Some several thousand years ago, when the oceans were lower, the caves here were dry and developed beautiful formations like the ones seen in dry caves today. When the sea level rose, the caves filled with water.

One of the main reasons we moved here was so that Hans could dive in the caves. Luckily, I find the caves here really beautiful and some of them are really large (Florida's caves can be fairly small). Since we've been here I've gone cave diving once or twice a week with Hans and I've started to become a little more comfortable with the procedures for cave diving. We were conservative, following the rules regarding my limitations as an Intro to Cave diver- we used only 1/6 of the air in our tanks, didn't make any navigational decisions and didn't go through any restrictions. After a few months, not being able to dive on 1/3 of my gas and not being able to make any turns or jumps in the caves started to become a pain in the butt. So I signed up for a Full Cave class with Steve Bogaerts (one of the best instructors in the world- in my opinion).

The first day of class was spent reviewing my gear and how I had my harness set up and practicing skills in the open water. We practiced various propulsion techniques (or kicks, if you will) and did various zero visibility exercises (eyes closed, simulating a silt out or total light failure). Steve laid a convoluted course with the reel in the Cenote at Ponderosa (Cenote El Jardin del Eden) and we had to follow along it sharing air and with no visibility. We then took these skills into the cave and did a simple dive at Ponderosa that involved lights out, air sharing on the way back out. At some point along this dive I flooded my Sunto Mosquito dive computer, so that meant that I had to complete the rest of the class with just a bottom timer and watch. (The Mosquito will now cost me about $300 US to replace. ugh)

The second day of class we met at Taj Mahal and went over the theory behind navigation, when to place personal directional markers and personal non-directional markers on the line to help you when you exit. Then we did a couple dives at Taj Mahal that involved making simple navigational decisions. We also had to exit lights out, sharing air and following our navigational decisions.

The third day of class we met at Minatauro, a smaller cave that has lots of restrictions (places that force you to travel single file). I really love Minatauro. It's a seriously beautiful cave. Some caves are so big that your flashlight can't illuminate the edge of the room you're in. Minatauro is the opposite.

Anyway, Minatauro has a circuit, so we went over the theory behind how you do a circuit safely and then we put it into practice. Our first dive we headed to the double line arrows and made a jump to the left and continued on until we reached our time limit and placed a personal non-directional marker (cookie) on the line. This marked how far we got along the line from one direction.

On the second dive we stayed straight at the double line arrows and continued along the line until we ran into our cookie from the first dive. Based on our time and gas consumption limits, we were able to determine that we had enough time and air to continue along the circuit. So we picked up our cookie and followed the line out, taking up our jump reel when we got to the place we had jumped left on the first dive. Very cool.

On the fourth day we went to Sistema Najaron at Cenote Cristal, south of Tulum. The caves south of Tulum are very different from the ones north of Tulum. This particular system is fed by a swampy area, so lots of Tannic Acid (the weak acid that is formed by decaying plant materials) floats in the water and stains all the formations (and even the line in places) black. It is very psychologically challenging compared to white caves. In a white cave the light bounces around off the walls and makes the whole place glow. In Najaron, the black walls just suck the light up. It's VERY dark.

At Najaron we practiced complex navigation with the added element of depth and decompression. The whole system is fairly deep there, so we were able to do shorter dives (which was good because cave water ain't warm). We carried tables with us so we could re-calculate our decompression obligation if our dive plan changed. Luckily for us on both dives it did change, and changed in our favor, so we had to spend less time decompressing at 10 feet than we had planned to in our original dive plan.

On the second dive I had to do a lost line drill. Steve had me close my eyes and shut off my primary light. He then led me off the line and placed my hand on a rock for me to begin the drill. He had given me 15 minutes to find the line again in the darkness, because if I had really lost the line I would be on a time limit as well. I tied off to the rock he had positioned me on with my safety reel and then did a secondary tie off to establish my starting position and I headed off in one direction looking for the line. After a little while I wasn't able to find the line so I headed back to my starting point and picked another direction to head in. This time I did find the line and I clipped my spool to the line in the direction I thought was out and began exiting. Steve patted me on the head to signal the exercise was over and it turns out I was on the line and headed in the right direction, but it had taken me 10 minutes to find the line.

