~ Friday, August 29, 2003

 Here are some quick numbers about our life lately:

• 378 - miles that Annette has run so far this year


• 3 - rooms in our house we had painted this month


• 30 - dollars per room that it cost to paint them
  
• 2 - schools of higher educacion in Mexico which are now using our Raices training curriculum as the basis for their youth work courses (to the best of our knowledge, these are the first schools in the country to offer youth ministry courses)


• 2000+ - nuts that have fallen off the walnut tree in our backyard


• 3 - dogs stolen from us since we've been in mexico


• 1 - dogs we've adopted from the street in the last month or so


• 3029 - miles we drove in July during the 3 Raices conferences


• 6 - tacos that Tim ate last night at a friends taco place

~ posted by tim at 8/29/2003 02:34:03 PM

~ Tuesday, August 26, 2003

 Maria's brother is in the hospital because his appendix had "exploded".
He's been there two week now and they still haven't sowed him up. My sister prepares his breakfast and I do his 3 pm meal...we just don't have time to make him dinner too. And since he's our brother, we won't bathe him...that's a job for his woman. And it wasn't until this week that we convinced her to come help." Apparently nurses don't normally bathe patients nor does the hospital provide food.

She went on to tell us a bit about her brother and his woman: "She's like him," Maria said, tapping the side of her head, "not quite right." Annette and I look at each other. How do people like that find each other? Maria continued, "They live together in an old country farmhouse that was my mother's. None of us like her much."

"Why is that?" we ask.

"Well, for one thing, when she get's mad at my brother she stones him...with real rocks...plus she is always bruised and scraped from falling down when drunk."

Annette asked, "So wasn't she with him at the hospital from the beginning?"

"She said it was because she didn't want to leave her farm animals, but it's also that she's afraid of cars...can't stand them."

"So how did you get her to come help out at the hospital?"

We didn't give her much of a choice. We just went out and pretty much told her she had to come with us. She was drunk again and had scrapes on her face, but we made her comewith us." I imagine these two soft spoken sisters hoisting a drunk, slightly off, farm woman up into the bus, dropping her off a the hospital and telling her "stay and bathe him!" Maria said she was worried this woman might get lost - since she's not familiar with the city - but Maria's sister said, "Don't worry, she's so scared of cars she'll probably never leave the hospital."

Two side notes: Maria's mother died of appendicitis about 9 months ago after multiple doctors said she just had a stomach ache; the people that stay in the hospital to care for sick family members sleep on the floor.

As you can see... it's a different world.

~ posted by tim at 8/26/2003 06:32:48 PM

~ Tuesday, August 19, 2003

 I came across this short article about getting really lost: Far From Home Without a Clue

This article reminded me of what happened last month when I was reading magazines in a department store in Mexico City... a well dressed, 50-something American woman entered and began talking rather loudly in English to her companion, Mark. You couldn't help but overhear her. She was sarcastic and bitter toward him... he'd apparently walked in on her in a compromising intimate situation and was apparently a drug user.

I had my back to the woman as I paged through Newsweek, but I saw the Mexican businessmen and women around me glancing in the woman's direction obviously irritated. Someone needed to do something, but no one was. I get embarrassed when Americans talk loudly or act rudely in Mexico... I just want to get away from such people or shut them up since they're just intensifying people's already negative stereotypes of Americans as loud, pushy or attention seeking. And even though I didn't want to be associated with this "bad apple" American, I decided to act. Putting my magazine back and turning toward the woman, I realized something was wrong... there was no companion... no Mark. She was talking to herself.

Oops... now I felt sorry for her and a bit ashamed for my egotistical indignation. I walked over and - in English - suggested that she step outside so that we could talk. She looked at me haughtily, told me she knew what the rest of the "drug cartel" and I were up to, tossed her black Prada purse over her shoulder and walked out, cursing as she went.

~ posted by tim at 8/19/2003 08:39:46 AM

~ Thursday, August 14, 2003

 Faux Pas... an awkward social blunder in which you find (or put) yourself: saying "what a cute little girl" when it's a boy, tripping or falling in an elegant setting, smiling broadly with the large bit of salad stuck in your front teeth, pushing the door then realizing it says "PULL" in big letters, asking when she's due when she's not pregnant, etc.

Living in a different culture gives you the opportunity to explore new and ever more awkward blunders... ones you'd never even imagined like asking the lady behind the counter at the corner store if she's has testicles when you meant "eggs"; like ordering the sexual organ icecream sundae when you meant "Caramel sundae"; like saying you are so pregnant when you mean "so embarrassed"; like being told the dinner starts at 7:00 pm - arriving at 7:00 pm - and being greeted at the door by the hostess still in curlers who you've horribly embarrassed because everyone knows that it really begins around 8:30 or 9:00 pm.

