ApartmentYesterday the realtor called and said she had found us an apartment close to our friends. We went with her to see it. It was nice 3 bedroom 1.5 bath and only for $3000 pesos a month. It seemed fairly new. The rooms were small so it would not take long to clean. There was a little patio area for us to put the washer and cloths line. There was no accessible grass that we could see. The view out the upstairs windows had a grassy area with some trees. That is very good for the soul when grass is such a rarity but it also reminded me of the saying "water water everywhere but not a drop to drink." Grass grass that I can see but no place for my dog to go potty. The apartment had a non-covered gated parking area. The street it was on did have some abandoned houses. Because it is downtown there would probably be scorpion around. It is still an option but we want to see more. We still have yet to see the one where the lady did not show up. It does have a little yard with grass.

Today I decided I would try to be more independent. I called a lady who will teach us Spanish and set up an appointment for our first lesson. Feeling quite confident (ignoring the fact the teacher spoke English), I decided I should try to call an schedule my next visit to my doctor. I made sure I knew what I wanted to say "Necessito una cita con Dr. (his name) por Lunez." I think she understood I wanted an appointment for Monday with the doctor. She asked me what type of an appointment. I told her 23 weeks obstetrical in Spanish, I think. She asked my name. I spelled it using my Spanish for Dummies guide for letter pronunciation. She got the last name but never got the first name so I just acted like she did and figured my last name was good enough. She asked me when and I told her after 4pm.

Then she asked me some questions I did not understand. She eventually said wait (esperar), something about 15 minutes (quince minutos) a bunch of other words and then there was click. I never got an appointment time. I think I frustrated her pretty bad. So the moral of this story is just because you know what you want to say does not mean you will understand the answer or be able to respond when someone speaks back. This is an every day occurrence but I was hoping I could get an appointment. I will have to have my friend call to see what a mess I made and try to straighten it out.

We tried to look at another house tonight. We were supposed to meet the owner at 5pm. Around 5:30 we called to find out where she was and were told she was “on her way”. We stayed around until about 6:15 and tried to call again, but her phone must have been off the hook. Oh well we’ll try again later.

In my U.S. mindset I would think if you have a house for rent, you’d be there before prospective renters in order to make sure everything is ready for them and to try to make it impressive.

We did get a chance to meet the neighbor who it turns out is a friend of the friends we are staying with. She is married to a man from the U.S. so the entire family speaks English. She told us it was a nice house but that the last renter had been paying $3000 pesos per month. The owner had quoted us $4500 per month. The neighbor said we should be able to get her down to $3000. So that was some useful information.

The house is just down the block from the large yellow house that we liked, but that seemed a little bigger than what we need. Unfortunately this house is closer to the main road and after standing there for awhile the I really started noticing the car emissions.

It would be nice if we could find a place that was furnished. The cost of getting a refrigerator, washer, furniture, etc. is really going to add up. So far I haven’t heard of anything like that being available.

I was 18 weeks pregnant when we met our doctor for the first time. He is very nice. He does not speak much English but understands most words. With my limited medical Spanish we were able to communicate some. Our friends came along and were able to help translate a lot.

His office was in a building with many other types of physicians. Each office was just a door in a hallway. Outside of the doors were a few chairs for waiting and a secretary's desk, if he had a secretary. Behind the door to my doctor's office he had a very nice desk and chairs for two people. Behind the desk was a partial wall. There were two exam tables behind the partial wall. He did not have a nurse or assistant, so he took my weight in kilograms and pounds. Then on the first exam table he took my blood pressure and used a doppler to hear the fetal heart tones. Next he moved me to the other exam table where he performed an ultrasound. Actually two ultrasounds. He had tried to record a dvd for me to take home and it did not work so he tried a second time. The second time did not work either, but he had other patients waiting so we needed to go. We spent at least 45 minutes with him and for the whole process he only charged around $30 dollars.

Two other differences I noted in the care given where the lack of routine urine dips. He asked me if I had symptoms of an infection but did not check my urine. In the states they routinely check for glucose and protein. He stated that at 24 weeks he would recheck my lab work. This brought up another subject. I am Rh negative. In the states at 28 weeks and then within 72 postpartum Rhogam is given. I asked him if he would give Rhogam at 28 weeks. He stated only if I wanted it or my Coomb's test at 24 weeks came back positive. He stated the reason for both of these differences was that it is a poor country so things are done differently. I am okay with that. But I did not ask if him if he heard of an asymptomatic urinary tract infection. At my next visit.

That is quite a change from the States. Not to mention the amount of time and price for the doctor visit. The ultrasound which could cost $1,000 in the U.S.A. Even though this is a private doctor, there is quite a difference when insurance companies are not controlling prices in a country.

From my understanding there are three different types of health care you can receive in Mexico. One is the public system for the poor or those without a way to pay. This would be equivalent to a county hospital in the states. But much worse from what I hear. I guess it depends on your county :). These prices are much cheaper. The second is a hospital that working people can go to. The government pays for this hospital. I don't know if the employers contribute some how or not. The third are private hospitals run by individual physicians or groups. These anyone who has the money can go. I will try to find more information on this subject, perhaps my doctor will be able to explain at my next visit.

Mark wrote about the yellow house by Sam's Club. It is my favorite so I wanted to add a little about it.

It is very clean. The walls and floors are all white so that makes it look even more clean. It is the first house with a dishwasher, a pea green one as a matter of fact. I guess that dates it around 30 years old. So maybe it does not work. The master bedroom in this house has its own pink bathroom, Mark did not like it but it reminded me of my best childhood friend's bathroom. It had a lot of pink in it. This house is probably more than we need but it is very nice and if we could get it for cheaper it would be really really nice.

There are two more houses in the same neighborhood neither are not listed with a realtor. We looked at one of them yesterday. It was very nice. It had four bedrooms. The master bedroom even had a jacuzzi in the bathroom. It had two water heaters and a hook up for a dryer. All three of those things seem to be rare. It also had grass in the back yard. Grass itself has to be worth $200 in rent. There were also two apartments in the back yard and an outdoor kitchen. A lot of house for $850 a month. Tonight we go and see the other house. It is much smaller 3 bedrooms and 1 bath for around $425 a month. It may be the perfect one, if we can get the price down and sneak in another bathroom. I would like to have at least two bathrooms for when the baby comes and all our family is here.

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.