Otros Gringos

To my surprise, there weren't many foreign tourists in Mexico, especially in DF; most of the tourists were other Mexicans checking out there own country. I imagine in the coastal cities/areas (Cozumel, Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Cabo San Lucas, etc), this is different, since those areas often cater to Americans from North of the Border or Spring Break students. Every once in a while you would see another gringo wandering around, but it seemed like they were few and far between.

[For the most part, Mexicans were pretty dark and short, due to their ancestry of Mayans, Aztecs, Zapotecs, etc, so most gringos stood out like sore thumbs; I was often the tallest person around and Kimberly was almost always the whitest person around. There is some Spanish blood in Mexico, which resulted in some additional height and lightening of skin, but it was a lot less than I suspected before arriving.]

Then we arrived in Oaxaca, and all of a sudden, we were surrounded by gringos. Everywhere: in the restaurants, at museums, in the markets. You name it, gringos were there. But the interesting thing is that barely any of them were USA-ers. I would say 90% of them were French. The other 10% were German or Dutch or English. I suppose that July is vacation month in France, so a lot of French are traveling, but it was pretty amazing seeing some fancy dressed people sitting in the cafes, smoking their cigarettes all French-cool like.

I'm not sure what the point of this post is. I just thought the number of French in Oaxaca was impressive, as was the lack of USA-ers traveling in some of the most culturally interesting cities of Mexico, our closest neighbor (tied with Canada). I would write it off as a microcosm of the traveling attitudes of Europeans vs Americans, but I know there are lots of Europeans that are xenophobic, so I'm not sure this fully explains it.

I guess to sum it up, I think more USA-ers should travel to Mexico since it's close, friendly, has good food, and is packed with interesting history.

Devastation

First of all, thank you all for the wonderful comments in the original garden post. I appreciate them.

Second, remember how mentioned I would keep you updated on said garden? Well, this may be the last post in that thread.

So, I mentioned that it was raining and we were having thunderstorms, right? Well, I awoke this morning to a co-worker who also has a plot near us: 'The rain gods are fickle.' I know he's trying to plant his plot, so I thought there was too much water still and he was sad.

I was so wrong.

When I walked down to the garden plot, I noticed an unusually large number of cars coming through the complex. Then, as I got close to the plot, I saw this:

You're looking at a soccer field. And that's water. A lot of water. More water than there should be. Like, say, a flood.

And this is where our garden plot is/was/should be:
There is a river that runs a couple hundred feet to the south of our plot, and apparently it crested overnight (I heard someone say it crested 5 feet, which sounds really bad):
Now the river is like 10 times as wide as it was before. And flowing really fast.

And if it looks deep, it is. See these basketball hoops, they're 10 feet tall. Keep in mind that the original height of the river was at least 5 feet BELOW our garden plot.
There's also a golf course across the street, which is along the river. Guess what happened to that:
I think that hole now has a water hazard.

It's supposed to thunderstorm pretty much non-stop until next Wednesday, so I think the water might continue to rise. We're fairly high up, so I think we'll be ok, but I think the units down near the filed are in trouble.

I don't know what happened to the fence and plantings at our plot, but I'm going to go ahead and assume they're all gone, based on how fast the water was flowing.

Here's the schematic of our plot now:

I'm not sure what it will look like once the water falls, so I'm not sure if I'll replant. right now, I'm a little shocked.

Goodbye dear garden, we barely knew ye.

[More pictures of the devastation on Flickr]

¡Hola de Mexico!

Hi all! We arrived in Mexico last night after a long flight (with transfers) and then a 3 hr bus trip (unfortunately we arrived during rush hour). We got settled in and slept like the dead.

I'm here in Queretaro, Mexico with a classmate J and professor C. We're working at the Tech, one of the 15 universities in this city. J and I will be teaching a conversational English class for the Mexican Tech students, and also hosting a language exchange between them and the American exchange students.

Eleven years ago, I did my own study abroad in ths town, but at a different uni. A lot has changed. The city is even bigger (1.2 million now) and there's more traffic. But the centro is stll historic and the churches are amazing.

