THE END

It has been a lot harder returning to a normal life than I ever imagined. A lot of unforeseen things have gone wrong. It is hard on our kids too but they are adjusting as well as they can. One of the first things I wanted to do when I got home was get rid of STUFF. I realized how much I can live without. The only possessions I missed when we were gone was the computer, books and the kids toys. I guess I missed having my own home too but not really the stuff inside it, except for maybe the beds, the bathtub and the fridge and those sorts of things. The amount of unnecessary stuff in our house was overwhelming, almost suffocating. I think we will have to have a lot of yard sales in the next few months. Another thing that was overwhelming was the amount of work that still needed to be done on our house, but that's a story in itself and not something I want to get into.
The best part about coming home was how happy the kids were about it. As soon as we pulled into the driveway, even before he went into the house, Liam ran to his best friend's house to tell him he was home. Ila and Mei squealed with delight every time they came across another of their prized toys; their stuffed animals, their princess dress-up shoes and necklaces, their fuzzy purses. I also enjoyed sleeping in my own bed again.
We have spent the majority of our time back just being with friends and family. So many people had babies. During Liam's easter break, we will visit some more. We are friends with a family that speaks Spanish and it has been fun being able to understand a lot of what they are saying. It is a good indication of how much we have learned of the language because when we hung out with them before we never had any idea what they were saying. We have no really big regrets about our trip and we are glad that we did it, for our kids' sake and our own. It was quite the experience!

The Aftermath

We've been back in Canada since just after 12 a.m. on Wednesday.
The weather has been pretty good for this time of year (17 celcius, 65 fahrenheit yesterday), although the forecast is calling for some cooler weather in a few days maybe snow.
It seems like practically anything that could go wrong has gone wrong since we got back, flat tires on our car, then a huge oil leak, hot water heater problems in our house, and our phone's not working very well... it has been a major pain in the bottom.
In church today I was enjoying seeing some diversity: asians, natives, a little kid with a mohawk, and a dad with a faux-hawk, a girl with fire engine red hair. And it's been cool to see hutterites around and about too.
Liz went to the library before she even went home, we're so glad to have such a wicked awesome library system here to use again.
And the 2nd hand stores are great too, it was best described as relief to go to the MCC thrift store and check out the 25 cent clothes, epecially given how expensive stuff like that was in Mexico.

But, in general, it's like we never left.

-Rus

home...almost

We had a great time in Phoenix. Ila fell in love with our friends' chihuahua-cross puppies, Belle and Titan. She didn't want to go home. She cried "I don't want to go home. Mei want to go home. I don't want to go home." We took full advantage of their pool and the beautiful weather too. We said good-bye to Phoenix and boarded the first of many buses. We were reminded of the odd people that take public intercity transportation. Now that it's over, it doesn't seem like it was so bad. I don't want to do it again for a long time though! We made it to Great Falls last night where our friend and his son picked us up and brought us to Lethbridge. We slept the night at his place and the kids and I will spend the day here while he and Rus hook up a new water heater in our house. It feels a little odd that I have made it all the way to Lethbridge but still haven't gone home to Raymond yet. But what's another day or two when we've been gone 5 months.
I was really wanting to go to the Copper Canyon before we left Mexico but by the time we decided we wanted to leave we already had a bad case of traveller's fatigue. My desire to go to the canyons was replaced by my desire to just go home.

I apologize for the poorly composed post. I am still so tired and don't have the intellectual energy to make it flow.

the yellow house

We are scheduled to leave Phoenix on Monday morning and will make it home late Tuesday night. Mei has been saying a lot that she wants to go home to the yellow house where her purple bear is (she got a purple care bear just before we left Canada). I think the only one of us who hasn't mentioned a desire to go home is Ila.

the urge to speak

I have this overwhelming urge to speak spanish everywhere I go. Phoenix has a 34.1 percent Hispanic/Latino population (2000 census). And that is probably just counting the people that are here legally, so I'm sure the number is higher. I hear and see Spanish everywhere. I've noticed chili candies and panederias and lavanderias and apple soda and a lot of things are bilingual. There are Spanish radio and TV channels. It's a nice transition coming here before going home.

Tataki Mashoo (Let's Beat the Drum)

The elementary/middle school that our friends'(Jim and Jen) kids go to staged a performance last night of Japanese drumming (Taiko) and song and dance (Soran Bushi). The school had received a government grant to help fund it. Jim, who is the middle school art teacher there, participated in a couple of the songs (he's the one with the white headband in the first picture). He also showed us how to make paper cranes the night before which I have completely forgotten how to do already. They used these to decorate the stage. The last picture above are hundreds of cranes strung together. All the cranes that were made for the show are later going to be sent to Japan to be hung in Nagasaki Peace Park and Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. We were pretty lucky to come here in time to see this show. It was awesome. It made me want to drum.

In Case You Didn't know...

