Keyboarding

It's not all fun and games here in Guanajuato. I mean, I've found a serious problem here. Well, not just here, but everywhere in Mexico. And in all Spanish-speaking countries for that matter.

Here's the keyboard that gives me fits every morning when I use it from 8:30 until 12:30. Why? Because it's a Spanish keyboard and not all the symbols are in the same place as an English keyboard. It can drive me crazy, particularly if I'm in a hurry. The key that fouls me up the most is the apostrophe key. I never knew I used so many contractions. But look: I've already used six contractions in this entry, and I'm not even finished yet. Wait! There's number seven, followed by the eighth. Oh, good grief.


Look closely (and you can do that by clicking on the photo), and you'll see that the apostrophe is below the question mark key, and in the apostrophe's "normal" spot (on my keyboard, anyway), there's an N with a tilde (Ñ). I'm usually pretty nimble on the keyboard, but not on this one. And anyway, that's not even the normal question mark key; it's where the dash and underline keys are supposed to be! And that's just the tip of the problem iceberg when I type on this keyboard.

And then when I get back to my apartment and my laptop, I spend at least 7 minutes reorienting myself with my normal keyboard.

Life is rough in Mexico. For this gringa anyway.

And if you've been counting, there are 15 contractions in this post. And it's a short one, too. (Oops, make that 16!)

It's a good thing I'm not typing in Russia.

The Sun's Out!

This is what happens when I buy an umbrella.

The sun finally came out today and stayed out, although right about now I can see some thunderclouds building up. I hope I didn't type too soon ...

Even though my little apartment is perched up on the hill in La Valenciana (just outside Guanajuato), there are sounds of activity all around as neighbors take advantage of this short-lived dry spell.

I took advantage, myself, and shot a few photos before heading to Celia’s office. The grounds here at the school are nothing short of beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that I sometimes wonder if living in the desert was the right choice. But then I look in the mirror and see my hair frizzed up from all this humidity, and say, “Nah!” I know I’m a desert gal. I’ve known that a long time, maybe since my very first trip to the Big Bend when I was 15.

Let’s see that was how many years ago? No way. I can’t even count that high. And I probably wouldn't tell you if I could.

Instead, I’ll share some of the photos I snapped of the school grounds so you can feel jealous. Just keep in mind, the humidity’s above 90 percent, okay? Put on a hat.


The is the gate to the courtyard behind my apartment. Come on in!


It all looks very peaceful and tranquil, doesn't it? You'd never know that there's lots going on outside these garden walls: neighbors hammering and nailing (isn't that the same thing), children screeching and playing, big trucks going "beep beep beep" as they back up, dogs barking, you name it.

And if you look really closely at the photo above, you can see part of my little balcony on the fourth floor. It's behind that mesquite tree.

These are the steps leading to the door of the office where I spend my mornings. Answering emails and the phone. Practicing Spanish, taking Spanish lessons, chatting with the teachers and students. It's a happy place.

The Rainy Season

This is the view late afternoon from my little balcony, looking toward the city from Valenciana. If you look really closely, you can see some of the city lights already twinkling in the distance. I landed in Guanajuato during the height of the rainy season. True to form, there are thunderboomers at all hours of the day and night. If it’s not raining, you can see where it is in the distance. It’s lush and green here and it seems like whatever can bloom is doing just that. It’s great weather for the skin, but I’m destined to one long, frizzy bad-hair month …

Fortunately, there is wireless access in the little apartment where I’m staying. That’s a good thing because there is no telephone and no television. I plan to do lots of reading (remember all the books I brought in the GMOG* suitcase?). I’m looking forward to the weekend so I can read my fool heart away. (*Great Mother of God, best said with a strong Scottish brogue.)

Weekends are crowded in Guanajuato. That’s when the folks from nearby cities, particularly León, come into town to party all weekend (that’s what I’ve been told anyway). Guanajuato’s already pretty crowded and is downright claustrophobic sometimes for this desert-dwelling mama, I can tell you.

I spent most of my morning confused. I’m doing some light office work for Celia, the director of the Spanish immersion school where Steve and I studied in May. If you’ve never used a Spanish keyboard, then you’re in for a real treat. The keys are basically the same, but a few are changed around. For example, instead of the semicolon/colon key, there’s one for “Ñ.” And I have no idea where the @ key is; I haven’t found that one yet. Anyway, there are just enough differences to make typing a wee bit confusing.

When I tried Google, it was Google all right, but everything was in español. It took me awhile but I finally figured out how to get to Google in ingles.

After my español lesson this afternoon, I trekked into the city, which is way, way down the hill from Valenciana where I’m staying. Fortunately, one of the maestros from the school drove by and picked me up. I swear, I’m not the spring chicken I used to be. The altitude here is above 7,000 feet and I was huffing and puffing like Popeye, only not as sexily. (I guess “sexily” is a real word because it passed the spellchecker.)

