The 75 Step Program

Today is Sunday so I got on my best, and only dress and we went down the hill to Contempletive Sunday. It´s the sort of thing people like us can do if we don´t want to go to church but we like the people. This time we all talked about forgiveness, about which everybody has something to say. It was fun, we got a cookie and we always come out feeling good, which is the whole idea I think. Then we went off to our favorite Mexican luncheon place on the river where every middleclass Mexican family was, all sitting around eating and listening to the local musicians seranade us, and the local donut and chocolate vendors sold us dessert. I´ve never before been in a resturant where they allowed vendors to sell you sweets to finish your meal. I like it because it gives them a way to make money too.

Yesterday I had three high spots to my day. The first one was when we went to pick up our computer, walked to the market and got our week´s fruits and veggies and taxied back and I wasn´t tired. That was a surprise, however the computer still doesn´t work any better than it did before we paid the guy $20 to fix it. But we now have a lead to a real computer person from a friend who knows a woman who runs two tatoo parlors and who has computors. It´s who you know down here. Then we went down the hill again and WALKED BACK UP THE 75 STEPS to go home and I wasn´t tired again! And my dinner I made from scratch turned out well, but Arturo, our landlord was shellaking our bedroom door so to get away we fled down the hill and had an icecream cone on the local strip and walked up the 75 steps again! I couldn´t believe it. When we came just walking down was enough to do me in, let alone walking back up three times.

However, once we got home our ceiling fan doesn´t work. Win some, lose some.

Rita

Hasta Lechuga

Now we have a fridge, but the computer is in the hospital. One down, one to go. If you don't count the phones and my Nook. We caught the landlord when he came back from his Christmas trip and Richard informed him that we'd leave tomorrow if we could. That made Arturo see $$ signs, so he got on it right away. We got a lot of things done yesterday that normally would have taken many, many days to do. By the end of the day, while we waited on the refrigerator man, (he was only an hour late), we all played cribbage and promised to play badgammon another day. Arturo is actually a sweet person, he just doesn't want to part with his money, and he's on Mexican time. You have to jolt him out of it.

We're living half way up one of the big hills surrounding PV. The last time we were here we were in the Mexican section, this time we're in the tourist section. I much prefer the Mexican part...it's more fun and you never know what you'll see around the corner. Here you can pretty much bet it's a resturant or an art gallery. Nice people, it's just not as interesting. There are so many ways to get down off the hill. They have these paths with stairs going down, (and back up, oddly enough), all over the place, but we found a bus that takes us right up the hill so of course we use that most of the time. I may be lazy, but I'm not silly. When we came I could barely make it up the hill and now I can make it up pretty well. I'm thinking I'll probably live another ten years or so.

We found the bus to COSTCO today and ordered new lenses for our glasses, which means I see things the way Monet saw them...fuzzy, and I'll see things that way for 9 more days. I should start painting now, because I'm noticing the colors and flowers much more than I did.

However, we're in a much better frame of mind than we were the other day. I still don't know if I should buy more veggies because I don't trust that fridge. People we know gave us the history of Arturo and fridges, and I imagine we've got the one that they had several years ago, and it didn't work then, either.

Hasta lechuga, which is literally, until lettuce which is much more interesting than hasta luego.
Rita

Puerto Vallarta

We've lost our internet connection in our apartment, the computer is down, our refrigerator died, and our landlord is out of town, so we're downtown in an internet place and I don't want to stay on longer than I need to. Oh, and our phones don't work. But hey, it's warm and I'm getting so that the hills don't bother me as they did. That's good...I may come out in better shape than I came in. We are seriously putting the option on the table of coming home early. I don't know if we'll do it or not, but the idea is out there.

On Christmas Eve we went down to a place called the Paradise Community Center, which had a very nice little ceremony. I'd just swallowed my Vit B the wrong way, so my throat wasn't up for singing a lot, but I could mouth the words. Then I went down the hill to watch the kids beat up a string of piñatas and leap on the candy. They started at 9:30 and would end at midnight. That's when Christmas day officially starts. It was fun. Christmas day we ended up on the beach, drinking margaritas,(me), eating calamari and then going off for fish and chips. A very Christmasy day. We're eating at home and creating things that don't need refrigerating, and things that you don't need to leave out because if we do, these tiny little ants descend upon whatever's there...rather like tiny little pirannas. Turns out our landlord, who's actually a nice person, has a real reputation for being very very tight, and hard to get anything fixed. So, we look forward to standing in line and beating him over the head gently but firmly. Sort of like a human piñata, I think.

We're meeting interesting people, though. Vandana, you know that utube thing with the sheep that have lights on their backs and make different designs? The guy in the next apartment had six sheep dogs that responded to 3 different whistles each, 2000 sheep, and now he travels all over the world judging shows with dogs like that. Even he is impressed with those sheep on utube.

Then we met a woman last Sunday who was raised on one of the tributaries of the Amazon, and she had wonderful stories about it. Clarksville sounds rather slow in comparison.

I'll hopefully have a working internet, refrigrator and phone the next time I connect with you. I've talked to quite a few folks who say what we're having happen isn't that unusual, the first time you come down here. Of course this isn't our first time, but at this rate, it may be our last.

Much love, Rita