I'll ce keeping you all updated and hopefully will have pictures of exciting travels and local scenes. Mom is going to be joining me after school lets out and then Peter's coming after that. I'm sure that means that lots of adventures are in store!

I have regular access to emails, so send them along like normal. Thus far the weather is fine, warm but not hot and a slight amount of humidity. Apparently, there was a heat wave before we got here. Sounds like I'm bringing the cool weather with me wherever I go. It sounds like we might be headed to San Miguel de Allende this weekend for a little trip.

More news to follow....

Exhaust: Good for the Environment

The past two days, the high, the HIGH, has been about 258 degrees Kelvin (or 5 Fahrenheit. You might remember from Chemistry class that Absolute Zero = 0 Kelvin = -273 Celsius = -459 Fahrenheit). At night, the temp has reached a balmy -9 F; you can actually see the cold air moving our curtains on the windows. Fortunately, we are inside and usually nestled under our electric blanket.

I don't write this to complain, although I've barely left the house in the last 48 hours. I am mentioning this because of something we've noticed lately.

We were sitting in a bar the other night, looking out the window, drinking a beer, when I noticed that one of the cars parked outside had smoke coming out of its tailpipe. Since the wind was blowing snow all around, we weren't sure if it was exhaust, meaning the car was running, or if it was just an illusion. Kimberly assessed that the car was running, since the snow on the hood of the car was all melted. I thought that was crazy; I know we're in Iowa, but wouldn't someone drive off with the car, a drunk college kid or something?

At least an hour later, a guy from the bar walked right out to the car, stepped in, out it in gear, and drove away. Apparently, he left the car running so that it would be warm inside when he needed to leave. Peculiar.

Over the last couple of days, I've noticed unoccupied cars idling all over the place - the grocery store, outside the coffee shop, the gym.

So I have to wonder: do people here leave their cars running so that they're not cold when they get back in them? And are people really that nice here; I've definitely seen some homeless people around, so why wouldn't they just take a car? Do you need to carry 2 keys with you to keep the car running, but lock the door? Doesn't gas cost a lot? I grew up and went to school in some really cold places, and I'm pretty sure this wasn't common there; or was it and I just didn't notice? Or maybe a lot of people here have automatic starters (a good idea), and I've just happened to walk past all the cars just after they were started?

If anyone has any insight on this, I'd love to hear about it, because I think it's really kind of weird that there are all these cars running with no one inside them here.

We Get To Decide Who You Will Vote For [Part 2]

Now that was quite the experience. The caucus was really interesting. And really chaotic. By now, I'm sure you all know that Obama won the Democratic caucus. People were really excited about him; being in a college town helps, I'm sure, but that certainly isn't true for the whole state (white and rural much?).

Right from the start, we knew it would be pretty hectic. As we entered the building where our caucus was, as well as 4 or 5 other caucuses, it was packed with people, including candidate representatives handing out stickers and doing a little politicking. As we forced our way towards our room, there was a line of people four across. It went around a couple corners before disappearing into the main room. We got there plenty early, so were able to make it in the room with time to spare.

Around 6:50, they announced that they wanted to close the doors around 7, but they weren't sure if they would be able to get everyone registered and in the doors by then, so they were going to delay the start until they were ready.

Apparently, turnout was huge this year, somewhere around 12% of voters; four years ago, turnout was 6%. Four years ago, there were about 110,000 Iowans at the Democrat caucuses; this year, there were about 225,000. They were expecting 300 people to attend our caucus; about 550 people were there. I would say, the organizers were a bit unprepared and overwhelmed by the number of people. From watching the news, a lot of Independents, and even some Republicans, came to the Democrat caucuses, creating all this chaos.

Not too long after 7, the doors were closed, and the caucus started. Before we started picking candidates, we had a bunch of local 'party business' to take care of. It would have gone much smoother if the precinct presidents had read up on Robert's Rules of Order. The voting part didn't really go much smoother.

The room we were in had about 250 seats, with barely enough room between them for aisles. Add another 250-300 people standing around the room, and it was packed. Fire capacity packed.

