What's been going on ?

Hello, my faithful readers, did you wonder where I dissapared to? Well I am still here! We had company last week and I didn't have anytime to sit down and gather all my thoughts, that takes awhile you know ! LOL Richard and Mario were here visiting us all week, and this morning it was time to say goodbye to them. We had a great time, lot's of laughs and way to much food, at this rate I am never going to lose my belly fat. Billy's brother Richard really knows his way around a grill, so most nights he was in charge of dinner, which was fine with us . We showed them our new place, even spent yesterday out by the pool there, it was the first time I have been in the pool and it was really nice, felt good to swim again. I am looking forward to living there so I can use the pool to get some much needed exercise. On Friday night we went to Chapala, took a walk on the malacon during sunset, it was actually a little chilly, with the wind coming off the lake.



Sunset over the mountains

Boats tied up for the night

Richard, Billy and Mario

Dusk, and the lights coming on, so pretty

Richard and I enjoying the sun and water

Fresh fish on the grill, so good !

These waterfalls are close by in Ajijic. We went hiking up the mountain to see them, not for the faint of heart or the out of shape. Told Billy I didn't know we had to be part goat to get up there, but it was worth it. The next time we go we will plan it better, take our time maybe bring a lunch with us, and plenty of water.

Billy crossing one of the many streams, he finally just walked across them, of course that made his sneakers and socks all wet, which he left in the car for two days, so now the car is airing out!

Very powerful stream of water

A pretty view from up there

The following 2 pictures are especially for my friends that have been here, I thought I would show them how high the lake level is right now, not much beach left.

We just had this furniture made localy, you can pick the material out and the style of the chairs and sofa. We bought it for the patio at the new house and it was delivered just in time for our company. We were out on the patio everyday. One of the things I love about living here, you can be outside without dieing from the heat.

This is the loveseat, two lovebirds are going to sit here.

This is how they start out, they don't look real sturdy but they sure are.

Well that's all for this post, hope you enjoyed the pictures, will post again next week.

Random Ramblings

Noise: They say if you don't like noise don't move to Mexico. Last night was a good example. One of our neighbors has a house here that he doesn't live in, and last night his son decided to have a party there. Well ok, everyone is entitled to party, but our other neighbor has two little yippy dogs, who were left out all night, because they were not home, so now we have the party going on , loud music and the dogs barking, welcome to Mexico, at 1:00 in the morning, I get out of bed, turn on the light and start looking for these big head phones to stick on my ears, ( I don't even know why these made the trip here), but last night I was glad they did, so after that no more noise ! and I could finally get some sleep.



Horseback Riding: My neighbors Gary and Gabby took me horseback riding. Gary has a horse that he boards right down the road and one day he asked me if I would like to join them on a ride, well you know I was more than happy to! A gentleman named Carlos runs the boarding stable, he is also a vet. here in Ajijic. So now I usually ride once a week, I get to ride the same horse all the time, I have named him Pal. I think Carlos is hoping that I fall in love with Pal, and buy him, but that is not going to happen. I mean the falling in love part has already started, the buying part is not happening



My buddy Pal

Gabby in the saddle

Carlos on Junior

Gary on his horse Pen

Paco is a handsome stallion, who lives across the street from where we will be living in October.

I hope to become good friends with him. I'm off to a good start, he loves attention and carrots !

Our New Place: This is a picture of the tile that we picked out, the guy who is putting it up is doing a great job, however, we asked him not to put up one of the accent tiles high up as we were going to put a range hood in, well I went in there yesterday, and can you guess? yes there was the accent tile, high up on the back splash, so now if you put up the hood you will only see half of that tile. What to do? We can either ask him to take it down, which will be a pain in the ass for him or live without the hood, I don't really care if we have the hood, but Billy wanted one, so this will be his call. They have also finished painting the place for us, it looks good. I picked out a sunny yellow for the bedroom and let me tell you it is YELLOW! I think it may be so bright because of the color that it went over, anyway it looks like a Mexican yellow and I will be able to get some nice throw rugs and wall hangings that will go really well in there. I am really looking forward to posting the before and after pictures of our new place.

Food: I have stopped eating so many rolls, now when I have them I cut them in half or quarters. Soda: I try not to drink soda, I was getting them all the time when we would go out to eat, I didn't have any for 3 days and noticed that I stopped having hot flashes at night, and then yesterday when we went out to lunch I had a soda, and I had a hot flash ! wow how interesting, so no more soda, besides they are really bad for you. I ordered a Gyro for lunch yesterday and I got the Mexican version of one, it was good, but not what I expected, they use steak for the meat. The place was ok, we said we would go back, but I think the prices were Gringo, too, which means that they were higher than they should have been. Funny how you get used to the cheap prices so quickly !

Shopping for food: Well it is interesting shopping for food here, lot's of places to chose from. There is a small supermarket here that I try and stay out of, it is way!!! over priced and we only go in there if we have to! It caters to all the gringos in town, by carrying loads of US brands, and boy do you pay for those US brands. We have learned to buy Mexican brands, much easier on the old pocketbook. (do they even use that word anymore) or is my age showing? We buy most of our veggies at the open markets, the food is fresher, and it's way more fun than the supermarket.

Money: I am still trying to figure out the money. It is not that hard and I think I have a mental block! The problem is I want to convert everything to dollars. People tell me that is a common problem, so I will have to stop doing it! Billy said he is going to start letting me pay for everything so I will learn faster, I say if I do we will go broke faster ! LOL

Learning Spanish: Well that's not going as good as I was planning, Billy is better at it than me. I mean I know the important stuff like: "How much is this" ( that one is real important ), "where are the bathrooms", very important! "check please", you have to always ask for it! "Have a good day", "How are you, I am fine", "Where is?" "I don't understand", "Do you speak English", "I only speak a little Spanish", and "how do you say this"? I know more but you get the picture, I do plan on taking lessons, just waiting for our friends to get here, and then we will take them together. Safety in numbers.

Driving:

Billy does most of the driving here, which is usually a good thing, the streets are very narrow, sometime we have to pull the mirror in so we can pass, without ripping it off ! The one thing that drives me crazy is when we are going to park the car, sometimes he will drive right bye some good spots, even going down the road and turning around ! Sometimes I want to scream just find a F------ spot! Of course I don't say that cause then he'll tell me if I don't like it, I can drive, and first I would have to learn how to parallel park, and lets face it the last time I did that was when I took my drivers test. Which was how many years ago???? well we won't go there! They tell me that when you go for your Mexican license they make you parallel park, guess I better start practicing.

Face book: Don't know if any of you go on face book, I really like it. Keeps me up to date with all of my friends back in Florida, but I have to admit, that I do not understand some of the abbreviation's that the kids use, I think I will have to look them up, I seem to remember reading a list of them, just have to try and remember where that was.

Not Knowing what to blog about: Well when I decided to write this post, I was saying, ok what am I going to write about this week, and as you can tell I found plenty to write about. Well that's all for now till next week !