Tlaquepaque

June 17, 2019November 15, 2019

Missing the US, Missing Mexico, Part 2

Things We Won’t Miss About Mexico

Despite our obviously huge affection for Mexico, there are some things we won’t miss, including:

· All the beggars and people missing limbs

· Having to carry small change to use public toilets · No seats on the public toilets

· No (sometimes) paper in public toilets

· Having to carry toilet paper everywhere, just in case

· Poor WiFi

· Random power outages

· Having people come up to us in public spaces or restaurants trying to sell us stuff

· Being stalked by salesmen or women in stores or galleries

· Occasionally paying the price for bad street food with four or five days of stomach discomfort

· Creepy crawlies, especially:

o The large frequency of spider sightings

o Massive bugs, some on the ground, some on the ceiling, some flying

o Cockroaches

o Scorpions

· Aggressive street dogs on our running route in Guanajuato

· Dodging dog poop on the ground while walking in any town

· The occasional stench of sewage while driving through Guanajuato

· Car-eating topes (speed bumps), often unmarked

· How hard it is to ride our bikes

Riding on the Via RecreActiva Sunday mornings in Guadalajara,
when closed roadways created our only opportunity
to get out on two wheels

I think that’s it! As we come up with more, we may update this blog. Thanks for reading!

Lisa, Beto and Gavin

June 15, 2019November 15, 2019

Missing the US, Missing Mexico, Part 1

Now that we’re back in the United States for the summer, we’re experiencing a bit of a culture shock! We’re realizing there were a lot of things we missed about the US when we were living south of the border, and we’re delighted to get to experience them again.

But even more surprising – or perhaps not – is how many
things we miss about Mexico.

Enjoy our lists!

Things We Missed About
the United States

These are some of the things we missed about the U.S.
when we were living in Mexico:

· English-language book stores (especially Barnes
& Noble)

· Noodles & Company

· Really good hamburgers

· Brick oven pizza

· Having white wine on restaurant menus

· Lilacs

· Yards and green grass

· Being able to put toilet paper in the toilet

· Being able to drink water from the faucet

· Being able to brush our teeth with water from the faucet

· Did we mention being able to drink water from the faucet?

· Cheezit crackers

· Toilet seats on public toilets

· Toilet paper always available in public toilets

· Being able to ride our road bikes

Things We Miss about Mexico

Here are a few things we miss about Mexico, now that
we’re back in the States:

· Low prices for everything

· Tlaquepaque, and the fact that there was always something free going on in Plaza Hidalgo

Ballot Foclorico in Plaza Hidalgo, Tlaquepaque

· The incredible views of Guanajuato below and the eye-popping, jagged mountains beyond from every window at Casa Estrella

Guanajuato views

· The fervent Roman Catholicism, including:

o Gorgeous churches, basilicas and cathedrals, even in the humblest villages

o Bloody Jesus statues and other curiosities inside churches

o Parades to accompany statues of Nuestra Senora (our mother Mary) from church to church

o Easter pageants, especially the bloody Jesuses carrying their crosses, accompanied by costumed throngs

The Virgin of Guadeloupe. She’s everywhere.

· The food! Especially:

o Nieve de garafa (fresh, hand-stirred ice cream made inside metal barrels, with
unconventional flavors such as tequila, elote and blackberry cheesecake)

o Michoacan ice cream

o Cuarto de Kilo (awesome Guadalajara hamburger chain with crispy, lemon-pepper-dusted French fries)

o Pollo Pepe (great chicken place, also a chain)

o Gus’s, our favorite the taco place in the basement of the mercado (market) in
Tlaquepaque

o Mercado fruits, veggies, breads, and fresh chicken and fish

o Valentina’s, our favorite pizza place in Tlaquepaque, with its rooftop garden

o Cat-shaped bolillos (small loaves of bread) from Pasteleria Don Pedro

o Amazing donuts everywhere in Guadalajara (who knew Mexico was such a big donut destination?)

o Mexican street food, especially elote (corn) and chayote (a unique Mexican squash) with queso y crema (cheese and a uniquely Mexican thick cream), then doused with salsa. The lonches (meat sandwiches), tacos and fresh-made potato chips were also excellent.