All in all, the class was VERY good. I'm really glad I took it with Steve, too. I had to wait a little longer than I would have if I chose to take it with another instructor (because Steve is really busy) and I paid more, but the instruction was top notch. He manages to give you constructive criticism while also reinforcing what you did right, so you don't leave feeling like you're an idiot or you'll never be able to do whatever he asked you to do. Hans said he also raises the level of the class so it corresponds with your ability level (he took Steve's Side Mount class, too) and only teaches you what you can handle, so since I was already ok with cave diving he focused on technique and smaller details.

I have taken dive classes before with instructors who have a passion for teaching, but not diving and I have determined that it is imperative to learn from someone who has experience diving using the techniques they are teaching. Steve has been living in Mexico for something like 9 years and has been diving since he arrived. He was already a diving instructor before he left the UK, so he picked up teaching cave classes shortly after he arrived. But not only is he a good teacher, he is also a cave explorer and has gone on various surveying expeditions. In fact, the day before class started he had been bushwhacking his way through the jungle looking for new cenotes.

Hans had issues with his primary light to no end, which I'm sure he will document on his blog, but suffice it to say, Dive Right HID lights suck.

Now, with all this new diving under my belt... I'm going to the beach!

More Coming Soon

2008-03-25T20:52:00.001-05:00

I've been unbelievably busy this week. I'm taking another diving course which has me tied up (you have no idea how literal that is, lol) at the Cenotes from 9-6 everyday from Mon-Thurs, then I've been coming home and working on the big work project I have launching at the end of the week. Then I have to review the dive stuff because there's a test. So, basically, I probably won't be updating this again until Friday or Saturday. Now, I'm off to grab some grub, I'm starving! Ciao.

Dear Gargantuan Mexican Cockroach,

2008-03-21T13:23:00.003-05:00

I understand that you're just trying to do what's best for you: find food and reproduce before your short life is over. That's cool, I can respect that, I mean we're all here doing the best we can. The thing is, could you just try to do your "thing" on the floor? Or better yet, in my neighbor's apartment? See, when you decide that you want to forage (let's hope you weren't looking to reproduce) in my utensils drawer in the kitchen, well, it makes a lot of work for me. When you're in there, it prompts me to wash all the contents of the drawer and the drawer itself. It also makes me want to throw up. I hope we can see eye to eye on this one.

Thanks,
Mexpat

P.S.
My apologies if your funeral wasn't as ceremonious as you thought it should be.

Point of Priviledge

2008-03-18T17:22:00.003-05:00

I saw this meme at a random blog I ran across while doing a Google search. I liked it, so I'm going to do it and, just because I'm mean like that, I'm going to tag some fellow blogging companions to do it, too!

The premise is that you "bold" all the statements that are true. The more bold lines one has, the more privileged one's formative years were.

Please note: The list is based on an exercise developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. The exercise developers ask that if you participate in this blog game, you acknowledge their copyright.

****

Father went to college

Father finished college

Mother went to college

Mother finished college

Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor - my mom was a professor, if that counts.

Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers (I think they mean social class)

Had more than 50 books in your childhood home

Had more than 500 books in your childhood home - it's quite possible and we certainly had at least 200. My mom is a full blown book addict with no sign of hitting bottom or seeking recovery ;)

Were read children’s books by a parent

Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18

Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18 - piano, guitar, gymnastics, swimming, tennis

The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively

Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18

Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs

Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs

Went to a private high school

Went to summer camp - I even worked at a summer camp when I was 15 because I liked it so much

Had a private tutor before you turned 18 - uh, how do you think I passed Geometry? For some reason, trig was easy in college, so I guess she worked.

