This morning as we came into Marquelia I saw really old woman taking a huge pig for a walk. Actually she was dragging the pig who was resisting by digging in his heels and screaming loud! I said look at this lady trying to walk her pig! My husband said she's not walking him; she's gonna tie him to that tree. I said but why is he screaming look at all that green grass..he said "cause he probably liked it better in the house" oh my god I laughed for 5 minutes!

 So the ATM in Marquelia had no money in it. There were people around it so Everardo went over to get in line while i was still laughing about the pig. He came back a minute later...there was no money but the guy waiting there was hoping the money truck would come back like it did yesterday! ok we need an open bank...
The only bank open on Saturday is all the way in Ometepec. Yesterday we bought s couple of chairs on the side of the road, and I had a leg massage, but tomorrow Hubby has to pay for a fishing net. The leg massage was pretty interesting. The guy used a cream that had some menthol in it, it was his own concoction. I could not really follow him ( I can SOOO hardly wait to be fluent!), but apparently he's been doing this for over 30 years. He was talking about tendons and lumps and air I think, but how everything is connected. It was probly more than half hour on each leg, never hard though (even tho' that's what I like after years of Thai massage). But he talked about how the place that it hurts is not the place that's damaged. Anyway afterwards he told Everardo not to turn the ac on in the car, for me not to wash my hands with water before the end of the next day- only alcohol. No shower either! I am happy to report I just took a lovely shower. It was good tho' and I probly will go back. The medicine I take makes my bones ache sometimes. And for a full body massage it's 2 1/2 hours for 400 pesos...hmmm sounds like a good deal! Even with the whole no shower thing ha ha!

Back to today...well there ATMs in the 2 closest towns but both were out of money. And the Super Che in Marquelia would give you up to 1000 pesos back with a purchase but only if you had Bancomer..ooops we have another bank- shoot! But I did find a big tupperware that the silverware will fit in, found out you can't just have it in a tray...the ocean air is one new experience after another ha ha. Weird that the ATMs have no money, right? And the bank was open in Ometepec because it's pretty big, but I heard (o take it for what it's worth), that the banks in the little towns were getting robbed so they close on Saturday. It might jut not be worth it to pay people to work...anyway we're getting to know Ometepec enough to see that sometime oon we want to go for the day and just poke around. There's lots of little towns that are down little side roads off the 200 between here and there (bout 1 1/2 hour drive) and little by little we want to explore those too.

Tomorrow is the elections. Some of our friends here are very involved and passionate, we however have no opinion- we just got here...we went to a couple of rallies just to be apart of the festivities & I was even in a march, but tomorrow the plan is to lay low. All this driving around and trying to get things done and I'm ready for a book and the hammock as well as a romp on the beach with Sam (our dog). I did cancel AT&T today and that gave me great satisfaction. Hope I'm still feeling it when the last bill comes- ugh. Can't remember what I wrote yesterday ha ha so I may digress to say we got home phone & internet- hmmm I probly did say that. Had some fabulous chicken tacos in a kind of soup with veges, mine came with sour cream and Everardo's had salsa, for a snack a Chela's a little earlier, so all is good. Oh and that was after dragging beds uo and down the outside stairs to make to singles into a doube cause we love each other but it's too damn hot to sleep on top of each other in this single and a half bed we got goin' in our bedroom. oooh tonite I get to stretch all my arms and legs at once while sleeping..yippee

Well I got to have yet another first. ha ha not one I was hoping for. Puking and the runs! I threw up all day yesterday and just got weaker and weaker. Finally about 7 pm I went to the local doctor in Copala and got a shot in my butt, plus some antibiotics that I have to take for 4 days. I feel better today, just exhausted and weak. The doctor said since we are living here after awhile noting will bother me, but believe me I'm gonna take it easy for awhile with food off the street.

We had been all day in Ometepec and stopped in Marquelia on the way back to eat. If I hadn't eaten the side dish of spaghetti I would have probly been fine, but now I remember that it seemed she was not making it in boiling water & must have been using regular water. So yesterday is a painful blur, I was so sick I thought I be carried to the hospital...luckily my husband decided I needed a doctor before the next day ( I had said let's see how I am tomorrow). Now for the best part! The doctor visit, a shot, antibiotics and some for the diarrhea...200 pesos! And that's without insurance...can you imagin how much that would have been in the states? In Calif???

Today I feel better, and we stopped by these guys selling wood furniture in the street and bought two rocking chairs to put in my favorite spot to watch the waves. Not like tall backed rockers; more like regular chairs but with rockers on the bottom. Very pretty. Well good to know about the cost of seeing the doctor! I'm still paying $366 dollars a month just for me to keep my medical insurance in Cal for a year. I won't use it once except to get a mammogram next April. I had breast cancer and a lumpectomy, and had to go thru chemo & radiation. Now I have to take a pill for 5 years, it's been 2 1/2 so far. I need to take Arimidex, which I believe I can get over the counter or get a prescription here, but when I left I just wasn't sure so I kept my insurance....I'll have to rethink this one.

