Category: Living Abroad

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Drink Living Abroad Mexico Travel Trends

What’s Mescal?

We just returned from Oaxaca City in southern Mexico. Coincidentally, a friend is living there while he’s starting a mescal export business. We visited with him a few times and learned a bit about mescal.

Mescal is a broad category for liquors distilled from the agave plant. The mescal most people know is tequila, but there’re lots more mescals throughout Mexico.

Because I live in Mexico, I’d been thinking about writing a post about my favorite tequila. But mescal is a more interesting story than my favorite tequila (I buy Centenario Repasado most often which, I guess, makes it my favorite).

Different types of agave plants are found pretty much all over Mexico. Agaves have been used as a beverage base for thousands of years here. Probably the original agave drink was pulque, sort of like an agave beer.

After the Spanish showed up and introduced distillation, various local Peoples began producing a drink called mescal using agave plants.

The world of mescal shares some similarities with the wine world. The agave plant comes in many forms and grows in many different soils and climate with each combination providing different taste characteristics for the mescal.

Just as champagne can only be made from certain grapes and only in the Champagne region of France, tequila can only be made from a certain agave plant and only in the Tequila region of Mexico.

Like wine, mescals can can be consumed when they’re young or they can be aged. Young clear mescal, called joven, seems to be considered the way to go.

The agave plants can also be harvested in the wild where they grow naturally, or they can be cultivated and harvested more easily. Each style of the resulting mescal has it’s following.

Again like wine, the pricing is often based on scarcity. And mescal drinkers use similar adjectives for describing the, often subtle, taste differences between different mescals.

There’s even some overlap with scotches; the most common adjective I heard for describing a mescal’s taste was “smokey.”

There’s a thriving mescal subculture, especially in Oaxaca, that’s worth investigating if you’re even slightly interested in it.

 

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Books Exercise Health Mexico

Are you an Unracer?

One of the few things I miss, living in a small Mexican town, is bike riding. The roads in our town are cobbled, so the riding is bumpy and jostling.

There’s one street here without cobblestones. All the others make for slow, bumpy biking. I have an old beater bike and its chain gets rattled off the sprocket regularly while riding on the cobblestones. Cycling on cobblestones is unpleasant enough that most folks in town don’t ride bikes much. Go to other towns in Mexico without cobbled streets, and there’re plenty of bikers.

I’ve been thinking about biking because I’m reading Just Ride by Grant Petersen,  who’s been biking a lot, for years. He’s in the bike business too, making non-trendy bikes for an enthusiastic niche market of people he calls unracers, which is what most people really are.

Petersen advocates just riding your bike. Like you did as a kid. Don’t concern yourself with bike racing culture and its sway over biking culture and unracers, who share almost nothing in common with race culture.

The bike business: bikes, parts, clothes, magazines, fitness and nutrition is all seen through the lens of bike racing. And that’s become an off-putting but seductive problem for most of the non racing bikers. It’s especially distracting for non bikers who might want to try biking a little bit but are intimidated by the dominating world of bike racers and wanna-be-racers.

Before the sixties unracers and racers had more in common. Those racers had little support during races so their bikes were sturdier and more practical.

Now, pro racers are supported throughout races. And they have multiple, specialized, not-built-for-the-long-haul bikes which are given to them new each year by their sponsors.

What racers need isn’t what unracers need. Petersen makes the case for a common sense approach to biking. A super light bike made of exotic materials, specialized pedals and shoes, biking clothes, or a bike sized for a 21-year-old pro racer aren’t what most people need. Petersen thinks you shouldn’t need to “get ready” to bike. The easier you make riding, the more likely you are to use a bike. Most of the racer culture gear inhibit you from just riding your bike. Make it easy and fun, and you’ll do it.

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Mexico

Relative Safety

What’s the chance that a bull could jump out of a bullring into the stands? It can happen, but it’s very unlikely.

Most of my relatives are afraid to visit me in Mexico. The steady drumbeat in the US media about the narco violence has distorted Americans’ perceptions of the situation in Mexico. It sounds really scary!

I’ve tried explaining that, just like in the States, some areas in Mexico are very dangerous but the majority are safe. That didn’t work. But now I have some statistics.

Last week, in The Huffington Post, there was an article about the safety of Mexican travel. The article provided statistics for travel destinations using the murder rate per 100,000 people in various countries cities and states. To make things easier, just remember the numbers I’m talking about are per 100,000 people.

