Tabbies In Snow

Welcome to the end of the year from Juarez!
I haven't been able to write in a while as the last months here have been a slippery slide towards our inevitable departure. We're now in the final month, and in accordance with the "Life Cycle of a FS Assignment,"  we're visiting our favorite places for the last time, relishing the food we will have pangs for when we're thousands of miles away and are now facing the dreaded EER and pack-out time. 

But first... the holidays!

Christmas morning was simply gray, offering the perfect excuse to stay inside and not feel guilty at all about it. But the next day was quite a surprise; I'll let one of the Tabbies demonstrate what he found in the yard after breakfast:

Tabbies in Snow! First flakes we've seen in four years.

Snow in Juarez!  Big, slushy flakes that did not amuse Dodger as he quickly darted back inside the house, to be fluffed dry with the traditional "wet paws" towel that I haven't had to break out since about 2011 when we left the Pacific Northwest.  I can't say that the snow stuck on the lawn (it didn't), but it lightly frosted the mountains in the backdrop of El Paso/Juarez and made it feel like real winter. 

By the next afternoon the skies were already clearing and returning were the crisp winter sunshine and china-blue skies that are my favorite part of this region.  Here are a few more holiday scenes from our travels with visiting family:

Ciudad Juarez Municipal Palace and city Christmas Tree

Gate decoration at a lovely estancia near where we live. 

Church in Mesilla, NM old town plaza 

Organ Mountains outside of Las Cruces, NM under clearing winter skies

Showing family around the region was a nice way to run through our Favorite Last Places tour. But looming on Monday comes the heavy lifting of preparing for our pack-out just one more week away: 
What will we put into long-term storage? (Will we need garden tools in a Soviet-style apartment in Bucharest? Hmmm....) 
What will we need immediately that can fit in the car to drive to our home leave house? (It HAS to fit in the car, as we drive away two weeks after the packers leave.)  
What will we need at FSI, but not immediately? (Winter, spring and summer clothes, plus the first month of work clothing at our new post.) 
What does Goodwill get? (Really? But I love that sweater!) 
What does the housekeeper get? (Do you think she'd use a coffee grinder?) 
What can we pawn off on coworkers? (Anyone need large potted plants?) 

Ahhh... the decisions!  It's enough to make a minimalist of anyone.  We now eyeball any grocery store purchases with "Can we eat/drink/use all that within three weeks?" and we're not buying any green bananas or full gallons of milk. 

Besides the holidays, pack-out and getting sentimental about my "last times," the God of Stressful Things added an EER (annual employee review) that needs to be written (by three people), edited, fussed over, edited again, worried about, and finally, officially submitted before our last day arrives.  For all untenured officers, EERs are due on the anniversary of our arrival at post, which is also our departure date, making this last month extra stressful.   And then when we're tenured - the EER is due on April 15th - does that date ring a bell for anything else important on the annual To-Do List? Yeah, I don't know how that date got selected either.

So, that's what the final month at post is like.  Oh, and I should mention that they sent me on a last minute, two-week TDY to help out the Consulate in Guadalajara just before Christmas.  Sigh. 

Coming next: the final drive north. 

Living on the X

When we arrived in Ciudad Juarez, over 18 months ago, the "Equis" (the massive X pictured above) was still under construction, and was completed shortly after our arrival.  There are many theories as to what it represents, and many people wondering why here, why a big ole' X standing on the Mexican side of the border, but nearly straddling the country divide.  One belief was that someone was spelling out MEXICO from coast to coast along the border, and being in the middle, naturally we go the X.  But as nobody had heard of an M or a C or an O anywhere else along the line under construction, that theory was quickly dismissed. Another more credible belief was that it was to represent the crossing of cultures between Juarez and El Paso.  After all, the full name, "El Paso del Norte" brings up images of a frontier trading post where people from disparate regions are funneled together to make it through the pass to the other side.  It's a crossing of cultures between Native American (as in native cultures from whichever side) and European, whether Spanish or English-speaking, or other. While I still haven't heard a definitive word on what it really means, like any type of art, it means what you want it to mean. To me, it's the representation of the melting pot in general. But if you're not satisfied with that answer - head on down to Matamoros or Tijuana and look for the big "M" or the "O" (depending on which side you're reading from) and let us know what you find. 

