Fiestas are on the Horizon

Buen Dia!

Isn't this an amazing sunset? The sky was truly this brilliant. To the north, a fog settled in on the montanas and soon a good storm arrived. We did not get much rain, but the wind and thunder and lightning certainly provided an array of sound and color. Cookies was eventually forced to give up his sentry duty among the new sandbags while the a/c blasted him from beneath the door. The sandbags are working great, not only do they keep out the bugs, but they are doing a nice job holding back the rain which always manages to find its way into the bedroom. We are even able to turn on the bedroom lights now for reading.

And I have not had a flapping, buzzing bug inside my pillowcase for about 3 nights now.

This may be cause for fiesta!!!!!!!

I am very happy to report there is no clean up after last night's rain. Senor placed a pink tarp over the unfinished skylight and everything stayed nice and dry.

I got up early and went to meet a friend for breakfast and when I returned, Umberto was plastering away and Senor was sawing away on varro blancas, then placing them in the skylight. When he is done Umberto will mortar them and we will be on our way to becoming even drier.

Hooray! Now that is really cause for Fiesta!


There is a lot of activity in the Palacio lately. As I mentioned before there seem to be a lot of Mexicano tourists in town and an abundance of activity all around.

Inside the entrance to the Palacio is a new sign to remind us this is both a bicentennial and centennial year. It is the 200th year of Independence and the 100th year of the Revolution. The first will be celebrated in September and then the Revolution in November.

I just have this feeling....................of wild craziness coming. Fireworks, music, food and tecate and dancing well into the night for days and days and days.

A week ago we went to an event at the Palacio, the 4th annual singing competition for the states of Baja, Baja Sur and Sonora. I believe the winner of this contest will compete in October in Mexico City. We were in the Palacio for almost two hours and finally Senor's ears had to leave. Mine followed soon.

There was just so much music. There were ballads, love songs, ranchero songs, singer after singer. People in the crowd and in the gallery above were waving banners to show their support for their favorites.

One very handsome young man, in full mariachi regala and sombrero sang to wailing women of all ages, half of whom got up out of their chairs and followed him outside when he finished. When we left at 7pm he was being smothered with kisses and photographed by every available Mexicano cellphone.

Around 10pm, from our casa, we heard a tremendous roar and clapping and screaming that went on and on for about 20 minutes. We decided the winner had been sombrero'd and surely it was him. He was from Baja Sur, but definitely headed to bigger stages than our Alamos Palacio.

I could not get a good photo of any singer until I went to the gallery. Then the camera batteries went dead.

It is a little breezier today and I hear a distant rumble of thunder once in awhile. But the heat is outside, all 100 degrees of it and I can feel it beating on the metal door. Cookies is under the bed and jumps each time Senor comes in to get cool for a moment.

Filing papers and receipts will be my afternoon job and one of the things I will file away is my clay class certificate from the mayor. I am actually quite proud of it and very happy to have received it later in the week and not asked to stand with all the children in front of their families.

It is my first certificate to actually receive.

I was told the old ayundamiento had a certificate for me thanking me for working at DIF after Norbert, and that Casa de la Cultura had one for me in appreciation of work done on the Calaca Festival, but I never saw either of them.

So, maybe I will not file it away. Maybe I will go to Navajoa for a frame and hang it on the wall. How many people have a signed certificate from the mayor himself?

Then this afternoon I will hop on new old bike and go to the fabric painting class. I wonder if I get a certificate for that.

I think I see many fiestas on the horizon!!

Here's to a Healthy Alamos

Buen dia. How interesting is this..............when I began this post today, it was in Hindi and at first I had no idea really that it was Hindi, but I certainly knew it wasn't English. As I typed each word it came out in English and then when I went on to the next word, all the previous words became Hindi. After looking at my layout and design settings I noticed Hindi was enabled as being the language for my blog to be written in.............. now, just exactly how did that happen?

Fortunately it was easy to change....................maybe manana it will be in German.

Every day is exciting!

We have some new renters, or maybe they think they are the homeowners. This little guy below lives under the beam in the left of the photo. He comes out occasionally for something to eat and if Cookies sees him leave, he guards the beam until new guy comes home. Of course, he is wanting to pounce on him, but when new guy gets close to home, Cookies begins backing away.

Then, there is this new fellow who is probably about eighteen to twenty inches long, but I really don't think Cookies has discovered him yet. He lives in between the two walls, the old adobe and the new ladrillo. If you actually recall which walls I am talking about don't worry, the photo is turned sideways. He comes out to sun when Cookies is usually lounging inside the bedroom, on his back, legs up in the air.