Elote in Tlaquepaque

o Pasteles (cake) and pan de elote (corn bread) from La Petit Plaisir, the French bakery across the street from the Guadalajara Language Center

o Chocomilk in any restaurant, which is a refreshingly frothy, blended confection

o Cremax cookies

o Raspadas (shave ice with fresh fruit and syrup)

Raspada Frambuesa (raspberry)

· The drinks! Especially:

o Horchatas and horchata fresas (a rice and cinnamon drink, sometimes accompanied by strawberries)

o Aguas frescas (fresh water with the essence of fruit, including mandarin oranges and jamaica, a therapeutic flower)

o Tequila and mescal

o Mexican craft beer

o Limonada (lemonade)

Horchata fresa and tacos in the Tonala mercado

· The sounds! Especially:

o Mariachi music

o Church bells

o Crowing roosters (who expected to miss this sound?)

o The song played by the Zeta Gas truck (“Zeta, Zeta, Zeta Gas!”)

o “Agu-AA!” yelled by the Pura water garafon (jug) delivery man

o The daily jangling bell of the trashmen

· Atlas FC Futbol (soccer)

· Lucha Libre (wrestiling)

· Adorable roof dogs

· Waiters never rushing us and always waiting for us to ask for the check

· The weather (warm days and cool nights, with the occasional dramatic downpour but not a speck of snow)

· Speaking Spanish all the time

Got this shot into the goal at an Atlas futbol game

Next up … Part 2: Things We Won’t Miss About Mexico

May 1, 2019

Leaving Tlaquepaque & Guadalajara

It’s time to leave Tlaquepaque and move on to our next
destination, Guanajuato.

We’ve been here nearly 4 months, a little longer than we
planned to stay in any one place, but wanted to have a familiar, reasonably accessible
place for Aryk to call home on their Spring Break from Keele University in
England.

With only a few days left, we’ve been going over our lists
of things we wanted to do here and we’ve whittled it down to just a few.

We’re Sad to Go

Both Lisa and I are feeling a little sad about moving on.
There is a lot to like about Tlaquepaque and Guadalajara. We love Tlaquepaque’s
colorful, artistic character. We love its relaxed, friendly vibe. We love living
within easy walking distance of the TLQ town square, Jardin Hidalgo, and all of
the energy, activities and food options there. Lisa has recently started making
Mexican friends.

We’ll miss the regular routines that drive the city — the water guy’s cries of “a-gUAAAAA!,” the Zeta Gas truck’s song, the ringing bell of the trash men, the double chiming of the church clocks in Jardin Hidalgo every 15 minutes around the clock, the early-morning cacophony of dogs and roosters, the music in the streets (whether a Mariachi band or a single hombre singing acapella), the busy mercados (marketplaces) and tianguis (pop-up markets) with countless people in your face trying to sell you their products.

We love all of the activities available in Guadalajara and
the fact that a subway from our neighborhood to Zapopan, on the other side of
Guadalajara, is scheduled to open sometimes in 2020. And with a new road under
construction, Guadalajara could soon be just two and a half hours from the Pacific
coast.

There are some things in Tlaquepaque that aren’t perfect. The running, bike
riding and our apartment are barely acceptable, but our home’s location has been perfect
for accessing the town square. We’re definitely going to miss being here. We’ve
even started discussing that this area may be a place we want to come back to
and spend even more time getting to know, perhaps living in Guadalajara proper.
But first, we need to experience more of Mexico.

In the meantime, we’re busy revisiting our favorite places
and restaurants for one last time.

Our loyalty to Guadalajara won us GDLt-shirts
at a promo event in Lake Chapala last weekend!

Today, it’s on to Guanajuato!

April 29, 2019

Obstacle Cycling: Riding Road Bikes in Guadalajara

We are avid road cyclists. We loved living in Colorado
because of the many glorious riding routes we could choose from, ranging from bike
trails into Denver to loops on mountain roads. We usually rode two or three times
a week, including a long ride on the weekend. Lisa rocks a Specialized carbon
fiber road bike with about 27 gears, and Bob has a classic green Bianchi.

So we optimistically brought our road bikes to Mexico on the
back of our car, hoping to continue our healthy habit and explore Mexico on two
wheels.

Trying to Find a Safe Place to Ride

I knew we were coming to a city of 5 million, people and despite
researching online, I couldn’t find any active road cycling clubs, or even
decent rides, on our favorite cycling route app, MapMyRide. Nonetheless, every night
during the drive to Mexico we dutifully took them off the car and took them
into the hotel rooms, and now the bikes live in the guest room of our house in Tlaquepaque.

But they don’t see the road much, and neither do we.