Recently, my husband and I, accompanied by a couple who've become good friends of ours, spent the evening at a park in Juarez called Parque Borunda.  Located towards the outer edge of our "green zone" (i.e. about as deep as we're allowed to stretch our legs into the city), it's a regular city park with grass, benches, a fountain (no water) and trees - the usual parky stuff, plus a small amusement park with brightly lit and colored rides, a baseball diamond and a midway of food stalls. We came for an evening of "fair fare" and people watching on a warm summer night and wandered through the food stalls, picking out our dinners: Garibaldi hot dogs, tortas de bifstek, agua fresca, elotes, churros rellenos and paletas.  (That's the sum of all our dinners, not what we each ate, I must add.)  

We sat on a small retaining wall, eating our dinners and trying not to get the food on our shirt fronts, and watched the families, couples on dates, teen music/dance troupes, a puppeteer and an assortment of stray dogs (who were occasionally trying to make more stray dogs, thereby causing a kerfuffle among the kids watching who then tried to figure out just what those two dogs were doing?!).  

So much of the food we saw looked like puro Mexico and the rest looked like country fair Americana. Stalls sold "Dorinachos" - someone's ingenious creation wherein single-serving bag of Doritos are carefully sliced open sideways and melted cheesy sauce or salsa is then dumped on top of the chips - presto ready to go and no thin paper boat to eventually leak all over your lap.  

The Dorinacho in action

The Garibaldi hot dogs are called "hot dogs," first of all, and not "winnies" as hot dogs are often called in Mexican Spanish, and come bacon-wrapped, then grilled/fried and topped with cheesy sauce, mustard, ketchup, pickles and jalapenos. (Oh my what the best of two countries can create!)  While waiting in line deciding if I wanted the chico or grande, I watched the two guys manning the stand outright hustling to quickly serve the long line of salivators preparing to raise their serum cholesterol levels in a single delicious serving.  The rest of the food was truly Mexican: the devotion to elote (corn) is apparent and it's sold either roasted whole and smeared with spices and mayonnaise, or sliced off the cob and served in a cup with any combination of condiments mixed in. Churros are certainly no stranger to the American fried-food scene, but it wasn't until I came to Mexico that I saw the churro relleno (filled churro).  Another brilliant person created a churro-reamer which creates a pocket inside the wand of doughy fried goodness to be filled with chocolate, vanilla or caramel cream.  If that is too rich for you, there are paletas which are real-fruit popsicles of every color and combination (I had a white and pink strawberry vanilla).

Elote off the cob and in the cup

Churros rellenos - there is a god

Life here, on the X as it were, is neither here nor there. Neither Mexican nor American. Border life is a third nationality on its own, like our giant read Equis, that has feet on either side (well almost). 
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the Texas side of the border out west here is really not the Texas one imagines with its Texan accents, cowboy boots and big trucks.  Sure, it has all those things, but instead the accent here says, "I grew up bilingual" instead of "I grew up on Southfork Ranch with JR and Miss Ellie"; more often the boots are Mexican pointy boots and the trucks, well okay, they're about the same. 
(Side note: Texan trucks may have gun racks, but the other day in Juarez we were driving behind a black full-sized Silverado truck that instead of having a gun rack in the back window, had a guy standing in the pick-up bed carrying an AK-47. Hmmm... kinda' the same as a gun rack only far more terrifying.  We hoped he was an "undercover" Federale because he was wearing just jeans and a plaid shirt and riding in an unmarked truck, but then we figured that the large weapon he was carrying kinda' blew his cover - if he had one to begin with - so we just kept our distance instead.)

Anyway, pretty much everyone on either side of the border, but particularly on the Juarez side, has family por otro lado.   That's often how the US is referred to here - the other side, or simply alla, "there."  Families have been coming and going since there were families.  Listening to El Paso radio amuses me as the DJs chat with each other or with their callers making dedications, switching between both languages as if it were assumed that everyone were bilingual: "This song goes out to mijo que va a cumplir 16 anos  on Saturday and will be starting on the high school football team!" "Orale! We wish him well, from su mama Rosa!"   

