Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Off to the beach

Hi. I am in morelia still. Kenny left for the states to start training on the bike for his summer job. So now i´m only down to one gringo friend in mexico. But that´s okay it just means more spanish. Speaking of which i am still struggling but doing okay with it.

Heading to the beach this weekend because it is semana santa (easter) and very few people work these next few days.

Anyways, have to run, sorry for the short update. Email me!!!
Love
mike

Friday, March 2, 2007

More time in Morelia

So the big news for me is that i have found an apartment here in Morelia. I am excited to stay in this beautiful city and work on my spanish more. That means i will probably be here at least until june, july or august. I am currently looking for a job. Probably as a bartender or waiter. But I think it will be hard because my spanish isn´t that great yet. We´ll see though.

I finally saw kenny again after three weeks apart. He finished his farm and stopped by morelia on his way to some hot springs. He is doing well and has a nice beard going. I´m not sure what his plans are next. Although our friend katherine is coming to visit him soon. That should be fun.

Lets see what have I been up to lately??? Well i have been to the zoo here which was fun. Lots of interesting animals from all over the world. I also went to a monarch butterfly reserve. It is where all the monarchs from canada migrate to during the winter. It was crazy. Millions of butterflys. I will post some pictures of them eventually. I have found a gym to work out at and also have located the only ¨climbing gym¨in morelia. It is really small but at least it is climbing. I have been playing tennis with andy´s brother in law hugo. He keeps beating me but soon i will win i think. I have gone out to a few dance clubs here which was an interesting experience. Tons of people with fun dancing. Last weekend i finally made it to the pacific coast. Andy, Nena and I went to the beach for three days. It was beautiful and I realized how much i miss the ocean. So much fun, although I didn´t get to surf because i couldn´t find a surfboard. Next time. We stayed at nena´s fathers house. They were such nice people. I still can´t get over how generous and great the people are here. They welcome perfect strangers into their homes like you were family. Good times.

well i have to get to my apartment to wash my clothes and make some breakfast. It is fun to wash clothes by hand. Takes a little time but they come out nice and clean. I will try and pòst more pics sooon.
Take care. I miss everyone. Kenny does too.
Love,
Mike

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Morelia

It was very interesting watching the super bowl in spanish. We watched it with some friends in Queretaro. Needless to say after struggling to understand the announcers the Colts ended up winning. Congrats to my boy Slack, his team did it. Too bad the broncos didn´t even make the playoffs, its okay though.

The day after the super bowl, kenny and I took a bus to Morelia. It is about 3-4 hrs west of mexico city. It is a beautiful city with about 1 million people. The architecture downtown is like most cities in mexico. Old colonial spansih style with very old buildings and very beautiful. We met up with my friend Andy Dick´s wife Nena, at the bus station and she took us to her home. After hanging out for a few days, Kenny has gone to another farm about one hour west of here. I decided not to go down to Oaxaca but right now there is no space for me at the farm so i am here in morelia for now.

My friend Andy arrived a few days ago and I have been staying with him and his in-laws. They are a wonderful family and I have been grateful to have such a nice place to stay with such delicious food. We have been just running errands and relaxing the last few days. But now I need to think about whats next. I might need to get some sort of restaurant job or something because my money is depleting rapidly. We´ll see. Kenny will be done with the farm in another two weeks and we might travel with Nena and Andy to the beaches on the pacific coast.

The weather here has been perfect. I have seen some mountain bikers for the first time so I´m going to try and find a bike to use and check out the trails. I have been missing the skiing, climbing and biking in colorado so i´m desperate for some similar excercise here.

I hope everyone is doing well and I miss everyone.
Take care,
Mike

Sunday, February 4, 2007

Soccer Match and tourist visa

Soccer Match (Los Gallos Blancos)
Hi. We are now in Queretaro Mexico (About 3 hours north of mexico city). We finished our last week at the WWOOFing place. It was a great experience and I recommend it to anyone. Anyways, after heading back down to san miguel from the farm, we stayed one night with some friends from spanish class. The next day we ran all over town trying to get the ¨permiso¨we need to travel in mexico. When we crossed the border no one checked our passports or even stopped our bus. I guess your supposed to get a tourist card but we didn´t. So we went to migracion in san miguel trying to get one. We were told you can only get it at a border or at an international airport when you fly in. So we told the immigration guy we lost ours and he sent us on a wild goose chase to accomplish this. First we needed to go to the police station to file a report of losing it and then get an official letter from them about this report. AFter getting the letter we would have to return to migracion and wait a week for processing. But we figured if we had the letter from the police we would be okay. Because we have heard stories of the police stopping busses throughout mexico and if you don´t have your permiso they put you in jail in a holding cell for a little bit and then make you go all the way back to the border to get one. We don´t really want this to happen.