The roads in Tlaquepaque are rough, narrow, virtually
unsigned, and often chaotic. We’ve only driven the car four times in the four
months we’ve been here because of the challenge of the roads. There are
virtually no bike lanes in our section of Guadalajara. However, the city does
have what is called “Via RecreActiva” on Sundays and holidays, where they shut
down several major roads for recreational purposes for six hours. We’ve come to
accept that as the best we can do.

Thank God for the Via RecreActiva

So every Sunday morning, we pull on our cycling clothes,
pump up our tires, fill our water bottles, and hit the Via RecreActiva. To get
there, we have to ride almost two miles on a busy street with no bike lanes, Avenida
Rio Nilo. Bob
has almost been “doored” by cars several times, Lisa was almost run off the
road by an aggressive bus driver, and almost rear-ended a cab that pulled in
right in front of her t collect a passenger. But it is what it is. Rio
Nilo gets us to the Via RecreActiva, and then we get to ride for one day a
week.

If you can call it riding.

There are essentially two main problems with Via RecreActiva.
First, literally thousands of people take advantage of it –unleashed dogs
chasing each other back and forth, kids learning to ride their bikes, teenagers
doing tricks and popping wheelies, old ladies pulling carts crossing the street
at a mercado, boyfriends on bikes teaching their wobbly girlfriends how to skateboard,
and people just walking three or four 4
abreast. It is just plain crowded and you have to be extremely vigilant to
avoid running into someone. Lisa calls it “Obstacle Cycling.”

The other main problem is traffic on the cross streets. While
your road is closed for a few hours, other roads aren’t, so you have to stop at
multiple lights and wait for traffic. This
means that you only get to ride several blocks before you are forced to stop so
that cross traffic can go.

It is better than nothing, but it is not for the faint of heart!

Trying to Find Other Riders

We have tried to make contact with other cyclists in Expat
forums here, but didn’t get anything really solid from those groups. We have
also seen cyclists riding on the sides of highways outside of the city, usually
followed by a sag wagon. But at this point we are leaving Guadalajara soon, so
we don’t plan to pursue that option.

We hope to find better cycling in our next stop, Guanajuato.
Lisa has already found a few promising routes on MapMyRide!

Enjoy a video of the Via RecreActiva here!

April 22, 2019

Learning Spanish in Guadalajara, Part 2

There didn’t seem to be a lot of structure at Guadalajara Language Center, but somehow it
worked.!

We weren’t given books, the instructors had some notes and only occasionally
referred to a book they had. It seemed that there was some coordination between
the morning and afternoon instructors, but only in an overlap of general
concepts. It wasn’t a direct continuation of what had been previously taught. Each
week we could be in class with different people, so some weeks we were ahead of
the other people in the class and others we were slightly behind. You wouldn’t
expect it, but for some reason this organization worked. After a while, since
we were there so long, it seemed like we progressed and other students were
shoehorned into our classes.

Excellent instructors

I thought the instructors were very good. Classes combined
grammar with conversation, and content was flexible, sparked by what we did
last night, our weekend plans, the weather, Mexican traditions. Sometimes there
was a lesson on a specific subject, such as the simple past tense or personal
pronouns. But other days, the class might consist almost entirely of free-form
conversation, during which we learned a lot about the history and culture of
Mexico.

For most of our time at Guadalajara Language Center, we had
Monica for a teacher in the morning and Edith in the afternoon. Monica was a
raucous, loud, animated woman and an outstanding teacher. She was the kind of
woman you would want to hang out with at a party. Edith was tall and refined,
more reserved, but eventually revealed a wicked sense of humor.

Monica explaining pronouns

Edith watching a lively discussion

After four hours of Spanish every day, we were pretty tired.
Many other people who came down for two or three weeks spent additional time
studying, but we knew we had eight weeks of classes, so we didn’t feel like we
had to jam everything in. Besides, we wanted to also experience GDL and TLQ. In
fact, at the end of the first four weeks, we felt like we needed some time to
review everything we had learned so we took a week off. Lex, on the other hand, liked the school so
much that she continued for the full eight weeks, and then did two hours a day
for three more.

Lex in class

Lots of work left to
do

Our official studies have ended. We’ve been exposed to the
grammar basics and have certainly expanded our vocabulary. We can get by. We
can understand the basics when speaking with Mexicans who speak clearly and not
too fast. We can have conversations with Uber drivers and market people. But we
know we have a lot more work to do. The Department of State’s Foreign Service
Institute’s School of Language Studies says that to obtain a Professional Working Proficiency (Speaking-3/Reading-3 on a scale of 1 – 5) takes anywhere
between 600-750 hours of classroom study. We have spent 160 hours in class so
far. Granted, we did come in with some basics, but probably at best we’re 1/3
of the way to where we want to be. We know what areas we need to address, and
we have found other resources to continue our study independently.