Family vacations involved staying at hotels

Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18 - Much of it was new, but I wore a lot of my big sister's stuff, too.

Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them - they weren't new or luxurious, but they weren't hand-me-downs either.

There was original art in your house when you were a child - We had a couple of my uncle's paintings and lots of artwork made by my sister and I.

Had a phone in your room before you turned 18

You and your family lived in a single family house

Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home

You had your own room as a child

Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course

Had your own TV in your room in High School - No, and my kids will not have TVs in their rooms either.

Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College - that's what paid for my college

Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16 - we went to New York a bunch of times and Utah and Colorado and ...

Went on a cruise with your family - on a small cruise ship to the Great Barrier Reef

Went on more than one cruise with your family

Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up - They still do when I go home to visit!

You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family

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So that's it! It's sort of a cool meme. I am going to tag 4 bloggers and I suggest they do the same. I'm tagging: Cancun Canuck, Fned, Just Married Chilean Style, andAnna.

New Ride!

2008-03-18T08:20:00.003-05:00

I got this awesome new ride on Saturday! Now I can get to the gym in about 10 minutes without being totally drenched in sweat. And, if you're in my way I can ring my bell at you!

We had a nice weekend. On Saturday we ran errands and got the bikes. On Sunday we went diving at Grand Cenote and Carwash Cenote. I totally reworked my harness and changed out my backup lights, so it was an eventful morning of reconfiguring gear.

I have been working like a mad woman on a project for work lately, so I haven't been doing much aside from working, unfortunately. The project should launch at the end of the month and maybe then I can get back to my regularly scheduled sun bathing.

This is Semana Santa for Mexicans, so there are lots of Mexicans here on vacation (adding to the, literally, hoards of Americans that have descended on Playa). It's funny, one of the reasons we chose Playa was because there were more Europeans, so a more international feel (and it's closer to the caves), but right now we're being inundated with Americans! Just going to dinner is an event that can take twice as long as usual as the waiters are all swamped.

We had discussed going to see the show at CocoBongo in Cancun, but apparently this is not the week to do it! My Spanish teacher said that when she was growing up in Cancun she wasn't allowed to go into town during Spring Break because there were people walking naked in the streets (at least according to her mom and I have no intention of heading up there to find out)!

In other non-news, I started taking Yoga classes with Ellen DeJong. Holy crap, that lady kicks your ass in that class (but I love it)! I've been really digging going for a run on the treadmill followed by a kick ass yoga class that makes you sweat like you're in a sauna! Ahhh, the spiritual bliss of being stretchy...

And finally, Hans started a blog to chronicle his diving adventures.

Update on my Quest for Fluency

2008-03-12T13:49:00.003-05:00

A few days ago I got supremely frustrated about my Spanish level. I have to confess that I had this expectation that I would arrive on Mexican soil and within a couple months I would be speaking like a native. This is in part because I have been studying it since I was 7 and had attained an intermediate/advanced level before leaving but also because I had several Spanish teachers and tutors tell me that I only needed a few weeks of immersion and I'd be speaking fluently.

Notice I said "immersion." Well, after two months I find that I still have to pause and think about what I want to say sometimes, or I have to actively think about verb tense and conjugation, when to use subjunctive, etc.

It all sort of came crashing down on me the other night when I realized that things weren't going to go as I had "planned." See, I speak in English all day with my hubby, work in English, often hang out with friends in English, etc. I'm not immersed, but my expectation was still there. When I have to switch to Spanish sometimes my mind just can't make the switch.

So, as any healthy person would, I decided to share how I was feeling with a friend.

Last night I spent two hours talking about how I was feeling about my Spanish level and various other things (as well as listening) in Spanish. I have to say that I'm starting to feel a little better about it. I was being really hard on myself- I've been here 2 months- I mean, lighten up! Plus, I think sometimes it just takes me a few minutes to "warm up" to where I can speak at speed and with reasonable accuracy, although I still second guess myself.