The countrywide numbers are the drivers of the warnings for US travelers: 18 for Mexico and 4.8 for the US. Sounds pretty bad.

But what about some alternative countries to visit Americans feel safe in: 36 for the Bahamas, 42 for Belize, or 52 for Jamaica (Hay Mon!).

For an American, the chances of encountering violence in Mexico are often less than the chances in parts of the States. The number for a US citizen in Mexico is only 2.1! And that number would be even lower if  we could somehow remove the numbers for US citizens who engaged in criminal activities in Mexico.

Going for a more granular comparison, we can look at some cities. Going to Disneyland? Orlando, FL is at 7.5. Houston is at 6.8, and New Orleans is lapping those two while Cancun is at 1.8 and Puerto Vallarta is at 5.9.

This year, the US president even let his daughter go to the Southern Mexican state of Oaxaca for her spring break where the number is 4.4 (the US state of Pennsylvania is at 5.2).

If you avoid the trouble spots in Mexico (and the US) you can have “safe travels.”

 

 

 

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Happiness Mexico

Stretching Time

Last week, we took an overnight trip to a small town an hour and a half up the coast. It’s smaller, but pretty similar to the small Mexican town we live in.

We were visiting some friends who’d done a house trade and invited us up for a night. Leaving home on a Wednesday afternoon, we were back home about the same time on Thursday. During that time I surfed a couple of times, we made a big dinner, caught up, and explored the town a little. It was relaxing and fun.

Here’s the thing, and I think most people feel this way. Even with all the similarities to where we live and despite the short time we were gone, it felt like we stretched a day into a week!

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Mexico

Deceptive Looks

This is a field note from tropical coastal Mexico. A couple of nights ago I spotted one of the insects you see on the right. In Mexico we call them “cancles” or “limpa casas” (house cleaners). In English they have a name as scary as they look, tailless whip scorpions.

Cancles’ looks are deceiving. They’re related to scorpions but aren’t poisonous. There’s no tail like you’d see on a true scorpion ( hence “tailless”). And their front legs have evolved into long thin sensors (the “whip” part of their name) to help them feel their way along.

They’re harmless to us but not to other bugs, resulting in their “house cleaner” nickname. Because they’re nocturnal and skittish you don’t see them very often, but when you do it’s memorable. They look strange. Bigger ones might have a body the size of a small thumb and their legs would span your open palm.

This family of bugs has members all over the world in similar climates and they all look intimidating. Some cultures feared cancles and falsely attributed all sorts of dangers to them even though cancles are actually beneficial predators of other bugs. You can’t always judge something by how it looks.

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Ideas Mexico

Repurpose

There’re times I wish I had a camera with me; today was one of those times.

I went to see a mechanic here in Mexico, to get my oil and filter changed. His name is Abel and he has a bustling business that is actually under a large shade tree. Abel’s shop does fairly sophisticated mechanical work, from brakes and tune-ups to rebuilding engines. He even has my car’s correct type of synthetic oil called for by Toyota.

Just a car length away in the shop, from where my oil was being changed, was another stall where a mechanic was building an engine back up, you could still see the exposed crankshaft. The Ranchero music from that area could be heard near my car.

When I went over to see the engine being reassembled I realized the music was coming from the mechanics cell phone laying flat on the ground using the top half of a 2 liter pop bottle as a megaphone. The mechanic had hacked the bottom half off the bottle and turned the top half upside down with the mouth of the bottle balanced on the cell phone’s tiny speaker.

The mechanic stepped away and I took the opportunity to take the bottle megaphone off, and without the repurposed megaphone the volume was much lower. I put the bottle back on the cell phone and the music continued on, loud again.

In Mexico I see people listening to music on their cellphone’s tiny speaker all the time, a sort of new age transistor radio. That’s kind of a private use. But when you want to share your music sometimes all you need is an empty pop bottle cut in half. Pretty clever.

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Living Abroad

Assumptions

Teaching English can sometimes highlight odd assumptions we have and don’t usually think about.

One day I was chatting in class with Mati, a woman I’ve been teaching for a couple of years. She’s a sweet middle-aged woman who grew up in our little town and we’ve gotten to know each other pretty well.

