Payday! Of course, the entire paycheck (and then some) is already spoken for, between rent and Enid’s preschool tuition. That sort of takes the fun out of it. But “peor es nada” as they say.

I spent most of the morning immersed in the study of cancer genomics. I’m starting to shift my emphasis from broad reading of background material to specific study of individual papers, trying to get a detailed understanding of the methods and experimental design elements that I want to emulate. I need to figure out ASAP what resources are missing from our lab and then either get them in the purchasing pipeline (if our budget allows) or start searching for other ways to get them (i.e. inter-institutional collaborations or extramural funding sources).

I spent the afternoon reviewing a paper I’m co-author on from my last job. I hated to spend work time on that, but it would be impossible to do at home with Enid around. The paper is pretty close to its final revision, and as it turned out I didn’t have many substantive comments to make. But as a co-author I still felt obligated to give it a thorough reading and make comments, even if they were just minor edits.

Enid finished her first week of school without any major problems, and is still reporting that she likes it. Unfortunately her preschool in Yountville is a tough act to follow. It was very well run with lots of good material resources, and the daily program included lots of free-play time and creative activities that were well suited to Enid’s skills and interests. Also she was something of a teachers pet there, owing to her advanced verbal abilities and adult-centric social tendencies. Here the educational approach seems to be quite different, with a more rigid structure, and of course Enid is no longer able to engage her teachers verbally the way she could in English. I worry that she may feel lonely and isolated in school, but she hasn’t complained. Anyway, it’s only the first week and presumably she will speak more Spanish as time goes by.

Lots of people have told us “Don’t worry! She’ll be speaking Spanish better than you in no time! They’re like sponges at that age”. But we aren’t convinced. Those people don’t know Enid. She is not all that sociable, especially with other kids, so she may not feel much incentive to speak Spanish. Plus she can be very stubborn about things she decides she DOESN’T want to do. If speaking Spanish ends up in that category than this whole learn-Spanish-in-Mexico project could end up as a spectacular failure. Only time will tell. The experiment continues on Monday…

Continued cool, cloudy weather with occasional rain today. Is the summer heat gone for good? I doubt it, but I hope so.

Robin reports that Enid didn’t want to be dropped off at school the past few mornings. She dragged her feet about going in the door, said she didn’t want to go to school, etc. It’s nothing new though. Enid frequently displayed the same reluctance when we dropped her off at school in Yountville. Sometimes it was even worse, with screaming and crying. But then when we’d go pick her up at the end of the day she wouldn’t want to leave and it was clear that she really loved school. Her morning behavior doesn’t seem to reflect her true feelings about school, so I’m not too worried about it. But it’s a bummer for Robin, and a frustrating, depressing way to start each morning.

Our cátedra (me, Sean, Luis and José) met today to discuss our research goals. We agreed to narrow our focus to non-Hodgkins lymphomas, multiple myeloma and breast cancer. I suggested that there were five high-throughput genomic analysis methods we should consider trying to implement in our lab: microarray resequencing, microarray comparative genomic hybridization, microarray gene expression profiling, microarray methylation profiling, and microarray miRNA expression profiling. I think the last two would be really great to implement because they are fairly recent technologies, whereas the others have been around for quite a while, and people have already used them to examine various cancers pretty thoroughly. With the methylation profiling and (especially) miRNA profiling there’s still a chance to make a unique contribution. It seemed like my suggestions were fairly well received. Anyway, a “maybe” is as good as a “yes” for me and I’m going to press on with researching the methodologies and putting together a plan to implement them technically. I’ve only got a year to get something done here, so I need to get started.

Lo Que Mama Dice

Well, I suppose it is time for me to weigh in all on all this craziness. The thing is, it is so un-crazy. I wonder, how can it take so much time, effort and money to end up in some place so surprisingly similar? I suppose the obvious lessons are:
1. Where ever you go, there you are
2. Anytime you move, anywhere, it takes time, effort and money
3. Though I might not want to paint it, the world is small and getting smaller.
4. Especially in terms of the country next-door.
5. Monterrey is quite different than many other parts of Mexico.

I'll sum it up like this - We're living in Beverly Hills but everyone speaks Spanish and the sidewalks are broken.

Technically, we don't live in Monterrey. We live in San Pedro Garza Garcia, a separate municipality. But it is physically contiguous with Monterrey and in fact is more central to the heart of Monterrey than many parts of Monterrey itself. Though San Pedro Garza Garcia is the Beverly Hills, there are many communities (colonias) within Monterrey that are nice. It is said that there is a significant middle class in Monterrey. Now, I believe it.

In some respects, I wish we had ended up in a different area than San Pedro Garza Garcia. It is littered with places like HEB (Texas supermarket chain), GNC, Starbucks and countless high-end designer shops (Louis Vuitton, etc). There are lots of expensive furniture stores and I've seen several Porsche Cayenne driving around. What’s the point of being in Mexico? The parents of the children at Enid’s pre-school and dance class drive nicer cars than we do, wear better clothes than we do, and live in nicer houses than we do. It is just like being at home!