Sometimes I second guess myself when I am actually saying it right all along and it can be sort of silly. For instance, last night I was telling my friend she had to tell this guy she's dating how she's feeling and I said something like, "If you haven't told him, he can't know" then I second guessed my grammar and repeated "You haven't told him, no?" as a question. She answered "No, I haven't told him." LOL. She didn't know I was checking my grammar.

I also bought a copy of Paulo Cohelo's The Alchemist in Spanish so I can at least spend my spare time practicing. I'll get there...

Fun with Clippers!

2008-03-10T18:10:00.003-05:00

Cancun: No Country for Sissies!

2008-03-08T09:30:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I made a quick trip to Cancun with my pal Sofia because her computer was at the service center and we both needed a little retail therapy. We hopped on the ADO bus in Playa and a very air conditioned hour later we were in Cancun at the ADO station near Plaza las Americas.

If you have an Apple computer and something goes wrong with it you have three choices in Playa: 1. You can make the 4 hour (or whatever it is) trip to the Apple Store in Merida, 2. You can fly home and deal with it in the states, or 3. you can go up to Cancun to Manzanita del Caribe, an authorized Apple Service Center. Sofia chose #3, so we had to go up there to pick up her lap top.

Manzanita del Caribe is on Labna road right across from Plaza las Americas, one of the big malls in Cancun, so we decided to hit the stores for a little shopping. I swear, I just want to go to Old Navy and Target and get some knit pants and tank tops, but of course they don't exist here, so instead it's Bershka and Zara (which they also happen to have in Playa, but hey...)

So to get to the mall we had to cross the road like 4 times. Let me tell you, after living in Playa and getting used to the speed of things here, Cancun is crazy! We had to take our lives into our own hands and run across the street at full speed and nobody was slowing down. Add to it that when you get to the other side it's not like there's going to be a sidewalk or anything.

I had heard that Cancun was a car city, but I didn't realize how true that was! I mean, Charlotte is a car city, too, but mainly just because everything is so spread out. If you wanted to walk to something near you in Charlotte, though, they'd have sidewalks!

Anyway, we managed to make it to the mall alive and I got a couple nice tank tops. The next big mall I'm going to will be La Isla there in Cancun. I've heard it's really nice. I'm going there with my Spanish tutor, so we'll kill two birds with one stone.

Of course when I told my French neighbor I was going shopping in Cancun she laughed and said "Don't bother!" I'll admit that Cancun probably isn't some great fashion mecca, but seriously, I was just looking for tank tops!

Finally, we went to see "Sin Lugar Para los Debiles" or "No Country for Old Men" the other night. What a weird and violent movie. It was well done, but freaky. Also, the English that they were using was very regional and they didn't say exactly what they meant, necessarily. We went with some friends, he's Austrian and she's Russian. They said they understood about 70% of what they were saying in English and had to resort to reading the Spanish subtitles to really get what the meaning was. Crazy.

While You Were Out

2008-03-07T22:36:00.003-05:00

Allie: Hi Chico, did you miss me? Of course you did! What did you do while I was gone? Nothing? You didn't get on the couch did you?

Chico: Nope, wasn't on the couch.

Allie: You mean you stayed off that couch? That one there? The one that was nice and neat when I left?

Chico: Oh, that one. Um...

Hairy Situation

2008-03-04T15:01:00.003-05:00

Ok. You win. I give up, Mexican water and humidity, what is the secret to getting my hair to behave?

Ever since we moved here I have had trouble figuring out what the heck it is about the water or the air or what that makes having "normal" hair impossible for me! Since I've been here my (previously nice and straight) hair has been frizzy (thanks humidity), wavy (wha...? why!?!) and hard. Yes, hard.

This is what I have determined so far, to the best of my ability:

1. The water here is really hard. There's tons of calcium in it and who knows what else (I mean you can't drink it, right, so...)