A sunday hike in the mountains afforded us a new and agrarian way to "faux pas". We took our dog with us so he could get a little exercise and as we neared the top of a hill we came upon a flock of sheep and their adolescent shepherd. It was an idllic pastoral scene - sheep grazing, shepherd with cowboy hat leaning on his staff, his 3 dogs resting at his feet - then our golden retriever's hunting and herding genes were reminded of their reason for existence and he took off. The sheep fled, scattering in all directions. Our dog was jubilant, bounding after the wooley critter closest to his nose. The sheperd's reaction was indecipherable, he just looked at us. Annette was mortified, "Oh no... poor things... poor shepherd... Tim do something, get the dog!". I just stood there like an idiot, caught between feelings of awe at our dog's speed and fearlessness in the face of 80 sheep larger than him and those of embarrasment and a desire to resolve the chaos which we were ultimately responsable for.

What seemed like an hour later (Annette assures me it was more like 30 seconds) our dog got chased off by the 3 sheep herding dogs and returned to us, tired but still intoxicated by the heady mix of sheep fear and canine adrenaline. The shepherd finally stopped staring at us and, heading in the general direction of his heard, began the process of reorganization. The sheep, showing either their keen interest in grass or an incredibly short memory, went back to munching and fertilizing. We continued our hike, holding our dog closely by the collar and wondering if the shepherd had noticed that we are gringos.

~ posted by tim at 8/14/2003 06:07:24 PM

~ Thursday, August 07, 2003

 "We keep working, but we just don't have the money we used to," said Estanislao Cirangua, 74, a furniture maker who earns $150 to $200 a month. {click bold blue text to read article]

As a follow-up to our blurb below on the cost of living here, take a look at this excellent Washington Post piece on wages, economic realities and survival in Mexico.

~ posted by tim at 8/7/2003 09:27:36 AM

 It is still the "Wild West" south of the border (washingtonpost.com)
Annette and I found this article to be a fascinating, albeit horrific, story of rural justice and mercy a la mexicana. We have visited marginalized rural communities like this and heard stories of protestant churches being bulldozed, family land being stolen at gun point and other atrocities.

Not all of Mexico is like this - far from it. We really love our life in Mexico. But as Annette says "Our host country is both first world and third world. It all depends on how much money you have." The city we live in has all the conveniences of any modern city of the world. And you can enjoy those conveniences if you have the mean$.

Just to give you an idea of what that cost is, according to an official international index, the cost of living in Mexico City over the last year has been between 12% and 32% higher than the average cost of living in the U.S. Gasoline here is over $3/gallon nationally, eggs are about $1.25 per dozen, a movie rental is $3.50 cents, a gallon of milk is $3.20, a standard pair of tennis shoes cost between $65 and $175, and any new car or computer is between 28% and 33% more expensive than in the United States. We just had a colleagues visiting us from Barcelona, Spain and he'd hoped to buy some clothing here since Barcelona is rather expensive. He left empty handed and astounded at how expensive everything is here.

But then there's manual labor, which is not a highly valued commodity. Yesterday we had a painter come to our house. We've been living here five and a half years and the walls were getting grungy looking. Salvador, the painter, was recommended, showed up on time, finished the job in 9 hours and charged me $30 dollars. According to some, "me vio con cara de gringo" which roughly translated means "he saw my gringo face and raised the price". But if I think it's a good deal and Salvador thinks its a good deal... it seems like a classic win-win situation to me :-)

~ posted by tim at 8/7/2003 09:09:53 AM

~ Tuesday, August 05, 2003

 Flash mobs spread to Europe: "...about 40 people in the middle of a busy street took out their mobile phones and shouted, 'yes, yes!' and then applauded," according to The New York Times.

If all of the sudden scores of people converge upon your roof chirping and squawking like birds, it may just be a "Flash Mob" or as the originator of the fad calls them "inexplicable mobs". The inexplicable nature and lack of apparent agenda seems to widen the appeal of flash mobs says this CNN article.

Take a read :-) - it's a cheerful little article.

~ posted by tim at 8/5/2003 10:01:30 AM

~ Saturday, August 02, 2003

 Mexico City Takes Back People's Park (washingtonpost.com)
the above article (click on link) is fantastic... really gives you a feel for Mexican politics, plus it's particularly funny to Annette and me because the "billionaire" mentioned in the 6th paragraph has twice delivered packages to us from the U.S.

How'd that happen? you ask... well, Annette's mother sent some little treats down to us via a church friend who had business dealings with the Saba family (they had a plant in our town). The friend met with the billionaire who was kind enough to hand deliver the package of replacement blender parts, a bank card, some clothes, and candy. A Billionaire courier :-)

~ posted by tim at 8/2/2003 10:34:28 PM

 Photos :: Raices '03 youth worker training
Click on the link above to see a few captioned photos showing 'n telling what we've been doing for the last 2½ weeks.
Since there are around 30 photos, it may take a while to load - hopefully you'll think it's worth the wait. :-)

~ posted by tim at 8/2/2003 05:06:44 PM

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