Nuevo Casas Grandes

We arrived safe and sound. The bus drove through the mountains and the roads were so windy and bumpy that Ila and Mei got sick all over the seats. That has been the only drawback so far. We have been staying at Hotel Juarez here in Nuevo for the past few days. The manager's name is Mario and his English is amazing. He has been a big help. Our hotel room has two beds and a bathroom with running water. There was even a little bit of warm water for a while this morning so I could actually bathe. Well, I wouldn't really call it warm, but at least it wasn't freezing cold. We went to Dublan yesterday and had dinner at the home of a family that we had been corresponding with from Raymond. It was nice to hang out in someone's home and get a lot of questions answered and have our kids play with other kids. We love it here so much. The weather is wonderul and the people are so friendly. They especially love the kids. They say benita ninas (beautiful girls) to Ila and Mei all the time. They receive more kisses from strangers in a day than they do from us.
The school that Liam will probably be going to is in Dublan. The first half of the day for him will be first grade all in English. Then in the afternoon he will go to kindergarten which will be Spanish and English mixed. If his Spanish is good enough later, he will go to first grade Spanish in the afternoon. So far we have seen one house for rent in that area, but we are going to Dublan again tomorrow to enroll Liam in school and look for a place to rent or maybe move to a hotel closer to the school.
So far we have seen one cockroach about the size of our thumb in our hotel room. The grasshoppers here are huge!
A little bit about the above pictures. The first one is Rus and the girls hanging out in the hotel room listening to music. The second one is Liam in front of a cool car - a beetle with a topper. The third one is the back of the hotel with the kids playing in the background.

Happy Halloween!

We took advantage of the swimming pool again this afternoon.
We then went for a walk to a cotton field nearby, where we picked some cotton (that's Mei in the picture)and some unopened pods. That was the highlight of my day. The highlight of the kids' day was tonight when we went to a halloween party for supper, games, and trunk-or-treat (going trunk to trunk in a parking lot instead of door to door - much less walking!) Ila and Mei and Kristi dressed up as princesses, although after a few minutes Ila changed to being a pirate. Liam and Emma were both vampires and Jared was a Ninja. We met a lady at the Halloween party who was from Dublan and her husband was from Juarez. They told us it is really hard to get a rental in Juarez but that Dublan would be easy. She also said that the English elementary school in Dublan is in dire need of volunteers and teachers (I knew there was a reason for us going there). We are catching a bus into Mexico on Tarahumara buslines at 7 am tomorrow morning. We have to get up around 5 am in order to get ready and have enough time to drive into the middle of Phoenix. That might be a good thing though because then we might be able to fall asleep on the bus and the nine hour bus ride will pass faster.

Eatza Pizza!

Here's Rus being attacked by our friends' kids, Jared and Emma. Also in this picture is Liam and Kristi(in the life jacket) and the head of Ila or Mei.

The middle picture is Mei, bottom is Ila.







So we got our tourist cards from the consulado mexicano this morning. We were granted the full 180 days so we can stay in Mexico for 6 months if we want. We really love Phoenix, being surrounded by palm trees, cactuses and such diverse ethnicities. Our friends' son is the only blonde kid in his class. The weather is nice too, being able to swim in an outdoor pool in October. We are taking our hosts out to Eatza Pizza tonight, an all-you-can-eat pizza place,where the kids get tokens to play games, so it should be fun...

Made it to Phoenix

We are in Phoenix,Arizona now at our friends' condo. We had no problems crossing the border into the US at Coutts. Jay and Halli drove us to the bus station in Great Falls (these three pictures are from that leg of the journey). We decided to take the bus all the way through to Phoenix instead of getting a rental car in Salt Lake. This was probably a wise decision as the sleep deprivation we experienced from the first night on the bus would have left us in no condition to drive a car for 15-20 hours. The second night on the bus was much better. The first night, there were just a lot of strange passengers with some obvious anger or substance abuse issues. One drunk guy smuggled a little puppy named Kahuna onto the bus. His buddy was an old hippy who kept trying to play his guitar or harmonica but was yelled at every time he did. Then there was a guy with a really loud southern drawl whose purpose of his trip he kept saying was "to go scare the repo man who took my car". There was one man who was travelling all the way through to phoenix who was excited about the 4 1/2 hour layover in Las Vegas so he could "get messed up, brother". I was not looking forward to this, but it turned out he sat at the front of the bus the next day and didn't even make a sound. Aside from a few scary people, everyone was very nice. I like the atmosphere on the bus when everyone is getting along. Being forced to spend several hours on the same bus makes you get to know people that are not in the same social circle as you. Our kids really liked this friendly trucker guy named Ross.

What are we doing there anyway?

