Mexico

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A Change of Scenery

Whew. I’m leaving for Mérida on Friday and I don’t think I could possibly deserve — or need — a vacation more than I do now! After taking it pretty easy in January and reorienting myself with new clients, I’ve worked my tail off in February! I can’t believe how much I earned in just two weeks this month. I also have the peace of mind of knowing that I’ll have a full roster when I go back to work March 1st.

One of the most exciting projects I’m going to start on is a new transcription project for Gutsu films. I am very proud to have been their Transcription Coordinator for the forthcoming documentary Freedom for the Wolf and am thrilled to be on board for their next project. I’ll be doing some law enforcement work on top of that, as well as a little proofreading and general transcription. I don’t think I’ve been this happy with my workload in ages (outside of the proofreading contract that just ended, of course).

I was going to get takeout last night, but was too beat to fathom putting on my flip-flops and schlepping “all the way” to Miguel’s. You know I’m tired when cooking feels like less work than eating out! But tonight, as I sent off the final transcript and invoice for a major project, knowing that I have a couple of easy days of work left before my vacation, I just needed a change of scenery.

So, being the classy gal that I am, I transferred the rest of my white wine to a water bottle (the wine bottle being too large to carry in my purse) and went to Miguel’s. I brought a book, but ended up spending most of my time talking to Angela about different things and getting in some much needed linguistic practice. My word of the day is “castigar” (to punish).

I ordered a shrimp burrito and a chorreada.

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I still don’t quite know what the latter is all about, but it’s yummy. I like the base, which is a charred maize product. It’s much thicker than a tortilla and has a strong corn taste, but is not crunchy like a tostada. I like a lot of guacamole, hot sauce, and lime juice on my chorreadas!

I haven’t really had many cravings for the shrimp burritos this winter for some reason and each time I have one, I wonder why because they are so good!!! I like these with just the avocado sauce normally, but tonight added both hot sauce and chiles curtidos (pickled jalapeños) and that hit the spot tonight for some reason. Usually, I like the burritos because they’re not spicy, but I must have been in a mood tonight.

Miguel and Angela had a sign by the counter today announcing that they now have agua frescas made from fresh fruit. I asked what kinds and it was hibiscus (jamaica), horchata (which Angela qualified as being riced-based, which I knew, but haven’t tried yet), and… guava. My favourite! I bought a litre bottle from her and will finish it tomorrow as it is very dense since it has so much fruit in it. YUM. Look at the pretty colour!

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Dinner was $80 with the tip (6.58CAD or 5USD). That was it for Miguel’s for February. I can’t believe it’ll already be March next time I go!

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Mission Not So Impossible

I had an adventure and a half this morning!

My riding friend Sue emailed yesterday to ask if I could go to town today to act as a translator. I cannot remember the last time I’ve been to town and could do very well with a few hours away from my desk, so I was glad for the excuse to take off. I met her at 9:30 this morning and got the scoop on what we were off to do.

By way of background, she’s friends with a guy named Rus who had come to Isla for a few weeks from Minnesota and stayed in the apartment next to him. I met him once and he’s super nice. Rus uses his iPad to take pictures and while in Maz one day he set it down and forgot it! He had years worth of pictures on it and was devastated. He put up reward posters in the area where he lost it (Centro between the Mercado and Olas Altas), but nothing came of it.

When he got home, he called Apple and they told him how to activate the Find My iPad feature so that a message would pop up on the lock screen saying the iPad is lost and giving contact information (I need to make sure I have that working on my own iOS devices!).

Incredibly enough, someone had turned the iPad in to the police!!!!! Soon as that notification showed up on the lock screen, a very lovely lady named Marisela who works for the police called Rus in Minnesota to let him know she had his iPad. Rus then asked Sue to go pick it up. Sue had other friends of hers call Marisela to get an address and then asked me to go with her to be a translator.

Which brings us to this morning. The information on a scrap of paper was almost meaningless to me, but I did understand that we were heading into the Juárez colonia. I said our best bet would be to give the paper to a pulmonía driver and see if he could figure it out. Our driver, Mario, looked at it for a bit and saw a street name. That was good enough for him and off we went. Sue and I go to Juárez regularly, so we knew we were in the right neighbourhood and not getting taken for a ride.

We got to the street and he asked a few people if they could get us to Marisela from the rest of the information on the paper. No. Sue had Marisela’s number and I had my phone with money on it so I asked Mario if he would speak to her if I dialed on my phone. Sure. He got hold of her and started with “Marisela? Good. I’m a pulmonía driver and I’ve got a couple of Gringos looking for you…” Sue and I got that bit and burst out laughing. He talked for a bit and said “Aaaaah” a lot, which was a good sign.

Mario hung up, handed me back the phone, and drove a couple more blocks to where we needed to be. We really were “right there” and we had made the right decision to trust a pulmonía driver. This is where we learned that we were going to a community police station for the first time! We were shocked! We’d already asked Mario to wait for us and had made it clear as we were driving around that we were prepared to pay, so he told us where he’d be waiting and wished us good luck.

