My Morelia Life

Price of gaspacho up two pesos and so worth it

2010-08-31T09:32:00.000-07:00

Key to great gaspacho is the Valentino sauce,
chili powder, salt, cheese, and orange juice.

After a summer in New England, Geoff, Alice and I are back in Morelia for another school year.

Geoff is happier teaching now that he has a semester under his belt. Alice, who basically kicked and screamed about coming back, went to school on day one a crab and came home that afternoon a happy, polite young lady. I don't know what they do over there at Collegio Salesiano, but they have my gratitude.

I, after not painting all summer, am wrapping up a small child's portrait and have a large painting of cantaloupes going on the easel. But my real job this week is buying Alice's school books and signing her up for swim lessons. Some job, you scoff, but that's because you don't understand. It might be a full time occupation for a week.

Yesterday I walked five miles, stood in two endless lines and not only didn't get Alice signed up for swimming, only came away with 2 out of the 10 books required. Key to not getting irritated about this was my stop for a gaspacho -- a fruit salad made with chili powder, salsa, salt, and cheese -- a treat that is famous in Morelia and only here, as far as I know. There must be hundreds of gaspacho stands throughout the city and making a particularly good one can earn you your own endless line.

Here's a painting I did a few years back of one of the many
gaspacho stands in the bosque. (Acrylic on paper.)

Mango, pineapple, watermelon, jicama: these are the common fruits in a gaspacho. Cucumber and onion are optional. The fruit is layered with cheese, salsa, chili powder, and salt. Once it's piled high, half an orange is juiced over it. A stiff paper collar is put around the top and the whole thing is handed over in an open plastic bag. When the fruit is gone, the spicey fruit juice that's left is unbelievable.
Cost: 22 pesos ($1.69), up from 20 pesos in June.

Butterflies on the March

2010-04-15T06:01:00.000-07:00

March 21st, the first day of Spring, coincides with Benito Juarez's birthday. Juarez was president of Mexico in the 1850-60's, the first native Indian president, and a Mexican hero. His birthday is a national holiday. Like in the US, the big national holidays are now all celebrated on Mondays to give students and workers the benefit of three day weekends. But the real first day of Spring is always the day of the Spring parade here in Morelia.

This year the parade fell on a Friday and I MISSED IT because I was sick and slept in and wasn't thinking about the calendar! So I was depressed the whole rest of the day because the Spring parade is one of my all time favorite events. All the nursery school kids and kindergarteners dress like butterflies, bees, and furry animals and march the mile from our end of town to the front of the main cathedral. In a city of a million, that's a lot of cute costumes. When I finally got up to go to the pharmacy I met one post-parade straggler who happily posed for a photo. Fortunately I have an archive of photos to share from other years.

If I was the governor of Morelia, I would make it a crime for mothers and teachers to get in the way once the parade has begun. It's so hard to take good photos with all the adult intervention. I like my bumble bees and butterflies unobstructed!

Mexico City for Semana Santa

2010-04-07T16:17:00.000-07:00

Semana Santa, the week leading up to Easter, is a national holiday in Mexico and many businesses and all schools are closed the entire week. This means the air in Mexico City is cleaner than usual and traffic is way down. Wealthy residents head for the beaches and the city provides a lot of free entrances and activities for the residents who stay. It's a great time to visit!

I knew right away it was going to be a great time because we traveled there on one of the new two decker buses and got the front seats on the upper level. What a view! The scenery between Morelia and MC is mostly farmland, rolling hills and with a wide array of crops and little plowed fields. There were even some snow covered mountains in the distance!

The first day we went to the Delores Olmedo museum which is a large estate in the southern section of the city. Delores O has one of the hugest Diego Rivera collections and as a painter I was very interested to see some of the large sketches he used to work out some of his murals. He was a master at breaking his subjects down into simple shapes. I was just sorry that the Frieda Kahlo collection had been sent to Europe for the year. But there was plenty of other interesting displays not to mention the grounds and the huge family of Mexican hairless (Xolo) dogs (a species popular with the Aztecs) in one of the gardens.

