Blah, blah, blah

Today I can't focus on one topic, so you get a potpourri.

The Spawn is Just Fine

Yesterday afternoon Hernan and I went to Guadalajara for a baby check-up. Everything seems to be just fine. This was nice to hear after a month of in-laws and neighbors telling me how my baby's too big or too small, that I have twins, that my abdomen is the wrong size, too high or too low, or how I need to be crawling around the house on my hands and knees to get the baby to fall into the right position because right now it's clearly in the wrong position and if I have a c-section it will obviously be my fault for not spending all my time crawling around on my hands and knees.

I'm certain they mean well, but having a passel of doomsayers isn't helpful.

So we like our doctor, who always tells us we're fine.

Traffic

On another topic, the drive to Guadalajara reminded me that "road safe" is not really a concept down here. "If you can get it to move, you can take it on the highway" would probably be a good slogan. In some ways I kind of admire the attitude, and people are clearly very resourceful. However, the combination of speeding cars, pickups full of loose debris, trailers with a passion for danger, slow-moving tractors, and jalopies makes for a dangerous ride, especially when you throw in the pedestrians, street vendors, cyclists, and farm animals.

It's not uncommon, for example, to have to suddenly stop on the highway because cows are crossing, or because that's only as fast as the pickup with the two sows in the back can go.

Yesterday we got to drive through a dust storm as we passed a trailer. It appeared the trailer was hauling dirt, a considerable portion of which formed a thick cloud around it as it progressed down the highway. We also just missed being flattened, three separate times, by semi trucks making sudden highways exists from three lanes over.

Care Packages

The state of Jalisco has extended the shut down of schools and public spaces for another few weeks. At first this really bummed me out, but then I remembered that there's nowhere around here for me to go anyway, so it really doesn't matter. I was worried, though, that all this swine flu shutdown business has included the postal service. I've been expecting care packages. Luckily for me, the postal service was only shut down for the first week of so, the period of national shutdown. This state-specific shutdown extension hasn't included the post, and so yesterday was a holiday: a backlog of care packages arrived, including our box of ramen and the baby hand-me-down clothes that were my niece's. We are very pleased.

First Rain

We have now had two nights with rain, which marks the beginning of the rainy season. I expected it to begin with a boom, but it looks like we'll be eased into it. Any day now the afternoon rains will begin. Hernan says they've started earlier this year.

The rain is welcome. I'm sick of the dust and dryness. And afterwards, the air is actually clear for a good two or three hours (before all the smoke and car exhaust get trapped beneath the cloud cover again).

Robin, have the monsoons started in Mumbai yet? Did I win the race? You knew it was a race, right?