I bought 100 pesos’ worth of minutes for my cell phone, then an umbrella. I walked to the city centro and purchased groceries, enough to get me through the next five or six days. I love shopping in Mexico. The ripe fruits and veggies are so fresh and fragrant, it’s hard not to just eat ‘em on the spot. I was hungry, but resisted the street vendors’ tasty tortas and burritos; I was determined to save some money and eat my own cooking.

I caught a local bus back to Valenciana and walked up the hill, then down past Mexico's most famous--and productive--mine back to the apartment. The street is cobblestone, and the stones range from tennis balls to footballs in size. It would be more appropriate to call it cobblerock. Not the easiest walk to make while lugging groceries. Heck, it's not even easy without lugging groceries. I’ll be glad when I get used to the altitude in a few days.

My little apartment has the cutest little kitchen (that’s cocina in español). But I have to admit, the first thing I did after unpacking groceries is pop open a Coke and savor the taste of a Coca Cola made with real sugar and not corn syrup. Yum. One was so good, I had to have another. At this rate, I’ll go through my six-pack before morning.

Here are a few photos of my cute little apartment:

And here's the 'necessary room,' complete with washer and dryer (you can't see them in this photo, but they're really there off to the left).

It's late and I need to get up early so I can fight the Spanish keyboard again. Mañana!

The Bus Ride

The bus ride to Guanajuato didn’t go nearly as smoothly as on my previous visit. Of course, this time I was traveling solo, which is not always a bad thing (depending on who your traveling partner is) because you can pay more attention to the scenery going by. From Ojinaga to Chihuahua everything went well. It was after I got to the Chihuahua bus terminal that things started going weird.

First, I had to wait an hour and a half, still not so bad. Mexican bus terminals are fabulous places to people-watch, I had plenty to read if I wanted, and I wasn’t hungry (still stuffed from the incredible meal Steve and I had at Cazuales in Ojinaga … yum). BUT, when–like a good girl–I visited the public (pay) toilet just prior to departure time, I couldn’t get my giant bag through the turnstile and locked it up. (Linda Walker calls this bag the-great-Mother-of-God suitcase because it’s, well, it’s huge, but hey, I had to pack for five weeks.) After a nice but non-English speaking gentleman helped me maneuver said bag (Oh yeh, did I mention that it weighed almost 70 pounds? And why did I need to bring so many books anyway?), the machine had already swallowed my money, which was all the change I had (extremely poor planning on my part; now Steve would have had the correct change times five).

So, after having made a small spectacle of myself during the GMOG-bag-stuck-in-the-turnstile incident, I asked a really nice couple (well, they looked nice and I think they really were), also English-challenged, if they’d watch my bag while I got some change and they agreed and laughed. Gee, I wonder why. Tick, tick, tick. The clock kept going even though I hadn’t. Yet. And it can be a potentially seriously embarrassing situation after enough time passes, thank you very much. Finally, after I had taken care of business (whew), I retrieved my bag from Nice Couple and profusely thanked them in my pitiful español, then headed out to find my bus.

IT WASN’T THERE.

I double-, triple-checked my ticket, which had the bus number written on it by the nice ticket salesgirl. No such bus. Not even a bus from the other lines (I had selected Omnibus’ primera clase) going to León, my next stop. Had I missed it whilst fighting the toilet turnstile? I was on the verge of tears, screaming, or crawling into fetal position while sucking my thumb mode. I stood there staring at my ticket as if it was going to magically save me.

Over at the little refreshment station, one of the coffee-drinking bus drivers must have noticed my dumbstruck look, because he came over and looked at my ticket. “Ah,” he said (that's universal language for “I know what’s wrong with this crazy gringa,”) and pointed at an Omnibus about to pull out of the gate. It didn’t have the same number as my ticket and its destination sign said “Queretaro,” but it turned out to be the one I was supposed to take. I skedaddled aboard quickly, mainly to get out of earshot of the baggage handler who had to load GMOG into an already full baggage compartment, complete with barking dog in its kennel, wondering what it’d done to deserve its outrageous time-out in the belly of a Mexican bus.

I stuffed my computer bag in the overhead, plopped my pillow and camera bag on the seat beside me, buckled up, tilted the seat back, and prepared to recover from my little incident. And maybe reapply deoderant. We hadn’t gone 20 miles before it started pouring rain, the leftover remnants of Hurricane Dolly. After nearly one whole blissful minute, I noticed that the floor of the bus was puddling up with rain, coming in from my window. Of course–my window! Which was broken. Thankfully I’d put my camera bag on the seat next to me and not on the floor. The bus was about three-fourth filled, so I was lucky to have an empty seat next to me. Since the ride was going to be about 18 to 20 hours long, I was looking forward to the extra sleeping room. But alas (universal language for "oh shit"), it was not to be.