Also in the southern part of the city we visited Xochimilco and rented one of the zillion shallow boats and spent a couple of hours enjoying the garden centers along the canals. Other boats had mariachi bands aboard, and some had little grills. From one boat, Alice bought a roasted corn on the cob slathered with thick cream and sprinkled with cheese and chili powder.

The next day we went to Ciudad de Los Niños an indoor amusement park set up like a city in child scale. Kids spend their five hours working at whatever industries interest them. Each "work" session lasts around 20 minutes. Most of the exhibits have corporate sponsors. Kids can be firemen, dentists, brick layers, DJ's, newspaper employees, DHL delivery men, electrical repairmen, archeologists, hair dressers, McDonald's employees, perfume makers, Walmart clerks, veterinarians, performers, house painters, etc. etc. etc. Five hours isn't nearly enough time. Unless you're the parents.

There were several more art museums (Museo San Carlos, the MoMA in Chapultapec being my two favorites), the economics museum (more interesting than it may sound, even Alice will tell you), free bicycle rental for 3 hours in Chapultapec park AND next to the free bike rental they were giving away samples of Oreo cookies with little glasses of milk! Does life get any better?

We rode the subway everywhere. It was still pretty crowded even with most of the population on vacation. But it's a cheap and easy way to get around (about 25 cents a ticket). And at the end of every day we were exhausted. Since we don't have a TV in Morelia we spent evenings watching Law and Order and House reruns in ENGLISH! And we'd never seen any of them before!

I filled my purse with drugs in Mexico

2010-03-29T13:16:00.000-07:00

I've been sick for a couple of weeks. ... coughing all day long, and all night too. My head never unstuffed, lying down frequently. At 3:30 on a Thursday afternoon I decided I needed to see a doctor and so I got on a bus and rode for 15 minutes to the big 2 story modern IMSS clinic. I'd never been there before, but since I'm now enrolled in the public healthcare system by virtue of my husband teaching part-time at a Mexican university, I thought it was time to check it out. All I knew before showing up was we'd been assigned to consultory #10.

The IMMS (Institututo Mexicano de Seguro Social) building on Camelinas in Morelia is a hospital sized, two story modern building. Inside, both floors have one huge central hallway. Examining rooms run along either wall. In front of each room is a counter manned by a receptionist. The rooms are numbered and there are chairs in 3 rows in front of each room with seating for about 20. At #10 consultorio all the seats were full and the receptionist told me that to get an appt. that afternoon I should have shown up between 1 and 1:30. I'm sorry, I said, can I get an appointment for tomorrow? That wasn't necessary, I just needed to go to a different receptionist upstairs and get a special exception appointment and wait to see one of the two overflow doctors. I found the proper desk on the second floor, made my pitch, was added to a roster and reported back to receptionist #10. She showed me the area where I'd be waiting with about 30 other people who were also special exceptions (many of the 30 were together... a parent and kid, an adult with an elder, etc.) Then she took me to a room and left me with a nurse sitting behind a metal desk. I sat down in front of her while she examined my credential which is really a little booklet with my photo and address. She flipped through the pages. Have you had a tetanus shot lately? I'm up to date on that. Pap-smear, breast exam? It's been a couple of years. Would you like to have them today while you wait for your other appointment? Okay.... Let's also check your blood sugar -- here's a little jab in your finger. Oh, good result.

After I had been examined and had redressed, she handed me a complimentary toothbrush and some condoms and wrote my vital statistics in my booklet and also the date to come back for my pap smear results.

I went to sit in the overflow waiting area and read my book. I had no delusions that I'd be seen soon. Some people seemed to have very long consults! But after an hour and a half during which time I read and conversed with the young man next to me in English about his low sperm count, the receptionist from consultory #10 came to find me. All #10 patients had been seen for the day so I could see that doctor. I explained my symptoms and showed the doctor the medications I'd been taking that hadn't been working to stop the cough or clear my head. He examined me and concured with my own opinion that I had a nasty allergy, probably spring related. He prescribed a cough syrup, an antibiotic because my passages were inflamed and were becoming infected, loratadine, plus one other thing I've never heard of. He told me not to go barefoot, not to drink cold beverages, and to avoid chills and sent me on my way.