That said, there is still, of course, plenty of local color. It’s just not charming like I expected. In 1997 we were in the southern state of Chiapas for about 3 weeks. Tuxla Gutierrez, San Cristobal de las Casas, Palenque – these places are charming. I didn’t expect northern Mexico to be the same but I didn’t expect it to be so completely lacking.

Don’t get me wrong, it is a wonderful city. It is modern, extremely cultured and physically beautiful. But it is not charming.

Some of the things I like best about living in San Pedro Garza Garcia:
1. There is an amazing recreational pathway running the length of two of the major traffic arteries (perpendicular to each other). Probably a total of about 6 miles, one way. It is tree-lined with annuals planted at the intersections and truly a very pleasant respite from the city, despite the fact that it is literally in the middle of the street. It is very well used and at any given time on the weekend, or during mornings during the week, you will find scores of people out running or walking.
2. It is relatively easy to find things like organic milk, cheese, peanut butter, meat, etc. Often times, even the same brand as at home. No tofu yet though.
3. There are some great play parks.
4. Chipinque, a national park, is right up the street. Literally you drive 10-15 minutes south of our house and you are up in the mountains and fresh air. There are miles and miles of excellently maintained hiking trails and beautiful butterflies to look at. As with everywhere around here, there are also large public art installations just before the entrance (at intervals): a giant ant, a giant ladybug, a giant grasshopper and a giant centipede

One thing I suspected and which has turned out to be true is that the biggest difference for us is living in a big city. Well, and the fact that everyone Speaks Spanish. : )

Signing off for now – La Mama

The weather continues to be cool and cloudy. The air has been clean and the mountains beautiful. Enid seems to be enjoying school. Yesterday she also had the first session of a dance class Robin enrolled her in. She seemed to enjoy that too.

I’ve been immersed in reading at work all week long, trying to get familiar with current cancer genomics. It’s interesting stuff, but all the hours of staring at fine print turn me into a zombie by the end of the day.

After more than a year of Herculean efforts and monumental sacrifices, we finally accomplished our goal. Today was Enid’s first day of school. In Spanish! By both Enid’s report and her teacher’s report it apparently went well. It’s early days of course, but maybe this will all prove to be worth the effort in the end, and she’ll learn to speak Spanish while we’re here.

The weekend was a nice mix of playing with Enid and getting things done around the house (mostly fixing minor problems with the apartment). The weather was a little cooler than it has been, with occasional rain. The only bad part of the weekend was that Enid fell asleep yesterday at 5pm. We probably should have woken her up immediately, but we took a gamble that maybe she’d sleep right on through until morning. Nope. She woke up at 8pm and we didn’t get her back to sleep until after 11pm. I suppose that’s what we get for being greedy.

It was a beautiful day in Monterrey. An overnight rainfall cleaned the air, and a steady breeze kept it clear all day. The mountains are incredibly scenic on days like today.

I spent the morning helping some young women in the lab resolve problems they were having with RNA extraction. Working together we were able to determine that the real problem wasn’t with their extraction method but with their spectrophotometric quantification, i.e. they were getting plenty of RNA but didn’t know it because they weren’t measuring it correctly.

In the afternoon I drove over to the main campus and turned in all the paperwork to register my domicile with the INM. Now all I should need to do is make one more trip over there to sign the paperwork after it’s prepared. Also it looks like the university will pay the lawyer’s fees, which is nice.

One sad thing that happened today was that on the way home from the main campus I passed an accident scene where a motorcycle cop had gone down in the westbound lanes of Morones Prieto. They were moving him onto a stretcher to get him into an ambulance. It looked like he was moving, so he was probably okay, but it made me sad to think how suddenly and completely his life had just been messed up, and that he probably has a wife and children who are going to get a call telling them their father is hurt and in the hospital. There are so many car accidents here, it’s ridiculous. You see them every day. And most of them are totally unnecessary. If the roads and signage were designed properly and people didn’t drive like such maniacs a lot of deaths and injuries could be avoided.

That said, I have to admit that the over-the-top road conditions add a crazy energy to the urban scene here, one that is characteristically latin-american. I never feel more like I’m in Mexico than when I’m driving.

My second (and last) lecture went well. One student even came up after class and said she liked the way I taught and wanted to know if I was teaching any other courses. Maybe she was just sucking up, but I felt gratified.

Robin and Enid woke up early and went over to the main campus with me. They had breakfast there and explored while I taught. I figured Robin would want to see the campus, but to get Enid interested I told her there were ducks and deer on campus that she’d be able to see (there are). Unfortunately she wasn’t in a very good mood (probably from being woken up too early) and didn’t seem to enjoy the visit very much. “This is just about a lot of walking!” she said.

After I finished teaching we went over to the CIAP building and Robin and Enid played outside while I met with a lawyer there who helps the students and employees with immigration issues. I think I got the ball rolling on registering my domicile and also on getting Robin and Enid their FM3 visas.

