All posts by Lori.

4 More Days – There’s an app for that!

The first time I traveled out of North America was around 1995, when I went to England and Ireland.  In 1997 I went on a safari which began in South Africa, went to Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and back to S.A.  In 1998 I met Ben and we went to Morocco, and then I dragged him along on my next safari which started in Kenya, went through Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zanzibar, Botswana, and S.A., followed by a stop in Amsterdam.  After that we eloped to Turks and Caicos and went back to Morocco a few more times.

On every one of those trips I was totally unplugged.  If we happened to spend some free time in a town that had an internet cafe, and if the internet was working that day, I might check my personal email or send an update to my friends and family so they’d know I hadn’t been chomped in half by a hippo while canoeing on the Zambezi River (no joke).  But the rest of the time I had no cell phone, no wifi, nobody asking me door-related questions (don’t get me wrong – I love door questions).

Times have changed.  Five years ago when we’d go on a U.S. road trip, I’d have maps printed out, hotel reservations made, and a detailed itinerary for each day.  All of this took prior planning.  Now when we head out we just take the iPad with 3G, and figure things out as we go.  When I went to Costa Rica with Sherry in 2010, I took a NetBook so I didn’t risk losing/breaking my company laptop.  Even that has changed because with the advances in automated back-ups (I use Carbonite), if something happened to my laptop I could be up and running again quickly.  Not that I want to break my laptop, but the computer is now more like a tool for viewing my data, rather than a storage locker for it.

On last year’s extended trip to Morocco and this year’s trip to Mexico, being unplugged was not / is not an option.  With my current job I can’t imagine just hanging out a “Gone Fishin’ ” sign and taking off – even for a week or two.  So the compromise is that I will be away longer (4 weeks!) but working part-time while I’m there.  It worked really well in Morocco and the infrastructure in Mexico is much better.  I think it’s a very fair compromise – 4 weeks of maintaining emails, magazine articles, blog posts, etc., and giving myself permission to put the big stuff on hold until I get back.  It’s weird what a difference that makes to me – no guilt about what I haven’t done…and I feel like I’ve really accomplished something if I keep my email under control.

We don’t have a lot of concrete plans for this trip, although we do have the travel and lodging nailed down.  After that we’ll play it by ear.  But I did download some AWESOME apps to help us out!

GlobeConvert Currency and Units Converter – I seem to have lost the ability to do math in my head – I blame the pregnancies, so I know we’ll be using this app all the time.  Although according to Hannah, Elizabeth is good at math as well as “making toast”, so maybe she’ll be responsible for all of the conversions – and the toast.  I ordered my pesos and travelers checks today (not quite last-minute!) and will pick them up at the bank on Wednesday.  I can use the ATM too, but I like to have some dinero in case the bank gets suspicious about large withdrawals made from a foreign country (yes, I told them we were going but you never know).

SMA Tránsito – Since we won’t have a car in SMA, we will have to take the bus if we venture too far from home.  This app has all of the transportation info, bus routes, stop locations, etc., for SMA!  It also has emergency numbers for los bomberos, sistema de emergencia, and loads of other places I might need to call for assistance.  I’m going to need some help with the Spanish, but that’s why we’re taking the 5 little translators.

TripWolf – This app claims to have all kinds of info about restaurants and things to do, but we’ll have to test it out when we get to SMA.  One GREAT thing it does is allow you to download a map to use offline.  Although it won’t know where we are if we don’t have cell data enabled (no blue dot), we can search for street names and points of interest, and navigate the old-fashioned way.  I also downloaded an SMA map from Google Maps that we can use offline and add points to…like all the most beautiful doors of SMA.  😀

iTranslate – This app was free, and I paid $1.99 for the voice version.  I can speak into the phone, the app converts my voice to text so I can see that it understood what I said and is not translating something random and embarrassing.  Then it shows me the Spanish translation but also SPEAKS the translation!  For you hard core Spanikopitas, it may not be perfect, but it’s a heck of a lot better than my Spanglish.  It’s also great for entertaining bilingual children, who think it’s funny to try to come up with words that it can’t/won’t translate – like “butt”.  Adlani was in hysterics over it.