The IMSS pharmacy is in the same building and I gave my presciptions to the pharmacist. In about a minute he piled 10 little boxes and bottles (2 containers for each of the meds plus 3 bottles of loratadine tablets) on the counter and disappeared. I stood there waiting for him to come back until Mr. Low Sperm Count noticed me and came to explain that the medications were mine and I should take them from the counter. I couldn't really believe that. But he showed me some of the boxes of pills in his pants pockets. So I slid all the medications into my purse on top of the toothbrush and the condoms and walked out feeling a little like a kid on Halloween.

It's been four days now since my IMSS visit and I'm feeling less congested and sleeping better. But I'm still not over the shock of the public healthcare experience. I'm never going to see a bill. As one of those Americans who, with my husband who has a chronic health condition, has written monthly checks of $800 for health insurance that had a co-payment so high that in recent years my check-ups were out-of-pocket expenses as were any prescriptions, who has been denied reimbursement for a major medical emergency, whose every thought of illness was a thought of financial crisis.... to suddenly find myself having my preventative care needs ascertained and served and to be given free medications ... and to think it's because my husband is teaching Part-Time -- it's pretty hard to fathom.

Not that things were bad here before we joined the public health system. It's always been reasonable and easy to see a doctor. Even to see a specialist, you don't usually need an appointment. Over the last ten winters we've seen a gynecologist, a urologist, internist, sports doctor, ear nose and throat doctors... we've never paid more than $50 for a consultation, and to see our neighborhood GP it costs $15. Dental care is a fraction of what is paid in the US. In fact many middle class and upper class Mexicans who belong to IMSS don't bother to use it. They don't like the wait and the crowd, they'd rather pay on the open market and many buy private health insurance so they can use the non-IMSS hospitals like Star Medica . But for me IMSS was like a visit to an exciting new world. I can't imagine not going back.

Would ya look at that clown?

2010-02-17T07:16:00.000-08:00

I have often referred to bad drivers as clowns. And taxi drivers are among the biggest clowns of all. So imagine my delight when I actually saw a real clown driving a taxi! That's a cop standing next to her.

Also in this photo notice the street lights. That's the lighting throughout the historic center of the city including on our street. It always makes me feel like I've stepped back in time.

Goodbye Friend

2010-02-02T10:34:00.000-08:00

Left Morelia Saturday on a 7 a.m bus to visit Troncones, a small beach town on the Pacific, for the three day weekend. All I could really think about was the email I'd gotten the night before saying one of my friends from college (age 53) had had a stroke while skiing in Colorado and was in a coma. Because even the remotest locations in Mexico now have internet, I knew on Sunday that it was actually a burst cranial aneurysm, unrepairable, and that my friend's organs were being harvested. This last part turned out to be a bigger comfort to me than I expected. With the help of a phone in a little grocery store I was able to grieve and cry with another friend in the states.

At sunset my husband and daughter and I went to a sea turtle release on the beach. We were asked to select a turtle from a plastic tub, then set it down and watch it make it's way to the water. This turned out to be fitting somehow on the day my friend was dying. Something about the fragility of life, being assigned that one life randomly to identify with, feeling the amazing strength even the smallest creature is born with, watching it push itself toward the water's edge with such innate determination, the beauty of the sunset.... It came home that there are an awesome number of unknown things that can happen in a life, a lot of them not-good, but helping others and touching others and all the beauty around us make the awful and scarey parts worth it.

There are families today grateful for what Tody gave them in the way of her kidneys and liver. She gave me friendship, good food, and shared her family and friends with me. She widened my world in a nice way. She is my first inner-circle friend to die and thinking about her life as a whole, I'm impressed and inspired. Way to go, Tody. I'll be thinking about you plenty.

I like my bulls on wheels

2010-01-12T17:28:00.000-08:00

Went to the park this evening while bull fighting lessons were on. What kid wouldn't want to take those? At least up to where you actually have to fight a bull...

In this first photo the Maestro is starting to run at the youngest student who is barely in the photo at the far right. He's got two little spears he's going to try and shove in the neck of the bull.