I asked a police officer outside about Marisela, but he didn’t seem too keen to help. It was an older gentleman in civilian clothing sitting across from him who took pity on us and led us in to Marisela’s office.

Sue had been told to come with ID, so we figured she’d show her passport, get the iPad, and we’d be on our way. No. I have no idea how long we were in that stuffy room, but it was a while! Marisela got all of Sue’s details to make sure they matched up with her information, was happy to see her number on Sue’s phone in an email from Rus, and then asked us for Rus’ address and birthday. Hmmm… Thankfully, Sue’s phone is set up to call the States easily so she called him and left a message. He called right back with the missing information. Sue then had to sign for the iPad and, get this, give her thumb print! They were thorough! Finally, we had to pose for pictures together with the iPad and also with Marisela, probably for their Facebook page or bulletin board. Whew!

Sue was a bit stressed during all of this, but I was having a blast. One thing was clear, there was no way she would have made it without translator. As she said, she would have been driving around in aimless circles and it would have been a waste of her time and money.

The iPad finally secure in her purse, we headed out and Mario whisked us back to the Playa Sur embarcadero. We’d determined the trip would be worth $300 to Mario, which is what he quoted us when we arrived, but we gave him $400. The trip had started off with him being a little uneasy and very likely wondering if it would be worth his time, but he was laughing with us at the end and left very happy and sufficiently compensated for nearly two hours of his time.

As soon as we got to Sue’s place, she sent Rus a picture of us holding his iPad. He’s a happy guy!

The iPad’s not home yet, though, of course. Sue is taking it home to Lethbridge with her, where she will courier it to Rus in Minnesota. But it’s safe and sound for now and he’ll have it in about eight weeks.

The takeaway from this story is that there are some really good people out there. This happy ending would not have been possible without the good Samaritan turning the iPad in to the authorities. And Apple deserves some credit for having a method to get its devices home when they fall in the hands of good people.

It was an awesome morning. Thanks, Sue, for asking me to be your translator on this fun adventure!

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I Did Something Really Stupid – and I Blame RVing For It

I’ve been having trouble with my fridge and especially freezer lately, thankfully after I got through all the meat and stuff in it (including all the ham from Christmas I wasn’t able to foist on other people). My landlady, her husband, and TWO handymen showed upwithin a couple of hours of my asking for help. The guys were going to look at it, she was going to translate if necessary (nope, yay!), and I wasn’t to worry, if there was a real issue, they’d pay for an emergency service call from a fridge repair professional OR a new used fridge right this very afternoon.

So to recap, my landlady responded very appropriately to a fridge emergency.

But I didn’t have a fridge emergency.

I did have a fridge with a magnetic seal that is weakening a little and which was not helped by my having something in the door that was keeping it from shutting properly. My landlord said that if the seal had been stronger, the thing in the door wouldn’t have been as much of an issue, but, ultimately, I’m an idiot who didn’t realise she wasn’t shutting her fridge door properly. Erm, he didn’t call me an idiot. That’s your blogger adding editorial flavour.

And I’m also an idiot who didn’t know that the fridge and freezer communicate. The fridge door not being properly sealed meant that all the cold air from the freezer was getting sucked out too.

I blame RVing because I’ve had a fridge with a door that latches shut for almost eight years now. This would never have happened with my Norcold!

We all had a good laugh and I said I was glad that I was stupid and that there was no massive repair bill in sight. Landlord said he is replacing the seal, though, because even with nothing in the door, it still needs an extra push to really seal tightly. So it was totally worth having him, two repair people, and a translator rush over to my house. Totally.

Post Edited To Add: This post is even funnier if you look at the title of the one before it!

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Doors Closing and Opening

Something important happened a month ago that some of you on Facebook could have possibly deduced from the fact that I was taking a Wednesday afternoon off here, going to town midday on a Thursday, and getting up late — the amazing proofreading contract that I’ve had since last summer came to a very abrupt end.

It wasn’t the end of the world.

I would have loved to have done it for another six months, but I knew that every shift had been a precious gift. So I had a the money to cover a couple of months’ worth of expenses stashed away in my emergency fund (thanks to the low cost of living here in Mexico!). I’d still want to work hard at making up the lost income to touch those saving as little as possible, but the contract ending wasn’t the bottom dropping out event a similar situation had been the fall of 2014 when I first got to Mexico.

Well, to my surprise, in addition to a reference, they gave me a severance payment! What a gift! My being let go was a business decision that I could understand and this generosity made that decision all the more easy to swallow.

So instead of having to work myself to the bone in January to make sure I could cover February expenses and the lack of income from my Mérida holiday without touching my savings, I could take it easy somewhat easy…. but still remembering that I have a trip home and a flight to Europe to pay for in the next few months!

I’d been granted the gift of time I’d been looking for for so long — time to learn new skills (coding apps for iOS and doing WordPress development!) and to find new clients without the nagging voice at the back of my mind counting all the money I wasn’t making.

The very next day, I was taking the first steps to signing on with a new transcription client. And just a few days after that, after beginning a training program that revealed some ugly truths, I told the client that they were paying slave wages and I wasn’t interested in working for them after all!