Our plan is to continue studying on our own and supplement
that with several sessions of conversation each week with private Spanish
tutors. As they say here in Mexico, “poco a poco” — or little by little!

All in all, we enjoyed our time at the school and found it
worthwhile. At some point in time, we will probably take some time to go back
to school, perhaps doing the monthlong summer program at the University of Guanajuato,
but not this year!

April 21, 2019

Learning Spanish in Guadalajara, Part 1

Our first priority in starting our life in Mexico was to learn
the Spanish language. If we are going to spend the next few years living in
countries where Spanish is the primary language spoken, we felt we needed to
get a good grasp of the language early on.

And while we had lived in Puerto Rico for a time in the
mid-90s and were not Spanish beginners, we knew that we had a long way to go
before we would feel comfortable with the language. We want to obtain a level
of proficiency so that we can develop friendships and truly feel part of Mexico
(and other Spanish speaking countries we choose to live in or visit). Knowing the language is also important
logistically, to allow us to navigate daily tasks such as asking where a
bathroom is and understand the answer, being able to order food at a street “puesto”
or in a restaurant, asking for directions, buying groceries, paying for items
at stores, going to the doctor’s office, and more.

Before we left the United States, we both studied Spanish independently,
using books we still had around, a CD series and an app called Duolingo, and we
decided to immerse ourselves in learning the language as soon as we arrived in Mexico.
We chose to attend a language school in Guadalajara (GDL), Mexico’s second
largest city, in the central region of Mexico. Like most Americans, we had
never been to the region, spending our previous trips on Mexican coasts for
beach vacations. This would give us an opportunity to begin our learning
process while exploring a new area.

Guadalajara Language
Center

We chose the Guadalajara Language Center (GLC), which is actually located in Tlaquepaque, a town at the southern edge of
Guadalajara known for its pottery and ceramics. In fact, our apartment is less
than quarter-mile from the city boundary and we routinely run in GDL. The school
offered several language programs, including an advertised CLEP prep class,
Lexie could take and get college credit for. We signed up for the immersion
program, where we would take 4 hours a day of classes for 8 weeks, Monday
through Friday. We took written placement exams and were a bit surprised that
we all tested higher than expected.

Once we arrived in Tlaquepaque, Lisa and I were ready to go
first thing Monday morning, while Lex decided to take a week off to recover
from the long trip from the east coast of the United States before starting.
The location of our apartment was perfect, just a seven-minute walk from the
school. Daily classes ran from 9 -11 AM and then 11:30 AM-1:30 PM, after which
we walked about 3 minutes to the Tlaquepaque main square to choose from the
food trucks and local eateries.

The school, run by an easygoing Dutchman named Wouter Stout
who is married to a Mexican woman, is located in an unassuming two-story blue
building on a street corner just two blocks from the Centro Historico. It
contains five small classrooms, a little kitchen for brewing coffee each day
for grateful students, a large hallway with a couple of computers for students’
use, and a larger gathering room with a couple of couches and chairs, and
Wouter’s desk in a corner.

Wouter and his dog, Estrella

Every week a new group of students arrives from all over the
world, though they seem to be clustered on the California coastline and western
Canada, probably because of easy flights to Guadalajara. Some stay for only a
week or two, some for the winter, so new placements need to be made every week,
and the first thing Wouter does on Mondays is assign students to classes based
on their tests and hope for the best. If it’s not a fit, changes can be made
after the first session on Monday. In the mornings we had one instructor and in
the afternoon a different instructor. Wouter also provides resources for doing
other activities to help discover the area, including organizing a weekly hike
into the Barranca (canyon), and providing students with info about Lucha Libre,
salsa and bachata dance lessons, a walking tour of Tlaquepaque, and more.

Lex with the GLC resident dog, Estrella (Star)

Ay, Caramba!

Our first day was rough. We were placed together, which was
fortunate, but in too high a level for our comprehension skills, and Spanish
words just flew over our heads. Fortunately, during the break adjustments were
made, and we were placed in an appropriate level class and could get down to
the business of learning.