The two older students practice with a cape and a set of horns. The one in the blue jacket has marvelous calves and is as graceful as any dancer. He may become a great bullfighter!

But I may never know because this is as close to bullfighting as I'll be getting.

Tres Reyes

2010-01-06T13:01:00.000-08:00

January 6th is the Dia de Reyes, the day Balthazar, Gaspar, and Melchior bring toys to girls and boys who live in Mexico (and in other countries too). Evidentally it's an old Roman tradition.

How do you ask the kings for gifts? In Morelia, many hundreds of children send their lists, rolled into scrolls, by way of helium balloon.

The kings come into town in a parade the evening of the 5th. Each is in a horse drawn carriage. The governor meets them on a stage in front of the main Cathedral and presents them with a special key that will open all the houses of the city just on this one special night.

After that the cathedral bells start ringing like crazy and over a thousand list bearing balloons sail up into the sky. (Not a thrilling site for the ecologically minded, but stunning if you can shut that part of the brain off a minute.)

Alice, who is twelve and currently attending Catholic school, has the intellect to question the truth of the virgin birth, but is willing to suspend disbelief when it comes to the kings. In fact, last night when I offered to buy her a balloon in front of the cathedral, she declined, saying she'd rather leave her list in our manger scene by the front door where the kings might find it upon entering our house. Letting it float into the air clearly seemed chancey given that the kings were already on the ground.

New Year's Eve, a Grape Tradition

2010-01-02T09:34:00.000-08:00

Spent New Year's Eve in a Holiday Inn ballroom in Guadalajara. Picture a wedding reception layout. Lots of round tables for 10 and a dancefloor with live band which was pretty good -- greatest pop Mexican tunes plus some Frank Sinatra. The event started at 9:00, meaning you arrive around 10:00. Dinner was served at 11:00. It was elegant and included a salad with a raspberry stuffed artichoke heart, yum! We were seated with 7 other people all in one family. A brother and sister, their spouses, their 3 children -- one grown, one 13ish, one chubby boy about 6 with large protruding front teeth. They filled us in on the grape tradition: As the clock striked midnight we were to consume 12 grapes, and make a wish for each month. OH COOL! I thought. I totally get into making birthday candle wishes and first star wishes and New Year's resolutions, I only wished I had a piece of paper so I could organize my wishes by month...

When the grapes arrived on each person's plate tied in little partyesque sacks, the band was still playing and people began panicking and blowing their party horns and pointing at their watches to get the band's attention. They wanted someone to announce it was time to start eating the grapes. I untied the little ribbon from my mesh bag and broke out in a sweat. Each grape was about the size of a basketball. Well, a golf ball. Everyone at my table started gobbling. I couldn't concentrate on the months OR my wishes, I was too busy reviewing the steps of the Heimlich maneuver . I only got three grapes down before midnight. And then everyone stood up and toasted (hard -- but not impossible -- to swallow champagne with grape seeds in your mouth) and then EVERYONE started hugging EVERYONE else... everyone at our table hugged every other person at the table, then we went on to hug several people at the surrounding tables. "Feliz año", "Feliz Año", "Feliz Año" you say into each person's ear. It's a lovely custom really. By the third time I said it I decided to just swallow the grape seeds. I figure now those wishes are growing inside me.

¡Piñata!

2009-12-17T06:06:00.000-08:00

The State Museum hosted a traditional Christmas event last night which included an enormous piñata. It was filled with tangerines, short lengths of sugar cane, peanuts, and other fruits. The inside of a pinata is a clay pot, so it really takes a good wack to break it. To prolong the fun, the piñata can be lifted out of the hitter's reach. Plus, usually the hitter is blindfolded and spun around a few times. When the piñata does break, even the adults rush forward to claim some of the contents.

CocaCola lets us down

2009-12-14T06:05:00.000-08:00

BIG crowd waited an hour and a half for the CocaCola Christmas parade to start. We left at 9 p.m. without seeing a thing. These people are excited watching the cotton candy man who kept letting the candy escape in large clumps. It would waft over the crowd several meters before someone could jump up, catch it, and eat it.