That was scary… and liberating! The thing is, I haven’t been living paycheque-to-paycheque for the last year or so and I’ve gotten used to having a better than subsistence level of income. Transcription was the wrong field to get into because it tends to pay slave wages, but I’m now in a position to wait for the better clients to come along.

And sure enough, one did. Her rates aren’t amazing, but they’re fair, and it’s the kind of transcription work I want to be doing. If I had clung to the first opportunity that came along, I would never have bothered to keep looking and therefore found this one.

And then, something else came along, another proofreading contract that pays well and for which the client is hoping to build a long-term relationship!

I am absolutely slammed with work right now after several quiet weeks of getting myself sorted and it is fantastic! I have a good mix of tasks, I haven’t had to make any budgetary adjustments (Mexico being so inexpensive helps, of course!), and I’ll be able to enjoy my time off in Mérida. So far it looks like it’ll be ten days off. I had planned to do proofreading there for the old contract, so if I have to do a little proofreading for the new one, it won’t be a problem. 🙂

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Anticipating Severe Sticker Shock

I’ve been hearing a lot about how grocery prices are going up in Canada now that the loonie is on a nose dive. I thought prices were bad before. My weekly grocery shop was usually 80CAD to 100CAD last summer, and I had to watch my pennies and sales to get it in under that price if I wanted any fresh veggies, meat, or dairy.

This afternoon, I headed to Centro to do my big shop for the month where I stock up on pantry staples, get the meat I’ll eat over the course of the next few weeks (freezing some), and buy produce for the week ahead. Basically a Moose Jaw-style supply run, only I’m buying just for a month instead of a couple of them. Those runs, if adjusted to a monthly basis, were about 400CAD a pop and I still had to shop weekly for some things. My average monthly grocery bill was 500CAD and the only way I could have gotten it lower was if I was living there year round and could really stock up a pantry when there were sales and also take up Charles on his offer of filling my freezer with deer meat. I should stress that don’t buy a junk food or a lot of convenience items and I didn’t even buy alcoholic beer all of last summer, with the non-alcoholic stuff being very inexpensive.

The little Ley in Centro has been totally revamped and carries more stuff, so I hoped that I could do my big shop there since I didn’t have time to go elsewhere. Did it ever! What a fantastic remodel! I found everything I wanted there except hummus, but I did find sesame seeds, so I’ll retry my hand at making my own tahini.

I had 1,000MXN, or about 82CAD, in cash on me but don’t really worry about my grocery budget here since even with eating out, I only average 300CAD a month on food. That’s right. I can eat whatever I want here and go out as much as I want to restaurants and I’m still spending 200CAD less than I do in Canada. So I just put what looked good in my cart and got enough food that I had to take 40MXN pulmonía ride back to the embarcadero. Total cost of my shop? 635MXN or 52.26CAD…

Here’s my shopping list. I’d love to know what a similar list would cost where you live! Prices are in pesos, then CAD. I will say that lots of these items are at sales prices because I don’t like buying things full price, but I do the same thing in Canada so I really am comparing apples to apples.

Avocados, 2, 6.27/0.52

Garlic, clove, 3.6/0.30

Sesame seeds, small packet, 8.90/0.73

Almond milk, carton, 42.9/3.53 (the only thing that is the same price as back home)

Brocoli, large, 4.30/0.35

Yams, two small, 10.61/0.87

Ground beef, pound, 44.05/3.64

Yellow onions, two large, 16.61/1.37

Green onions (échalottes), bunch, 4.75/0.39

Sliced deli ham, package, 58.80/4.84 (this is thick-cut ham)

Lettuce (Boston-type), large, 17.90/1.47

Butter, two sticks, 21.80/1.79

Sliced multigrain bread, loaf, 26/2.14

White potatoes, four medium, 8.05/0.66

Toilet paper, four jumbo rolls, 11.50/0.95

Barilla pasta, two packages, 35/2.88 (this is why I eat so much more pasta here than back home!)

Pineapple, half, 11.66/0.96 (!!!)

Pork roast, small, 50.14/4.13

Beef, two large thin steaks, 46.58/3.83

Tomato sauce, three small tetra packs, 11.7/0.96

Chihuahua cheese, 200 grams, 28.90/2.34 (compare to cheddar)

Oxaca cheese, 400 grams, 55.90/4.60 (compare to mozzarella)

Sliced cheese, 8 slices, 16.90/1.39 (compare to Kraft real cheddar slices or other higher end slices with real cheese in them)

Chinese-style soy sauce, small bottle, 15.50/1.26

Salsa verde, small tin, 8.90/0.73 (compare to green enchilada sauce)

Paper towels, 3 rolls, 20.90/1.72

Raisins, medium bulk container, 17.33/1.43

Yoghurt, 1KG, 18.90/1.56 (granted this is a sale price, but the full price is only about 0.50CAD more!!!)

This was my first time needing a pulmonía to get home from the Centro Ley and it cost me 40MXN, a fair price. I had just what I could carry home on this side. If I’d had just one more carton of almond milk, I would have needed a taxi here, too!