Looking for a particular item at JC Penney's in El Paso the other day, I asked the store employee if they had the thing. She responded, "Let me go ask my colleague," and so we found another woman and the first woman asked, "Mire, ella busca una bolsa para llevar sus, sus, pequenos bottles of shampoo, you know, like for travelling? Las tenemos, o no?" I then described in Spanish the little toiletries bag I was hoping to find, which I thought might get a surprise reaction from the clerks as I will never be mistaken for someone who looks like a native Spanish speaker (it didn't, and they didn't miss a beat), and we continued to make our way through the possible sections of the department store, in both languages, until it was decided that I better just "look for it en linea, si, seria mejor."  I've decided that people use whichever language fits the situation best, is easiest to say, or just captures the sentiment most accurately. Listening to two native Spanish speaking coworkers chat in front of me (one Puerto Rican and a Mexican), it was all "Andele pues...let's just call him and see if he can come here on Wednesday."  "Ay, si, si, OK andele pues, hasta miercoles..."  ("Andele pues" being the go-to phrase for "alright," "let's go," "sounds good, okay" and as the 1-2-3-4 for the lead singer to start up the song.)

Between food, families, language or music - the border is the gentle blurring of one country gradually into another.  A place where Boston Irish kids go to their friends' quinceneras and where the jalapeno is as common a condiment as ketchup (and boy am I going to miss that!).  It truly is, life on the X. 

(*Footnote: I must give credit to my friends MJ and JF, the ones we went to Parque Borunda with, for coming up with the slogan "Living on the X."  Besides perfectly embodying the cross-cultural border life, it is also a double entendre to those of us who went through the mandatory anti-terrorist threat training before arriving in Juarez.  Again and again, the instructors told us that our first goal was to "get off the X!" Meaning, if you realize you're in a situation that is about to get bad, or get that feeling that you're about to be pounced on from some direction - get off the X and get out of there!) 

Cresting One Year in Juarez and Three Years in the Foreign Service

I think the title says it all: we've recently hit our one-year mark here in the northern Chihuahua desert and are now, as my friend called it, on the back nine.  For me it was an important moment because even though I've been in the Foreign Service for three years now (this month!), I haven't been at any post for more than one year.  We curtailed from Bogota just weeks before hitting the exact one year mark to join A-100, so in a way I feel I haven't been able to see an assignment all the way through to completion.  

Time has so many ways of passing, depending on what's going on in one's life.  This is one of the reasons why my husband and I decided to take on a life of continual change, actually.  I find that when someone is in a routine, any routine, time truly flies.  Each Wednesday begins to feel like the last, each weekend blurs into the next one until you realize that one, three, seven years have gone by.  But when placed into new environments, where our senses must be active to adapt and survive, time passes far more slowly.  Each day brings a new sight, smell, taste, fear, joy - something, anything - that makes us feel more alive instead of simply living on muscle memory.  

In some ways it feels as though the next year will take forever to pass. We still have one heck of a summer to get through, which in early March is already teasing us with days as warm as Seattle in late July.  We'll have another rainy, road-flooding season, another Christmas, another tiresome annual employee evaluation to write (just turned mine in yesterday, thank you) etc...  However, given the theory I proposed in the paragraph above, I believe the year will pass quickly as we have definitely settled into a comfortable routine.  I'm really enjoying my work and have reached a level of confidence that each day doesn't feel like I'm a fish on the carpet anymore.  The Tabbies certainly have their days mapped out: breakfast, quick tour of the garden to "read" who shinnied down the tree to invade their turf the night before, grab a few winks on the couch, then up to the bedroom to catch the mid-day sunny spots, then we're home for dinner and some more time in the garden before bed.  It's a nice way to pass a life when you're 15.5 years old (or about 80 in human years). 

But for those of us who are not 80 in human years, I feel that this is my young life and I don't want it to pass so quickly!  My husband and I have started making lists of places we need to see and things we need to do before the buzzer goes off and we have to leave Mexico.  I've recently applied (again) for a rotation into the American Citizen Services section at the Consulate which would mean learning a whole new set of consular skills.  If I'm not selected for that spot, I'll raise my hand for a TDY to another other post in Mission Mexico this summer, like I did last June in Monterrey. Anything to make the most of our time here, both personally and professionally, and milk every drop out of life.  Otherwise it's just too easy to let the years march on and before I know it, I'm 80 and just looking for a sunny spot to rest in.  