How Sweet It Is

2009-12-11T15:54:00.000-08:00

December 12th is the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Here in Morelia the celebration centers around one church. Starting Dec. 1st, many dozens of food vendors and rides are set up to feed and entertain the pilgrims who come from all the villages around Morelia to pay their respects to the Virgin. One of the main staples of the feast is sugar cane (caña). Truckloads of the raw cane arrives and is stripped with machetes, cut into chunks, bagged, and sold. You can buy a bag of plain chunks, but most people buy a bag of chunks doctored with orange juice and chili. You pick out a chunk of cane and chew on it until all the sugar is gone, then you spit the fiber on the ground. When the cane is gone, you drink the chilied sweet orange juice with a straw. Each morning sweepers with palm fronds sweep up the dried fiber that covers the ground. By night the ground will be covered again.

There may only be one God, but

2009-12-05T10:41:00.000-08:00

there are a lot of baby Jesuses for sale at the hardware by Woolworth's. The clerk there thought it was curious that I wanted to take a photo of the babies, but I take a photo of them every year. They're just so ADORABLE. And that's one of the things I find fascinating about the religious celebrations here. Everything is so literal, so palpable. For example, on Good Friday, Christs make their ways through the streets bleeding and hauling the cross. They're SUFFERING it's frightening.

I've gotten in line to kiss the baby Jesus figure after the midnight Christmas Eve mass in the main Cathedral, downtown Morelia. The life sized baby figure is held by the priest. Hundreds of people are in line to kiss the statue, just like it was a real baby. Every once in awhile the priest turns Jesus, so you may get to kiss either his toes or his head.

I'm not sure what the protocal will be this year because of flu precautions. If the priest has to wipe the spot with sanitizer after each kiss the line will really take forever.

International Music Festival

2009-12-01T06:50:00.000-08:00

Each November, Morelia hosts an International Music festival which lasts two weeks and this year included 45 concerts held in and around the city. This year the featured music was from Great Britain.

During the festival you can buy tickets to see orchestral and chamber music performances, or just go to the free concerts. The concerts are held in all the major cathedrals, municipal buildings and theatres in the city.

There are also a number of outdoor concerts like the Beatles concert held in the Plaza de San Francisco with a great cover band backed up by a full orchestra from Mexico City. On either side of the stage were enormous screens showing old Beatle film footage. The crowd was enormous, full of young people, and there was lots of singing along. Beatle songs sound great in Mexican accent.

I didn't take any photos at the concerts, but the pictured flower rug is laid out for the first weekend of the festival by the women of the village of Patamban. I wish I also had photos of the flower arrangements that were set out on the stages. That's another thing Morelia should be famous for. We have world-class flower arrangers.

You can see more of the flower walkway at: http://mexicocooks.typepad.com/mexico_cooks/2007/12/xix-festival-in.html

Day of the Dead

2009-11-03T12:26:00.000-08:00

Day of the Dead (officially Nov. 2, but the preparations and festivities start days before) is not Mexican Halloween. It does involve skeletons, but Christmas in Mexico involves devils, so forget the iconic images and the coincidental dates. Skeletons represent the form of the dead, much like in the states we might think of angels. Candy skulls are gaily decorated and skeletons are elaborately dressed or portrayed having fun... these decorations are meant to put us in a joyous, celebratory mood. When the dead come back, we want to entertain them and let them know we miss them.

To me, Day of the Dead is a lot more like Thanksgiving combined with Memorial Day. You prepare traditional foods and buy traditional decorations and you have relatives over -- only they're dead. It's, in fact, a lovely holiday and we got completely into it by creating a traditional altar for Florence and Walter my deceased parents.

I painted a portrait of them, which took several days, and we bought the traditional flowers -- marigolds in particular -- tons of them are sold here the week before Day of the Dead. Other necessary elements are candles to light the way for the deceased to return; paper flags to represent air/spirits; a special round, sweet bread to share as communion; fruits and other foods the deceased might enjoy including some brandy for dad and some chocolates for mom (we also bought dad a couple of cigarettes, a very traditional thing to do). We included sugar skulls and even little sugar skeleton figures in coffins that sit up when you pull a string... think Easter candy.