Hector, the lawyer, told me that among the things I’d need to do the domicile registration was more photos (three frontal, two right profile). And of course Robin and Enid will need them for their FM3s, plus Enid needs three photos for her school enrollment. So we walked over to a place off campus that does passport photos and we all got photographed (another $35 lost to the black hole of immigration paperwork). Then Robin and Enid dropped me off back at the med school and went home. I spent the rest of the day immersed in reading about cancer genomics.

About the time I was starting to think about catching the bus home it clouded up and started to rain. Hard. Eventually it slowed down though, and I made a break for home while it was just drizzling. I managed to arrive home without getting rained on too much, but the streets were quite flooded by then so my feet got soaked. Crossing Morones Prieto was even more exciting than usual because tonight it was not only a river of cars but a river of water too,

Enid and Robin have an appointment at Kinder Allegro tomorrow to meet Enid’s new teacher. Then on Monday school starts. Not a moment too soon I’d say. Enid has been out of school since mid-July, and we’ve been her sole playmates 24/7 for most of that time. She really needs some fresh company, and we really need a break. Particularly Robin, who has been on duty all day long M-F for the last two weeks while I’ve been at work.

The bus commute to and from the medical school seems to work fine. Routes 202 and 227 do the trick and come by every few minutes. Route 126 also works. The afternoon commute is a little more intense because the traffic is heavier and the bus drops me off on the wrong side of Avenida Morones Prieto where there’s no pedestrian bridge anywhere nearby. That means I have to sprint across several lanes of traffic moving at near freeway speeds. It’s a little dicey, but there’s a grassy median strip in the middle that actually breaks it up into two sprints, so it’s not that bad. I usually have to wait a few minutes for a gap in the traffic, so crossing Morones Prieto actually takes as long as the bus ride itself. But it still only takes me about half an hour to get home, so that's not bad. And I get a little exercise, which I need.

My transcription lecture went fine today too, or at least as well as can be expected given that I had to use someone else’s slides. It was actually kind of fun to teach, mostly because I spent so much time preparing. I’m glad I only have to teach one more lecture though (on Thursday) because I really need to spend more time on other things. I have a lot of reading I need to do to get up to speed on cancer and cancer genomics.

While I was on campus I walked over to the International Programs office and was finally able to meet with Claudia, the woman who was in charge of helping me get my visa. She gave me the contact information for the university lawyers that I need to talk to about registering my domicile with the INM, and also about changing Robin and Enid’s immigration status. They are here on tourist visas now, but they should be eligible for FM3 visas as my economic dependents. It would be nice for them to have FM3s because then they (like me) would be eligible to use the IMSS (Mexican social security) medical system for free.

Wrapping up a fairly relaxing weekend. Robin worked on some housecleaning chores part of the day yesterday while I played with Enid. I built her a new spaceship out of our empty cardboard moving boxes, to replace the one we had to leave behind in Yountville. This one is even better than the first one. It has a side-mounted hatch so she can get in and out alone (the first one had the hatch on top so we had to lift her in and out). It also has a foam backrest and a supply compartment she can access from inside. Hopefully she’ll take many long journeys to other planets in it, as she did with the one in Yountville.

I also took some time yesterday to walk over to Avenida Morones Prieto to investigate how I can get to work and back on my own (Robin and Enid have been dropping me off so far). Alas, it doesn’t appear that I can afford to buy a motor scooter. I probably could afford a bicycle, but the route looks a little dicey for that- lots of high speed traffic and a complex highway interchange to deal with. I could probably walk to work in a reasonable amount of time, but it would be a very unpleasant walk with all the noisy traffic on Morones Prieto. Therefore I’m thinking the best option is the bus. It took me about 15 minutes to walk down to Morones Prieto where the bus stop is located. So thirty minutes a day transit time to and from the bus stop. That’s not bad. The buses appear to cost 7 pesos a ride, so it’ll be about $1.30 a day for my commute. That’s reasonable. The bus ride itself should only be about 5 minutes each way, maybe 10 if the traffic is quite heavy. The only uncertainty is how often the buses come and which bus to take. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any easy way to find that out from the comfort of home. There’s no website with downloadable maps and schedules like you’d find in the U.S.A. The bus stops don’t even have signs saying which routes stop there. So I’m just going to have to wait at the bus stop and see what I can figure out. I’ll probably give it a try tomorrow. Hopefully I won’t end up in Oaxaca!

Today we went to Parque Chipinque, which is located on the slopes of the Sierra Madre Oriental, the mountain range that forms the southern boundary of Monterrey. It was incredible. Lots of well-maintained hiking trails, plenty of parking at the visitor’s center, only 30 pesos for admission, and best of all it’s a15 minute drive from our house. Fifteen minutes and we were hiking in a forest! I couldn’t believe it. I think we’ll be making plenty of weekend trips there. Enid did a great job hiking on the trails, which were mostly quite steep since the park is on a mountainside. We saw tons of butterflies, including some really colorful, exotic-looking ones. I think it was just what we all needed after spending the last 18 days dealing with the hustle and bustle of a big, unfamiliar city.