To add some color to this contemplative entry, I'm going to close with some photos of our most recent weekend escapes. First to Guadalupe National Park in Texas for a day hike. Later we visited Silver City, NM and finally we had a great camping trip to Aguirre Spring National Recreation Area near Las Cruces, NM.  These little trips are all ways of trying to brighten up our otherwise regular, suburban existence.  (Speaking of which, please notice that I've started to add a list of blogs from and about Juarez, in case any of you are reading this due to being assigned here in the near future.  I understand that there was a recent A-100 flag day wherein NINE new Juarez-bound Consular Officers received their tiny Mexican flags.  Bienvenidos todos!)

Homestead in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, TX

Canyon view from Devil's Hall Trail in Guadalupe Nat'l Park

Is that standing water? View from the highway towards Guadalupe Nat'l Park and the highest peak in Texas

Lovely campsite in Aguirre Spring Nat'l Recreation Area, NM

Bad moon on the rise - looking east from Aguirre Spring

New day dawning with a huge horizon, Aguirre Spring

Organ Mountains, eastside view from Aguirre Spring

Gila Cliff Dwellings Nat'l Monument, near Silver City, NM

Living room view for Gila Cliff dwellers

Some little friends near our kitchen window in Silver City, NM. I saw 16 different bird species here!

Funky downtown Silver City, NM

How the Tabbies pass the day

An older gentleman loves his basket

Road Trip: Puerto Penasco, Sonora

It is with great pleasure that I tell you that I'm writing this from the 11th floor condo overlooking the Sea of Cortez, about 20 miles south of the Sonoran resort town of Puerto Penasco. Yeah, I had never heard of it before either, and unless you're from Arizona or this corner of northwestern Mexico - it's a pretty good secret. 

Well, as much a secret as a fully-developed beach resort within four hours' drive from two major Arizona cities can be, which is really not a secret at all, then is it? (Okay, okay, so it was a secret to US!) Before I go too far, I'd just like to set the scene so you can have an image in mind as you continue to read:

Anyway, it's been well over a year since my husband and I had a true vacation, even if only for a long weekend. Mostly because popping away for the weekend is always easier in theory and our daydreams than in reality due to the whole find-a-good-cat sitter dilemma. The Tabbies have become pretty high-maintenance in their old age. Dodger doesn't want to eat, Toby will eat everything, and Daphne is somewhere in between. So last time we headed out to Marfa, TX, we hired a young co-worker to come in twice a day to feed, water and scoop litter boxes. Which he did. What he didn't do was clean up the puddles of barf that Toby left after he inhaled Dodger and Daphne's unattended meals and promptly got sick to his stomach. (Note to self: Never hire young folks whose mothers still do all their cleaning and cooking to keep your pets and home in ship-shape. Lesson learned.)

But this time we rolled out of town full of confidence that the mother and two young daughters from the neighborhood with whom we left our key (along with two pages of detailed instructions and one test-run under their belt) would take excellent care of the fur family. 

So back to the vacation: We drove north into El Paso, and then west through New Mexico and Arizona before turning southwest across the Tohono O'Odham Indian Reservation, then due south through Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument to the small border crossing at Lukeville, AZ on one side and Sonoyta, Sonora on the other. The whole thing took nearly 10 hours, longer than expected, but it was also far more beautiful than expected. Join us en route:

And you already figured that he has the naked babe painted on the gas tank, right?

Really? Right where we're headed. Awww man. 

As luck would have it... the wind blew in our favor

Stunning backdrop to the Organ Pipe Cactus Nat'l Monument

The Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument was, from our quick drive-through view, really spectacular. The Organ Pipe cacti are about 12-15' tall and apparently come in all shapes and poses. While I was privately anthropomorphisizing the cacti into humans in all sorts of he-larious poses, I then glanced at the horizon and saw an even more surprising backdrop of mountain peaks and ranges. Man, who knew this was all here? Gorgeous. 

So we get to the border crossing, and by now all the traffic that we'd missed by leaving Juarez early had caught up with us coming from the nearby Tuscon and Phoenix. They were there in force, and they brought their toys. All I was thinking was, "Damn! What are the chances that these yahoos are going to be staying in the same condo with us and will be ATV'ing their way up and down the beach in front of us?!"  

