our new passion

We only have to go about waist deep to see hundreds of fish. Rus was lucky enough to see a pufferfish yesterday. Liam said he saw "a fish like the one in that movie Finding Nemo" this morning.
That's me in the picture, in case you couldn't tell...

homesick

I have been feeling a little homesick lately and seeing this little curious cat peeking over the old boat at me reminded me of our cat Simon and it made my homesickness worse.

a fisherman and his tricks

In an issue of National Geographic Traveler, Rus showed me a good quote that was related to an experience we had. It was about how a man would rather give someone money to perform their native dancing than have him move into the city to work at a gas station. It made us feel better about this fisherman today who wanted money from us. He gave Liam a stick to hold and wrapped sea food skins around the end for Liam to hold up to feed the birds. He kept telling us to take a picture and we have laerned that if someone wants us to take a picture then they want money for it later and we kind of hesitated but we saw how fun it was for the kids so we just went along. We hate being pressured into giving someone money. Then we realized that we would rather give him money and have other tourists give him money for this so he can keep doing what he does than have him do something he might hate, assuming he doesn't hate what he does...

sea shell city, the golden zone, and feeling useful

We decided to venture into the tourist zone, the Zona Dorada (Golden Zone). It is what our Lonely Planet guide book describes as an "unashamed" tourist playground. We didn't stick around too long, although there would probably would have been some interesting dive/snorkelling shops if we had looked for some. We came across a huge store specializing in selling seashells and other sea treasures. It was ridiculous. I have never seen so many in one place. It made us a little angry though because all the seashells were there and not on the beaches for us to discover ourselves. They also had some funny coconut faces as you can see in the picture.
We also found a non-denominational christian church (second picture above) that offered free internet and phone calls to Canada and the US, for a small donation, which we didn't mind at all since it went to some excellent programs. They help kids go to school, they feed and clothe hundreds of people, they build water filter systems, they help with orphanages, etc. They told us that what they really need other than donations are people to go and play with the kids in the orphanages. I went to talk to the couple that runs the Salvation Army down the street but it was hard to communicate because of the language barrier, so not much came out of that. Our friend Mimi from "the breakfast club" is also interested in helping at one of the orphanges so maybe she can tell us something next time we see her. Despite our good intentions, we find it a little frustrating because of our inability to communicate (we are getting a little better) especially with kids because they seem to have a harder time understanding our heavy accents. We also find ourselves spending most of our time just keeping our own kids content and out of trouble.
One thing that I have started doing is working at the volunteer-run library in the old historic downtown. It is only once a week for a few hours, but it is something that I think I will look forward to each week. I feel at home in a library and at least a little bit useful. This has been easy work because the majority of the books and patrons are in english.
We have found quite a few Spanish language courses here but they are out of our budget. There are plenty of courses offered at home that I think we will look into when we return instead.

We're famous! "Crecimiento rapido" means "growing up fast" referring to Rus sitting in our kids' stroller. Me and the kids are in the background.

Falling in Love with Maz

A few of the things we like about Mazatlan:
1. all the animals we have seen - we found this pale little gecko in our room under a pile of clothes - the kids named it Gecka Gecko
2. beautiful tiled exterior walls on tiny houses - like the houses in Dublan, I have to limit myself with the number of pictures of tiles that I take
3. all the cheap intertainment - because this is such a big place, there are things like big malls with mini amusement parks - the kids rode these boats until they were sick of it for 15 pesos each
4. The cool people we meet - we have nicknamed some of our friends that we have met at the same restaurant "the breakfast club" because they all seem to know each other - this is a tiny restaurant kind of tucked away and the menu is simple, cheap and delicious - I don't even know the name of the place. Rus and I just call it Lerma because it is by the Hotel Lerma that we stayed at when we first came. The picture is of Liam and a three-legged black poodle he befriended by the name of Lola, owned by a Newfie named Mimi.

Isla de la Piedra

We met a local man in a restaurant a few days ago who had found some interesting things on the beaches of Isla de la Piedra (one of the above pictures shows a dried sand dollar -estrella del mar- and a recently dead and not so dry sand dollar). He gave these sand dollars and a couple of nice shells to Liam. He also showed us some bird skulls and a manta ray tail with the stinger on it which he would use as a knife. This inticed us into going to Isla de Piedra (Stone Island). We took a small taxi boat (note the picture of Liam in the boat above who will be getting another visit from the tooth raton) and were a little disappointed when we arrived at the beach and were bombarded by vendors. It didn't look as peaceful as we had been told. We walked past all the restaurants, ATV rentals and the RV lot to find the uninhabited beach area. The beach was beautiful, very soft sand, and on the edge of the beach was a huge coconut grove that stretched farther than we were willing to walk. We explored a little in the trees and watched some horses that lived in a fenced-in area in between the trees. A few of them looked terribly undernourished. Walking through those trees was worth the trip. And then on the way back, we saw a black dolphin. I have yet to capture a dolphin on film. There is also a bright green hummingbird that hangs out in the backyard around the flowering cactus (pictured above) that I have tried unsuccessfully to capture.

church?

