WELL THIS IS INTERESTING.

Now this is a experience that not everyone would enjoy, and I am not sure we did either.  Our car is in the shop.  Old car ready to die with I bought it for 2,000.00 USD.  Then with all the trips - well it just got sick and will be getting fixed for four days.  Now garages in the states is one thing - garages in Mexico is truly quite another experience all together.  Who knows if they will fix it - who knows for how much and who knows if I will ever see it again?  But that will be another adventure.

We got a ride to the grand plaza and from there got a taxi home.  Believe me when I say our home is not easy to get to or to find.  But the dear cap driver got us there.  Picture the reality that we now have.  Out in a adobe house in the forest off a dirt road and quite a way from town with no food and no car.

Need to travel to the market and what are our options?  WALK.  Since we also do not have a washing machine we should take our cloths to get washed in town.  Since we have no food we should take something to carry food home in.  Since I am out of touch with people that could find us another house to rent - we should find a place where I could use my computer.  How far away is town?   What is the condition of the road?  Everything you can think of.  How old are you Donna?

Now on a real serious side of the coin, I have to let the reader know that while I would rather be in some resort town by the ocean I have chosen to do this for a very sound reason.  My son is mentally disabled and I fully intend to have him capable of taking care of himself.  Now that is a very tall order since at birth I was told he would never sit up - talk - walk and would be lucky to live.  I understand how his mind works and how to work with it.  He has to have experience, hands on doing type learning.  He is learning how to solve problems without help, he is learning how to get what he wants and needs without help or without knowing the language.  He is learning and with that learning comes self confidence within himself.  I just wanted to let you all know that really I am not completely nuts although my daughter's family thinks so.

However, we need start walking into town.  We take the ice chest with the dirty laundry and the computer and start walking.  Mexico does have a wonderful transportation system. Once you figure it out that is.  Every little street has a bus that comes by.  So I knew that once we got to the main road, we would get a bus.  Do not know where the bus goes but it has to go somewhere that has people and people need laundry mats so we will find it.

We do get to the main road and sure enough a bus does show up.  We get on.  I give him a 20 and he give me back 15  not bad.  Course I do not still know where the bus goes cause I do not speak the language (just as my son has language problems, now so do I and I must show him how language will not be a stopping point for him).

I look at my son with amazement.  He is sharp in so many ways, far from retarded, dumb and stupid.  Yet here he is with trust in me that no harm will come to him.  It reminded me of when I first started to teach the blind how to snow ski.  My very first man that had never had vision and therefore never experienced snow was sitting on the chair lift with me and it struck me just how much trust this man had in me.  Here he was ready to just jump blind out into space when I say  jump.  So here is my son who get onto a bus when his Mom tells him to with trust that she will let no harm come to him.  Who I wonder is the teacher and who is the student?

There is this lady who seems to be a neighbor or mine because she got onto the bus in the same location as we did.  She speaks no English, I speak no Spanish but I tell her that I need to find somewhere I can wash our clothing.  So when we get to the nearest town, she is so very kind as to walk me to the laundry person.  In this part of Mexico you take you laundry to some persons home that has a machine and they do it for you.  You come back and it is folded and ready.

We eat lunch in the plaza and it was wonderful - we both had seconds.  Fresh squeezed orange juice, got a cooked chicken and homemade flour tortillas - with rice and a can of beans to take home for dinner.  Picked up our laundry.  Got my Internet connections to my kids made so that they would know I was not dead.  Now how do I know what bus to take home?  Up walks my neighbor and she walks me over to the bus we get on and home bound we are.

The bus is very full with lots of people and items they purchased in town.  Of course they talk about the gringo that knows no Spanish and my neighbor tells them all about me. The people on the bus and the people in town looked at me like I was some foreign thing - OH I forgot - I am the foreign thing.  But they are kind to us.  Although I could see in the faces of the old people in town a unwelcome look.  They like their town and they want to keep their town just the way it is.  The white people have done so much damage to their communities and their culture that the old ones do not welcome any more activities with the whites.  This town does not have the true traditional  indigenous people but a mixture of Indian / Mexican type people.  The people who live here were born here and they will die here.

They take their cows out daily walking them along the roads to graze.  Horses and donkeys roam free.  It is a nice place if you do not want - and maybe the word here is WANT.  They have what they Need, they do not have a lot of wants.  Is that bad?  The location they live in is absolutely beautiful and they have time to sit and enjoy.  The town has everything you need - there is just not a lot of different choices.  Do we need lots of choices about things we want but do not really need?  Interesting way of life.