So we went to the first address we got and the place had moved. We took a bus to the new location but went into about 3 wrong building before we found it. Once we finally found it we waited for a little while and made friends with the secretary lady and helped her do her english homework she had for an english class. Then the lawyers took down our story and printed out an official looking letter describing our situation. We think this will be good enough to travel with. Then we helped the secretary finish her homework and she gave us some tamales that she was having for lunch. Overall it took the whole day but it was still a good time.


We also happened to run into one of our spanish teachers at the police station and he said he would give us a ride to Queretaro where our friend Alex (the groom from the wedding) lives. Once we arrived alex took us to a local market where we bought some food and took it to his sisters house where we had a wonderful fiest. We also got to see his nieces, nephews, and sisters that we met at the wedding which was very great to see them again. Because they are the nicest family ever.


After eating we decided to go to the Soccer match. Los Gallos Blancos de Queretaro v. Los Diablos Rojos de Toluca. There is a really big stadium in town where they play. The whole experience was great. Tons of people all cheering non stop for two and a half hours. There was lots of action but no goals and the game ended in a 0-0 tie. Still very fun.

After the game we went to a restaurant and bar and had dinner with some tequila. Very delicious food as always. Then we went to a bar next door where there was a live traditional mexican band (about 11 members) and we danced and hung out until the wee hours of the morning. It was a very great night.

Today we went back to the sisters house where we had more delicious food. And we are now going to watch the super bowl in spanish at his house. It was weird because i had no idea it was the super bowl or who was playing until about an hour ago.

Anyways, kenny and I are doing well and are heading to morelia tomorrow to meet up with my friend andy dick and his wife nena. I´m very excited to see them both. Hope everyone is doing well.
Adios,
love
mike

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Farm Pics


The Most amazing bug ever: painted grasshopper The yurt we built waiting for canvas