Heads-Up – Speaking of hysterics, I ran across Ellen Degeneres’ Heads-Up game the other day, and coughed up the 99 cents to download it.  It is SO GREAT!  You hold the iPhone up to your forehead and it displays words that everyone else has to act out, give you clues for, or hum (the “Hey Mr. DJ” category), depending on which category you’re playing.  If you guess correctly, you tip the phone forward to give yourself a point, or you tip it backward to pass.  You have a minute to get as many points as possible.  If you have a phone with a front camera, it will make a video of the person/people giving the clues.  The kids absolutely love it and I think we will be pulling this out at the city bus stop, the line for churros, el baño, etc.  It’s well worth the buck and maybe even the other 99-cent add-on categories.  I hope Ellen is donating the proceeds to charity.  Here is the “best of” video from Ellen:

If you have any indispensable travel apps, let me know and I’ll download them!

7 Days Left (now 6) – What, me worry?

I always have so much on my plate that I’ve developed a coping mechanism to save my sanity, which involves focusing on only the task that will have a major negative impact if I don’t complete it.  The only things I manage to get done are the things that would result in being fired, served with a warrant, causing someone’s death, initiating financial collapse or foreclosure, or named the worst mom in the history of moms.  Each day there are to-do list items that fit into those categories – if I don’t do this, the results will be catastrophic, or at least humiliating.

I haven’t always been this way.  I used to be proactive and organized.  I made lists that I actually checked things off of.  They were to-do lists, not wish-i-could-do lists.  I knew where to find every item I owned, instead of running out to buy another one because I don’t have a clue.  I was on-time with birthday gifts.  I did crafts.  CRAFTS!  I cleaned – I even washed windows!  Now I’m lucky if I can keep most of the vermin away.

I feel like at this point – less than 1 week until departure (FOR A MONTH which is a really long time if you think about it), I should be starting to ramp up the preparations.  But I haven’t quite reached that critical point yet – lately it’s not uncommon for me to be doing laundry at 2 a.m. with a business trip commencing at 6 a.m.  I have passports, plane tickets, and immunizations – those would fit into the catastrophic category by now.  The balls will be here Tuesday and the miscellaneous items (except the new culotte slip!) have arrived.  I have the shuttle lined up to take us from the airport in Queretaro to SMA – I actually felt a little proactive doing that a couple of weeks ago but I didn’t want to forget.

I put the preparations aside this weekend because my bestie Sherry and her daughter Hannah were here and last night was the Annual Fool in the Pool bash.  So making sure Adlani had underwear packed became less critical than hiding all of the clutter and baking rum cakes.  If I showed up at the party without a rum cake the results could have been catastrophic.  Yesterday we went on a tour of Harvard to see if Hannah might want to apply…it was AMAZING!  The pool party was a big success on the LG Evaluation Scale which includes scoring in the categories of food, drinks, spontaneous nudity, laughter-induced peeing, and memorable moments to be rehashed the next day.

I had planned to get some hardcore packing done today but after some college drive-bys we ended up back at the Ce-Ment Pond and now I’m working on laundry, laundry, and more laundry.  It is now officially crunch-time so I expect to get A LOT done this week.

Here’s Norah at the Ce-Ment Pond today, waiting out a rainstorm.  Good practice for visiting Mexico during the rainy season!

 

Countdown Day 8 – Strangers in a Strange Land

As I was strolling around Whole Foods tonight, I came to a realization.  Actually 2 realizations.  The first was that I think Whole Foods must put something into the air in there, because I wander around the store happy as a clam, instead of racing around like I do the rest of the time.  I felt so calm and stress-free, enjoying the sight of the fresh produce, sampling the scents in the bath and body section, drooling over the picture-perfect fruit tarts in the bakery case.  I’ve GOT to find out what they’re using to relax their customers and replicate it at home.  It’s possible that I’m just drawn to the impeccable order of their merchandise, which isn’t going to happen at home any time soon.

