First thing's first: our next post is Port-au-Prince, Haiti!! We're very excited about it, but I think it will be a difficult post. Ian will hopefully be able to work and get excellent experience, and I'll be in a very good position for career purposes! Everyone is welcome to come visit, but no one will be obliged.
Secondly, Guita won the blue ribbon for her puppy obedience class! She shared first place honors with a lovely young Airedale named Cornelio, but we're more interested in our own sweet baby. The photos below show her enjoying some down-time during the exam and then later with her big blue ribbon!
OK, no photos because Blogger doesn't agree, but she was darling, and she loves her big ribbon!
Finally, a word on Mexico City traffic. Everybody complains about the driving here -- and with good reason -- but there are some aspects that merit special mention.
First, the optional respect for red lights. Most Mexicans do respect red lights to about the same degree that Washington, DC, drivers do (inconsistent at best). But from time to time, drivers decide that red lights are for little people, and they blow right through them. This evening I saw one of the good, safe buses go straight through a red light from the left turn lane. It zipped around the cars waiting at the light and careened through the intersection, dodging the island with the traffic light poles, and swinging back into traffic on the far side. Pretty fancy maneuvers for a big city bus.
A while ago, we were coming home from Costco in a taxi, and the driver took us on a totally unknown route. We went through a lot of construction (and Mexico City always has road construction), and came to a right turn. An old VW Beetle with a hearse-like back was turning down the road we'd come up, which was legitimately a two-way street, but it was blocked by those rectangular barricades construction crews use. Not to be deterred, the VW literally pushed one of the barricades out of its way to open the street to two-way traffic. Luckily nothing hit our taxi, and the VW cleared up a significant traffic snarl by opening the turn again. Amazing - it's hard to imagine even the worst drivers in the U.S. having the wherewithal to use a VW Beetle to remove an official roadblock!!
Finally, our own dear Prolongacion Vista Hermosa. Ian and I live near the top of a very small and very steep street that has been under construction for one thing or another since anybody can remember. At the bottom of the hill, there is a drainage ditch, which is a good thing. But the ditch is probably a foot wide and it's set at the wrong angle for a steep street. Add to that, the covers for the ditch are often missing completely and you start to get interesting experiences in taxis that think they know better than the locals! Furthermore, the road is two-way, but somebody (the city? residents?) often puts up a variety of barricades (pieces of the grate, pylon cones, random sheet metal), embedded in the ditch, to prevent downhill traffic. It's dangerous, to put it mildly. As you climb the street, you pass a five-year-old landslide and a broken house (broken in the landslide) and enter the construction zone. In the construction zone - heaven alone knows what they want to do here - workers dig by hand through the pavement, make ditches, refill them, repave them, and start again. They've dug at least five times in the year that we've been here. Lately they've added a great big hole-maker (like a pile-driver for fence posts but on serious steroids), and they're making giant holes in the road right outside our gate. It's excellent for residents, and we're just really glad we don't have to get a car past it every day!
But enough moaning about the traffic -- I'm still just happy about Haiti, Ian's birthday presents (early, tomorrow night), and our upcoming trip to Isla Mujeres off Cancun!
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