I was issued a phone and computer on Thursday, and they also printed up a placard with my name for the office door. They use two surnames in Mexico, the paternal and the maternal. So down here I am officially Marc Crepeau Cull, and that is what it says on my office door. I'm sure my mother is filled with posthumous pride.

The computer is an IBM Thinkpad. I'm no fan of Windows, which I find overly complicated and inelegant compared to the Macintosh operating system. But I'm comfortable using Windows if I have to, and at least it's a nice, new machine. One complicating factor though is that the computer is configured for the Spanish language. All the menus and error messages are in Spanish and It even has a special keyboard with all the special punctuation marks needed to write in Spanish. It's slowing me down a little at this point, but I don't think I'll bother changing it to English because it would probably take me hours just to figure out how, and anyway I need as much Spanish practice as I can get.

I also picked up my first two week's pay yesterday. José kindly arranged for my pay to begin accumulating on August 1st even though I didn't actually start working until Tuesday of this week. The Mexican government deducted about 17% of my salary for taxes. That's not bad I suppose, but it reduces my already modest pay check enough to make things rather tight for us. Oh well. This whole adventure has been ruinous financially right from the start anyway. But you only live once, right? We can catch up when Enid starts school and Robin and I are both working again.

Mostly today I worked on preparing for the lectures I've got to give next week. I hate being unprepared for that sort of thing, so I'm just going to focus on it until it's done. I'm glad I don't have to teach very often. About the only other thing that was going on today was that some representives from the local Roche distributor were working with Alberto (one of our researchers) to demonstrate some Taqman probes on a LightCycler instrument they want us to buy. They extracted RNA from some of Alberto's blood yesterday to test the probes on, and I also loaned them some of the RNA I extracted from mammary cancer tissue in February. They ran the PCR with BRCA2, NOS, and GDPH probes and I was gratified to see that my sample gave a good signal, even after several months in the freezer.

Last night we went to an exhibition of student artworks that José invited us to at the Casa de Cultura de Monterrey. His wife Gladis took a class there and her ceramic pieces were some of the works on display. We arrived about a half hour late, which may have been a good thing because they were giving speeches when we arrived and might have been giving them for the last half hour for all I know ("Mexicans love to give speeches!" José whispered to me, rolling his eyes). But fortunately they stopped not long after we got there and then served refreshments and let everyone look at the art. It was a nice enough affair, and we definitely appreciated the invitation, but the reason we were late was that we had to fight rush hour traffic for nearly an hour to get there. Remind me never to do that again!

Today was my second day of work and was reasonably productive. José, Luiz, Sean and I had a meeting to discuss the development of our research goals. We agreed to focus on some blood cancers. Luiz and José are both hematologists and get plenty of patients with those diseases, so obtaining patient samples won't present a problem. We are going to review current literature independently and then meet again in about a week to start zeroing in on specific lines of research. Other than that I mostly worked on helping Sean translate his lecture slides for tomorrow, and on getting prepared for my own lectures next week. A student named Judith also asked for my help with RNA extraction from cultured cells, and I told her I’d be happy to help after next Thursday.

On the home front, Ismael got the door on the laundry room and began mending the screens. He plans to return tomorrow to work on the cracked window panes. Robin reports that Enid took her first shower today all by herself. Up until now we bathed her in a bathtub and she disavowed any interest in showering because she didn't like getting her face wet. I figured her fear of getting water in her face would eventually go away on it’s own, but I didn’t expect it so soon. It's fortunate though because our new apartment doesn't have a bathtub (they are not very common here). Hopefully this also bodes well for her swimming since once she’s used to getting water in her face it’s only a short step to dunking her head under in the pool, something she’s refused to do up to this point.

Yesterday was devoted to getting our household livable. In the morning I finished my email to our landlords requesting attention to various minor deficiencies. Then we spent the afternoon cleaning and managed to at least get the surface dirt gone. There's still some deep cleaning left to do before it’ll be as clean as we’d like. We finished cleaning at about 9pm and then went to Walmart (yes, Walmart) to do some shopping. Mostly we went because we didn’t have any towels and we both needed showers badly. Probably it was a mistake to take Enid out that late. She had a bit of a meltdown in the store when Robin refused to buy the towels she liked, opting for cheaper ones. A memorable moment was when she told Robin (between sobs) “if you won’t buy me the towels I want then I will want you to get sunscreen in your mouth!” Oh to be so innocent that the worse you can wish upon someone is that they get sunscreen in their mouth. She got over it after a while though and then had a wonderful time choosing out a nail polish color with Robin.

When we came out of the Walmart there was lighting flashing in the sky, and on the way home rain started coming down in torrents. The streets in our neighborhood were flooded with several inches of water. Enid fell asleep in the car and didn’t wake up when we carried her inside, even though there was thunder booming loudly every minute or so.