2. There's lots of humidity in the air, so blowing my hair dry straight is a lost cause. Not only will it be frizzy from the sweating that I'm doing while using the friggin' dryer, it will be frizzy the minute I walk out the door anyway.

3. Hard? Is it the lime dust that's in the air from all the construction? We had a friend who went to the doctor here and the doc said that lots of kids have asthma who live here from all the construction... could it be the ~~asthma~~* lime that's making my hair feel dry and hard?

Anyway, I had been wearing my hair up since I got here and I just got sick of it finally. Yesterday I went to a salon and got a hair cut. The hairdresser guy was a Canadian (I swear, they make it hard on you to practice your Spanish here...) so we were able to discuss in our first languages what was going on. He cut between 2 inches and 4 inches off my hair and layered it. He also blew it out straight with about 4 products in it.

It was definitely straight, but it felt sort of hard and sticky and there was no way I was going to be able to fling it around as it was moving more like a helmet than hair after all those products. BUT- it was straight and didn't frizz. I even ran on the treadmill and it didn't frizz, so I'm thinking that this was one serious product. Anyway, he had to blow it out and iron it and I'm thinking I'm not going through that every day.

So today I let it dry wavy (wtf, hair, why can't you just be curly if you want to be curly?). I wish I was Mayan with stick straight, long, black hair. Life must be so easy (hair-wise, anyway).

So what's the secret ex-pat ladies? Do I need to add something to my water? Do I need some special Gringa tried and tested potion to make it act normal? *sigh*

I am waving the white flag. Please. Mercy!

* I had to edit that, but it was pretty funny as it was... but, no, I don't think it's the asthma that's making my hair hard!

Punta Allen: The End of the World

2008-03-03T12:37:00.006-05:00

While Maggie was in town we decided to drive out to Punta Allen. As my friend, Rupert, would say, "Punta Allen isn't the end of the world, but you can see it from there."

It's at the end of a little peninsula and is part of the Sian Ka'an Biosphere.

So we headed out with our trusty cameras and, of course, our dog. Later we learned that dogs are not allowed on the beaches in Sian Ka'an. One of our friends had said they were, so we were armed with faulty intelligence (can you tell we've now watched almost 4 seasons of 24?).

It took us maybe an hour and a half from Tulum to get to Punta Allen. None of us were sure what we were expecting, but it wasn't what we were expecting... It's a sandy little town with not too much going on. Really the perfect place for someone who REALLY wants to get away.

Here's a few photos from our little trip.

Everything's Better with Monkeys!

2008-03-02T19:37:00.008-05:00

While Hans' mom was in town we decided to check out this Spider Monkey Sanctuary that my Spanish tutor had recommended. They had found it one time on a lark while looking for a cenote, so we just followed their directions and stumbled upon The Jungle Place.

Out in the middle of the jungle (ok, really only about 1KM from the highway on a dusty road) lies The Jungle Place. It's an idyllic and tranquil place nestled back into the jungle with it's own small cenote and several beautifully constructed cabanas for guests.

The owners have dedicated their lives to rescuing and rehabilitating Spider Monkeys. For a small fee to cover their costs for keeping the monkeys you can go and interact the with monkeys in their cages- that is- you can go inside the cage and interact with them.

Their cages span almost the entire jungle lot and the monkeys swing to and fro and can make large traverses across the property. They monkeys seem truly, deeply happy and the whole place is just awesome.

Anyway, without further ado, here are some photos from our monkey experience:

They REALLY liked Maggie's shoes. They provided minutes of entertainment. Uh, does "Monkey Reserve" count as "Farm" on that US Customs form?

I got a good once over to see if I had brought any "Treats."

The girl monkeys really liked Hans, like, REALLY liked him.

Diebold Accidently Leaks Election Results Early

2008-02-27T16:57:00.001-05:00

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early