This afternoon I was at the church down the street helping them setup a website. Haley sent me an instant message asking me to pickup some jelly and butter from the nearby store before I came home. I had forgotten my Blackberry, but I figured it wasn't any problem. I could just find the items on the shelf. I couldn't after a few minutes of acting confused and looking at every shelf someone came up to try to help me.

My ability to communicate in Spanish totally left me. The only Spanish words I could think of were for Bread, Fruit, and Milk. I started with the butter. I said "pan" (bread) and acted like a I was holding a piece of bread and spreading something on it. They took me to the bread. Ok, so I said "leche" (milk), acted like I was shaking it vigorously and then acted like I was spreading it on bread. They took me to the individually packaged pudding and jello section. Finally someone realized that this gringo might want to put butter on his bread and directed me to the appropriate area.

Next I wanted to locate jelly. I figured we had exhausted the things that were possible to spread on bread, so I acted out spreading jam on my "pan" again and the lady took me back to the bread section. I then said "frutas" and pointed at the pretend bread and she understood what I mean. She took me to the jelly section where I located the strawberry jelly and headed to the checkout.

The same lady who had helped me went around to ring me up. She wasn't happy with the butter I had been given and took it back to exchange for another. As I was leaving I think she said that I would learn Spanish quickly. Either that or she told me that I had better learn Spanish "pronto!"

Anyway on the way home I felt proud of myself. Not because of my mastery of Spanish but because of my ever increasing skill at charades. The nice thing about charades is that it should work in any country, so after a few months here I should be able to travel anywhere in the world and buy jelly and butter with ease.

This Sunday, I understood more of the sermon that I have every before. It felt that I was catching about 25% of the major words. It was probably lower than this, but it felt good to be able to recognize every few words.

I think I'm getting pretty good at recognizing "church vocabulary" but that doesn't necessarily translate into being able to easily tell a cab driver where you want him to take you. I remember reading a book called "God Smuggler" about a guy who smuggled Bibles into foreign countries. He learned to speak English by sitting down with a English language dictionary and the King James Bible. He once passed on a dinner request by saying:

"Thus sayeth the neighbor of Andrew, thou wouldest be pleased to pass the butter."

I want to avoid sounding like that. I don't think it will be a problem. The church we are attending uses regular Spanish, not whatever the KJV equivalent would be.

A few days ago we were at Soriana (kind of like a Super Walmart), and I was looking at the televisions. They were showing a Spanish rap video. The rapper was rapping away in Spanish and holding a handcrank mixer toward the camera. The only word I could catch was "Sabe" which I think means "do you understand?" I didn't, so I moved on. Learning Spanish from rap videos is probably a pretty dangerous idea.

Front of House Near DowntownWe spent some more time driving around and looking at houses for rent today. There was a house for rent in a neighborhood we really liked downtown. It was at the end of a dead end street, had a garage for parking, four bedrooms and three stories. It was nice but the carpet was really old and dirty. In Mexico I think I prefer tile because it is easier to see if it is clean. I tried to see if there was tile under the carpet, but there wasn't. We could probably do a contract that specified they had to change the floor, but I'm not sure if it would be worth it.

Roof of House DowntownThey were wanting $5500 pesos per month (about $500 USD) and I'd rather be down in the $300 range. It was a cool house and it might have been more attractive if we didn't have a baby on the way. Also it was in an area that has scorpions. This probably wouldn't have been a problem if the houses nearby were clean. Most of them were, but some of the ones behind it that it shared a wall with seemed pretty run down. The one's it shared the street with were very nice though.

We also looked at the place on the mountain again that was renting for about $900 USD per month. It was very beautiful and would cost millions of dollars in high class areas in the U.S. There was a guy staying there that was doing some work to clean up the yard. We asked him about scorpions and he said they generally found about 5 each week! He said they also had problems with lots of snakes and that the owners were moving out because it was too expensive to run the utilities to keep the house going.

It was beautiful, but 5 scorpions per week isn't going to cut it. It think we are going to have to settle for a building that isn't on the mountain. This isn't really a bad thing because $900 per month is more that what we really want to pay–even if we could afford it. The scorpions make it an easy decision.