Interesting Classmates

During our eight weeks taking classes, we usually had just
one other person in our class, and at most a total of four. Since we often
shared stories from our lives in Spanish conversations, we got to know some of
those people fairly well. Everyone had an interesting story as to why they were
there. Aaron, from Napa Valley, was our classmate for several weeks. He worked
for a small vineyard and wanted to be able to communicate better with the
Mexican workers when he traveled. He also had financial incentive from his
company, so he immersed himself in and out of class, living in a homestay so he
could speak with his hosts in Spanish and enjoy home-cooked Mexican meals. Shireen,
from Boulder, CO, spent winters in an RV with her partner in a small beach
community called Guayabita on the west coast of Mexico. Jack, a gay librarian
from Vancouver, talked about the drag shows he attended at home and the Mexican
friends he partied with in Tlaquepaque. Eva was a retired English teacher who
spent several weeks in Mexico. David worked on a boat that took people on
National Geographic eco-tours from Alaska to South America. Francine, originally from Iran, was
a scientist-engineer studying Spanish between jobs. We met retirees and
backpackers, and a young Catholic couple with seven kids who were starting life
as missionaries in Ecuador.

Our buddy Eva

Find out more about our Spanish learning experience in Part
2!

April 18, 2019

Getting Our Mexican Temporary Resident (Residente Temporal) Visas – Part 2

Due to the gas crisis that was occurring in Mexico when we
arrived, we were delayed in the city of Leon for a week before finally arriving
in Guadalajara. Then we wanted to jump right in to language school, so it was
almost 3 weeks before we finally made it into the immigration office in
Guadalajara.

Step 3: Visit the
Immigration Office in Mexico

We found the Mexican Immigration page online, downloaded the
in-country immigration forms we needed, and filled them out. We dutifully made copies
of our passports and had more passport photos taken at a (rather pricey) photo
studio in Tlaquepaque. We then arrived at the Immigration office a few minutes
before it opened and showed the greeting staff the forms. They gave us a ticket
and showed us where to sit. We were quickly called up to a window and showed
the woman our paperwork (no English spoken there). She didn’t like my paperwork
since, as I had been warned at the Mexican Consulate in Denver, I needed to use
my full and complete name for everything. (Lisa, who had filled out the online forms,
had not been aware of this.) I was sent to a computer kiosk to refill it, not a
pleasant experience, as everything was in Spanish and a line was forming behind
me. Nonetheless, I was eventually successful. Lisa joined me in the line to
redo hers for another picky reason.

Back at the window, we were given another document that we
needed to immediately take to a bank, where we would pay approximately $200
each, obtain a receipt, and return to Immigration.

Step 4: Pay the Fee at
a Local Bank

We walked a few blocks to find a bank, took a number, and sat
in the waiting area. Mexico is basically a cash society, so people go to banks
with cash to pay their bills – water, electric, cable, phone, and, in our case,
Immigration payments. There’s almost always people waiting in the chairs. When
our number was called, we went to the window and showed the form we were given.
The Immigration woman told us that the receipt we got from the bank had to have
our names EXACTLY as they were on our passports. The bank’s system wouldn’t
allow the hyphen in Lisa’s last name (Hamm-Greenawalt), so she is Lisa Hamm
Greenawalt in Mexico.

Step 5: Back to
Immigration

Returning to the Immigration office, we waited until the
woman who had previously helped us was available, and gave her our receipt. She
took that, along with our copies and the Immigration permit we got at the
border, and told us that we would get an emailed approval in one or two weeks.

Lisa and Lexie got their emails in a week. We emailed it to
Lisa’s Mexican friend in Evergreen, Gabriela, to confirm that the dense
legalistic language in Spanish said we were approved. She said yes!

But mine didn’t arrive until a week later, causing a bit of anxiety.
We were each given an official Mexican identification number called a NUT, for
Numero Unico de Tramite.

But we weren’t finished.

Step 6: Photos and
Fingerprints

We now had to go back to the Immigration office again to get
our fingerprints taken and give them photos, since they deemed that photos we
had submitted earlier in the process were slightly too big. So we got a new set
of photos taken (in the designated “infantil” size), and scheduled to take
another morning off from language school to finish the process.

We again arrived at Immigration right before it opened, got
our tickets and were shown to a different set of seats. Lisa went to one window
and Lexie and I ended up going to another. They accepted Lisa’s photos and took
her fingerprints, giving her one small napkin to get the purple ink off her
fingertips. They also accepted Lexie’s photos, but not mine. They said the
white background, which looked pale gray, was too dark and I needed to get new
photos again.

First we went to the bathrooms to try to scrub the
fingerprint ink off our fingers! In the Men’s Room, a man sprayed my hands with
some solution and gave me paper towels, so I was fairly successful. Lisa and
Lexie didn’t get the same treatment in the Women’s Room so they had to work
harder, and Lexie’s fingerprints were purple for a day or two.