The crossing at Lukeville, AZ is much smaller than any of Juarez crossings, and the little town on the Mexican side was colorful, pleasant and quite a bit tidier. But it still had that familiar hard-scrabble, nursing-stray-dog-trotting-down-the-sidewalk, concrete-brick-house feel to it that we're used to and we felt at home at once. Not tempted by dentists or inexpensive pharmacies so popular in the border towns, we were through Sonoyta quickly and back onto the wide-open desert highway towards a coastline that if I hadn't already read the map - I would never have believed existed so close by. (What a surprise it must've been to the first explorers. "Well I'll be... Hey guys, would ya' come take a look at this!")

Mexicans head north for cheap shopping and Americans head south for affordable medical services.

Colorful roadside offerings for those stuck in cross-border traffic. 

We got to the outskirts of Puerto Penasco, turned left at the roundabout that the nice guy in the rental office told us to look for, and headed again into the desert (as in "totally deserted" kind of desert) on a road paved only with packed sand, towards the hope of the condo we'd rented popping onto the horizon sometime soon. And after forging a handful of  "water over roadway" sections that made me glad we hadn't bought a sports car, we found the property. Not too shabby, eh?  We're on the second-to-top floor, far left. In case you're interested, here it is. 

The plus side is that the place is serene, directly on the beach, nearly vacant and with so many pools to pick from that this afternoon I just didn't know where to start. So I used them all and then read and napped in the little shady chair casitas.

I'd like to state for the record that we're not luxury resort kind of people. So this felt like we'd stepped into an episode of International House Hunters by accident. (Which, by the way, I can now watch from one of the condos two TVs with Direct TV. Will the wonders never cease?) 

We visited the town of Puerto Penasco twice: once for a quick look-around and grocery shopping and the second time for a sunset dinner on our last night. The malecon (downtown waterside walkway) was busy with bars, restaurants, souvenir vendors, and hawkers of all sorts. If that's the scene you want -  then stay in town. We enjoyed it for one dinner and quick look around; I loved seeing the pelicans perched atop each mast of the fishing fleet in the small harbor, but personally, the tranquility of being isolated was more our style. This is how we prefer to see a beach, and did, just by turning our heads to the right from the balcony:

While I was happy to indulge in some HGTV catching up, Tim got to see his alma mater play on Saturday college football. Can you guess who we were rooting for? He dared me to make this statement in the sand below our balcony. Let's just say that ain't no Tide gonna' Roll over this! (For at least 12 hours that is...)

But all vacations must come to an end, and so on Monday morning, we reluctantly packed up and pointed the car back towards the border. Sonoyta was bustling with business, loaded with roving vendors selling pottery, ice cream, carvings and baskets. We resisted, even the fusion US-Mexican Dia de los Muertos painted pottery skulls wearing NFL helmets and the life-sized iron T-Rex.

Man, I'm glad he's chained up!

We pulled into our rugged city and then our tidy neighborhood, to find that the kitties had been beautifully cared for and were happy to see us again. They all three slept on the bed with us and only got just a bit of revenge at 03:00 when they decided it was time to be let out of the bedroom. 

You know, Mexico is really an awesome place. You all should come see more of it.

C'mon back down an' see us again!

Sunday Snapshots

There is a blog I like to read that specializes in what the author refers to as "Wordless Wednesdays" where she posts a photo or two instead of writing. I thought I could do a bit of the same today, in a lazy-Sunday sort of way. I'll have to caption the pictures or you'll wonder why I'm showing you all a photo of my sheets and pillows. Here in pictures I offer you all a slice of our daily life and a few snippets from weekend road trips we've taken in the Juarez/New Mexico/El Paso region:

A place for everyone and everyone in their place.

One reason why we get danger pay.

Another reason why we get danger pay. Even the drinking fountains can't be trusted!

Exhibit A: How you can tell that someone's household effects haven't arrived yet. 

Exhibit B: How you can tell that someone's household effects haven't arrived yet.

Day Trip #1: Charro exhibition, traditional Mexican cowboying - it's a family affair with multiple generations all participating. 

Mas Charros!

Day Trip #2: White Sands National Monument, NM - Awesome!

Wild grasses thrive in the gypsum

Watch out for the yellow... sand?

Darn shame about the 50 mph winds that day...yes, really. 

At the end of the day - it's across the border we go.