Today was my first day of work. I didn’t make it in until 10:30am, but I stayed until 8pm, so I guess that’s a respectable first day. José, Sean, Luiz and I are going to meet tomorrow at 11am to talk about research goals, but today I mostly just worked on helping Sean translate the Powerpoint slides for the class he’s teaching, and then I began reviewing for the two lectures I’m going to teach to cover for Sean while he’s away next week. The class is an introductory molecular genetics course for medical students and both lectures will be on transcription. Should be easy enough, but I want to be well prepared. I’ll probably spend most of my time over the next few days on that.

An unexpected treat at work was that they gave me an office. I was only expecting a cubicle. I don’t know if I’ll get to keep the office for the whole year I’m here, but it’s nice for now. A phone and computer are supposed to be installed tomorrow.

The good news when I got home was that the landlords responded to my email by sending their worker Ismael over today to take care of things. He fixed the water heater so that the pilot light stays lit and repaired the broken drawers on the dresser. He is going to come back tomorrow to fix torn screens and cracked glass in some of the windows and hang a new door on the laundry room. It was a very auspicious beginning to our relationship with our new landlords.

We are finally in our new apartment and I am sitting in a room with the lights on while Enid sleeps in the dark in another room. That’s the first time in over two weeks that I’ve been able to say that. It’s a very good feeling to finally be settled. We still have a lot of work to do to get the apartment clean and decent-looking, and to get all our stuff unpacked. Some of that may have to wait until after Enid starts school on the 27th. But at least we aren’t moving anymore, and we are in a home of our own again.

Right now I am working on an email to the owner of our apartment to ask her about fixing some minor problems. I also need to get a copy of her ID to provide to the INM as part of the paperwork for registering my domicile. The email will probably take me a while since I’m somewhat of a perfectionist about my Spanish when I write to people.

Today we had lunch with José, my boss, and his wife Gladis (who is Brazilian) at their home. In Mexico the big meal of the day is lunch. Dinner tends to be light. So we had a big meal, complete with wine, then we sat and talked while Enid watched a Winnie the Pooh video. It was a nice time and I was glad that José and Gladis finally got to meet Robin and Enid. Enid was very well behaved and made a good impression I think. She's usually pretty good as long as she isn't sick or tired, but you never know when an unexpected tantrum may strike. So I'm always glad when she shows her best side.

On the way home we stopped and did some grocery shopping at the H-E-B in Del Valle. We were pleased to discover that the H-E-B here has a lot of stuff that the one in San Jeronimo doesn’t, including lots of organic foods. Once we got home I fiddled around with the DSL modem until I figured out how to establish an internet connection. First things first, right? Gotta have the internet! Then at dusk we went over to the park around the corner so Enid could feed the ducks and play for a while before bed. With the sun gone down it was nice outside, although I noticed there were a lot of mosquitoes enjoying the park too.

Tomorrow is my last day of freedom as I promised to start showing up in the lab beginning Tuesday. We’ll probably go over to Kinder Allegro and pick up the enrollment paperwork, and I also need to check with the university to find out when my bank account will be ready to use. Plus I’d like to maybe scout out potential routes to work and back. I’m thinking it may be possible to get there by bicycle. I’ve found a good way to get down to Avenida Morones Prieto, which has a sidewalk I could ride on all the way to the med school, but I’m not sure how to deal with the big intersection where Morones Prieto crosses Gonzalitos. There’s no sidewalk on that stretch and there may not be a safe way to get through on a bike. If not I’m thinking about maybe getting a motor scooter, but of course that’s a lot more money.

Other than that I’ll probably spend most of tomorrow helping Robin clean the apartment, or at least keeping Enid occupied so Robin can work without interruptions.

Regiomontanos, as the people of Monterrey are called, are night owls. That’s probably because the heat and humidity make it so miserable to do anything during the day. But I’ve noticed that the evening rush hour peaks around 8pm and doesn’t really subside until 9pm or later. So it should not have surprised me that we were asked to come sign our lease at 9:30pm last night. What with the social pleasantries and all the dotting of i's and crossing of t’s on the rental agreement we didn’t get home until after 11pm, at which point Robin and I were dead beat. Enid was not at all sleepy of course.

The owners of our apartment live on a big family estate up on the side of a mountain in a colonia called Pedregal Del Valle. It’s the kind of super-wealthy enclave that I expected Del Valle to be from all the talk. But Del Valle is a slum compared to Pedregal Del Valle. Now I know where all the rich families really live: up above the smog. Stands to reason I guess.

We moved all of our stuff over to the apartment this afternoon. The owners said they were going to have it cleaned this morning, but we saw no evidence of it having been cleaned. In fact it’s pretty dirty, which was depressing, but nothing a little hard work won’t fix. The owners may still be planning to have someone come out and clean it for all I know. But it will be more difficult now that all of our stuff is in there. I guess that was the drawback of moving in on such short notice.