earthbag house under construction


Donkey Luna


Outdoor hottub heated by the sun Shower







Kitchen

Pictures

Sunset at the farm
With our spanish teacher Marta

Disneyland type church in san miguel


Overlooking san miguel


Our homestay courtyard

At the lake Media Luna






Water falls at El Puente De Dios







Cascadas in Tamasopo








Kenny in Tamasopo

First Week on the Rancho

Hello all,
so we completed our first week at our first WWOOFing location. It is about 15 acres of land in the hills outside of San Miguel. After finishing class last friday we took a bus saturday morning to the big grocery store in town to meet the owner of the farm. Dorothy is a lady about 45 years old from san diego. We got into her 1971 VW bus and headed out of town to her farm. It was only about 12 km away but took about 40 minutes because the roads are pretty bad. We drove onto their property and were greeted by her husband Andy who is from england and their two dogs, puja and spangle. They also have two donkeys, whose job is to mow the wild grass around the property. There property is a beautiful desert area at about 2000m elevation (about 6700ft) We set up our tent and went straight to work.
So we thought this place was going to be an organic farm but it is really more of a natural construction site. They do have a pretty big organic garden and a green house but it is the dry season so they really only have carrots and a few types of lettuce left from the rainy season. Anyway, what they mainly specialize in is earthbag construction. They hold workshops for anybody who would like to learn how to build buildings out of earthbags. This basically consists of filling old livestock feed bags with a mixture of different types of dirt, then stacking them on top of each other and putting up a cob finish to cover and protect the bags. The structures are very sturdy and look almost like normal concrete walls when finished.
Everything on their property is spread out and made out of some sort of natural or recycled material. The kitchen is a circular earthbag thingy with a tin roof over it. It is outside and can be quite cold when cooking breakfast in the morning. The owners live in a tent made from yak's wool that they brought back from Tibet. There is an earthbag hottub which is heated by a solar water heater. Although we haven't been able to use it yet because it has been raining and freezing all week. Not enough sun to heat the water. They also have a greenhouse made of used old wood pallets. Very cool. Other things: sawdust composting toilet, a mongolian style yurt under construction, a very cool outdoor cobb shower, a dome type tent thingy for the dining room, a solar oven, a solar water bottle purifier, and another wood pallett tool shed.
Everything is outside and there is no electricity. They get water from a well and is cold if the sun hasn't been out. But if your lucky the sun will heat some of the water in the above ground hoses so your shower won't be freezing.
Typical day: We get up each morning at 7:30 or so make breakfast, and start work at nine. We work until noon, have lunch, do the dishes, and then continue work until about 3 or 4. Hang out reading or walking around until Andy makes some sort of delicious vegetarian dinner around 5;30 OR 6. Then we do the dishes from dinner and the sun goes down pretty soon afterword. It has been cold this week so we usually read a little in the dining dome with our headlamps and get in the tent around 8 or 9.
Tasks So far: we have built a yurt out of wood and then learned how to cob to make a little front stoop thing. The cob they use is 1 part black earth, 2 parts donkey poop, 3 parts sand, and 1 part concrete to bind everything together. We have fixed up their greenhouse with new plastic and reinforced the walls to make it more sturdy. We have done a lot of digging up or big huge rocks and filling in the holes with smaller rocks to make little drainage holes for rain water around the yurt. We do our laundry by hand, and also fill up 2 liter soda bottles with well water to be purified by the UV rays and heat of the sun (a very cool and really simple system to get clean drinking water). Next week we will start building this little cicular earthbag building and cobbing the walls of it. Should be a good time.
We are hoping for more sun this week as it has been pretty cold last week. Then next weekend we are going to travel to Queretaro, and Guanajuato before kenny heads to Michoacan and I head down to the beach in Oaxaca to meet Vicky. Pretty excited about it.
Hope all is well in the states. Take care.
love,
mike and kenny

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

San Miguel de Allende

Still in san miguel. We decided to do one extra week of class. Our teacher is great and we are learning slowly. Last night we went to free salsa lessons at a bar in town. It was great taking turns dancing with 50 year old women, because there were about 10 guys and 4 or 5 girls. I was pretty terrible but hopefully will get better. There is another class tonight we will probably go to. Also tonight we are teaching english to local 8-10 year old mexican kids at the public library. Should be a good time.

Our stay with our family here has been the best part of San Miguel. Their home is beautiful and the family is so kind and generous. Kenny and I share a room for $18 a day each. But we also get three meals a day of the most amazing food ever known to man. We leave each meal satisfied, full, and completely amazed at how lucky we are. I will post some pictures of our house later.

Last weekend we went with the family to their rancho. They own two. One with pigs, cows and bulls and the other is sort of a beginning of a small resort. We went to the resort one. It was outside of the city about 10 km and was very beautiful. They have 2 big swimming pools and 2 smaller kiddie pools that fill up with natural agua caliente. It comes right out of the ground and they pump it into the pools. Then they drain the water each week so that it is always fresh and clean. No chemicals used. The amazing part is that they grow vegetables down the hill from the pools so that the pool water is redirected to the crops when the pools are drained. Amazing! The main house, where the daughter and her husband just moved in, is beautiful as well. The ceilings are high and arched but are made of bricks. A very tricky thing to build they say. There is also a small courtyard where there is a gigantic palm tree growing. The leaves act as sort of a roof for the open aired courtyard. The whole place is just incredible. They also have 3 small apartments (one or two bedrooms with kitchen and bathroom) that they rent out to whoever for about 300 dollars a month. There is also a very small little church, alar type building which could be used for weddings or praying or quinseneros (15 year old girl huge birthday celebrations that are as big of a deal as weddings) or whatever else. There goal is to start organic farming there and have a little store where they can sell the produce. They also charge a small fee to use the pools. Which are always packed full of kids. They want kenny and I to tell them about our experiences on the organic farms we are going to. And possibly help them set up there land to grow organic stuff as well. Last weekend when we were there we ate lunch and then helped the son of the family scrub and clean one of the drained pools for about 4 hours. It was hard work but fun none the less. The whole family works very hard. Probably about 12 -15 hours a day.