Then we went in search of a nearby place to get photos taken,
found one a couple blocks away, and went back to the Immigration office with
the new pictures. Success!

Then they told us to
come back in a week for our Temporary Resident (Green) cards.

Step 7: Temporary
residents!

A week later we went back to the Immigration office a third
time. Once again, very efficiently, we got our numbers, got called to the final
issue and signed for our Green Cards.

Finally, six months after the first visit to the Denver
Consulate and 6 weeks after we crossed the border, we held our Mexican Green
Cards in our hot little hands! We were officially Temporary Residents of
Mexico.

Celebrating the success of the process and our new status as temporary Mexican residents!

March 22, 2019

Daily Life in Tlaquepaque

I know you think our life is so glamorous now because we live in Mexico, but actually, it’s just life, only with different people, language, transportation and especially food.

This is a Day in the Life in Tlaquepaque:

6: 45 AM: (Or earlier, if the cats are hungry.) Bob and Lisa get up. Shower. Make coffee. Eat breakfast. Do homework. Pack a snack (Lisa – tangerine, Bob – banana).

7:45 AM: Lexie gets up, showers, eats, and packs Goldfish or crackers.

8:45 AM: Walk 7 blocks to Guadalajara Language Center.

9-11 AM: Morning Spanish Class with Monica.

11-11:30 AM – Break. Eat snack. Bob goes walking and exploring; Lisa often talks with Aryk or chats with other students.

11:30 AM-1:30 PM – Afternoon class with Edith.

School’s Out!

1:30-2:30 PM – School’s out! Lunchtime. The three of us walk two blocks to Jardin Hidalgo, the plaza in the center of Tlaquepaque, to search for a lunch that is late for us but early for Mexicans, who eat lunch from 2-5 PM. We have favorite puestos, or food stands – the Elote Truck for Lisa and Lexie, where Lexie gets yellow corn on a cob on a stick with butter (25 pesos, $1.25) , and Lisa gets an elote/chayote (corn and a delicious type of squash) combo with cream, manchego cheese and salsa (20 pesos, $1). Bob goes off to get a lonche, a plain meat sandwich on extraordinarily delicious bread. Lisa and Bob enjoy raspadas, which are fruit in syrup with crushed ice, and we find a shady park bench to sit and enjoy our treats.

Pineapple Raspadas

Elote truck at night

Elote/Chayote with crema and queso

There’s also a taco place we love underneath the big enclosed marketplace, where Lexie enjoys tacos blanditos (plain beef taco made with two flour tortillas) and Lisa orders molitas (spicy beef abd melted cheese on a fried corn tortilla, with salsa, lime, and onions).

Molitas

Tacos blanditos

Or we go to Quarto Kilo, a delicious hamburger chain with freshly BBQed burgers and spicy fries.

After Lunch

3:30-Bedtime: After lunch, we might peruse art galleries, do work in a coffee shop, go for a hike with the school director, go to the gym for a workout, write a blog, practice our instruments, go for a run, take a walking tour of Tlaquepaque, clean the apartment, take cats to the vet, drop off or pick up laundry from the local laundromat, go to the Mercado to buy fresh meat, seafood, bread and produce, stop into a bakery for breakfast treats, visit a mini-supermarket for sundries, walk to Wal-Mart or Soriana for groceries, or just head home and watch movies.

Getting claws trimmed

Salsa classes

GDL International Film Festival

Quiet Weekdays

School takes a lot out of us, so our weekdays are pretty quiet. In the evening we’ll eat out once or twice a week, or just pick up a pizza and bring it home. We might take a Salsa dance class (50 pesos), go into Guadalajara ($88 pesos on Uber) to walk around the Centro Historico or see a movie at the Cinemex, or hang out at home playing Pinochle or watching a couple of episodes of Gravity Falls on Netflix.

Gravity Falls

Transportation

Our truck sits idle in the driveway, as we walk everywhere in town and otherwise take Uber, which is dirt cheap in Mexico. Public buses are also close, so we don’t feel the need to drive.

Culture

We have had a chance to enjoy a variety of culture: Hospicio Cabanas (museum), Lucha Libre (wrestling), bullfighting, Atlas futbol, the Guadalajara International Film Festival, the Jalisco Symphony Orchestra, and lots of free mariachi music and Ballet Folclorico. We enjoyed the huge Guadalajara birthday celebration and the Herradura Tequila Train.

Getting culture in the city!