Our new security light is in between each of their houses and is giving us security but proving to be a real pain in the neck. It attracts hundreds of bugs, june bugs, flying black beetle bugs, iridescent green back beetle bugs, flying white wing red body ants, tarantula black red wing flying bugs, little black beetles with opal wings. I have no idea what their real names are. But these things come out in droves when the light comes on.

Now this is something we never thought about, this new light attracting all these creatures.

We have had to move our nightly seating area down outside the bedroom door, where it not so bright. I have made sandbags for the doors because all of these bugs like to go inside and hang out all night, playing games like battle of the wings and I smell worse than you do hahaha, making sounds like they are sneezing. More than once I have awakened to Senor sneezing only to find out it is one of the beetles with the opal wings drooling and sneezing from the windowsill over my head.

What I really hate is when they get into the curtains overhead or the pillow cases. If I shake the curtains, they fall down on the pillows. If they are in the pillow cases, they crunch when you move your head.

So, the sand bags placed at the bottom of each door have taken care of this problem. And I bought a yellow fly swatter for Senor's side of the bed and a pink one for myself.

I will admit I enjoy running around in circles, outside, slapping them with the new fly swatters. The black flying beetles are very fast and I get a workout chasing them. So when we go to bed, there are generally a lot of little bug carcasses all over the cement out there.

And in the morning most of the bugs are gone. And after giving this some thought I have decided that is why we have new renters. They are coming out in the night and taking away these bugs and beetles.

Aren't we lucky?


Look below. Here is the photo I wanted to show you yesterday. I promise there was a pretty fuchsia bougainvillea over the wall yesterday and in the night it decided to topple back into the inside of the wall. My neighbor says I have to weight it down with a rock to convince it of where its home is. So, one of these days I will try that.

For some time there has been dozing activity up near the soccer field and track. Recently a sign went up explaining this. Ayuntamiento, the city council, or possibly in Alamos, that really just means the mayor, is building a sports center for the children of Alamos.

Below, is the present soccer field and track, surrounded by a brick wall which was built by the previous ayuntamiento.

The dozing is to the left of the wall.

And here is the sign.
There will be basketball courts, volleyball courts, a small baseball diamond, a small mod soccer field, a gymnasium, a pool and other small assorted pelota (ball) and frontton (ball) courts.
If you look in the photo above, you can see orange courts that look like tennis courts, on the lower right, but beneath these courts, it says basketball. We brought our tennis rackets and balls with us, hoping that since we were giving up soccer we might begin playing tennis again. There are tennis courts in Alamos, out by the airport, but they are private and we put the rackets away when we heard what it costs to join and play. But it is understandable, the foreigners who had the courts built would like their expenses covered. We have no problem with that. But unless some of the new courts are multi use, we won't be playing tennis.

And notice the courts above the pool (alberca). They are labeled Usos Multiples and appear to be more like basketball to me than the others which look more like tennis.

And, sigh, sigh, sigh,........................ the sign does say it is for our children. So maybe they are not going to let us adults play anything.

The sign in the photo below shows a river running through all of this and there are walkways to get from the sports facility to the soccer stadium. There is not a river there now, but I, for one, would be thrilled if ayuntamiento can just put in a river right there. It would be very scenic. I think those yellow circles are picnic tables. I would ride new old bike there and have a picnic at a table along the river.

Now there is an arroyo that runs nearby, but if that is a drawing of the arroyo they will need to move it. So, heck, in the summer, if it fills up with rain water, that would be lovely, too.

This project is supposed to be completed in 2012. I think it is very exciting. There are so many children here, so many young teenagers and high school students and Alamos is very lucky to have ayundamiento that is interested in keeping them healthy and active.

When Mayor Navarro came into office someone who supported the departing political party told me..................there goes tourism........Navarro, (being a doctor)..........he continued........is only interested in health issues.

Being a person who loiters around the Plaza constantly, I see more tourism this summer than I have in the past two, and how lucky for Alamos children that Mayor Navarro is interested in their health.

adios! siesta time!

Lunch

Buenas tardes.

There is not a cloud in the sky. The air is dead and very hot. I was up at five am, watering, painting, sweeping dead bugs and ants off the concrete, washing dishes, and asleep in a chair by noon.

Senor went to play bridge and I was still asleep. I did not hear him leave.

