Hurricanes, What We Miss and the Zen of Taking Out the Trash

Hurricanes... Many of you have asked about whether or not we are in danger. Though both coasts of Mexico have been hit by hurricanes in the last week, we have been affected by neither. Perhaps we are getting a bit more rain, but it's hard to know. Abby is pictured here, taking a drink of Oaxacan rain water. We were attending one of Gabe’s ball games, which was in fact, rained out. This was a big storm, but we experienced no gale force winds, loss of power, broken trees, etc. Oaxaca City sits at 5000 feet above sea level, inland a couple of hundred kilometers from the coasts and protected all around by mountains. The climate is wonderfully mild. End of summer and fall marks their normal rainy season.

What We Miss (So Far) Besides Our Friends

Abby misses being good in school and knowing what’s going on in her class
Gabe misses Barnabas (our dog...pictured in a much earlier post) and going to A’s games
Susi misses movie dates with the family at Bay Street and going to A's games
Jason misses his former digestive health (We think we’ve zeroed in on the problem…patterns indicate that Jason is allergic to mangoes…so sad, since the mangoes here are about as close to heaven on earth as you can get!) Did you know that mangoes are in the same family as poison oak? As it turns out, Jason also has a severe reaction to poison oak.

Other random news…

I heard Mac the Knife twice in one morning. So strange for this to occur in a foreign country, I had to document it. First it played in my spinning class at the gym during our final stretch. Second, (about 35 minutes later) it was playing at my favorite café while I waited for my cappuccino…I hope there’s no divine message in that song for me.


The Zen of Taking out the Trash

A beautiful morning here. I was up to meet the trash blokes. I had the early shift, or trash duty, as we call it in this house. The trash truck comes every morning at 6 AM…(did I mention that they ring a cow bell to let you know they’re coming? That cow bell wakes us faithfully every day, Sundays included!) The sky was so clear I saw brighter stars than I’ve seen in a long time, including a very brilliant morning star on the horizon, saw Mars as well…and a lot of others that I don’t know the names of. My old neighbor, Miguel Alcaron, who was also on trash duty at his house, told me the name of the morning star…Beros, he said. Who would have thought trash could so effectively inspire stargazing and bring neighbors together! Ah...Mexico.