The way the caucus works is pretty basic: go stand in the 'corner' of your candidate, then count. As most rooms only have 4 corners, and there were at least 8 choices (7 candidates plus Undecided), trouble was brewing. They wanted to separate the biggest groups (they predicted, quite accurately, that these would be Obama, Clinton, and Edwards - using polling data makes predicting the future much easier. Tell that to Trelawney), but ended up putting them all in the same half of the room. These people should be running for Congress with these problem solving skills.

Finally, they unleashed us. I was leaning towards Obama, but went to the undecided corner - I just wanted to experience the moving around the room, the being approached by different candidate reps, and civics in process. I thought Kimberly was going to go with Hillary - she'd been talking about her the last few weeks - but she went straight to the Obama camp (I'll let her explain her reasoning, if she wants), along with about half the people in the room.

When they started counting people, I was on the far side of the room from Kimberly and the Obama camp. Every other group in the room was done counting before the Obama group - it ended up with just under half the people in the room. Pretty much every other group, except the other top two, were deemed not viable (you need 15% of the vote to be considered viable, which in our caucus was around 80 people, which apparently is abnormally high. Hillary wasn't even viable in Grinnell, which is home to a small Liberal Arts college.] Then, some horse trading of votes began, which I didn't really understand, and didn't really seem to go anywhere (this summary of some of the Des Moines area caucuses has a better description of the horse trading of votes).

I was expecting more people to come up to me to try to convince me to go to their group. But whenever someone talked to me, and I voiced a concern about their candidate, they were just like, 'whatever' and walked away. Aren't they supposed to try to convince me and assuage my concerns? I was slightly annoyed.

I eventually worked my way back over the the Obama camp, where I was counted with the rest - in the end, more than half the caucus was on the Obama side. Clinton and Edwards pretty much split the other half.

Kimberly and I went out for a celebratory ice cream (actually, frozen custard). I was pretty invigorated by the whole thing, despite the lack of preparation by the organizers. I think Kimberly was annoyed by the process, which is understandable: it was disorganized, chaotic, suppresses participation, and voids all secrecy in the voting process. But other than that, there's really nothing to not like.

We Get To Decide Who You Will Vote For [Part 1]

In just over an hour, Kimberly and I will be attending our very first Iowa Caucus where we will get to decide who you eventually vote for. Other than the one time I voted in Seattle, this is the first time my vote will actually count for something; growing up in always-Democrat-Massachusetts somewhat minimizes the worth of your vote.

This is the biggest thing going in Iowa, except for the State Fair. It's basically been the lead story on the news every single night since we moved here. If we had been more motivated, we could have met almost all of the candidates - Obama, Clinton, Richardson, Romney, and a handful of the others were in town just over the last few days.

I always thought it was kind of weird that Iowa was the first chooser-of-the-President places. It's kind of a small state, with a pretty small population. It's also really, really white. And rural. The 'First-in-the-Nation' status of Iowa is why farm subsidies will never go away and why inefficient corn-based ethanol is being forced down our throats.

On top of that, the caucus-concept is a pretty strange thing. I could try to explain it, but this interactive piece from the Boston Globe does a much better job than I ever could. Basically, we'll be going to a big room (a lot of the caucuses are held in people's houses, especially in really rural towns), standing in a corner, and talking about the candidates. There's no absentee balloting and all the voting is public (both remnants from the days of Town Meetings and the like). Add to that the fact that it could last for 2-3 hours, and the caucus is even weirder. But I hear they usually serve punch and dessert, so that's nice.

But having lived here for 5 months now, I realize that the Iowa Caucus is more important than I originally thought. Iowans take this stuff seriously Really seriously. They view the caucus as their opportunity to vet every candidate for the benefit of the rest of the country. They ask every question, push every button, and turn over every rock. And the state is pretty evenly balanced Republican-Democrat (it's a Purple State), so both sides get the same thorough review.

I still have no idea who I'm voting for. I don't think Kimberly does either. I might just use totally arbitrary criteria: we met Chris Dodd, so he's got a point; Obama sent us a Christmas card, so he gets a point; someone wrote a hip-hop song for Kucinich, so he's got that. Maybe I'll just pick whichever candidate has the best snacks at their table. Or whoever has the most people at the start (aka popularity). Totally arbitrary seems about right: I'm pretty sure that's how the rest of the country chooses, so why not.