Liz's other blog of book reviews:

http://lisbeths-fruit.blogspot.com/

Rus

good ole Guaymas, good ole Denis

We made it to Phoenix early this morning. Yesterday, we spent the day in Guaymas between night buses, visiting our friend Denis (in the first picture with us). We took a walk down to the harbour and were bombarded by a group of uniformed school kids who fawned over Ila and Mei's little blonde heads and blue eyes. We also caught a little bit of a boxing match and Liam and Denis made some inuksuks out of chunks of white shells and marshmallows. On the second night bus, I went through a short period of remorse about leaving Mexico but I got over it and am sort of looking forward to returning home to see my family, friends, cat and house. But first, we will take advantage of the beautiful weather in Arizona at our friends' place for as long as possible before heading north for good.

bus bus bus bus bus

I bought our tickets for a night bus to Guaymas this morning. We might stay there a night depending on how badly we want to keep moving. We are going to take another night bus from there to Phoenix where we will stay with our friends for a few days again and then hop on another bus or two for another 30 hours. phew. That's a lot of bus time. I think when we are back we will feel like we never want to ride a bus again. But isn't that what women say after they have just given birth, that they never want to do something like that again? And yet, plenty of women go through more than one pregnancy and still want more. I guess the desire for another adventure will inevitably lead us to more excruciatingly long bus rides.

el mercado

Our kids are enamoured with the whole cows, pigs and chickens that they get to see whenever we go to the market. We once saw a guy stumbling down the aisle with the weight of a whole cow on his shoulders. There is very little processing here. It goes straight from the farm to the butcher to the cook to the mouth. It is good for us to see this so we are not so removed from the origin of the meat that we are consuming. We ate cow tongue tacos before we knew what it was we were eating. It tasted fine. Rus really liked it. Liam didn't seem to mind when we told him. I guess to him it would be on par with eating any part of an animal's body because he hasn't been conditioned to think that some parts of an animal's body are less desirable for consumption than others.

the friends we have made

We have met some amazing people here and we will miss them all; the volunteers at the membership library, the friendly families in our church, the shop-owners and vendors and their kids, the family who runs the place where we stay...

iguanas and geckos

We'll miss these critters.

tazos and spiners

Satisfying Liam's daily desire for a new toy are these treasures, found in chip bags, that we find on the street or are given by avid chip eaters. The tazos (with a simpsons theme- homer is homero) are like pogs and the spiners are just tops.

the Vineyard

This is the church that is in charge of the feeding, dental and learning centers that have been set up in the poorer colonies that I talked about in a previous post. They are doing some great things.

Picture explanations:

1. The bus that takes tourists to see "the other side of Mazatlan" and brings food to the people in the colonias and the dump.

2. The main church building in the Golden Zone (tourist district) where they also host meetings for Friends of Mexico and Hands Across the Border.

3. A line-up for food at the dump. Ila is standing off to the side in this picture.

4. Area where cement water filters are made to give people cleaner drinking water.

5. The water filters in storage, soon ready to be filled with filtration system.

Deer Island

We had to go to the tourist zone in order to catch a ride on this amphibious vehicle to get to Isla de Los Venados. It was converted from a US army vehicle. Everything we had read about this island promised good snorkelling but when we checked it out, the water was cloudy and we didn't see anything that we hadn't already seen. We had a good day, despite the snorkelling disappointment. We found hermit crabs and some of the best seashells yet. It was nice and quiet (once the beer-drinking tour group left) and the sand was warm and soft. Ila and Mei had a blast jumping into it(Ila is in the blue shirt, Mei in the pink).

Dogs in Clothes

An exceptionally high percent of dogs wear clothing here. Why? It's so hot!

stickers, tassles, statues...

The best thing about the transit system here is the personalized driver's spaces.

the poorer colonias

The people in the first three pictures have just been displaced to this new area on the outskirts of Mazatlan because the owner of the land that their families had been squatting on for 30 years decided to develop it for middle-income housing. The girl holding Ila is standing in front of her "new home". The next three were taken at the dump where people scavenge for things they can haul away to get money for. Some of them use donkeys or horses to pack their daily collections. I was pretty excited that they let me sit on their donkey and so were the kids. The last picture is just a cute little boy from one of the many poor colonias we saw today. The kids there loved our kids because they were blonde. A lady once told us that her kids had never seen blonde kids before, just blonde adults, so it's quite a novelty, especially since they don't live in the tourist zone.

An Orphanage

This orphanage, simply named the Mazatlan Orphanage is the only one that we have been able to find in our time here, although there are at least two others that I know of. The place looked amazingly well-kept and efficient and the kids seemed more physically well off than a lot of the kids I have seen in Mexico. Liam really liked this bedroom. He thought it looked like something out of a movie. There are 23 kids living there right now, most of them girls and all but one are school-aged.

amaranth

Amaranth is an extremely lightweight kind of grain that Liam absolutely loves. He thinks it tastes like popcorn so that's what he calls it. They are inexpensive tiny little balls of goodness that we eat by the handful but I prefer them in yogourt. They can also be used in baking and as cereal.