About 30 minutes after the rain began, we came across a stranded bus and we stopped to completely fill our bus with those poor passengers. Plus two people who opted to stand in our bus's aisle rather than wait by the side of the road for the next bus. A plump little old lady chose the seat next to me; she appeared exhausted from her ordeal and sat with her eyes closed. I held my camera bag in my lap (yes, it was also heavy because I'd stuck a couple or five books in case I wanted to read on the bus) and drifted off to sleep, until my legs went numb from the weight. I shifted the bag to the top of my feet and dozed off until the little old lady put her hand on my leg. By then it was dark and she was snoring softly, so I gently moved her hand back to her own lap, and dozed again, only to be awaked by the hand on my leg, inner leg, this time. I not so gently picked up the hand and saw that that the little old lady wasn't sitting next to me anymore–it was a strange man! My mind raced as he gently snored. Was he really sleeping? Was this a deliberate act of molestation of some sort? I shoved my camera bag into the seat between us and put my arm on top of it. Of course, a 20-pound camera bag being shoved into his side woke him up with a start, then he immediately went back to sleep. He wouldn’t “accidentally” touch me again, I hoped. Everyone else on the bus was sleeping, even the babies. Everyone but the driver. And me. I was adequately freaked out enough now that I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all. After what seemed a really long time, I checked my watch. 12:24. It was a very, very long night.

Fortunately, when we got to Zacatecas just before daybreak, enough people disembarked so that I could move to another seat. From Zacatecas to León, there were no more incidents (other than the most beautiful smile from an adorable curly-haired toddler in the seat across the aisle!).

Buses leave León on the hour for Guanajuato. This time I chose wisely and got the nicest line, ETN, which has a row of cushy single seats on one side of the bus and cushy doubles on the other. As I picked up my complimentary drink and sat down, I noticed that the very same MAN was on the bus! There he sat, snoring softly away in his single seat where he would not freak out any proper lady passengers.

But I’m here now and all’s well. Sure am tired though. I’ve got a lot of sleeping to catch up on!

The City of Frogs

Tomorrow I leave for Guanajuato, Mexico. It's the capital of the state of the same name and is one of my favorite places. The name Guanajuato is said to come from a Purepecha word that means "hilly place of the frogs." It's a beautiful city built in the mountains and is one of Mexico's colonial cities, with Spanish European influence everywhere. It was an important spot for the Spanish because of the rich mines there; some are still productive. Because Guanajuato is primarily an agricultural state, there are wonderful fresh fruits and vegetables in abundance. I'll be there a little more than a month, house-sitting for a friend. Besides staying in such a beautiful city, another perk is that Spanish lessons are included. And Guanajuato's a great place to learn Spanish, because not much English is spoken there, unless you count market vendors who speak 'money' in lots of languages.

The city was built along the Rio Guanajuato and was prone to flooding until the river was diverted into underground caverns. The original riverbed serves as a highway of sorts and there are many highway tunnels, built by the enterprising miners. These twisting roads, alleyways and tunnels give the city the feel of a labyrinth. But more on that later ...

I checked the weather conditions and that's also a perk: high 80s during the day and 40s at night. How perfect is that? Warm enough days for a cerveza fria and cool enough to sleep under a blanket with the windows open. Just stick a fork in me!

Getting there will be an adventure in itself. We traveled to Guanajuato earlier this summer, so I already know the drill. Steve will drive me to Presidio, and across the Rio Grande into Ojinaga. I'll take a bus from Ojinaga to Chihuahua, change to a higher-class bus from Chihuahua to Leon, and then change again to a commuter bus to Guanajuato. The whole trip is a 24-hour affair: 3 hours from OJ to Chihuahua, 20 hours to Leon, then about an hour to Guanajuato (Gto.). The first two buses are air conditioned, show videos, have fully reclining seats, plenty of leg-room, and restrooms. They also have reserved seats. The last bus is more like a U.S. city or commuter bus, but without air conditioning.

I'll sleep some during the middle leg of my trip, but I like to be awake when we come into Zacatecas because that's another beautiful mountain city. I want to visit there someday with my friend Summer, who's lived there before (now that would be some fun!). Somewhere along the way we'll stop to eat. I'm hoping to get to stop at a little place outside Aguascalientes where we stopped before; the food there was fantastic and the prices reasonable. We had some of the best tacos al carbon and carnitas I've ever had. Yum.

The Mexican bus stations are more like our airport terminals than our U.S. bus stations. There are ticket counters for all the bus lines (and there are a bunch of them) and their different classes. The difference in fares between classes is not huge. I was really surprised at how efficient the Mexican bus system is. Apparently the Mexican government invested in its bus system whereas the U.S. put more money into airports. Each terminal along the way has a pay toilet, about 3 pesos, and they're much cleaner and nicer than I had expected.

