Visitors!

Thanks for all the words of encouragement! This week I got to fight the blues when I hosted my first guest. Scott, one of the volunteers from the central part of México, is a big hiker, and he came up for a week to enjoy the hiking in the mountains around Monterrey. On Sunday, my counterpart went with us to Parque Chipinque, but we took a different trail than I took last time. This time we went to a point called El Pinal...loosely translated in my bad Spanish to the Piney Spot. El Pinal is the little wooden structure at the top of this mountain. Yes, we actually made it that far!

This is the view of the city from El Pinal.

The haze and smog kind of wreaked havoc with the view. But, as the sign says, from here, you can see...nothing!

I have also started hanging out on my terrace at night to get out of the heat. Homes here tend to trap heat and literally turn into ovens, especially the second floors. Before he left, Scott surprised me with some house plants for my terrace as house-warming presents! Right now they are pretty small, but with the constant sunshine and some TLC, in two years I might have a full-fledged jungle upstairs. The jungle will compliment the turkey, roosters, and roof dogs that I can see from the terrace.

On the sad news front, our English Club was very short lived. When I stopped by our cafe on Tuesday with Scott, I saw a sign that the owner was selling everything in the cafe! She had not been getting much business, so last Friday she and her husband decided to shut down! Needless to say, just that morning I had sent out an e-mail to everyone in my center, inviting them to the club. Oops...

As a point of comparison between the US and México, here is a basket of groceries that I bought at the local convenience store. Basically enough as snacks for a couple of days: a loaf a wheat bread, a pineapple, a half-kilo of eggs (8), some nopales (cactus leaves), carrots, tomatoes, bananas, and juice, for a grand total of...88 pesos! Which is roughly $6.75. An order of 5 tacos from the local joint costs 35 pesos, so less than $3 for a very satisfying main entree.

Tomorrow I head off to Matacanes with a fellow volunteer and some people from his office. Everyone says that it is an amazing experience (think cliff jumping, rappelling, swimming, hiking, caving, etc., for 10 hours), and I'm getting pretty excited! Pics and stories next week.