Japanesebutterfly’s blog

Two months spent in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.  What, pray tell,  did I do there you say? So many many things.

Starting with driving the camp mini vans all over the mountains and back and forth to Denver, picking up lovely young campers. I drove so slowly they called me Grandma...Till the kids were out of the van, then I cracked that whip all over them twisty turny roads. Hollah!

 I survived the Norovirus... I didn't actually get Noro, but it hit my first day of work. Campers and staff puking their guts out and pooping their pants. Lurvly. We closed down the camp sprayed everything with bleach and continued on for a fairly excellent summer if you like that sort of thing. Which I discovered I no longer do...But I was a trooper.

I biked, I hiked, I rafted, I drove the bus. I got fatter on a steady diet of camp cuisine and fast food eaten on the road. I lusted after young counselors, I made friends, I practiced my Spanish and made best buddies with the kitchen staff and ate so much sugar cereals at night  that I swear they gave me a hangover...I danced like a hippie to Rusted Root and I smirked my way through the summer as I realized that although being thirty has its downside(specially if you are driving a camp van) it has its up too, like knowing not to dye  blond hair brown=green. And having a surprisingly vast wealth of knowledge regarding the opposite sex and their sad re re ways...I felt, old and wise and fabulous on occasion. I saw a million shooting stars and started learning guitar, I roasted marshmallows, and ate five hundred hamburgers and sat around countless campfires  singing camp songs...I complained about everyones disgusting hygiene, I bleached the bathroom a gazillion times...I drank beers and sang karaoke in a local bar and went down an alpine slide...I made friends with teenagers and enjoyed their company and tried not to destroy their hopes for the future.

And my future? Well here I am once more starting over, only this time stateside. Job/man/apartment hunting and contemplating what it is I really want.  More on that as it comes in...

Sometime shit don’t work out

You think it will

but hot damn Sopresa!

Find yourself stranded at Mexican Immigration

Without the proper paperwork after getting canned for

Being “the kind of person that sees the glass as half empty”

Lost your cellphone in the back of un taxi

Cuz you were too busy making out to notice it had slipped out of your pocket

Find yourself passed out on top of your backpack

Flies on your face in the Monterrey Airport

After a few hours of latin lovin cut short by pseudo deportation

Find yourself wandering around the Mexico City Aeropuerto

Sampling tequila at the duty free shop…

Nothing is free, except you!

Find yourself in JFK waiting on your mom

To collect your sorry almost 30 year old ass

Find yourself in your childhood bedroom staring at the flowers on the wall

Find yourself thinking, the worse has happened!

And it’s not so bad.

Find yourself on a train into Manhattan

With a cutie corporate lawyer hittin on you

Find yourself drunk in a bar uptown on Friday,

Drunk in a bar on the lower east side on Saturday

And content at Westchester BBQ on Sunday

Find yourself a new job in the Rocky Mountains

Breathe. Things could be worse.

I will not be blogging about my employment until I am free from my contract. If you are dying to know why it sucks feel free to send me a  private message.

1. Walking
    It is not an easy task to stroll the massive outlying streets of Monterrey(my house is in Guadalupe one of the smaller areas that make up the megalopolis that is Monterrey) all cars honk/hoot/whistle, kissing/hissing noises follow your ass every which way it goes...and watch your feet, there is always some metal rod sticking out of the ground or gaping hole or giant pile of mud/poop. Breathe at your own risk.  The air quality has made me appreciate my lungs and I have quit smoking altogether because I fear the combined effects of inhaling that many pollutants will cause my lungs to simply collapse in a festering cancerous heap.

2. Bus
  There are set bus stops but no need for those you can hail a bus like a taxi. Don't worry about exact change(7 pesos for the bus without AC 8 for the "cool" ride) the driver will make change, while shifting gears and whipping out into the insane traffic as you grasp in vain  to keep from falling, one foot out the door, flip flop blowin in the wind....it's a wild ride and not for the faint of heart or those with poor balance or a fear of jumping onto a moving vehicle. If you can find a seat(HA! good luck with that) aim for the front, sitting in the back will undoubtebly cause irreversible damage to your spinal alignment and possibly your kidneys. When you need to exit the bus, find a working next stop button(good luck with that as well) or just yell "Proxima Parada!" Then leap off when the driver gets fairly close to the curb. A rolling stop is your only chance to exit.

3. Taxi
   While the bus has it's own special physical dangers riding in a taxi offers the adrenaline rush of a lifetime, each time you catch a cab! Taxsistas are quite courteous here.  Driver's will drive over the median even if it is raised and covered in grass, trees etcetera, to pick you up, they will cross four lanes of heavy traffic and come to a screeching halt right by your side. Then they will get you where you are going fast and furious. (Well, I had a slight delay the time my driver pulled over to buy a lottery ticket but he made it quick and made up for lost time by cutting off a bus and shortening my life expectancy by frightening a year or two off).