I can't speak for all of Mexico. But we live in the state of Michoacan which has many towns with predominantly indigenous populations. In these places the cemetaries are decorated in elaborate carpets of flowers and candles and the families bring traditional foods and sit by their family graves all night singing and waiting for the dead to arrive. In the city, where we live, schools take over large plazas and students compete to make the best altars -- think homecoming floats. Stores, and restaurants all have altars.

Last night we went to bed after lighting the candles and copal incense and setting out the food on our altar. When I woke up at three, I was enchanted to see the paper flags fluttering and the flames dancing in front of the portrait of my parents. I didn't think twice before speaking aloud to them. I was so pleased to be able to have a way to invite them into my home for a little while. I think you can see from their smiles that they were happy too.

Darwin

2009-10-13T17:47:00.001-07:00

Alice: Science was pretty interesting today.

Me: (My eyes brighten) Really?

Alice: Yeah. We learned about this guy.... I think his name was Darwin.

Me: Sounds right.

Alice: You've heard of him?

Me: Uh-huh.

Alice: (Gives me a look like I'm kidding... ) Are you sure?

Me: Darwin? Yup. I'm pretty sure I've heard of him. But maybe I'm wrong... tell me what you learned.

Alice: Well. About giraffes. Like, this is just an example. But say most giraffes had really short necks and ate grass. But some giraffes had really long necks so they could eat the tops of trees and because the short-necked giraffes ate all the grass, they starved, but the long neck ones survived!

Me: (I was ready to die happy right then, but it got better.)

Alice: But then there was this other guy. Lamarck. And he thought that the giraffes got that way because they just kept stretching their necks to reach higher and higher into the trees when the grass ran out.

Me: And was he right?

Alice: No, because even if they really did stretch their necks out like that, you don't pass that on to your kids.

Praise the Lord.

Just saw Quentin Tarantino

2009-10-03T19:37:00.000-07:00

Morelia's 7th annual International Film Festival started today and Quentin Tarantino is this year's special guest so when we went to the theatre this afternoon I brought my camera because, I said, ya never know, Quentin might be there!

My husband once downloaded the entire script of Pulp Fiction and has been known to recite whole sections at inappropriate times. So when we realized Tarantino was arriving at the theatre for real, I stood with the photographers and tried very hard to get a photo for him. I got a lot of photos of photographers' hair. But Geoff got to see Tarantino turn and wave to the crowd.

Tarantino's forehead is in the last photo. Does anyone know who the guy is in the sunglasses?

Tanks - a lot!

2009-09-30T12:40:00.000-07:00

It's the birthday of the man for whom Morelia is named: José María Morelos.

He was of lowly mixed birth, he struggled to become educated and became a priest in his 30's. In the war for independence he proved to be a brilliant general, and he is always portrayed wearing a really cool bandana around his head. I understand it was soaked in something that helped his chronic migraines... someone correct me if I'm wrong.

President Calderón was scheduled to be here for this holiday and the centro (the historic center of the city) has been closed down to vehicles since yesterday morning and pedestrians could only get through on a few streets. We live just 4 blocks from the parade route, but it took us a half hour to get through the security check point so we missed all the soldiers marching... I could see their helmets in the distance and I think there were thousands!

We got there for the tanks, which, let's face it, aren't as thrilling as floats. But we were entertained by this little girl in front of us. Her other red bobble earring is in her mouth.

Cinderella Dresses

2009-09-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

When I was a little girl I had the big box of crayolas, the one with the built-in sharpener, and my favorite thing to draw was girls in Cinderella style gowns. I'd make the gowns in every color. Little did I know that there was a place in the world where my imagined creations were real -- and it wasn't Disneyland. It's Morelia.

There has to be hundreds of shops that make these dresses here. I took these photos on one side street of the downtown.

Not Happening

2009-09-23T10:30:00.000-07:00

Even if we were in the market for suitors, which we definitely aren't, we would not under any circumstances accept fellows who hang out under cars. Even ones with blue eyes -- admitedly an unusual trait -- but we're still not even considering it.

When we found LuLu, 10 days ago, my concept was to take her immediately to the vet and have her spayed. But the vet had other ideas. Like waiting for three weeks to make sure she was really healthy.