Mexicans are nothing if not creative! There is a place on the way to Ometepec, (which is about a 2 hour drive from here south & east), right before you get into the city itself where the road dips. There's dirt in this dip which I guess makes alot of dust. There's this family who have these small buckets that keep the dirt damp. That way the dust doesn't blow over you and/or your car. Then they stand with little bowls and people give them a few pesos. I've seen it twice now, and some people told us they are always there. Pretty cool. We give them 10 pesos when we pass- on the way back, not the way in. My husband commented that we don't see too many homeless people deep in Mexico. Even if people have nothing, they at least have a small shack they live in- and it's theirs. People own their home- shack or castle or in between (mostly), and you always see places with a small store or restaurant in front and they live in back or upstairs. With no mortgage ,when you own what you have, you can make it.
I also see lots of small jobs, so mostly everybody eats. The tips you give to the people who carry things to your car- in some parts of Mexico this is the only money they make- the store doesn't pay them. When we were in Acapulco Monday we went to Wallmart- there must have been 100 people working in there! But it works. As I write this I'm keeping my eye out for the bread lady, but it's afternoon and I might have missed her.

So many things we don't normally think about. We have a covered pitcher of water in our bathroom for brushing our teeth. I wasn't thinking about drinking water in the bathroom, but hey when you brush your teeth the water goes in your mouth ha ha. I just remembered the 3 weeks I stayed in someone's home in San Miguel Allende a couple of years ago to go to a Spanish immersion school; there was always a pitcher of fresh water in my room.My candles have been coming in handy and were merely decorative in Calif. It seems that during the rainy season the electricity goes out alot. But we just carry on. Don't know if I already said this, but a guy is rewiring our whole house for about 300 pesos- the wiring was messy and when the new construction was done they just "extended" the wire ha ha. Our electricity is not string enough for the pumps so he's gonna fix that too.

So in Ometepec today we went to Telmex and got a landline & internet. This was very cool because previously we were told that internet could be as much as a year wait because this area is "saturated". But somehow in the end we got it! yipee Well we'll see about yipee- the installation is 10-15 days away, which may nean something entirely different, but it's a positive start. All that's left now is one more trip to Acapulco to Telcel to get my IPhone "unlocked" so I can get service on it here from Telcel. But that's ok cause we had no time for Costco when we were there Monday so we can take care of things like toilet paper, cerea, etc. Last nite we ate a fish just caught by Chela's husband and it was yummy. Nothing beats fresh everything! That's all for now!

Mexico is a trip! Every day something new. Sunday nite we had no water in our part of the house. Our house is actually 2 buildings; one is the kitchen and a bathroom and a shower room, then across the patio is our living space; a big bedroom upstairs and ext to it a bathroom & shower, then downstairs a huge living room that I kinda divided into quarters- living room with chairs and TV, then an area with bookshelves, our "inside" picnic table, electronics and my exercise machine. One quarter is like the garage- tools and stuff, and the last quarter is empty. Anyway next to that is our bedroom & bathroom/shower. So Sunday nite I try to take a nice cold shower- believe me I don't even kinda miss hot water for showers! It is always soothing to get into the cool water. Everardo wanted to go outside and pump some water up to the roof but  said no I could  wait until morning.

Water is interesting, water is gold. Drinking water is purchased in those huge plastic bottles- I think I already said that, and for everything else you collect it during the rainy season in these cisterns in the ground. The roofs have an edge or lip so the water is collected and then goes down a pipe on one side cause the roof has a tiny slope you almost can't see. Then you pump it up to these big black tanks on the roofs to be used in the house. If you run out of that water you can buy it from these big trucks, or take your own big black tank down and buy it cheaper. Our friend created a project to pipe water to his land so he has unlimited supply and has offered to sell us water at a cheaper price than the others.

So we got up at 6am Monday and left for Acapulco to immigration and shopping and didn't return until after dark, I think around 8:30 or 9pm. And exhausted, we came home to no electricity! Well there's a guy for that, too and he had been to our house the day before to replace the line coming to our house4 from the pole- he said the electric company (or somebody) took it and replaced it with cheaper stuff. He re-replaced it with the better wire for 200 pesos. This was great because our electricity) was dim and light dim and light. So imagine our surprise Monday nite- no electricity. Well we talked to our buddy/neighbor because it looked like everybody on our end of the street had lights but us- and he said to cal Romero (the electricity guy) (Notice I don't say electrician- this guy is one I guess by experience- he's just good at it-hmm so I guess I will call him an electrician), but it going on 10pm and we were going to sleep anyway. So this morning he came over round 8am and now he's going to rewire the entire house for $300 pesos!! Yippee. By the way he fixed the issue by climbing up the pole across the street from our house and doing something- apparently he had to do this for our neighbor further up the street than us last nite so if we had been home...
We wanted a simple life and we got it!! But we are getting the hang of it. Gume, our good friend has talked Everardo thru a lot of stuff already and expressed some surprise (not in a good way) that we had some of the issues we've had after paying someone to build onto the house, and also paid for basic maintenance. But it's all good- we are learning and will know better next time! NO hard feelings, just more knowledge.