4. Catching rides with friends
     This is the most economical but I only have a couple of friends with cars and apparently all Mexicans take their driving lessons from the same place, Loco Driving School. It is a free for all on the streets here and each time I arrive alive I send up a little thanks cuz I know I am blessed to have made it.

I was picked up at the airport by the director of my school, it was raining. The fabulous mountains surrounding the city where nowhere to be found. My hair frizzed up in the humidity and strangely enough I was reminded of when I first arrived in Miyazaki and my supervisor came to pick me up...Except this time I could read all the signs on the road and chat in Spanish with my new boss who is a 27 year old foxy lady not a middle aged dude with gout. Anyway, mostly what I saw was factories, KFC, Chili's, Popeye's and the like. We turned off the main road down a street that looked like a bunch of factories. Turned out they are a bunch of factories(one of which I saw burning down the other morning on my way to work) the school director slowed down in front of a hovel sandwiched between two shady looking enterprises, "Here is jor house!" I must have looked aghast(I certainly felt aghast) she then burst out laughing and said "Jus KEEDIN!" and kept on on driving. A couple blocks down from the hovel was a nice resdidential area with two story houses. All have gated garages that look like varying degrees of jail/cages depending on the design of the bars. All windows were barred as well. Never a good sign but at least I know what is up. The garage/cage was piled high with garbage. I felt a sense of foreboding. Who was I going to be living with? But my fears were unfounded, my two housemates turned out to be two very nice girls, Michelle from Nashville and Mitzi from Jersey. Coincidently Michelle had just gotten back in the fall from a year in Japan as well and Mitzi is Japanese-American so we had the J-Connection. The garbage pile was the result of not knowing when the garbage days were and boxes and packaging that furniture had come in. Well not my furniture. I don't get any furniture. Or bedding. Good thing I brought my sleeping bag.
                                                     

My Luxury Suite

But other than that the house is really nice. Although I really need AC in my room which they keep promising but have failed to deliver. Sometimes at night I sweat so profusely I wake myself up from the effort. The 3:10 to Yuma also passes underneath my pillow every night at random intervals shaking our entire house and exploding my eardrums.  I have invested in ear plugs.
The deal with the school is this:
Just opened in January
Just lost two teachers; one quit one was deported
The teaching manual has definitions like "Enough is used to describe when something is efficient" I have enough money to go out to dinner tonight.
Needless to say they need to iron out a few kinks before we can really get this English party started. But the students are great. Mostly adults who work as engineers...I don't think I know what an engineer does in any country but here they sure do gots lots!

I have joined a gym called Super Fitness Damas (ladies only) and it is conveniently located in the same plaza as my job so on the break I can go work out and try and burn off some of the tortillas and beer I consume on a regular basis. I found an awesome place to get my nails done and for 25 bucks I now have fabulous acrylic nails French manicure style with a tiny diamond on each nail. I can also get my hair  flat ironed for 5-8 bucks. Pretty sweet.

My schedule pretty much sucks, and we have to work on Saturdays from 8-1. I get home late(10pm) and get up early(5am some days 7 others) but have in the middle of the day from 11-4, which gives me time to work out and prep my lessons but not much else. Oh and to write this blog and  upload my pictures. I did get to do a little sightseeing on Sunday. My one day off...

So to sum up:
I like Monterrey...so far.

I am 100% overwhelmed by the fact that in three hours I have to be at JFK for a flight. I am sort of packed, and sort of prepared to start over yet again in a foreign country. When I left Japan this past August,  I really thought I would find what I am looking for in Spain...but I didn't. So now, I am about to embark on this fairly short adventure, 6 months in Monterrey, Mexico teaching ESL.

I must say I have mixed feelings about the travel lifestyle I have chosen...I have made some very poor decisions just so I could travel all over this lonely planet...and I hope I can get my life back on track. Running off to Mexico is probably not the best idea I have ever come up with but hey, what can I say? Logic never has been my strong point. I need money, stability, a home, and a relationship. I have none of the aforementioned items/concepts. But I do have  one simple thing, a desire to travel all over and see what I can see before "old rocking chair comes and gets me".

I nervous about this move and I have the pimples to prove it.

Alas, I am back in NY my tan is fading, my ass is freezing...I looked at the couple of  paragraphs I wrote about Jamaica and decided I wanted to add a bit more about the "real" Jamaica in case anyone ever reads this crap and wants to go on vacation in Negril.

Upon arrival to Montego Bay be careful if you have new passport like my father did.

Immigration Officer: One month? That is a long time. How much money do you have?

Daddy: Five, six hundred dollars...

Immigration Officer: You don't know how much?

Daddy: I have a little something called credit cards.

Immigration officer: Let me have a look at them.

Daddy: (Removing cards from his wallet while smirking)

Me: Heh Heh, I could show you mine too! (Mine of course are completey maxed out) 

Daddy: I have been coming for a month for 30 years.