Liam(pictured on the left making me a birthday picture a couple days ago) will be going to a bilingual elementary school, pending approval by the school board in Dublan or Juarez. He is pretty happy about getting a whole week off school. Yesterday was his last day here. His class even had a little party for him. Ila and Mei are too young to do anything but hang out with us day and night. Maybe we can find a play group to attend or if there isn't one, we can start one once we are settled into a rental. Rus and I are thinking we might take turns volunteering at the school if we can. We are also wanting to take some spanish language courses, maybe a TEFL course as well. Rus and I aren't really worried about getting work. We have enough saved that it's not necessary. There is already a shortage of jobs for Mexicans, so other than maybe teaching english, we would be taking a job that someone else would need more. I think we will just fill our time with exploring the land and culture and volunteering. Something that Rus and I have been excited about lately is starting a "Plumbers Without Borders". Rus has done some plumbing and is hoping to eventually apprentice. There are doctors, nurses, and engineers without borders, but no plumbers that I have found so far, although the engineers probably do some plumbing. It would be great preventative work. So much of the problems in poorer countries come from poor plumbing or no plumbing at all. The only problem we would have with this is finding the funding for the supplies because I'm sure that one inch of pipe costs more than what some people make in a week. Maybe we could find sponsors. Anyway, this plumbing idea is a long-term plan. Maybe it's just a pipe dream.

geography

Here is a map of mexico that shows where Chihuahua city is located, 3rd marked city from the top. Chihuahua city is the capital of the state of Chihuahua. You can also make out the border city of Cuidad Juarez.

Now here is a close-up of the area that we will be. It is southwest of Cuidad Juarez, northwest of the city of Chihuahua. Look for Nuevo Casas Grandes. You will see a small place above it called Dublan (or Colonia Dublan) and also one to the southwest called Juarez (or Colonia Juarez). Juarez is where we want to be. But we'd settle for Dublan or Nuevo.

Colonia Juarez is a bilingual town (spanish/english).
From wikipedia: "It is located in the valley of the Piedras Verdes river on the edge of the flatlands running up to the front range of the Sierra Madre mountains."
There are apple and peach orchards there. It has about the same climate as Phoenix, Arizona or El Paso, Texas. In January, the coldest month, the average low temperature is 0 degrees celsius and the average high is 14.
There is a little pottery village nearby called Mata Ortiz. There are also some ruins in the area. We will probably go exploring in the Copper Canyon, which is in the southern part of the state.
Here are some pictures of the Copper Canyon:

Plans

I never thought that leaving the country for six months would require so much preparation. All the documents and back-up documents...
We are trying to pack as little as possible. Liam, who is six, is old enough this time to carry his own backpack. After his essential clothing is packed, he is allowed to fill his bag with whatever else he wants, as long as he is able to haul it around for the week that it will take before we hope to be settled. That leaves two adults to carry the rest for ourselves and our two three year old daughters, Ila and Mei.
We are leaving our home unoccupied during our leave. We have thought about renting it out while we are gone, but things are too uncertain for that. Maybe if we continue to do this every winter, we could eventually profit from it. The stresses involved in preparation however, do not compare to the excitement that I feel more as the big day draws nearer.

Here are our plans for the first few days:
On Monday, October 23rd we leave in the morning for the US. We'll get on the Greyhound bus in Great Falls, Montana in the afternoon. We thought of taking the bus from Lethbridge to Great Falls but it goes some crazy route over to BC and back that takes well over 24 hours. So, we opted for getting a ride down to Great Falls instead. By the way, thanks Jay!
We'll be sleeping that night on the bus (mmm comfortable), and we'll get to Salt Lake City around 5:30 am. We're gonna spend the day there, visit the great big beautiful temple, maybe visit some of Rus' family. Then we're picking up our rental car and driving to Phoenix, Arizona. We're gonna stop to see the Grand Canyon and sleep on the way. We have some friends(Jen and Jim and their 3 kids) who just moved to Phoenix from Raymond who have kindly welcomed us to stay with them for 2 days and 3 nights . They have a swimming pool in their condo community and a girl who is Liam's friend, so Liam is pretty excited about this part. Then, early Saturday morning October 28th, the moment we have been waiting for...we catch a bus (Tarahumara bus lines) into Mexico. Nuevo Casas Grandes, to be exact. Around the corner from the bus stop in Nuevo, there is a hotel waiting for us. Maybe the room will come complete with free cockroaches! Rus had a couple of pet cockroaches once. Yum! From here we start to look for a rental in the nearby small towns of Colonia Juarez or Dublan. So that's our plan so far. We'll see how closely we stick to it...

I have been casually learning on my own a bit and my friend Teauru gave me some spanish lessons. These are some of the things that I remember how to say so far. (I will apologize now for any grammar or spelling mistakes)
Yo quero rentar una casa pequina. -I want to rent a small house. (This one I made sure to memorize because that will be one of our main concerns!)
Donde esta el bano? -where is the bathroom?
Mi nombre es Elisabeth. -My name is Elisabeth.
Yo quero agua purificado. -I want purified water. (Another main concern.)
Usted hablo ingles? -You speak english?
These are the main phrases that I can remember how to say and spell right now. (and i'm not cheating) I'm working on how to say things like a place to sleep (dormir) and eat (I don't remember anymore). Some words on their own I know too but I think I will really learn it when I am totally immersed in it. There's no harm in a little advance preparation. I haven't figured out how to type the spanish accents like the "n" in bano and pequina that makes it sound like "ny".
Beck's song "Que onda guero" translates as "what's up white-boy".