I'll check in later on with a summary wrap up. And since the process is all public anyways, maybe I'll let you know who we voted for.

Happy New Year!

We had a pretty mellow celebration here in Iowa. Barack Obama invited us to his New Year's Eve party, but we decided to lay low and party with Dick Clark and Ryan Seacrest instead (this is not a joke). We drove 17 hours on Saturday to come home, as I had some housekeeping I needed to take care of here on Monday.

[4:15 pm edit: Way back when, I complained about the Central Time Zone and how annoying it is. Well, last night, they played New Year's Rockin' Eve live. No tape delay. Do you know what that means. People here in the midwest celebrate the New Year at 11 pm. Why? I don't know. people here are weird. For some reason they live life like they live in the Eastern Time Zone, with most people starting work at 7 am. There's a lot of things I don't understand about this place; Central Time may be the hardest for me to understand.]

We also we wanted to be back in time for the caucuses on Thursday, and judging from the weather report I saw/heard for the Northeast, I think we made a good choice in leaving a little early. Incidentally, I still don't know who I will be caucusing for - if you feel strongly for any candidate, please make your case in the comments - but I'm not voting for Tom Tancreado, no matter how good your argument. I can go either way, in terms of party, I mean.

I usually don't make Resolutions, because I usually don't keep Resolutions. But this year, I've made a few. Most of them will remain in my head, but one of them is to try to be more productive in my writing. Hopefully, that means more posting on this here blog; hopefully, it means interesting posts on this here blog. We connected with some old friends while in Boston and spread the word of the blog; in addition to the legions of fans already visiting, I want to keep people happy.

Kimberly and I are also working on something else for the internets which is a little more interactive and collaborative - we're keeping it private for now, but hopefully it will go public in the future.

My first post of the year will be right below this. I'm sure Kimberly will check in soon to complain about the weather - it isn't supposed to get over 10 degrees today, so I have to agree with her for right now.

Please feel free to comment if the inspiration strikes. We hope to see you soon.

Some Notes on the Flat (aka Things I'll Miss About Oregon: Volume 11 [Geological Formations])

Mt Hood standing sentry over Portland, protecting it from that dangerous early morning sun.

Before we moved out here, everyone told us that The Middle was flat. 'It will take some time getting used to it,' they said. Based on these statements, I pictured Iowa looking like the other flat places I've been: Kansas and West Texas, which are devoid of trees and where you can see the curvature of the earth on the horizon (if you can see past the oil derricks or world's largest cross (made of vinyl siding) in Texas).

In actuality, our part of the middle is much more 'rolling hills' than 'flat.' When riding my bike, there are definitely times when I need to work a little to get up the hills (most of the time, it's for train overpasses, but not always). And in our small city (I prefer medium-sized town, but people here insist it's a city), there's a good amount of trees and assorted foliage. Still, the region feels flatter, so I know what everyone was talking about.

It just feels much flatter here for some reason.

Then, one Sunday, as I was driving to Des Moines, I had a revelation: 'It is really really flat here! But you know what, this isn't any flatter than the drive from Portland to Salem.'

On that drive you are in the middle of the Willamette Valley, which is about as flat as flat can be. Here, you're on the Great Plains in America's Breadbasket (or something). There are differences, of course. Some small, like the crops being grown (corn/soy/pigs vs grass/hazelnuts/apples/christmas trees), the number of cars (less vs more), and the quality of the drivers (example deleted).

But it wasn't until I was driving home in the evening that I had the 'light bulb moment' and realized the major difference: As I was driving, the sun was setting and shining directly into my eyes.

Now you're probably thinking 'well, it rains every day in Portland so you don't have to worry about the sun there.' I would retort 'hahahahahahahahahahaha' real sarcastically and then explain that you know nothing about the weather in the NW.

In Portland, the sun does in fact come out. More than you think. The reason the sun isn't a problem is that everything is surrounded by mountains. The Cascades and Mount Hood are to the east, blocking the rising sun until it's high enough not to be a nuisance. When you're in Portland, you have the West Hills blocking the sun most of the late afternoon. On the west side (The Tron and Hillsboro), the Coast Range is in the way (apparently, its official name is the Pacific Cordilleria). As you head south in the Valley, you have the Cascades and the Coast Range as your geologic sun visor.

