Weather and wisdom

9:55 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 2, 2010 – La Casa, Palenque, Mexico

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While the change in seasons here are nothing like my beloved North Carolina, I'm still noticing distinct differences besides the massive increase in precipitation. The average daily temperature has dropped about ten degrees since I first arrived (closer to 20 at night), and when it's not raining the weather is quite pleasant and not so unbearably hot. I’ve even busted out jeans on a few occasions. The cold showers have become more of a daily nuisance rather than a daily six minutes of bliss, and I now completely utilize my one, thin sheet rather than kicking it off early in the night.

Some things I’ve learned/am still getting used to:

1) Change is extremely difficult to hold on to, but is also necessary for survival here. You can’t break anything over a $50 peso bill on the street (~$5 USD) and often not even that. Unfortunately, the ATM usually spits out $200 MXN bills in your hand (sounds like a lot but is less than $20 USD), so trying to break them is a constant mission. If you were dropped off around here with only a $200 bill you would probably starve. Also, dealing with the bill (la cuenta) at a restaurant is always a huge ordeal. They only provide the total for the entire group—usually scribbled in pen on a napkin—so it always takes us a while to figure out who owes what and how much with tip.

2) My understanding (or lack thereof) of the Mexican postal system can best be illustrated by the following email to my good friend Liz:

Dearest Liz,

Please send me your address. That does not mean you will get any mail necessarily, I'll leave that in the hands of the Mexican postal system which are perhaps the worst hands a piece of mail can be in. I don't even have an address here (just some vague directions to an unnumbered house on an unnamed road), and the whole town of Palenque seems to be out of postage stamps. I've heard that letters/packages can take months to deliver--if at all. And yet all the vendors still sell postcards to the tourists! Figures.

On second thought, I will place my message in a bottle for you and send it adrift and hope that it floats up the Atlantic Gulf Stream, is blown into the Charles by a Nor'easter, picked up by a homeless woman, eaten, pooped out on the street, swept up into a trash can, dumped into a garbage truck, driven by the truck to your apartment, dropped out on the street, picked up by the mail man, and delivered into your mail box. Because THAT will happen faster and more reliably than Mexican post.

So, you should definitely be holding your breath. That is, if you have a lung capacity 86400x that of the harbor porpoise.

3) I find myself dreaming more than is healthy about howler monkeys; I’m starting to have a reoccurring one where I panic because I can’t find them.

4) My body is perpetually itching and covered in bug bites.

5) I’m still trying to find ways to get ahead of the ants that infiltrate our kitchen daily. My latest struggle has been over my jar of Nutella (a delicious hazelnut/chocolate spread similar to peanut butter, for those who are unfortunate to have never tried it). I discovered quickly that ants can even find their way into a tightly screwed jar. So I started putting my peanut butter and Nutella in the fridge, which works fine for peanut butter. But the Nutella does not fare well in cold temperatures, and became so hard that I couldn’t even stick a knife in it. I tried to microwave it or a few seconds, but didn’t realize there was still a tiny bit of foil left around the rim. The microwave quickly notified me of this by flashing bright white and sparking. After nearly setting our kitchen on fire, I decided to try a different approach. I took a bowl of water and rested the jar in the middle of it. I now had a nice mote protecting my Nutella. After a week my jar remains untouched, but ants are not above committing suicide in attempts to cross the water. Their bodies float around the bowl, testament to their foolish devotion to the queen, but none have managed to successfully cross the liquid barrier. Yet.

Adjustment is hard, but sometimes all it takes is a bowl of water.

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