Anyway, what I had planned to write about was my second realization.  As I left Whole Foods, I thought I saw someone I knew.  I see friends everywhere, in fact, it’s pretty rare for me to do a few errands without running into someone.  At Whole Foods I quickly realized that she was not the person I thought she was, and that reminded me that I’ve hardly run into anyone lately.  Usually I see people at school, sports, activities, and organized outings…now that all of those are over and lots of people are taking vacation time, it feels kind of like the old days when I used to take adult-ed classes just to meet people.  Well, not quite as desperate as I was back then I guess, but it feels different.  And yes, I took roller blading, line dancing, and various other classes because I had nothing to do and nowhere to be.  No, I didn’t meet Ben there.

It’s hard to imagine that we’ll be spending 4 weeks in a town where we don’t know a soul.  Maybe we’ll meet some people – I hope we do, and we’ll have each other.  I think I will survive it, but I will miss the familiarity of running into friends in the citrus aisle.  On the other hand, it may be nice to only have one adult witness so we can swear each other to secrecy.

8. more. days.  😀

9 Days Left, and 9 Necessities from Amazon

Thank goodness for Amazon Prime.  With only 9 days left until we fly away, we have come up with a few things to add to the packing list and no time to hunt around for them locally.  It’s almost magical to wake up during the night in a cold sweat because I just thought of something we can’t live without, order it via my iPhone app, and have a random assortment of items show up on my doorstep 2 days later.  How do they do that?  Here are my 9 necessities:

Mini Speakers – We will have an embarrassing amount of electronic devices – e-readers, iPads, a Nintendo 3DS, and at least one computer.  As much as I want to be the mom who leads a rousing sing-a-long of 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, I’m not.  There are some times when in order to keep everyone alive I need them to go watch a movie or play a game – educational of course.  I’ve told them that all devices will switch to Spanish when we cross the border, so at least they’ll be practicing their español.  But when two or more kids are trying to watch a movie on an iPad, we needed an external speaker so they don’t have to fight over proximity to the tiny sound hole.  So one of my most favorite Amazon items is the set of 2 tiny speakers that recharge via the USB, and provide amazing sound quality!  I love them!

Ball Bag – Yes, although we live less than a mile from 3 or 4 sources of soccer ball bags, I added them to my Amazon cart and saved myself a trip.  I can’t wait to bag up our balls and take them to the orphanages.  We ended up with 10 balls – all sponsored by various families.  I’ll definitely post photos so you can see how much the kids love them!

Underwear – While I was able to find A LOT of underwear for the orphanage on super-sale at Children’s Place, we had to supplement for the larger sizes.  The girls range in age from 3 to 19, with a 31YO mentally disabled girl too, so I’m assuming that some may need women’s sizes.  I think we’ve got enough to accommodate everyone…who doesn’t love getting new undies??

Culotte Slip – When we had our madres trip to New York City in the 95-degree heat, I had enough experience with the Moroccan heat to pack my trusty culotte slip.  I decided to add a shorter version to the Mexican packing list, and I found it in 2 seconds on Amazon, rather than spending hours traipsing around the ‘Ham in search of chafe-protection that didn’t involve “shapewear” (AKA garment that leaves you unable to breathe and causes you to contract a UTI because you’re so hesitant to pull it down in case you can’t get it back up).

Metamucil Wafers – Again, my Moroccan experience (and a sleepover with Aliya’s friend Victoria) taught me that these little magic cookies can reverse the gastrointestinal effects of an all-Mexican diet.  Enough on that, but I ordered a 2-pack.  They work!

Raincoats – There must be like a 2-week window in the spring when the stores are stocked up on raincoats, because it hasn’t been easy to find light-weight but waterproof raincoats for the kids.  It’s the rainy season in SMA, which basically means a short shower or 2 each day (we hope).  Our friends’ parents (I’ll just call them John and Carolyn because those are their names) told us that Mexicans don’t carry umbrellas…they just step into a doorway until the rain stops.  I LOVE the idea that the rain isn’t going to keep us home, and we have the free time to stop and watch the rain, and maybe chat with other doorway-dwellers in my mangled Spanish.

Thermometer – I think our old thermometer was used to measure the temperature of a science experiment, so I threw one on the Amazon order.  I’m hoping that we won’t need it, but just in case, we have Pepto-Bismol, Immodium, Motrin (adult and children’s), Benadryl, and antibiotics from the pediatrician.  The pharmacy doesn’t mix the distilled water and powder, so we don’t have to refrigerate them until we need them.  This worked well for past trips.  We are all up to date on our shots – Hepatitis A & B, Typhoid, Tetanus, and the other typical US shots.  The only time I’ve really gotten sick is after drinking a frozen drink in Zanzibar.  That was ugly.  We’re hoping for a doctor-free trip to Mexico, although this article almost makes me want to schedule a house call from Dr. Gorgeous.