House Near Sam's ClubThe last house we looked at was near Sam's Club. It is a little ways from downtown, but it is in an area where people live that say they have never seen a scorpion. The house was beautiful. It had four bedrooms and a garden area. It also had a maid's quarters out back. The entire thing was surrounded by a tall wall and it was in very nice shape and clean.

Garden of House Near Sams ClubThe owner wants to get $65000 pesos ($597 USD). This is still more than what we really want to pay, but we might be able to bargain them down to something a little more reasonable. There are other houses in the $200 range, but they aren't in as nice of neighborhoods. Our original budget was for a $200 house. Our friends pay $200 and their house would work very well for us, but it is hard to find houses like that downtown. Maybe we could find something similar in the neighborhood over by Sam's Club, but so far we haven't seen one.

Inside House Near Sam's ClubWe want to see some more houses in this area to see what type of prices they are going for. So far the ones we have seen have been even more expensive, so it might be a really good deal for that area. The no scorpions thing is very attractive!

I think our best bet is to find a house by word of mouth. The one's listed by the real estate office seem to usually be more expensive, so the best deals are probably going to be the one's where there isn't even a sign on the house.

Large House Downtown DurangoWe went house hunting this week. I called the local Century 21 office and we sent around with an agent. Her name is Claudia and she spoke very good English. The first house we looked at was huge and beautiful. It is located downtown and has a large wall around the entire thing. It has a yard with an outdoor dining area and grass (something of a rarity down here). The house had 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms. There was a separate maids housing out back and two additional bathrooms outside. They are wanting 17,000 pesos (about $1,500 USD per month). This is out of our budget, but I wanted to see the house anyway. The agent finally admitted that she thought the house was overpriced and that we could get something similar for around $900 per month. She told us if we were interested we could make an offer and see what happens. The house is hard to see from the photo because it is surrounded by a wall. Since there were people living there, I didn't feel right snapping photos inside.

House on Mountain in DurangoWe looked at a few other houses. There was another huge house on the mountain that was going for about $900 USD per month. It looked nice but when we started to go in a large friendly German Shepard mix greeted us at the gate. Our agent was deathly afraid of dogs, so I suggested we come back and see that house later when when the dog wasn't at home. The view from this house would have been spectacular. Unfortunately the mountain has more scorpions than the other areas, so we'd have to have it sprayed or something. $900 USD is still more than what we want to pay, but since we had an agent I wanted to get an idea of what different places went for. I couldn't get back far enough to get a good photo of the front of the house (without falling off the mountain), it has a large yard and parking up behind what you see in this photo.

House near old fairgrounds in DurangoThere was another place we looked at that was near the foot of the mountain for about $450 per month. It was nice, but not really in the location we want. It is probably more along the lines of what we'll want to get if we can find one closer to downtown. It had 3 bedrooms and 1.5 baths plus one in the maid's quarters. It was also located in a place where there were scorpions, but other than that the neighborhood looked nice and safe.

There is a neighborhood near our friends where we go walking hoping to find a house for rent. The agent said there was a house going to be available in that neighborhood in the next few days. It is near downtown, but on streets that don't go all the way through (less traffic). Most of the houses look very nice and well taken care of. She is going to call us when we can go see it.

Going with an agent is much more expensive that gong with individuals Based on what I can see, I think the prices are about 50% more with agent listed houses. However, it is much easier to get a feel for what is available when an agent can take you around and show you a bunch of houses at one time. Our friends rent their place for $200 per month. If we could find something similar that would be great.

In Mexico time is treated a lot differently than in the States. Sunday we went to a meeting that was supposed to start at 2pm and end at 5pm. The main speaker didn’t start talking until around 5:30. What struck me as odd was the fact that there was no way they could have fit everything in that they were trying to do and still met their schedule—even if they had of started on time. It is almost as if one group of people got together and decided when the meeting would start and end and another group got together and decided what they thought would be good to put into the meeting and neither group talked with each other to see if their plans were aligned.

