2017 Is Already Flying By!

Celebrating a friend's birthday.

Here we are into our third month of 2017 already and it’s been two months since I’ve posted a blog! As usual, we’ve been incredibly busy with various charity events and outings which means the time is going by so quickly. The busy season should be starting to wind down now – or we hope it is.

Just like real Mexico!

Much of our time has been taken up with various PuRR Project activities.I started taking tour groups to our PuRR Project Ranch every other week; some really great people have been able to enjoy an hour plus of cuddling lots of cats. There is a 45 minute ride out to the ranch so it gives me a chance to find out about the people on the tour; to tell them about the non-profit and to hopefully get them interested in adopting a cat or helping to find a forever home. On our way back, we stop off in a small village at a taco stand where everyone can have a real taco experience. One woman commented “I love this – it’s like real Mexico”. It certainly is!

Dog recovery

The first Sunday of February, and again yesterday, it was our regular Spay and Neuter Clinic and we processed 72 animals in February and 71 yesterday. In addition to the PuRR Project, much of my time is spent in trying to get the clinics more organized and run more professionally as well as promoting them to the locals. Steve has now been drafted onto the organizing committee as well. One of the initial organizers felt we needed “a man” in the meetings to help keep control. He’s a good addition because he’s very logical and forward thinking.

A friend who organizes some of the PuRR events talked me into modeling at the PuRR Fashion show. This was so much fun and I got to try on a lot of clothes. One of the benefits that I took advantage of was a discount at the stores that were featured. Plus, I took advantage of pampering treatments such as nails, pedicure and having my hair done. Who wouldn’t say “yes” to all of that?!?

Mid-February, two more friends were each organizing charity events so I agreed to help with both. The first one was a day-long medical event with speakers and a small exhibition. This event was the seventh and each year it grows tremendously. We had well over 4,000 attendees this year. I was able to help out by coordinating 30 volunteers on-site and making sure everyone was where they were supposed to be. It was an incredibly successful day!

The next day was the Corazon de Nina annual Gala. For this event, I was able to help my friend with the silent auction, and helping out at the event on the evening. Steve was drafted in to help out that night too but he didn’t mind. 

We’ve both been battling colds and a bacterial infection. Steve came down with his cold a couple of days before the grandsons arrived just after Christmas. Not wanting to put a damper on their holiday, he kept going and participated in everything apart from the snorkeling. After they left, he hit the meds pretty hard but still had his cold for a couple of more weeks. I was taking vitamin C while he was sick so I managed to avoid the cold until a week after he was better when I stopped taking the “C”. Around the first of February, I came down with a cold and it continued on through all of the crazy charity event schedules and got a lot worse during our time in Mexico City. It could have been partly due to the high altitude.

The third week of February, Steve and I went to Mexico City for a few days and then on to a butterfly reserve up in the mountains.ur time in Mexico was spent visiting museums, churches and archeological sites. Our private tour guide filled our heads with as much Mexican history names, dates and events as she could fit into five days. We were able to climb one of the pyramids at Teotihuacan – actually, Steve climbed two but the high altitude got to me so I could only manage one. They are a very steep climb on little steps and quite high.We also visited the Basilica – the new Basilica where supposedly the original image of the Virgin of Guadalupe on Juan Diego’s tilma (like a cloak) is housed. This has become one of Mexico’s most popular religious and cultural symbols. The new Basilica was built because the original structure begun in 1695 was sinking.

New and old "sinking" bascilica

Castle where Maximilian lived

 

Horse back for part of mountain climb

Millions of Monarchs!

This one posed for us

The Monarch butterfly reserve, El Rosario, is a 3 ½ hour drive out of Mexico City and up in the mountains. We spent a very cold night in a lovely hotel in Angangueo. It seems there is not heating in any of the hotels in Mexico (or so we were told). But we had a lovely fire to warm our room before going to a very cold bed. The following morning, we headed up the mountain, first by car, then by horseback and finally a 1 mile trek to the reserve. The trek to the reserve was all uphill but what I couldn’t understand is the trek supposedly “down” all seemed to be uphill. Doesn’t seem logical! The Monarchs usually stay anywhere from 9,000 to 11,000 ft. above sea level. It was definitely worth the climb as there must have been millions of monarchs covering the tall oyamel fig trees and just flying around.

Once we made it back down to a car, we headed for Toluca. We knew nothing about it but it has an airport so it was going to be quicker to stay the night there than go back to Mexico City. We were right in the center of town and there was a beautiful Botanical Garden just a few blocks from the hotel so on Sunday morning, we walked to the garden. The building was originally a market but when the market disbanded, stained glass was put in and the gardens were planted. It was a great end to a wonderful week!