Cycling Sundays

On Sundays, Lisa and Bob hop on our road bikes and we ride 10-15 miles on the Via RecreActiva, which is basically major roads in Tlaquepaque and Guadalajara that are closed to traffic from 8 AM-2 PM so people can exercise. I call it obstacle cycling because of all the dogs, kids on big wheels, skateboarders and clueless novices we have to dodge around. Still, for hard-core cyclists like Bob and Lisa, it’s better than nothing.

Finding an inclusive church with English services within a reasonable distance has proved impossible, so my Sunday sermons are found online at Lisa’s pastor brother Peter Hamm’s YouTube page.

We’re planning to do a lot more exploring starting next week, when school is done, though Lexie will be continuing to study during the second session, and Bob and Lisa plan to keep studying every day. But otherwise, there are galleries to visit and sights to see!

February 16, 2019

Settling into Tlaquepaque

Sorry for the long absence from blogging. We have been in Tlaquepaque for a month, and it’s about time we shared a little bit about our life here! We have been busy attending Guadalajara Language Center five days a week to learn Spanish, plus getting to know this magical village and neighboring Guadalajara and getting into the rhythm of life here.

Let’s start by talking about where we are living!

The cats were extremely relieved when we pulled into the driveway of our orange concrete house in Tlaquepaque, delayed a week and a half by border issues and then the gas shortage, and they were finally able to leave their traveling cages and settle in. There was no hiding upon arrival this time; somehow they knew they were finally home.

Tlaquepaque (pronounced “tlah-kay-PAH-kay”) is a bustling, working-class village on the edge of Guadalajara, the second-largest city in Mexico. It has a population of 600,000 people is known for its ceramics and its artisans. The center is a lovely pedestrian area of shops, restaurants, food vendors, and galleries branching out from a central square, Plaza de Hidalgo. Branching out from the center, homes get smaller and smaller, and roads and sidewalks are narrow and cracked. Most of our neighbors are lower-middle class Mexicans, making their living doing laundry, vending water door to door, operating tiny corner stores, painting sacred statues, fabricating wood-and-leather chairs, or opening pop-up restaurants to sell pozole or tacos dorado.

The Mexican people are friendly and quick to smile. Their culture prides itself on always finding the bright side, despite adversity. Their homes are small but their smiles are big.

Our Mexican Home

Our house on Calle Jalisco is very simple, a two-story orange concrete house in a “coto” (small gated community) with a carport and a small patch of grass out front. We rented it directly from the school, two floors with four bedrooms a half mile the school and downtown Tlaquepaque, for $840 a month. It’s not fancy or luxurious; it’s very basic, and quite Mexican. It didn’t even have an oven, since most Mexicans just the stovetop, so our landlord Wouter allowed us to purchase a toaster oven so we could bake. It has patchy Wifi and a large flat-screen TV with Netflix. It needs a paint job badly, but it’s home.

The Upstairs

The master bedroom has a surprisingly comfortable king-sized bed and a little utility patio that lets light in — plus the sounds of roosters crowing, dogs barking and the nearby cathedral bells chiming every 15 minutes all night. (And for some reason it tolls 21 times each time.) All the noise kept me awake at first, but eventually I stopped hearing it, which reminded me of the 17th floor apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where Bob and I lived in the mid-1990s — at first we could hear the sounds of car horns and people yelling for a mile around, but eventually we didn’t notice them at all.

I was awakened one night by the sound of chaos in a nearby henhouse. I’m not sure if it was an animal thief or a human, since I heard no sound from the perpetrator. But the sound of raucous, terrified squawks that diminished one by one until he last one croaked its final appeal haunted me for days.

Lexie claimed a sunny bedroom with a queen-sized bed, and there’s a third room upstairs with two single beds that we use to store our home gym equipment. (We call it Aryk’s Room because that’s where they will live when they come home for spring break.) The second-floor landing is a large room of its own, with a zippered-fabric closet (two of the upstairs bedrooms have no closets), a loveseat and a little computer table. It’s a great space for me to do yoga (I get a new yoga session from Container Collective Yoga in my inbox every Monday, so I stay connected to Colorado whenever I practice.)

The Downstairs

Downstairs there is a fourth bedroom with a double bed, which we use as a music room and for bike storage. (We also call it Mal’s Room because it’s where Aryk’s partner Mal will stay when it comes to visit over Spring Break.) The white-tiled main living area has an open floor plan, with a weathered couch, a loveseat and a large chair providing plenty of living room seating. The kitchen is efficient and pretty, though we have yet to figure out how to get hot water out of the spigot, and we take our lives into our hands every time we light the over-enthusiastic gas range. There are three seats at the counter and a little table with four chairs.