It will be tough leaving the desert--yet again this year!--and I'll miss my friends and pets, but it's such a wonderful opportunity. I'll take lots of photos and share them in the coming weeks. Hasta pronto!

My Backyard

Yes, it's beautiful, isn't it? It's a wonder I get anything done at all, between gawking at the scenery and watching 'cat TV.'

See how the ocotillo's all leafed out? Pretty, huh? We live in a veritable forest of ocotillos. I think they look a lot like underwater plants. And once upon a time, this area was part of an ocean, so it's not as far-fetched a notion as it sounds. But besides being just a very cool looking plant, ocotillo is one of the most resourceful of desert flora. They absorb most of their moisture through their long spiny limbs, and lose those perky little green leaves when they go into drought mode which is pretty often. Hey, it's the desert.

I take lots of photos of ocotillos. Here are a few:

This is actually looking east. The sunset is behind me, but the clouds and mountains in the east can be spectacular as well. That's why we watch the sunsets backwards at the ghost town Porch.


Here's what a bloomin' ocotillo looks like. And now here's a closeup of the blooms:


Aren't they pretty? You're welcome.

Summer Thunderstorms

Summer is the reality check for living in the desert, where it’s not uncommon to reach 100-plus temperatures on a daily basis. On a nightly basis, too. If there’s a breeze the effect feels much like that of a convection oven, and we all get a teensy bit roasted. Hydration is the key to survival, but more on that later.

Sometimes I will hear an approaching storm before taking notice of the clouds. The deep rumble of thunder is one of the most beautiful sounds heard on a convection-oven afternoon. I can hear the leaves rustling in a tidal wave before the wind blasts in to our mountain valley. A friend clocked winds at 83 miles per hour during a recent storm, well above hurricane force. But that’s another story, too. This desert is chockfull of stories.

Behind the wind wave, you can see the rain coming closer. When the first quarter-size drops hit, the outside cats beat a retreat to their shelter, and the inside cats run to their window perch to watch until they get bored. There’s a tin roof on our sleeping porch and sometimes the sound of rain beating down drowns out the thunder. It’s that loud.


I go into “safety mode,” and make the rounds unplugging everything except the refrigerator. If there’s enough light, I can do inside chores, but if it’s dark it’s a great time to crawl into bed with a flashlight and a good book. Unless I’m hypnotized by the frequent lightning formations.

As soon as the storm passes I’ll walk southeast toward the Chisos Mountains, enjoying the wet creosote smell. I love the smell of rain, but the smell of a freshly wet creosote bush is even better. It’s a clean, crisp smell—no dust, no heat. The outside cats sometimes come with me on my walk. Usually I don’t get far because every gully and ravine is awash with runoff, exposing rocks and creating new tiny rivers of latte-colored water. The desert plants, especially resurrection plants, come alive. Everything that grows here squeezes every bit of usefulness from the moisture.

In the next day or two, the long arms of ocotillos, forever pointing skyward, will leaf out and create a massive fuzzy sea of green all through the valley. Nothing is as alive as this desert. And nothing is quite as beautiful as a summer thunderstorm.

Possum of the Desert

I woke up this morning early and went outside to see if Possum had come back. She was missing all day yesterday, but that's not unusual; she's been known to take hunting trips, but hadn't done this since birthing her kittens, who are now about 2 months old. I sat on the step and called her, my usual morning routine. Her two kittens, Paco and Fredo, knowing that my calling means "chowtime!" crawled out of their hiding place to look for food and then played with whatever was moving. Kittens are so much fun to watch. Our neighbor Anne calls it "cat TV." But after 20 minutes, still no Possum.

I walked around awhile to see if she was somewhere else, but I wasn't optimistic; she's a real people cat and a love muffin. If there's a chance she'll get her head scratched, she's there in a hurry. We call her our "greyhound" because she'll fairly fly to get to us. When I go walking and exploring, she's usually right with me, and almost always brings a live lizard back to her kids. She's a good little mama and a great huntress. For a teenage mother, she had an incredible maternal instinct.

I miss little Possum. I can't help it, but I am already grieving her loss. The desert can be a fabulous playground for the outside cats, but it's also a very dangerous warzone. A month ago we lost one of Possum's kittens, a frisky little black charmer named Oso, to a hawk. But Oso was very adventurous from the start, and that's probably what made him easy prey. His brothers, Paco and Fredo, are more timid--particularly Fredo who is scared of his own shadow. Possum was always on the lookout for trouble, and I felt like she was the safest of our outdoor kids.

It's now early afternoon and still no Possum, my girl with the beautiful eyes and lightning speed. Paco and Fredo and I will miss her.