This coming week, we are looking forward to our daughter’s visit. It will be her third within a year and she’s getting more and more comfortable and used to our area and way of life. She found a really cheap flight so it seems to make more sense to fly down here and relax in the sun and have the beach than pay for expensive accommodation and food in the US.

Not sure this will work but here's a video of the monarchs 

Welcome 2017! Bienvenido 2017

December slipped by so quickly, we hardly had time breathe! There were, even more, pre-Christmas parties than last year, and then Christmas day on the beach.  A week-long visit from Steffanie and our two grandsons, Lake (13) and Fynn (8) followed these festivities.

Selling raffle tickets - winner!

There was the PuRR Project Luau on the beach the 2nd week of December. An annual event that last year experienced a torrential downpour. Everyone huddled under the palapas – not that they helped. I remember water pouring down my back during the whole thing. This year, the weather couldn’t have been more perfect, and supporters filled the beach while enjoying the BBQ pork, plus all of the fixings. I was selling raffle tickets, and when sales started to slow down, I started a competition with a friend who was also selling tickets. Guests thought there was a prize for the winner of the most ticket sales and the MC , so we managed to sell more tickets than ever before. There was no prize, but it was a lot of fun and generated more ticket sales, meaning more pesos for the kitties.

 albóndigas – so yummy!

We had a pre-Christmas party hosted by one of our friends and then Christmas Eve brought us to a Mexican friend’s house where we had a potluck dinner. She made us the "best ever" meatballs (albóndigas). Christmas day, I fixed a traditional turkey dinner, with stuffing and gravy and mashed potatoes. I just felt the need for a traditional Christmas meal, and besides, I’m convinced, the stuffing has something addictive in it. Our dinner was only two hours before a meet-up dinner with friends on the beach at 4 pm. We were far too full to indulge in the Mexican fare as we’d just finished our turkey dinner two hours earlier, but we did enjoy the drinks and catching up with friends during this time.

A few days later, Steffanie (middle daughter) and her two sons arrived for a whole week. And what a week it was! They had started off the trip with a long wait in the airport before even boarding for PV, so we took it easy the first day. Shopping for their fitted snorkeling gear (Christmas present) and then lunch on the beach, followed by shopping in the markets and then a test run in our pool with the new snorkeling gear.

Fynn with his sea turtle

Lake with a dolphin

Every day was filled with activities such as whale watching – lots of whales and two of them were playing with some dolphins; releasing baby sea turtles at sunset; massive fireworks all over Banderas Bay from our balcony on New Year’s Eve (day2), a full Mexican brunch on New Year’s day, followed by swimming and a first go at snorkeling off the beach, resulting in a lot of scrapes due to rocks (day 3); zip lining down a big mountain - the trek up was exhausting and it took 14 zip-lines to get down!, followed by water slides (day 4); snorkeling in the bay and a dolphin playing with us alongside our boat on the way back (day 5); and last full day was swimming and playing with the dolphins up close and personal (day 6). We had lunch on the beach each day so that the boys could swim in the waves while waiting for their food and continue swimming after lunch. Restaurants here are very lax about letting you stay at your beach-side table while the kids swim. By evening, they were completely exhausted, as were we adults, so everyone slept soundly!

Due to an incident at the PV airport, it was shut down the afternoon the kids were scheduled to leave so their flight was 4 hours late leaving PV. They missed their connecting flight in Dallas so spent the night in the airport while waiting for another flight. They were scheduled much later the following day, but Steff’s friend got them an earlier flight into Washington, DC – not Baltimore. He picked them up, and they arrived home around 24 hours after they left. Not a happy ending but they didn’t care. They are ready to come back!

Our schedules picked up after they left with weekend commitments each day and Sunday being our Cuale Spay and Neuter Clinic. We keep getting more and more animals (81-85), which is fantastic, but it means we have a much longer day. This time, I had to be there at 7 am to meet a new volunteer, and we didn’t leave until after 5 pm. It makes a very long and tiring day when you are bending over animals taking vitals and then cleaning up the area to make look as if we were never there.

This week is filled with Spanish lessons and getting started with the English classes for the locals. Our teaching group is trying something completely new this year, thanks to a couple of us taking the ESL course in November. It’s taking a lot more organizing and time commitment, but we are hoping it will mean a much easier start to the actual classes next week. I’m also the tour guide for the PuRR Project this Wednesday, so it means at least a 4-5 hours of coordinating and then going on the tour. Can’t say that I mind as I love spending time with the cats.

At the moment, I’m just looking forward to Saturday and Sunday as I have nothing scheduled. A rare, and much-needed respite after the crazy last few weeks. I want to leave you with two inspirational quotes and a wish for a very special and happy 2017!