So her care is being strung out (this is at the vet school clinic). Last week was the physical exam. Yesterday, she had the first vaccination containing five different serums. Next week she'll get a booster.

Then finally, in two more weeks, comes the esterilización. Meanwhile, LuLu has gone into heat (celo) and has attracted the attention of all the neighbors' dogs plus a couple of strays who have taken up residence under parked trucks near our door.

That's LuLu on the roof, moaning like a grounded 16 year old. At any time she can get at least six dogs on our block barking. Once they start it's like a scene from 101 Dalmations. Remember when the dogs start sending out the word about the lost puppies and soon dogs are barking all over London and beyond? It's like that. Only in Spanish.

Independence Day

2009-09-18T05:43:00.000-07:00

Tuesday was Mexican Independence Day -- the day the war to end Spanish rule began. The war was started by a priest named Father Hidalgo. It was his decision to bring the Indigenous into the independence movement. A plot to oust the Spanish had been secretly underway for some time and involved a lot of folks who would've been happy to keep the Indigenous as slaves. But because the Spanish got wind of the independence plot and were about to start arresting conspirators, Hidalgo, who had been warned that we was about to be arrested, made a flash decision to start the revolt himself with the aid of his parish -- which was made up of poor and indigenous. Because these folks actually began the war, they stayed an integral part of the independence movement. If Hidalgo hadn't been involved, slavery and the caste system might have stayed in place even after the Spanish were routed. For this reason, he's a very popular hero.

The war for independence began 199 years ago.

The celebration is where, at 11:00 p.m., someone (the President, your governor, the host of your party), recites Hidalgo's call to arms (the Grito) and everyone yells, Viva Mexico! about a million times.

We skipped the Grito, but we did go to the parade the next day. It was mostly a show for the military and civil defense forces. Just seeing those women marching in high heels was enough to make me feel well defended. (Alice and I just watched the Charlie's Angels movie, so I know women in high heels kick major butt.)

It was bound to happen

2009-09-14T06:53:00.000-07:00

I knew someday it was bound to happen -- it's just one of the well-known risks gringos face in Mexico. And sure enough, on Friday afternoon, a street dog adopted us. Geoff and I were walking home from the internet cafe, Alice was sick at home, and some high school students were feeding a filthy little dog, one I'd noticed living under cars for the last couple of days. I asked if it was their dog and they said no, it was lost, but they were going to take it home. Oh good, I said.

Unless, Señora, you would like it..... I laughed. But as we walked away, Geoff said, I thought that was just what we were looking for. A few minutes later, after consulting Alice, I went back and got her. She was promptly named LuLu, and I think she's come for good.

Here are some before and after photos.

La Escuela de Alice

2009-09-10T11:18:00.000-07:00

Here's some photos of Alice's school and of Alice in front of our door after a long day. If you felt how heavy her backpack is, you'd be surprised she can stand.

This is a typical uniform of a Mexican school kid. Most schools, public and private, have uniforms. She wears this three days a week, and a gym uniform two days. She starts the day with her hair pulled back, and her sweater on... but anything goes on the way home.

We're lucky that there's this very good school less than two blocks from our house. Many parents drive in from outside the city and may drive 45 minutes each way. Traffic in Morelia is a bear.

The school has grades 1-12, with the primary, middle school (secondaria), and high school (prepa) divided off by walls. There's a chapel attached -- it's a Catholic school. The school takes up several city blocks. It's all behind walls. Alice has 39 kids in her class and 13 teachers who rotate into the one classroom where she takes all her classes. There's recess and a food break.

Our Street, Rainy Season

2009-09-08T10:25:00.000-07:00

These days, this is what I typically see from my doorway: fabulous clouds. It's rainy season and the clouds inflate all day until it rains. The rain can last a few hours, or all day. But most days there's enough sun to dry the laundry.

Our street is quite narrow, which keeps out through traffic. Many residents park half on the sidewalk. We don't have a car ourselves -- there's tons of public transportation and we can walk to everything we need.

We know all of our neighbors except for the students. Morelia is a college town and many of our neighbors rent space to students. Still it's quite a peaceful street for a city.