The apartment is not only dirty, it’s also kind of dumpy. Some of the furniture is decent, but much of it is junk. There are tears in the window screens, water damage on the bottom of the bathroom door, stuff like that. But the location and price are good enough that Robin and I figure we can live with dumpy furniture and torn screens for a year.

We didn’t get out stuff out of the hotel by checkout time so we ended up paying for another day. Therefore we are staying in the hotel tonight. Since we’ve already paid for it we figured we’d sleep here where the air conditioning and hot water won’t cost us a penny and someone else will make the beds tomorrow.

Things seem to be coming together. Yesterday Robin discovered a very nice furnished apartment on Río San Lorenzo in Del Valle advertised online for only 8000 pesos a month. It was an incredibly lucky find. We jumped on it immediately and the owner emailed me the lease this morning. It looks pretty much like a lease in the U.S.A., but in Spanish of course. We should be able to pay the deposit and first month’s rent today or tomorrow and move in this weekend. That will be a big load off our minds. The apartment is very close to one of the schools we liked a lot, and there are also a couple of other promising looking schools nearby that we haven’t visited yet. There is a great little play-park with a duck pond around the corner, and lots of shopping and restaurants within walking distance. My work is not far as the crow flies, but because of the layout of the connecting roads I probably won’t be able to walk or ride a bike. One option might be to buy a little motor scooter like the one I had in Hawaii.

The only real drawback of the apartment’s location is the air quality, which would have been better on the south side of the city. The air over Del Valle usually looks awful, with the kind of poor visibility you’d see on a bad day in Los Angeles. However when I check the readings from the monitoring stations on-line the readings are usually in the safe range even when the air looks terrible. So I keep wondering if maybe a lot of what I’m seeing in the air is just water vapor. The humidity here is always very high, so it’s possible that all the moisture reduces the clarity of the air. I sure hope that’s it.

Regarding the weather since we arrived, it has been ridiculously consistent. It reminds me a little of Hawaii where the forecast rarely varies from conditions roughly approximated by the word “perfect”. Except here instead of consistent perfection we get consistent misery. Well, not that bad I guess, but not particularly comfortable. Basically the weather since we’ve been here has been, almost without variation, partly cloudy with a high of 36°C, a low of 24°C and humidity around 80% (for the metric-challenged that’s 97°F and 75°F respectively). I actually don’t mind the heat very much if I’m in the shade, but out in the sun it’s pretty intense. So that seems to be the summer weather picture. It’ll be interesting to see what the other seasons are like.

Another day spent on the frustrating task of trying to scout out schools, neighborhoods and apartments. We looked around colonias on the south side of the city such as Las Brisas, Satelite, and Lagos del Bosque. They were areas José recommended. Some of them seemed nice enough, but it was hard to find schools there and most of the ones we did find either advertised themselves as an “escuela bilingue” or had English names like “Kids Town” and thus didn’t seem very promising since we really want a school that’s all or mostly all Spanish. It’s amazing what a plague English is proving to be for us. Even here in Mexico we can’t get away from it! We collected the names and phone numbers of the few schools we did see and will probably call some of them tomorrow.

In the afternoon we started to call around about apartments in Del Valle and actually went to look at a couple of them. We know there’s a school there that we like (Kinder Allegro), but we have to figure out whether there’s a decent apartment in the area that we can afford to rent. So far it looks tough, but maybe not impossible. We’ve both been browsing the internet real estate sites since Enid went to bed trying to stir up some leads.

Enid was really patient and good-spirited about all the driving around today, so we took her out for ice cream as a thank you. This whole process of trying to find a school and apartment is frustrating for us, but it must be even worse for her. Hopefully it will pay off in the end if we can find the right situation.

P.S. I was surprised this evening to find that MapQuest has complete coverage of the city of Monterrey.

Today we visited a preschool in Del Valle called Kinder Allegro that seemed right up our alley. It’s basically an all-Spanish format with just a little bit of English instruction each day. Friendly and competent sounding staff and nice facilities on a quiet street. But expensive of course, since it’s in Del Valle.

In the afternoon I got a call from José saying my employment papers were ready to sign at the main campus, so I took a taxi over there. Everything went smoothly. I have my Monterrey Tec ID card now, so I’m officially part of the club. Tec is also opening a bank account for me to deposit my checks in. It’s apparently a mandatory part of the hiring process, but I don’t mind because it’s something I need to do anyway and now they’ve saved me the trouble. After signing the papers I wandered around the colonias immediately adjacent to the campus, just to see what they were like.

This afternoon the wind picked up a little and blew all the haze and smog away. You could actually see the mountains all around town. It was the best air quality since we arrived. So in the evening, around 8pm, we walked up to the mirador on top of Cerro del Obispado. Enid walked a good part of the way herself, much more than I expected, and we pushed her in the stroller the rest of the way. It was good exercise and the view of the city from the top was great. Enid loved it and didn’t want to leave. Consequently she didn’t get to sleep until 11:30pm, but she took a very long nap in the afternoon so I suppose we’ll survive.

