así es….de mi punto de vista, pues

I was asked a few questions about a couple of the previous blogs, so I will answer them straight away:  

No, I did not wear a mask.  I…um, this is a little vain, but I think they look ridiculous.  And as I was not sick, I was not too worried about infecting anyone else.  Of course, if I had gotten sick, I more than likely would have infected people because I wouldn’t have started wearing the mask until it was too late.  So pretty much it comes down to vanity and a probably unjustifiable faith in my immune system.

Books I’m reading:  I’ve just finished Pride and Prejudice for the umpteenth time.  I do enjoy that book.  At the moment I am currently involved in a number of books.  More than usual, really.  A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry.  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard.  Seven Weeks for the Soul by Gerard W. Hughs.  Home Economics by Wendell Berry.  And, last but not least, My Grandfather’s Blessings by Rachel Naomi Remen.  One reason I can read so many of these at one time is that Seven Weeks for the Soul, Home Economics and My Grandfather’s Blessings and, kind of, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek are all short stories or essays, so they don’t need to be read on too regular of a basis in order to keep up with them.  So far I highly recommend all of them.

And, um, yeah…I suppose you can put the red food coloring in the strawberry soup to make it more red.  Without, the soup is a lovely pinkish color.  I suppose it is a little Pepto-Bismal-ish now that I think about it.  But you can ignore that and just focus on the taste, which is delicious.  Speaking of strawberries, I bought a kilo of strawberries for 15 pesos yesterday!  That’s 2.2 lbs of strawberries for $1.13!  So I made strawberry bread…that recipe is also in Simply in Season.  It’s good, but I like it more in muffin form.  No cutting involved.

Though the general population seems to be getting bored with the flu here, the school systems are not.  There are all sorts of new regulations for schools.  The daughter of my reps goes to a pre-school and the faculty (by mandate of the feds) took the temperatures of every student that entered the school yesterday and today (yesterday was the first day back at school after a two week break).  Many students wear face masks and some parents were not satisfied with just a face mask.  There was a picture in today’s paper of a kid who, unfortunately for him, had a piece of clear plastic over his eyes in addition to the face mask.  Luckily his hair was not disturbed by the plastic eye wear (which do not resemble glasses in the least…more like a windshield) and he could apply hair gel in the normal fashion.

There was an interesting article, also in today’s paper, of how lack of water affects schools, particularly rural schools.  This is the end of the dry season for many parts of Mexico; the rains will hopefully begin at the end of this month or the beginning of June.  As a result of not having a reliable source of water for the last eight months, many schools are out of the water that they would use to clean bathrooms and wash hands.  So what do you do when you don’t have enough water to even wash hands after using the bathroom and following a flu scare?  Cancel school.  You don’t want your entire student body to get sick, however important you think education is.  There isn’t any other option when you can’t afford anti-bacterial hand gel for everyone and kids (though asked) can’t afford to spare water from their homes to bring to school to wash their hands and clean the bathrooms.  It’s scary to think how much water affects every single part of our lives and how little we care for this basically free (financially speaking) resource in the States.

Following is another random photo from my hike in Guatemala.  

We weren’t really too lost…I mean, the path is obvious, right?