Immigration Officer: This passport looks pretty new.

Daddy: It is, it's brand new.

Immigration Officer: Let me have a look at the old one.

Daddy and Me: Giggle giggle

Me: We don't keep our old passports man.

Immigration Officer: I WILL DO THE INTERROGATING HERE!

Me:(lauging but trying not to) Sorry sorry

Immigration Officer:(Leafs through my tattooed lady passport pages searching for an empty square to stamp) Is this your daughter sir?

Daddy: Yes

Immigration Officer: She is very beautiful.

Daddy: Why, thank you. You should see her sister!

Me: Shut up Dad! (slap his arm affectionetly) 

Immigration Officer: Enjoy your stay.(winks at me)

While I wrote about the cliffs, snorkeling,  the 7 miles of beach,  delicious vegetable patties, jerk chicken and the like, I did not mention that if you stay in a little house like ours not in a resort, you will hear dogs barking, toads whistling and people yelling and calling each other blood clots most nights at all hours. My pops brings a noise machine to help combat this, it works well, particulary if you drink a lot of coconut rum and sample the local herbs prior to bedding down for the night.  This year the mosquitos were off the chain. They sucked our blood night and day to the point where my father swears he is never going back to Jamaica again... Our saving grace is a little machine called a Vape. You put a little blue waifer on a small metal plated machine and it heats it up sending what are probably cancer causing waves into the air that kills the skeeters. I like how the package says FUMAKILLA.

Jamaica is a developing nation. It is a beautiful country but it is a poor country. If you don't go the all inclusive route(or fancy resort)  you will see a great deal of third world poverty and you do have to be careful. It can be a dangerous place. While I have never been robbed in Jamaica, I have been searched by the police, and bitten by a dog (0n the upside of this, I am now immune to rabies).  There are a lot of crackheads wandering around as well. Cars and motorcycles race by you on the road(no sidewalks) scaring the bikini bottoms off many a tourist and the local route taxis (red plate only!) race around the corners stuffing as many people as possible in, sometimes giving you a small child or two  to hold on your lap. You can get a private cab if this is uncomfortable for you, but you will have to bargain like hell to get a decent price. Also to be noted, if Jamaicans don't honk their horns they can get sick and even die.  I love Jamaica, and I feel very fortunate that I was able to chill there for a month and even if my dad never goes back(he says this every year) Jamaica feels like home to me.

You can check my pics on flickr.

Yesterday we spent the morning making fresh orange juice. My dad peeled about 50 oranges and my sister put them in the juicer. I helped not with the making of the juice but the drinking of the juice in the form of two large screwdrivers...I became intoxicated and hit on the bartender at the bar across the street from my house. I then  played dominoes with two old white guys and one old skinny rasta guy until the wee hours of the morn. This morning I did some sunning and swimming off a rock at Xtabi a pretty cliff resort with stone steps leading to sea caves you can swim in and out into the ocean. I am brown all over.

Getting to Jamaica- early morning rise,

so early I wanted to stay in bed instead of catching my plane...  you know the feeling.

 We would have made it to the airport without incident except we got ourselves a flat tire on the Taconic. After a brief dysfunctional moment with my parents a donut was put into place at the gas station and we rolled on to JFK. One bottle of duty free vodka and a Self Magazine comprised my total purchases. Yawn. Sorry for sharing. My brain feels...soft, relaxed.  

It's been a week... what can I say? Swimming off the cliffs, walking miles and miles under the blazing sun, stripping down to my mismatched bathing suit,  I get to the beach and  I  frolic in the gentle surf, sipping Red Stripes gazing at waters so blue...lovely. Swimming off the cliffs at sunset, I drip salty water and munch on plantain chips and thank God that I am here...and I have three more weeks of this life.

I am still broke but I am blessed in life with a travel bug and a family  that keeps me on the move even when my funds are low or nonexistent. I went to my Daddy's doctor today. He grabbed the fattest juiciest bit on the back of my arm and jabbed me so hard with a  big fat needle that I cried out in pain. He assured me it did not hurt. He assured me I didn't need a band aid. Wrong on both counts. Bleedy Bek. But now I am immune to Hepatitis A which is a good thing to be immune to if one is going to live in Mexico. Not my first choice, but the school is  buying me a plane ticket and giving me shelter, a small living stipend and a little food money on top of that. Whether this turns out to be a horrible mistake remains to be seen. I have a bit of a bad feeling about it but I am chomping at the proverbial bit for some adventure. I have grown weak, lazy and comfortable living on the homestead. But that is not for another month or so...in the interim I am going down to Jamaica tomorrow. Yay! Ugh, I must depilate.

Still at my parent's house. Still watching lots of t.v. But at last! A light at the end of the tunnel. In two weeks I am off to Jamaica with dad for a month. Thank God. And my dad. And then decision time, keep traveling and teaching English? Or get a job in NYC and start a new life here...Tuff stuff. I can't wait to hit the beach.