I’ve found that teachers can be like lawyers in the sense that a teacher should know the answer to every question that’s asked of the students. I knew Mati is a mom and I even know one of her kids. In the course of our conversation I asked her how many children she has.

After I asked if she has children she calmly gazed back at me and stated that she didn’t have any children. I thought maybe she was a poker player and making a joke with a straight face.

But it turned out not to be a joke. In Spanish, children only refers to kids who’re prepubescent and younger. In English, children refers to a son or daughter of any age, right?

Mati’s kids are all young adults. So in Mati’s mind, she didn’t have any children. She would have responded better to “Do you have any sons?” At the intermediate level English, it took a while to sort out who was talking about what. But we eventually figured out the cultural and linguistic confusions. She was surprised to learn that in English she’s the child of her parents and they’re the children of… and so on.

This situation turned out to be a fun serendipitous learning moment for both of us. Cross cultural assumptions sometimes lead to misunderstandings. And it’s compounded especially when you don’t know – what you don’t know.

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Ideas Mexico

Words and Stories

Now that there’re about 7 billion of us around the world bumping into one another; it’s hard to imagine we were constrained in small kinship groups for thousands of generations. And one of the primary activities was probably telling stories to each other.

If I ask you to describe this picture, you’d likely tell a story to describe it.

I teach an English class here in Mexico. One of the most popular and effective exercises is showing the class an interesting photo or image they’re not familiar with and asking them to make up a story about what they see. They always like creating a story.

Data doesn’t mean anything to us until it’s presented as information and when the information can be told as a story there’s a better chance that we’ll absorb it.

If you wanted to, you could say “less is more” by writing down this “<=>.” It’s kind of cool and clearly represents the idea in the shortest way. A formula is more concise than using words. But, it lacks the warmth of words the same way you don’t enjoy the ceramic logs in a hissing gas fireplace the same way you’d  enjoy real logs on fire crackling in a fireplace. Both forms have their place, but I think generally we prefer stories.

 

 

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Ideas Mexico Sites

the small world and writing

I was surprised to find a fellow writer living on the same street I live on in Mexico. She just returned to Mexico; and while chatting, we stumbled across our common interest. We even use the same setup and general layout for our blogs. It really is a small world. If your keen, here’s her site.

She’s has been looking for a writer’s group, or to form one, in our town. There’re a few other people who might be interested. We’ll see.

Thinking about a writer’s group got me thinking about writing and what works for me and what I’ve gleaned that seems to work for other writers.

First, I suppose is to just do it. And just do it a lot. If you have a schedule or deadline set that helps. Don’t worry, you’ll come up with stuff to write about; have you ever gotten up in the morning and not had something to say? If you have stuff to talk about, you have stuff to write about.

That leads to the second thing about writing; which is the more you do it the easier it becomes to continue doing it. Sort of like forming a habit. And I guess it goes without saying that you have to enjoy writing or you won’t keep going.

Aim to make your writing interesting, or at least useful.

Why use a long word when a shorter one will do? And cut out extra words where you can.

The actual how of writing is pretty simple. Say it clearly.

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Health Ideas Living Abroad

What Are Your Emergency Essentials?

Suppose you needed to abandon your home because of something like a tornado or a hurricane. What would you take?

Earlier this month we had two potential hurricanes that where approaching our coast of Mexico. It turned out to be a non event; we just got some light rains.

But I still prepared for it. There is a lot of stuff you could do and most people won’t. But there are some emergency essentials that are easy to get together and to keep stashed out-of-the-way until you need them.

Like most people I don’t keep extra gasoline around, so I made sure the car had a full tank of gas. Why not avoid long lines and save time if an evacuation is called for? It’s the same thing for water so I bought some extra jugs of water.

Here’re the emergency essentials I keep handy inside a plastic pail with a watertight lid:

A radio/flashlight unit that runs on batteries or can be hand cranked and some fresh batteries – duck tape – a lighter – a small pot with a lid – half liter water bottle – small first aid kit with booklet – a box of disposable syringes w/ needles – a bar of soap – iodine drops – and a leatherman multi-tool.

Pretty self-explanatory except maybe for: the syringes – in case a medical team is out and I need a shot and iodine drops – for disinfecting water.

These are only the low hanging fruit of emergency essentials. If you assemble this stuff once ahead of time, and without any pressure of impending doom, it’s easy and maybe even a fun project. And then you can forget about it and hope you never need it.