I got my CURP today at the INEGI office downtown. It turned out to be very easy. I didn’t even have to wait in line. Then I went to the medical school where I met with José. He said Gloria had left on vacation and the person who would know about my paperwork was a guy named Angel Mario. José called the guy, who asked for half an hour to look into it. So José and I chatted for half an hour at which point Angel Mario still didn’t know anything and José had to leave. So José gave Angel Mario my cell phone number and instructed him to call me when he found out where I needed to go to sign the hiring papers. I never received a call. Maybe tomorrow. José said he’d get on Angel Mario’s case tomorrow if I didn’t get a call. I’m sure everything will come together soon enough. José said he’d arranged it so my pay will start retroactive to August 1, and he’s also going to pay for our first week in the hotel. So I really don’t have anything to complain about.

We found the coin laundry in the hotel and Robin washed some clothes while I was out. After that we went to see a preschool called Centro de Excelencia Infantil Quixalla in Del Valle. The school seemed pretty good, but they use English about half of each day which is a big negative for me. We walked around Del Valle for a bit after we left the school. I have to admit it’s a very nice neighborhood compared to other parts of Monterrey I’ve seen. Not so much because of the size or quality of the houses but because of the quietness and walkability of the streets. My first impulse is just to say “to hell with the rest of the city, this is where we are going to live”. But we haven’t really looked at any other residential neighborhoods except Obispado yet, so I think we really need to reserve judgement. The rents and school tuitions in Del Valle are high enough that we would save a lot of money if we could find another neighborhood that we like just as much. We really need to just get in the car and go exploring. I’m sure we would have already if we weren’t so intimidated by the driving conditions. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll get around to it.

Another day of rest and family time. We went to Costco in the morning. It was exactly like a Costco in the U.S.A. We didn't buy very many things because we have limited storage space in the hotel we're staying at, especially refrigerator space. Once we find an apartment we can go back and do some real shopping there. Sunday morning is definitely the best time to drive across town. The roads were practically deserted. Good time to go to Costco too. We nearly had the place to ourselves. Other than that we just played in the hotel room until late afternoon when we went over to the soccer fields in the nearby dry riverbed. Played with the soccer ball there for a while until they kicked us off the field because a game was about to start. Then we played a little hide and seek before coming home.

Not exactly sure what tomorrow will be like. I need to go get a CURP (Clave Única de Registro de Población) number, but I have no idea how long it will take. Hopefully not all day, but it's a possibility.

Today was a well-earned day of rest. I made a point of having no plans today except playing with Enid. Hopefully I made up a little for all my recent edginess and preoccupation. In the afternoon we all went to Parque Fundidora, which is an old steel mill site that has been mostly cleared out and turned into a park. Parts of the steel mill were left in place however, including huge smokestacks that are scattered around like hulking monuments to past industrial glory. Some of the old brick buildings have been converted to art museums, which we visited. And there is also an ice skating rink, which was our primary reason for going there. Ice skating is something we started doing as a family activity when we were living in Yountville, and now it’s a favorite of Enid’s. She’s not bad at it for a three year old. Mostly she skates holding our hands, but occasionally she’ll go for a while on her own. The rink here is nice enough, but the ice was kept a lot smoother at the place we used to go to in Vacaville. The price was about the same at both places. The skates here are newer and better than in Vacaville.

Driving in Monterrey is quite an experience. I’d describe it as lengthy periods of lucidity punctuated by brief moments of absolute madness. Although traffic lights and unambiguous lane markings are not as prevalent as in the USA, the roads basically make sense and traffic usually flows in a relatively safe and orderly fashion. But every now and then you come to a spot where things have broken down into utter chaos, either due to an accident, ongoing road repairs, or simple bad design. At these spots it’s a wild-west, every man for himself battle to the death. When you see an opening you hit the accelerator and hope for the best. Otherwise you are literally trapped, with fifty angry Mexicans stuck behind you, all honking their horns. It is not for the faint of heart.

I finally made it over to the medical school late this morning. Gloria didn’t have any papers for me to sign, but said there would be some ready for me on Monday. José, the guy who is hiring me, should be in on Monday too. He was out of town this week. Gloria tried to give me some help with finding a school and apartment, but didn’t have much to tell me that I didn’t already know. Basically it just comes down to Robin and I doing the necessary research and making some decisions. I picked up two faxes and a letter sent to me care of José by some preschools. Including three emails I received that makes six responses from forty letters I sent to schools. Better than nothing I guess.

I also spoke with Sean, the guy I’ll be working most closely with and who will nominally be my supervisor. He was rather stressed out because he is supposed to start teaching on Tuesday but isn’t yet prepared. He’s been provided with a textbook and Powerpoint sildes for the class he’s supposed to teach, but everything is in Spanish and he doesn’t speak Spanish. He can teach the course in English, since all the medical students are supposed to have mastered it, but the Spanish textbook and slides aren’t much use to him if he can’t read them. It looked like an introductory course in molecular biology or genetics from what I saw of the Powerpoint slides. Lani, one of the medical students, was supposed to help him translate next week’s slides into English today. I volunteered to help out with subsequent translations if necessary. He also mentioned that he’d be gone the third week of August and might need me to cover for him. So I may end up doing a couple of lectures.