Chilly Chile and a Disappearing Autumn

After getting pain meds!

WOW!! Seriously, is it less than a month until Christmas? It’s easily been six weeks since I’ve posted and so much has happened. We experienced a few beautiful days in Chile and on Easter Island, one of which Steve was in the hospital for a kidney stone; we’ve again started the rounds of “peak time social events” and I recently took an ESL teachers training course. Not exactly a “lay-by-the-pool” type of retirement. But it’s certainly been interesting.

Sunset on the snow-capped Andes

 First of all, the trip to Chile and Easter Island was amazing. Santiago is a beautiful and extremely modern city. You’d never know you were in a South American country – except for the language. We did struggle because their Spanish is very different from the Mexican Spanish, but thankfully, we had English-speaking guides on our numerous tours. It was when Steve went into the hospital and also when we went shopping that we struggled – mostly me! I had check Steve in and then pick up some meds for him at a pharmacy where you take a number same as in a deli; then you give the note from the Doctora, and the clerk comes back with the packet of medicines. You have to be sure it’s the right things because in Mexico, the people in the farmacias are not trained, and they may give you anything. In Chile, I had no way of knowing, but I got the pain drugs that Steve needed with relatively little problem. When I stopped into The Body Shop on the way back, the young woman there followed me around the shop talking constantly. I kept saying in Spanish, I’m just looking, I don’t understand and I don’t speak Spanish but she wouldn’t stop. I bought some little tubes of lotion and left as quickly as I could.

Fortunately, our first three days were spent sampling and appreciating the wine region around Santiago, days when Steve was perfectly healthy. There are several valleys and numerous wine regions to choose from. We visited six vineyards over three days, and it was fascinating how the different valleys with different soils, climate conditions and processes can change the taste of the wine. These tours gave us an excellent taste of Chilean wine. We enjoyed the tours of the vineyards and presentations of the different methods of making the wine and of course, getting to taste the various examples.

The rest of their bodies are underground.

Our time on Easter Island, Rapa Nui, was mind blowing! The island is exceptionally remote – it’s 3,500 kilometers from Santiago and even further from other land masses, so we had a five and a half hour flight from Santiago. You don’t get a lot of modern amenities in Rapa Nui – the hotel was bare minimum basic, and we had hardly any Internet service. We had to sit in the lobby and hope there wasn’t anyone else trying to access the Internet at the same time. 

The tours of the most famous Moai were the most incredible things to experience. You can’t possibly imagine how people a few hundreds of years ago with minimum tools could carve these massive statues weighing hundreds of tons and then how they would move them to their locations. Once in the location, they were hoisted onto massive platforms.  There was a lot of walking over “rough terrain” (rocks and hills) and it was hot, but it was worth the experience! This island is so remote and thousands of miles from anything else so it’s definitely not something that an everyday tourist wants to experience. This meant that it wasn’t overrun with tourists and we had full days of exploring the sites of the Moai.

As soon as we returned, we got back into our day-to-day lives with feline shelter tours, donor meetings and catching up with friends for dinners. In the second week of November, I started a 2-week course for Teaching English as a Second Language. It was intense with lots of reading and homework as well as in-classroom instruction, presentations and hands-on teaching in a Mexican school. The program is offered from a group in Canada, so we had to cram a month’s worth of work into two weeks. This studying, which I wasn't used to, was on top of our busy “catching up” social schedule so most days I was burning the candle at both ends – up at 4 am to do my homework and in bed at 10 – 10.30 so that I could fall into an exhausted coma. I definitely now have a higher regard for what teachers go through!! Lesson plans plus having to cope with very high energy kids – how on earth did you do it day after day?

We’re continuing our Cuale spay and neuter volunteering every first Sunday of the month. Somehow, I was “voted in” to keeping the clinic schedule as well as setting up an English Facebook page and liaising with a Spanish friend who is doing the Spanish Facebook page. I need to keep it active now, so those of you on Facebook will see several posts. Somehow, this all seemed to evolve while I was away – or maybe not paying attention! I have to admit, offering the free clinic is something that I’ve become passionate about, though, because there are so many street dogs and island cats and the Mexicans don’t have the same regard for animals that the North Americans do. It’s an educational process and one that the PuRR Project is addressing at a very early age through the handing out of coloring books in schools. These little books (in Spanish) tell kids how to care for their pets (mascotas) and have been tremendously popular with the kids. The last clinic, we even had a little girl of about 8 bring her parents and their two dogs to get fixed because of the coloring books’ message.

I also was roped into helping with a charity fashion show that took place this last Saturday afternoon. I produced the menu/program, table numbers and helped the organizer out on the day with anything and everything. I do want to help because I love these people but I also definitely need to learn to say NO!