Headlamp – Call me crazy but I always carry a headlamp with me, and mine recently resurfaced without a strap.  I may look like a coal miner, but I can use it to read, crochet, tip-toe to the tequila cabinet without waking the children, and lead us safely through the cobblestone streets after a Mexican fiesta.

Doors of San Miguel de Allende – Last year I took lots of door photos in Morocco and posted them on my work blog (www.iDigHardware.com).  The editor of Doors & Hardware magazine asked to publish them as a photo essay, and it came out great!  So imagine my excitement when I found out that San Miguel is know for its beautiful doors!!!  There’s even a book about them, which I purchased in used condition via Amazon for literally 1 cent plus $3.99 shipping.  I have another photo essay lined up with the magazine, and I can’t wait to get started!

I’m hoping that my purchases are complete…gotta save some pesos to buy a wardrobe of flowered skirts and a sombrero.

Countdown to Mexico!!!

Right around January 1st I received an email about our friends’ parents house for rent in Mexico, and it seemed like a sign.  Yes, I think lots of things are signs.  The email was sent to A LOT of people and most of them didn’t decide on the spot to go to Mexico, but I’m easily influenced.  I immediately put the wheels in motion to rent the house for 4 weeks, and work remotely while also taking some vacation time.  The departure date seemed so far away…now it’s 10 DAYS until we will be south of the border!!!

Ben can’t work remotely or take 4 weeks off, so we will be spending the first 2 weeks with my friend Elizabeth and her twin daughters, Chloe and Hannah, who coincidentally are Aliya’s best friends.  I can’t imagine being 11 years old and spending 2 weeks in Mexico with my best friends (plus 2 more weeks after that for Aliiya).  I don’t think they know how lucky they are.  When they fly home, Ben will fly down and spend the last 2 weeks with us.

Given all of the bad news about Mexico in the media lately, a few people have asked why in the world we would go there, whether we’ll be safe, etc.  The answer is YES, we’ll be safe!  I met some people from Mexico the other day and they told me that San Miguel de Allende is “muy tranquilo”.  The areas of Mexico that are experiencing the violence and drug problems are not near SMA.  We don’t expect any problems but we’ll be cautious as always.  While trying to put mom’s mind at ease, I found this article – Top Ten Most Dangerous Things in San Miguel.  The list includes accidentally talking to a Republican, fallen seniors who have tripped on the cobblestone streets, and wine bottles clinking together in the trunk of the taxi.  No doubt we’ll come up with our own Top-10 list – we’ve already been warned about the drunk shopping…when you wake up in the morning and wonder how in the h*ll you’re going to get that giant piece of Mexican art home (thank you Priscilla!).

On Monday morning I told Norah that we had 12 more days and I felt that little flutter of panic that I get when I’m still doing laundry at 3 a.m. and leaving on a 9 a.m. flight.  So in hopes of some stress-relief we started getting organized and doing a little packing.  The kids and I already have our 4 pairs of matching socks ready to go into the duffle.  We are allowed one 50-pound bag each, and just like when we go to Morocco, a lot of what we bring will be staying there.  When I visit someplace I like to leave some sort of positive mark and teach the kids something, so on this trip we will be bringing supplies to a girls’ orphanage and doing some “social volunteering” (aka playing and visiting).

We’re bringing school supplies, soccer balls, and 270 pairs of underwear!  Here’s Norah sorting and packing the undies:

The soccer balls that we’re taking are really cool – they’re indestructible and they don’t need a pump.  We will be taking 10 balls with us, so we’ll have enough for the girls orphanage and also the boys orphanage!  If you’d like to sponsor a ball for $25, let me know!  Here’s a great story about the balls from the One World Futbal Project:

There’s more information about SMA, along with photos of “our” house on the SMA page.  I’ll try to do a good job of keeping up with my postings, for anyone who wants to travel to Mexico vicariously.  😀