On the way back to Durango many people were asleep or talking quietly. All the lights were out. Someone who had a camcorder decided that everyone would benefit from seeing his home movie of everyone eating breakfast. He got one of the bus drivers to plug his camera into the bus audio video system and started playing the video, but because of the way it was hooked up there wasn’t any volume control and it was very loud and woke a bunch of people up. He finally turned it off and everyone cheered – waking even more people up.

Got on the bus around 7pm and made it back to Durango around 11am on Monday. I think it is common to travel by bus at night like this, but I don't know that I'm cut out for it. I have a hard time sleeping on the bus. Although I did discover that I wasn't fully reclining my seat on the way down. I managed to get it to recline on the way back and it was much more comfortable. It also would have been better if we had taken some blankets. The temperature fluctuated a lot and much of the time we were cold. We had coats with us so it wasn't too bad, but I think we were sitting in the cold area of the bus. Other people kept wanting the air conditioning turned on while we were already freezing–usually most of the Mexicans prefer a much warmer temperature than what we like.

Around midnight we stopped at a large restaurant that was designed for bus tours. The restrooms were 2 pesos (about $0.20 USD) making them the most expensive restrooms I've seen so far, but they were also the cleanest public restrooms I've seen.

About 3 am, the bus slowed down in traffic, we weren't sure exactly what was going on. The bus driver woke up his co-worker who was asleep riding under the bus in the luggage compartment and had him run ahead to see what was going on. I turned out a semi truck with a double trailer had swerved slightly into the oncoming traffic and the second trailer had hit another truck. The double semi was carrying cases full of bottled beer. Since the truck was an open flat bed, there were beer bottles strewn all over the road. Most were broken, but there were bottles in the grass that were unharmed. The traffic was slow because of the accident and all the people who stopped to pickup the unbroken bottles of beer to take home.

The bus slowly crunched its way through the broken glass and continued to Durango. I was concerned that it might result in a flat, but the bus tires were in good shape and each one has a tube running to it that appears to be connected to an on board air compressor. There is a special connector in the center of the wheel that allows it to turn without twisting up the air hose. I think the bus automatically sends more air to tires if the pressure gets below a certain point.

Monday morning we asked the bus driver who was sleeping underneath the bus if it was hard to sleep because of all the bumps. We had gone over a lot of pot holes and large speed bumps that seemed like that would have really thrown him around under there. He said he was on a mattress and was very comfortable. When we were unloading we discovered that our definitions of comfortable were probably quite a bit different. His mattress was just a few blankets on the bottom of the aluminum bus cargo area.I suppose if he was as tired as we were, he probably slept just fine.

When the bus was at the hotel the bus drivers slept in the luggage compartment for the week. I'm not sure where they took showers. Maybe the hotel has a shower area for bus drivers, but I didn't see one.

We had a good time trying to speak with people in Spanish on the bus, the people who speak a little English usually want to practice speaking English to us. It sounds kind of funny because we'll try to talk to them in Spanish and they respond in English. When we get stuck we revert to whatever language necessary, or ask someone who speaks English for help.

We spent most of Monday resting and we'll probably get some extra sleep on Tuesday as well.

In Mexico they put in speedbumps the way other countries put in mine fields. Instead of just a bump or two, you'll find yourself driving through a whole field of speedbumps. Sometimes 50 to 75 at a time. In Michigan speedbumps are kind of rare. This is probably because they don't get along well with snow plows, but of course that isn't an issue here in Mexico.

The speedbump fields we've seen are large enough that they would probably disabled a vehicle if hit at high speed. I guess that is the idea. You have to slow down or else. In some places they space the speedbumps far apart and then closer and closer together as you get to the place where they want you to slow down. It is very effective in getting people to slow down.

Some of the speedbumps we've seen are more of speed ramps. They are big and steep enough that if you hit them going fast, you'll probably go airborne. Fortunately we haven't hit any of these going fast enough to catch air, but we have had some roller coaster rides over the tops of them.