All in all, though, it’s a cheap, comfortable base from which to embark on our first adventures in Mexico! It’s more basic that we are used to, but everyone else at the language school is staying in a hostel or with a Mexican family, and we like having our own place. It was large enough to host a Super Bowl Party! We will remain happily ensconced here through the end of April, though we do plan a beach vacation during Aryk’s break.

February 11, 2019

We Made it to Tlaquepaque!

We finally made it to Tlaquepaque!

Our 6-day trip from Pennsylvania to this village just south of Guadalajara where we planned to spend our first four months in Mexico ended up taking 14 days, but we finally arrived on Jen. 19 – exactly four months after we left Colorado.

On the Friday of our week in Leon, Lisa and I decided to bite the bullet and try to get gas so we could continue on to Tlaquepaque. (If you recall, we were only in Leon because we couldn’t get enough gas to get to our final destination, Tlaquepaque.) We were determined to wait all day if necessary. A few days earlier, we had been told that the Leon government website listed stations that would be receiving gasoline that night or the following morning. We looked at it and saw only 20 stations (for a city of 1.5M people) getting gas. Our observations supported this, as we would see lines at only 1 of 10 or 12 gas stations we passed as we Ubered around town. And the lines were long.

And even though we kept hearing the situation was going to get better, it didn’t. So we enjoyed Leon and ignored the gas situation for a few days. Why stress over it?

But on Friday, Lisa read in the Mexico News Daily that a pipeline was opening to Leon on Saturday, and the number of stations pumping was supposed to increase to 35%. Lisa wanted to get to Tlaquepaque, so we decided to give it a shot.

The Early Bird Gets the Gas

So we got up before 6, gathered books, tables, drinks and snacks to entertain us during an anticipated long wait. and drove to the nearest gas station. There wasn’t a line, but that was because they weren’t pumping. We continued down the road and saw a line several blocks long for another station. As we drove by, we saw that they were pumping gas. We tried to make a u-turn to get to that station on a side road, but we were unsuccessful, being forced to take a long way onto a highway and wasting 10 precious miles worth of gas in the process.

When we doubled back we spotted another gas station that was also pumping, with a shorter line, so we got in line. Lisa and I discussed that we really needed at least 600 pesos worth of gas to get to Tlaquepaque, but stations were limiting sales to 500 pesos per car. We agreed that 700 pesos would provide a bit of a margin of error if we got lost. Finally, we discussed what we needed to say to the attendant, in Spanish, to attempt to get that 700 pesos worth of gas.

The early morning line for gas

The line moved quickly and we were soon at the pump. Lisa hopped out and told him that we were trying to get to Tlaquepaque, where our house was, and 500 pesos wouldn’t be enough to make it. Could he help? He told us that all he was allowed to give us was 500 pesos. But nonetheless, he pumped 600 pesos, looking furtively in both directions to make sure no one noticed. Then, in an act of compassion, he reset the pump and pumped us full with another 550 pesos of gas! We were ecstatic! And, of course, we tipped him generously.

Made it to the pump in just 15 minutes

Success — a full tank!

A Full Tank, But Locked Out

In our wildest dreams, we had never even considered that this would be the outcome. We had our Leon Airbnb rented for another day, but on the short drive home, we decided that we would pack and head to Tlaquepaque as soon as we could get packed up. later that day. We did have one small glitch: We only hade one set of keys for the apartment, which were inside with Lexie, and she was sound asleep. It could be hours before she rose. Her phone ringer was off so we could not reach her. outside the complex gate for half an hour or so, Lisa got the idea to contact the woman who rented to us, and our host quickly brought us a second set of keys that allowed us to get in, get Lexie up and start packing. Instead of waiting in a gas line, we ended up waiting an hour and a half to get back into our apartment!

Finally On The Road

We were on the road for our 2½ trip by 11 AM. About 1½ hours into our trip, closer to Guadalajara, I thought that it might be a good idea to fill up again. However, from that point on, almost all gas stations didn’t have gas and the one or two open ones we saw had huge lines. So when we arrived at our rented house in Tlaquepaque, we parked the truck with 5/8 of a tank and decided to use walking, public transportation or Uber until the situation is stabilized here.

But, we’re here and getting settled in. We’ve essentially been traveling for four months since we left Colorado, so it feels so good to be settled for a while!

Our new home!