We went to church yesterday morning only to find that the gate was locked and there was no one around, which we found a little odd because we had gone to that same LDS church a few weeks earlier at the same time and there was a service. It's a mystery...Finding ourselves with plenty of spare hours on a Sunday, we spent some time in the plaza in front of the cathedral catching pigeons.

our home

There is so much to explore around here. We are never without something to do. We live within a few blocks from the beach, the market (where we can get excellent deals like a big chunk of cheese for 15 pesos), four internet "cafes", tons of restaurants, laundromats, even a Salvation Army thrift store.
The above pictures show the family sitting in front of the entrance to the stairs up to our place, Ila at the end of the hallway looking into the backyard, view into backyard, and the view from our room's window onto a noisy busy street (it was a cloudy day today so some of the pictures aren't that great). We have to wear earplugs in order to sleep at night, there is no hot water and we have to share two bathrooms with the other tenants but it is cheap (1500 pesos for a month) and we know that in order to live here we have to give up some creature comforts. Our life here in Mexico has definitely not been without sacrifices!
The second last picture is of the kids showing off their new beach duds. We figured that if we would be living on the beach, we should invest in some swimsuits for Ila and Mei. The last picture is of Ila, also taken today. There is a natural saltwater pool nearby that is full when the tide is high and there are usually a few bright tropical fish to see there so we bought some snorkelling equipment.

notes from Rus

Rus asked me to post this for him:
Rus here again - Day three in Mazatlan, we like it still. There's a lot to like: the climate (25 is the average high, 15 the average low for Jan. to March and April is only a few degrees warmer, and 4 days max with rain average for any of those months), the public transportation is good, things are cheaper, the kids love the beach and can spend hours on end there - without fighting!, Danish and Canadian consulates (just in case), a market close to where we live and a playground, we were so lucky to find our room - I suspect divine intervention. It is a tourist town, but when you consider that 38% of all tourists to Mexico go to Cancun it's not that bad, we barely speak any english when we are out and about. It's really nice to actually have something to write about as well! All things coinsidered, it's simply better than Chihuahua. The climate there is too cold for the houses, I had a really hard time justifying a roaring fire inside when it was nice outside. It was dusty as heck, too. But, if we hadn't gone there we never would have come here. The only things that still really irritate me are some things that are particular to Mexico (not Mazatlan): the pay per pee (or poo) washrooms. They're not expensive, 20 - 50 cents, and we had to pay for bathrooms in Europe, too. It's still an irritant, and bathrooms can be hard to find at all sometimes. And the traffic is crazy, the way stop lights run is a little wack. You can only cross to the middle of a street on a light. Pray for us! Also, We just discovered a drink here that we all really like - Jamaica - an herbal tea made with hibiscus flowers.

good-bye Dublan, hello Mazatlan

I think this is the longest I have gone without posting. Don´t worry, we are alive and well. We checked into a monthly-rate hotel (casa de huespedes) this morning after two consecutive nights on buses. Laying down on a horizontal surface has never felt so good. We met up with a friend that we had met halfway to Mazatlan, in Guaymas. He lives in Edmonton but has spent the last few months in Mexico on his motorcycle.
We met so many nice people in Dublan and it was especially hard to say good-bye to our neighbour that rented the other side of the house. We are looking forward to our life in Mazatlan though.

decisions decisions

We have really developed a love/hate realationship with Mazatlan. We are never bored, the kids are endlessly entertained, and the weather is always nice. There are plenty of opportunities for Rus and I to make ourselves useful (we had been starting to feel a little useless in Dublan - the only thing we could find was the library work). The fact that this is a much larger place makes it easier to find things to do. There are plenty of spanish classes. There is one institution that organizes volunteer work and there is also a volunteer-run library. Some of the things that we hate however, are the crazy traffic, the noise level late into the night and the heckling street vendors. It seems that there can never be things so wonderful without the contrast of things so terrible. We are a little concerned about Liam's education for the next few months because we haven't found a suitable school here yet for him and even if we did I think it would be too hard on him to go to yet another school where he doesn't know anyone. Before we left Raymond, I got all the material from his teacher that his class would be doing while they were gone. She was really good about taking the time to organize it and meet with me. If we relocate to Mazatlan, I will use this material to homeschool Liam before he heads to the beach every day. I'm just glad that we started this now and not later in our lives when we would have three school-aged children to worry about. Something that we are trying to remember as we make our decisions is that we might never make it back here again and so we should squeeze as much out of the country as we can.

We are returning to Dublan tomorrow on a night bus, where we will finalize our decision on where and when to relocate.

Note the smiling picture of Liam. He lost a tooth! Here, there is a tooth mouse (raton) instead of a fairy that left 50 pesos for Liam under his pillow.