Here in the middle, you have the Appalachians and the Rockies, both of which are like a thousand miles away. They don't block much of the sun.

In fact, there's only one place I can think of in Portland where the sun in your eyes is ever a problem, and it's so unique they gave the road a special name. When you drive west over the Sunset Highway at rush hour, you will be staring directly into the sun. And the only reason this happens is because in order to go over the West Hills, the angle of the road points you directly into the sun. It's like you're marching to war with Helios.

So anyways, this is all a roundabout way of me saying that there's not much in topological variation here in the middle. While it's not as flat as a pancake (like Kansas was scientifically proven to be), there's not much in the way of hills, not to mention mountains. Don't get me wrong, driving through miles and miles, and miles, and then more miles, of rolling corn and soy fields, with the sky open above you, can be very pretty. And some of the sunsets, especially when the thunderstorms are rolling, are amazing. I've also heard some of the river valleys (the Mississippi and the Missouri buffer the state) are beautiful [a friend in Portland once called Iowa City, on the eastern portion of the state in the Mississippi River valley, the 'Paris of the Midwest.' I can't wait to verify/debunk that claim.]

But in the end, I miss my friends St Helens, with its occasional outpouring of smoke and soot, and even occasionally Jefferson, Adams, Rainier, or the Sisters, depending on where you were in Oregon.

But mostly, I miss Mt Hood. That mountain just looks like a mountain . I would see it every day driving to and from work (or at least on days when it wasn't raining, which wasn't often, hahahahahahahaha). And sometimes at night, with the sun setting over the West Hills, Mt Hood turns purple or orange and sits there glowing on the horizon.

Does it ever stop?

The rain here is most impressive. I'm sure you all are tired of our whining about the weather ("more pics!" I hear you clamoring), but seriously, the weather here is unbelievable. My students were working in a computer lab today and as they were quietly typing (yes, they really are that fantastic) a BOOOM! shook our room. We all stopped, peered out the window, and watched as buckets, nay, barrels of water came down. And now, as I try to work on homework myself, I'm distracted by the flashes of light, the thundering echos, and Peter exclaiming "oh my god" over and over.

The most amusing part about this (for right now) is that everyone here thinks that I'm USED to the rain. It's hard to explain that it does not rain like this where I'm from. Ever. Peter and I spent one memorable evening last spring on our couch with all the lights turned off watching a storm roll in in Portland. Ha. That was a storm? I've seen 10 times that storm in one afternoon here.

And more confusing to attempt to explain is that although we have plenty of rain back in Oregon, we don't have humidity. That one is apparently a mind bender for the folks here. I complain and complain about the humidity and they look at me and say "but you lived in OREGON. It rains all the time there." And I try again to explain that while it's gray for 9 months, and drippy most of that time, it's not actually humid.

There are flash flood warnings again for our neck of the woods. And we're supposed to have a program potluck/bbq on Friday in a park near here. I'm told that if the park turns into a lake, we'll move to someone's house. This park has a tendency I guess.

I gave away my good umbrella before our move, due to some mistaken belief that it doesn't rain in the Middle. Guess I'll need to buy a new one. It's too hot for my raincoat.

It was a dark and stormy night....

Last night was one of the craziest storms I've ever slept through. We both woke up about 2, either because of the disco strobe light brightness in our room or the sound of the world breaking into bits, I don't know. We were in the center of the thunderstorm, with lightning bolts ever 30 seconds or so and the thunder booming instantly after.

In Milan, we had a discussion about how to convert the time between lightning and thunder into distance. Peter and I knew an American conversion of one mile per second. Our Italian cousins said that the conversion was one kilometer per second. We all found it a bit funny and puzzled about how these rules came to pass.

Regardless of whether I applied the American or Italian conversion last night, the result was the storm on top of us. Miles spent the night huddled in the other room under a table. We couldn't convince him to join us all exposed in a bed.

This morning the rain and lightning and thunder have stopped. The weather report for today is more of the same, though. This handy little icon has been showing up for days now.Somehow I thought I was moving somewhere hot and sunny. And these people think that it rains where I'm from?