Got to run.
Adios
Mike and Kenny

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

First Colorado Plates

Today we saw a Toureg with Colorado Plates, the first we have seen in Mexico, absolutely fantastic! I felt like I was in Colorado. Spanish school is going just great, Mike and I are in the same class and our maestra is a fox! We are thinking about doing one more week of class because of this reason before we start our farming extravaganza. I haven´t seen anyone I know in town except for Mike and a girl we met on the bus sometimes. Things are good, it is colder here right now in the mornings and night than Colorado it seems. It seems that global warming is actually cooling Mexico and since this is a new trend since El Niño eight years ago. For those of you who don´t know Spanish, that means the Niño. Also the sudden popularity of ethanol in the states has given to raise to the price of corn products including our stple, corn tortillas. The price now has risen to 14 pesos per kg in the most expensive areas of the country. People are angry and cold, but we are having a great time and recommend this part of the country to anyone who dares to brave paying $1.20 for two and a half pounds of tortillas. Mike has had some diarrhea and I´m waiting for mine to arrive any day now. Our mama, se llama Maria is a nice lady that prepares plenty of food for her hijos. I have been eating too much and not running enough because the air is a little contaminated and gives headaches. Much love from freezing morning and night time San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Kenny met a nice girl on the bus, it was quite magical. Details for the wedding are on the way. To be continued... we might go to Cuba.

Saturday, January 6, 2007

San Miguel de Allende y màs



sunrise in los lomas del real

Las Cascadas in Tamasopo



Hello people. Thanks for the e-mails and comments. I love to hear from you guys too. So we have had a few crazy days since last update. We are now in San Miguel de Allende in the state of Guanajuato for spanish class for one week.




After leaving Tampico we took a bus to Ciudad Valles where we took another bus to tamasopo. This is heading west away from the gulf coast. During this night bus ride we met a kid named Juan who was in Austin Texas for 3 years illegally before the immagration police caught him and took him back to mexico. He said it took him seven days of swimming and walking in the night to sneak accross the border. Crazy story.



Anyway we arrived in Tamasopo at night at found a decently priced hotel. In the morning we went to see las cascadas (waterfalls). This seems to be a semi small mexican tourist attraction. But we didn´t find the town in our Lonely Planet Mexico guide and we didn´t see any other gringos there. It was extremely beautiful. After we walked back to town and walked up a dirt road past sugar cane fields for about 5 or 6 km to another waterfall place called el puente de dios. It was even more beautiful with crystal clear water.

There we met a mexican family that lived in Chicago. We swam with them a bit and talked about our trip and then left for the walk back to town. We hitchiked back into town for lunch and that same family happened to drive by. They joined us for lunch and then offered to give us a ride to the next town called rio verde. So we piled in their car and drove about 1.5 hours to rio verde where they proceeded to invite us into their home for dinner. Then they drove us to a campsite outside of town called media luna. Here we set up our tent in the dark and met a group of 6 kids that were from san luis potosì they had hitchhiked all the way to tijuana (about a day and a half) and were on their way home.




The next morning we woke up to a beautiful landscape. Pine trees and a lake with little rivers running here and there surrounded us. The water here was also crystal clear and very warm. Probably about 75 or 80 degrees. We swam the whole day with the kids we had met. At night we decided to hitch hike with them back to san luis potosi. After walking for about 2 km we piled into the back of a truck. 8 of us in the back and a trailer with 3 horses behind us. The ride took a little over two hours and my butt hurt. It was freezing cold but still an adventure.

In san luis potosì we stayed at the house of one of the kids we met. The next day we toured the centro area of SLP. Very beautiful old churces and government buildings. Unfortunately we forgot our cameras so the images our for our memory only. This morning we woke up early and took a bus to san miguel de allende. We are staying in a beautiful house with a mexican family in this beautiful town. We start classes on monday for one week and then we are working on a farm here for two weeks.


It has been an amazing couple of days. Finding these little known places that aren´t even in the guide book has been great. People continue to be exceptionally nice and are alway willing to help. Be it a ride or for directions, whatever you need. Mexico and its people are amazing and everything is beautiful.

Time to go. Would love to hear updates from you guys too.




adios,


love


mike and kenny