Animals don't rank as high in Mexico as they do in the US. In fact it is fairly recent for dogs to really be accepted as pets. We had a hard time trying to find someone to watch Britches (our yorkie) when we were going to Mexico City. We checked at the best vet in town. They had a kennel, but it wasn't a place we were comfortable leaving her. Most people seem to just leave their animals at home and get someone to check on them every once in awhile.

When I was reading about coming to Mexico, several people mentioned that people from the US are usually shocked at how Mexicans treat animals because animals are treated so well in the US. They also mentioned that most Mexicans are shocked at how poorly people from the US treat their children!

In Mexico the soap operas are very popular. This morning at the hotel there was a soap opera on television. I noticed that everyone of the commercials seemed to be for a course to learn English. Then in the soap opera the main character received a gift. When she opened it, it was the English course.

The whole soap opera was a mini story where a Spanish girl who designs clothes is taken advantage of by a US girl to speaks English. She learns Spanish and takes the US girl's place as the top designer.

This seems to be a pretty good marketing method for the culture down in Mexico. I've often wondered if this would be a more effective way to advertise in the US as well. Instead of just putting products in commercials, put them in the actual show content.

Mexico City isn't as crowded as we had expected. Maybe it is just the part we are in, but the roads are busy, but less so than many of the large US cities. We watched out of the hotel window today and there just didn't seem to be as much traffic as we would have expected.

Also a quick count out the window revealed that 5 out of 50 vehicles are the old style Volkswagen Beetle. When 10% of the cars on the street are bugs it really feels like you are in a Love Bug movie. In Durango there are fewer Beetles and many more Nissans. It almost seems like cars reproduce around here so one place has a bunch of VW bugs and another has a bunch of Nissan Sentras.

The US is getting ready to build a large wall between Mexico and the US in order to better control immigration and cut down on Mexicans sneaking into the country. Most of the Mexicans down here see the wall as being a slightly hostile act on the part of the US. However, some have pointed out that the Mexican government doesn't seem to want to stop their residents from sneaking into Mexico. One told me about a government meeting with the US, where every time the US representatives tried to bring up the immigration problems the Mexican representatives would just laugh about how many of their country men and women were sneaking into the US.

The Mexican government has good reason to keep the flow of Mexicans into the US. Last year the Mexicans in the US sent over 17 billion US dollars back into Mexico. That is in the same ball park as what Mexico brings in from oil each year. For the Mexican government these are people who are bringing in money to the country that the Mexican government doesn't have to take care of. Mexicans in the US aren't using any of the Mexican public services, so they cost the government nothing.

If the Mexican government can't keep their people in the country, then maybe the wall is a good idea right? I don't think so. The wall may be able to keep some people out of the country, but in the end it really isn't going to change things. The wall will only cover a particular area and there are dozens of other ways for people to sneak into the country. The industry built around sneaking Mexicans into the US stands to profit more than anyone else from the wall being built. The contractors picked to build the wall are a possible exception–they will make a very nice profit.

I think the real solution is to make it easier for Mexicans to come into the country, but slightly less desirable for them to stay. If the US was to make it easier for Mexicans to enter legally, there would be less incentive for them to try to sneak across the border. Also if they are here legally it is going to be easier to collect taxes from them because there will be a record of them being here and they won't be limited to working for employers who only pay cash.

Right now many people are concerned that there will be jobs lost to Mexicans if they are allowed in legally. However, this is only true because we've artificially raised the value of certain types of work though minimum wage. Since Mexicans can come to the US, take a job for near minimum wage and still have money left over to send back to Mexico, the minimum wage must be a lot higher than it needs to be.

If the minimum wage was lowered it would allow employers to staff positions that currently are too expensive to fill. This would open up many jobs that don't exist currently or that are handled using technology. The lowered minimum wage would make the move to the US less attractive for many Mexicans and it would achieve something of a balance. Overall a bigger workforce that is willing to work for less pay is a good thing for US businesses and could actually end up lowering prices for certain types of services which means the US dollar would be worth more.

Implementing a change like this would be difficult to plan and execute, but not impossible. Overall the United States would be better served by trying to work with the Mexicans that want to work in the US instead of literally building a wall between the two countries.