We're Not in Portland Anymore Or How I Learned I No Longer Lived in a 'Liberal' City

We've been here less than a week, but it's already apparent that we don't live in Portland, or even Boston, anymore. Not just because there's no water nearby, or mountains, or because the Republicans held their straw pole less than a mile from where I live, but because of these three things:

1. There's no curbside/household recycling here. Really. Iowa does have the old 5 cent deposit on cans/bottles, but that's it. K and I will use our own boxes and separate out our own recycling, then drive it down to the recycling center. I guess it's not really that big of a hassle, but after experiencing mandatory recycling, it seems strange not to be able to put it out at the curb. And although I can't prove it because I don't know anyone here, I imagine not a lot of people drive their recycling down to the center voluntarily (I imagine people in Portland would be less likely to recycle if it wasn't mandatory, but I think the percentages would still be pretty high, based on the people who live there). Our postman tried to assuage our fears by telling us that in the City it's not a big deal if you don't recycle because they burn all the trash anyways. I'm not sure if I should be happy that they're burning our trash to provide cheap energy or horrified that they are burning trash to provide cheap energy (not to mention the burning plastic and not burnable metal cans).
2. In Our Iowan city, pedestrians apparently do not have the right of way. One of the nice things about Boston and Portland was you could start crossing the street (or even stand at the curb and contemplate crossing) and cars would screech to a halt to let you pass (becaue they're nice in Portland; because they're worried about tickets in Boston). But in the less than week we've been here, I've already seen several people get hit by cars. These are people that are already in the street and then need to avoid the cars that aren't stopping for them. While Our Iowan city is pretty sprawly and not easy to walk around in (based on my less than a week here), you would think that the people would at least be nice and not try to run people over. I'm not sure how I feel about this so far.
3. Not a real bike friendly city. In our Iowan city, there are no bike lanes here. While I'm not surprised that there aren't bike lanes in the streets here, I am a little surprised Portland is one of the most bike friendly cities in the US and thusly has a lot of bike lanes, so I guess I'm spoiled. I stopped and talked to another biker today, and he said that people in the city were pretty good about bikes. He added that he had only heard of a few instances on rural roads where people were yelled at or had things thrown at them. What? And then I was almost run over on my bike. In the City. Apparently there is some groundswell to start adding bike lanes to the streets (they're certainly wide enough for them) and to add biking to the driver's education programs. Both of those would be good, because it's fairly flat here and would be a good place to ride a bike all the time (I have more on my first biking expedition, but that's another post).

Down With Central Time

You know when you watch TV, and they say: "The Simpsons; Sunday at 8, 7 Central." Know what that means?

It means I miss The Simpsons.

You know why? Because I apparently now live in the Central Time Zone.

I really shouldn't be surprised, since we saw the 'Now Entering Central Time Zone' sign somewhere in the middle of Nebraska. And I've been hearing the old 'This Show on Day at x, x-1 central' spiel ever since I remember (I watched a lot of TV growing up).

But for some reason I never believed them. Why would a show start an hour earlier, just because we live in a different time zone? I mean, on the West Coast, they start all the shows at their normal time (except live things, like sports (but not awards shows, like the Oscars) which are shown live, but early for the local time). And I'm pretty sure it's the same way in the Mountain Time Zone.

In this modern era, with these fancy things called computers, you'd think they could set up some sort of delay so shows are shown at their normal time. I don't want to have to start cooking and eat dinner at 4 so I can be sure to be finished in time to watch a 'Prime Time' show starting at 7. I don't want my '10 o'clock News' to be the '9 o'clock News.'

I'm sure all the locals would argue that they're used to watching their shows an hour early (they would probably argue that I want to watch the shows an hour late, damn logical thinkers). If they changed the program schedules now, the whole midwest would probably go crazy. Imagine, a whole extra hour of free time in the evening, when the temperature is actually not painful to be in. They could double their corn output.

I've been trying to watch less TV, so maybe this confusing time zone TV schedule will help. But I won't go easily.

Although, as with any cloud, there is a silver lining: the Daily Show is on at 10, meaning I might actually be able to watch it live and still wake up in the morning.