I made some calls to a few schools today but didn’t make a lot of progress towards finding one. I learned that Instituto Versalles in Obispado is primarily Spanish, with one hour of English and one hour of Mandarin per day. Worth a visit I suppose. Centro Educativo Allegro in Del Valle is primarily Spanish, but the director was out and won’t be back until Tuesday. FORMUS in Valle del Contry is apparently full but I was invited to fill out an application online.

We drove by Allegro and one other school in Del Valle late in the afternoon, just to see what they looked like from the outside, and so we could have a look at Del Valle. Del Valle is supposedly the really posh part of Monterrey where all the rich families live. I found it nice enough, but surprisingly unimpressive. Sure, there were some nice big houses, but they were all stacked cheek by jowl. Nobody had any front or side yards at all. And there were occasional apartment buildings mixed in with the houses, something you’d never see in the neighborhoods of the wealthy in the U.S. I guess from the way people talk about it I was expecting something really upscale and exclusive like Beverly Hills, but it’s nothing like that. Which works to our advantage if we choose a school there, because we might get lucky and find an affordable small apartment nearby.

We also bought Mexican cell phones today. We went with Telcel and got a plan where we can make calls of five minutes or less to each other for free as long as we are in Monterrey. Longer calls or other local calls are billed at 40 cents per minute, so we won’t be using the cell phones for much besides calling each other to check in. But eventually we’ll have a landline for other calls. The phones we have now are the prepaid kind, which was really the only kind we could buy without having a permanent address, bank account, etc. Once we are more established here we may be able to convert to a monthly service contract with better terms. These phones will do for now though. The important thing is that we can contact each other when we need to without breaking the bank.

I’m not looking forward to searching for a school and an apartment with Enid in tow. She is a really good kid, but sitting quietly for lengthy periods while Robin and I try to muddle our way through business negotiations in broken Spanish is really not something she’s capable of at her age. I think one of us will have to do the talking while the other keeps her occupied as we take care of business. Which is not ideal because all the decisions are ones we need to make jointly, but without anyone else here to look after Enid we have no other choice.

Tomorrow being Saturday we won’t be able to work on the school search again until Monday. Probably a good thing since we’ll have a chance to give Enid some undivided attention for a while. We’ll probably also take advantage of the lighter weekend traffic to visit some neighborhoods and try to narrow down where we want to search for schools.

Bienvenidos a Monterrey

We arrived yesterday in Monterrey. The border crossing was relatively uneventful. There was a small problem with my visa, but it didn’t delay us for long. All the worrying about the menaje de casa turned out to be for naught. We were never asked to stop anywhere for an inspection, so we just drove on through. Kind of anticlimactic, but I’m certainly not complaining. If I’d known though I could have saved the $127 for consular approval of the inventory.

When I started the drive to Monterrey I thought I’d celebrate our arrival by taking a shower, putting on some clean clothes and drinking a nice cold beer. Unfortunately, about the time we got on the open highway south of Nuevo Laredo I started developing a headache. It got worse and worse as the day wore on, and once we got to the outskirts of Monterrey I was feeling nauseous as well. So I actually spend my first afternoon and evening here lying on the bed in our hotel feeling miserable. I woke up this morning feeling much better, but I still don’t feel 100%. Not sure if I picked up a virus or maybe it was just the heat and humidity getting to me. I sure hope it passes though, because I have a lot to do over the next couple of weeks and will need all my energy.

My dad decided to go home today instead of spending the day in Monterrey as previously planned. I guess that was fairly predictable in retrospect. He isn’t one to sit around relaxing if he can avoid it. I was kind of disappointed because I thought it would be a good opportunity for him to have some play time with Enid, but instead we piloted him back out to the U.S.-bound highway and said our goodbyes. We got an email from him a little while ago saying he made it back to Texas okay, so that was a load off my mind.

We spent the rest of the afternoon investigating a school in Colonia Obispado and doing some grocery shopping at the H-E-B nearby. The people at the school were very friendly, but I don’t think it will meet our needs since they told us the instruction was 80% in English and 20% in Spanish. That is going to be a persistent problem for us in our search for a preschool because Mexicans want their children to learn English as much as we want Enid to learn Spanish. So a lot of the schools emphasize an English immersion or bilingual approach. I think we’ll eventually find what we want, but we’ll have to start using the telephone because it’s too time consuming to drive around visiting schools only to learn that they are English-oriented.

I meant to put in an appearance at the medical school today, but by the time we finished the grocery shopping it was late in the day and I was too tired to get excited about making my debut there. I sent an email though to let them know I was in town and promised to come by in the morning.