So back to Monday's trip to Acapulco. Got to the immigration office by 9am and said our final good bye and gracias around 4:30! We were not in their office the whole time tho' - initially we were sent to go have breakfast while they discussed what to do. ha ha since I had no documentation. When we came back from eating, oh and Everardo had crossed the street "Mexican style" dodging between honking cars to grab some cash from the bank while Chela and I went to this huge Wallmart to look at beach furniture...We told them the story of how I went up to the window, paid my $25, got a piece of paper for the truck and my visa back but didn't notice right away that they had not stamped it or written on it. As it turns out, apparently I was at the window to get the 180 permit for the truck and was supposed to go to another window for my visa. But I thought it was one window for foreigners and one window for Mexicans...ha ha again...I thought??  So anyway we had to walk back  to the bank and pay a fine for entering illegally even tho' I thought they should have checked my paperwork before I passed...and Chela and I crossed holding hands and NOT in between cars! At  this point they
tell us two very complicated ways for me to get documented, and one includes Everardo showing 3 months of bank statements to prove he can support me- or we can go get our marriage certificate and apostill notarized (an apostill is a notarized document confirming the marriage cert when going to a foreign country- even tho the marriage cert is already notarized- and we went thru some hell to get it, too, finally fedxing back and forth with the State of Nevada cause we were married in Reno..)

So now we have to notarize the notarized apositlle! And all this had to be translated to me because it was way too fast and complicated and I would say "que?'...ha ha I was laughing out loud and the woman thought it was pretty serious. So finally we agree that I will simply get a 180 day tourist visa and then we'd go home and collect douments like bank statements and see the lawyer for the notarized docs and start the process for citizenship. The woman wrote a book- ok 3-4 pages of the story of how I got here without docs thru the Santa Teresa border- I guess to cover everyone's collective asses ha ha. This took hours, we talked about the furniture I saw in Wallmart and agreed to check Home Dept &b Costco before making a purchase since they were all close. I want to put simple outside furniture inside until I lived here while and figure out what I want.... so then Everardo has to make a third trip to the bank to get a bank statement we think to establish our residency cause it's the only thing with our address. (which includes tby the way, casa verde next to El Faro!) You don't pay anything in their office; you must walk to your local bank- luckily we have one! He comes back and suddenly everything has changed- they are telling me to get photos and everyone is talking except I'm only saying "Mande?" (what). I a getting an FM2 Immigrante card which is r4esidency for a year! Yippee!! Maybe it was Everardo's good looks and kind manner, maybe it was my good looks and sincere desire to follow the rules, and just maybe it was what our bank statement said...which ended up changing pretty quick after furniture shopping, Home Depot for wiring and tools, food, and some other big ticket stuff we wanted to get all at once. Anyway as I always say- Everything is possible in Mexico...ya gotta wait....it's funny they said to comeback in a few days to pick it up, but when we returned with the photos they said just wait we will give it to you today. Oh and Everardo had to go back to the bank a 3rd time to make that payment...So...we waited.
Getting the photos was fun too- the first set taken by a young woman who never smiled even once the whole time we were there- well I had been smiling smiling for my photo and finally stopped and click! As they were cutting them up (taken with a very old camera and processed in the back room), I insisted to see them and said- oh no, no no I don't want these She informed us we had to pay again & I didn't care, the second set the flash made me blink so my eyes were closed. Chela and I were laughing but Chela then argued I shouldn't have to pay for that set. So for set three I opened my eyes very wide and yelled take the picture- she said are you sure? -YES! So I have wide eyes and a huge smile on my residency card, but good cause I'm a smiley person.

So we left there finally! Time for shopping but not too much time cause we wanted to be home before dark and the rain was coming. Almost ran thru Elektra (gong back later to see their mattresses), Home Depot and Wallmart. These were all down by the airport, almost out of Acapulco and we had been in downtown. Well I liked the first set the best but of course they didn't have it at this Wallmart,so back to downtown. Acapulco is very beautiful when you are driving along the cliffs looking down at the beaches and all the houses, hotels, and buildings. So I got to see it a couple of times ha ha.
We got home late, after dark and pooped out! And then no lights, so I arranged my new furniture by candlelight and we hit the sack. Today it's raining but there's a big party in Copala (about 10 min). It's a political thing- I'm not sure why it's before the election but people are decorating their  ars and trucks to do a parade from here to there. I wanted to wait and go around 3pm since the electrican is working at out house but I an at Chela's using the internet and people are gathering...wow for a quiet life I sure am busy!