Christmas is coming up and here in Mexico, and there are so many fiestas leading up to Christmas week. We have the posadas (parades) that begin on the 12th of December for Our Lady of Guadalupe. These run for two weeks and get bigger and bigger each night. There are lots of other fiestas too. And best of all, my daughter and her two sons are coming for a visit on the 28^th and will be here for just over a week! We’re planning on playing on the beach, snorkeling, paddle boarding, boat trips (hoping to see dolphins and whales), turtle releases, markets, maybe zip-lining and lots of tacos. We have so much planned for the boys; they will go home completely exhausted.

Oh -- I did my autumn leaves before we left for Chile. 

And now it's time to put up Christmas decorations. We can't wait to see how Kato reacts to a decorated tree. 

PV’s Sizzlin' Summertime is Winding Down

Our days of heat and tremendous humidity should be nearing an end but someone forgot to remind the weather. September, as PV’s rainiest month, lived up to it’s name in a substantial way. We’ve had thunderstorms most evenings with a result of gorgeous lush greenery and palms. And thunder clouds have given us a few evenings of pretty amazing light shows and sunsets.

Most small shops were closed during the month of September because it’s normally the month when no one visits. This year, many of the nationals decided to make PV a holiday destination around the 16^th, Independence Day, since it fell on a Friday. The 14th was our 25th wedding anniversary, a traditional charros parade (Mexican traditional horsemen) traveled through downtown so we met up with friends to spend the afternoon . On Friday, the 16^th, we met up with friends again to visit the taco festival and then on to a Mexican dinner where we celebrated my birthday (early), our anniversary and Independence Day. It was one wild night!!

The following day, a friend from Singapore arrived and we tried to cram a week’s worth of sight-seeing and eating into two and a half days. We wandered the streets of downtown and although the festivities were finished, green, white and red decorations flourished in the plazas and streets. We managed to arrive at the Lady of our Guadalupe cathedral just as noon services started and it was a beautiful experience. We hit a few market stalls and shops that were still open and then went for lunch on the beach.

Although it’s been busy, I’ve managed to sew some cushion covers for our balcony dining chairs. I’m really pleased with the way they turned out because it has been a very long time since I’ve done piping and any sort of cushion coverings, apart from the quick covers for our sofa when we got Kato. I actually put a lot of effort into our dining chair cushions! Then, I found a really cute bag on the Craftsy website and wanted to sew one. Finding some appropriate fabric took some effort but once home; a couple of hours later – my bag was ready to go. I’ve used it constantly since and just finished another one for our holiday. A couple of friends and I took a morning out to make breast cancer awareness ribbons for another friend’s reception. We had lots of fun and laughs and got to wear one of our ribbons at the reception.

And we’ve also managed to get Kato used to a harness so that he can go outside when we are out. He’s been very good about putting it on and doesn’t go too far – should say, he can’t go too far but we’ve ordered him a longer leash.

Releasing newly hatched turtles has long been on my list and it’s an activity that I wanted to do while Roger was visiting but we couldn’t find the hatchery. A few nights ago, we decided to walk the beach and walk until we found it and what an amazing experience!! We released hundreds of turtles and they all scrambled to the water. It’s so amazing that they have this inborn instinct to go straight towards the ocean. We watched their little heads bobbing in the waves as we wished them well. The magnificent sunset added to their drama of the life cycle.

The rest of our week leading up to holiday in Chile is filled with social events, reception for breast cancer awareness (my friends and I made ribbons for attendees), taking a donor on a VIP trip to the no-kill cat shelter, newsletter meeting for the other charity, Friday Foodies (our last of the season), “book club” brunch and a brunch on Sunday with friends who insist on a “last meal before we leave”. And somewhere in between I need to complete 30 hours of homework. I start a TESOL Training Program when I get back and the assignments for just the first day are calculated to take 30 hours. What have I gotten myself into?

I have to admit that starting last month, I’m missing the changing of the seasons. Last time I went to Walmart, they had pumpkins and fake fall leaves, which made me laugh. But now I’m thinking, I’m going to go back and get some of the leaves. If it’s not autumn outside, I can at least have the leaves in the house.

October is an “awareness” month for so many charities and organizations, it’s hard to keep track of them all. So my motto is, “just be in the here and now and think about others”. Hope you have a terrific month and I’ll post on returning from Chile. 

We have so many photos from the last month - far too many to include within this post. You can see some of them at this link https://get.google.com/albumarchive/102840684536112573599/album/AF1QipOSws2NDIvLyDAHpWG6gDSC2sZB1cAzYg7hylsT?authKey=CJ3siJ3ahYrVBg