I wanted to post a new photo of the street side of the adobe wall and the gate and show you how the bougainvillea, trumpet vine and feugo trees are flowing over the edge of the wall, but Senor always locks me in with the gate key when he plays bridge. I stood at the gate thinking someone would walk by and I could get them to unlock me, but after fifteen minutes I bagged it, came into the bedroom, turned on the ac and said, manana.

I thought today would be a huge workday around here, but it was not. The first door is ready to go up, but the walls need a final white washing and the cement floor needs to go in. I thought putting up one door would be so simple............not.

Senor says I don't understand the sequence of events nor the timing of events.

Umberto came around seven to say he has the grippe and can't work. He quit early on Saturday because it was his fifty first birthday. But last year he told me it was his fifty first, so my guess is sometime between celebrating on Saturday and Sunday, he realized he was a year off and needed to celebrate Monday, too.

Senor went to the hardware store twice, but I did not see him come back with anything. He went to the store twice and came back with a coke and a gatorade.

Well, there you have Monday morning.

So now I will tell you about yesterday's morning.

I suggested that we go to Topolobampo. South about two and a half hours and then half an hour west of Los Mochis, it is the second deepest sea port in the world. Its main industry is shrimping and then, whatever is coming off the huge freighters in the harbor.

So we hopped in the truck like everyone else and headed to the sea.

Fortunately I got to ride inside and not in the bed like most and while the guidebooks all say Topolobampo is kind of a nothing place, we enjoyed it very much.

The little town is built into the hillside and most houses look onto the sea or into tiny hillside alleyways.

There is very little black ironwork here, most of it is painted bright white or blue. Many of the houses appear to share small courtyards and along the seaside they are built wall to wall.

This is a popular spot for catching the Baja ferry to La Paz, which leaves in the night and takes a little over five hours to cross the sea. We saw a lot of Mexicano tourists, but not another foreigner in town.

In addition to shrimp boats, ferries, small yachts and motor craft, there are many lanchas like the ones below and huge freighters from Hong Kong in the port. I lost my photos of two tugboats trying to get a gigantic freighter into position.


We walked up and down the hillsides, checked out the souvenirs, which were all imported from China, and finally settled on Chicho's for a shrimp lunch.

On the drive home Senor said it was an awfully long way to go for lunch...................

End of the Clay Tale

Buen dia!

Below is a lovely photo Senor shot from the roof top last evening. You can just see the thunderheads building to the north on the horizon. It took those clouds almost a day to get here as it is now pouring rain this afternoon. Maybe we will go beyond the four inches we got here on Durango Sunday night. The air is fresh and very fragrant, the smell of rain and flowers.


.

The end of the clay tale is near. We did not see anything come out of the kiln, Senor had a bridge day that lasted until six. Then I missed two more firings out in Uvalama. They just had to fire when they had to fire and there was really not any way for us to know about it.

Today there was a presentation at Casa de la Cultura, for the children to show off their prized pieces and receive certificates, so I went up this morning to join in and take photographs.

Outside Cultura, I snapped a few photos and you can really see the montanas are greening up. A few more rains and they will be very brilliant and tropical and lush.

Inside, the fired clay was presented for viewing and the children and their families were excited to see their work.

Sadly a few pieces were broken, but Jorge kindly explained to the families that glue will fix anything. In the plaque below you can see the clay pretty much remained adobe, but has some discoloration with a smoky fired look. Jorge says these could be glazed and fired again, but the purpose of his class would be for the children to paint them with acrylics.

Here is my candle holder ..................maybe it will look better painted.

and the pieces for my wind chime, with some type of creature on top of the right one.


and my wall plaque...............................looks like it did before firing.

Some of the kids who participated are in the photo below with the teachers, upper left.




So, now I will need to paint these things and see if I can even turn the wind chime into a wind chime and I don't know about that candle holder. jorge said maybe I shoud turn it upside down and it will look like some hrapes....hanging. I will think about that..............

For about two weeks now I have been hearing a large band practicing.

Just like the 'Elusive Bongo' post, I have been out on new old bike to find the source. I finally found it today at Casa de la Cultura. It is remarkably large, about twenty five members, drums, tubas, clarinets, flutes, trumpets, trombones, saxophones and snare drums. The players are all young kids in their teens and early twenties, and are being conducted by Ramon Alcantar, a local music teacher who is also a very talented musician.

The band has been organized and supported by the Casa de la Cultura and Century Art, an independent music and art organization from the states that is owned by an Alamos American resident.

Each day I have been listening to the band practice and I would say, they should keep up the practice, they have amazing potential. How great to see people this young interested in learning and playing instruments. I hope you enjoy their performance! adios! linda lou