Life in Playa

A long break and now back too it…

So it has been over a year since I wrote on the blog.  I keep meaning to get back into it but a blog is a lot of work, especially when you have all this life going on around you.  A WHOLE BUNCH has happened in my life since last year, a lot of which I have not talked about because I have thought that it was personal and I didn´t really want to include personal stuff in the blog, but I guess the point of the blog is personal stuff.

I am going to do a short time-line of all the stuff that has been going on…Maybe I can go into it more in depth later.

So, starting about 3 years ago I got this idea in my head that I would like to go back to college, I sort of felt that there was something missing in my life and I thought that college would maybe be that thing.  So I started to look into what it would take to get to go to the local college in Playa Del Carmen.  Which led me to the Secretary of Education in Cancun:

The Secretary of Education wanted  a whole long list of my vital records, starting with first grade on up to high-school.  So I got in touch with my mother in the States and she didn´t have the records that I wanted but she suggested that I talk to the schools that I had attended.   I got ahold of them and had them send me out a copy of the documents up until the 10th grade when I got my GED and started attending community college.

Note the part about GED and community college….we´ll get to that later.  The secretary of education wanted my records translated and apostilled as well.  I had no idea at the time what apostille is, but I found out.  I think this is a good lead in for another post.  Anyway, after getting the apostille and translation the SEP(Secretaria de Educación Publica) let me know that my GED was not valid in Mexico.

After a few frustrating(for me) phone calls to the director of the validation department of the SEP in Chetumal, the state capital, I resigned myself to the idea that I was not going to be able to use my GED to go to college here.  So, since I am stubborn and I wanted to go to college, I continued down the path and started the mexican version of the GED program, which is a year and a half study on your own and take the tests type program.

So in July of 2008  I started this process, looking back on it I am glad I did because I am really sure that it helped my Spanish and got me into the routine of studying.  Every one of the posts that you read that I published since that time, I wrote during the schooling process.  In November of 2009 I finished and had met all of the pre-requisites of the Secretary of Education to start my higher education.

In January of 2010 I started university here in Playa Del Carmen in a small university, studying law.  Its a 3-year program with a six month internship in the middle.  Getting authorization from immigration to be a student AND work was a small miracle but it worked out.  This could probably lead to a whole other post as well.

In February I got married to a wonderful woman.  I had to jump through a few hoops in order to get immigration and the civil registry to let me marry a Mexican girl, but it all worked out.  I think there is another separate post here as well.  When we got married we didn´t invite our families because we knew that we wanted to actually have a larger ceremony on the beach later in the year when everything sort of calmed down a little bit.

We decided to have the wedding in Puerto Morelos on the beach and one day while there looking around for the right place to do it, my lovely bride suggested that we have the wedding in the church instead of the beach and then have a reception later.  Which opened up a whole new can of worms, I am/was not catholic…so I became catholic.

So…between work, school and family I have been pretty busy.  It has been hard to write lately.  The motivation for this post is simple, I was listening to a talk by Kevin Smith(Clerks/Dogma/Chasing Amy) and he mentioned that the most important thing for anyone who thinks about being a writer is write.  So I guess I better write.

Oh, that and this term I am starting an written communication class and am going to have to practice…so I might publish some posts in Spanish.  Nothing that can´t be missed…maybe I will translate anyway.

Well, that´s all for now folks.

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Mexico City(Part 4)…

The last day I spent in Mexico City wasn’t actually in Mexico City. We went to Toluca, a town about an hour west of DF. Its all really the same place, from a foreigner’s point of view. Just different bus stations. The draw to go to Toluca was the Cosmovitral, a stained glass greenhouse that is home to a botanical garden. There is a pretty cool history associated with the Cosmovitral, but you can Wikipedia that. I don’t have a lot to say about Toluca, I was impressed by the Cosmovitral but Toluca was nothing special. I think the pictures speak for themselves:

So, the Cosmovitral was amazing. Really. Spectacular. I would really advise seeing it to anyone who is a Mexico buff. I would also advise making it a day trip.

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Mexico City(Part 3)…

The next day of the trip was probably the most fun, I like active challenging attractions, Tepoztlan is definitely that.  This is a cute little city just outside of Cuernavaca, about an hour and a half from Mexico City.  The main attraction of this pueblo is the pyramid on top of the hill just north of the town itself.  After a long walk up the hill, LONG WALK UP THE HILL, we finally reached the entrance to the pyramid.

Not all the steps are this nice...

Keep on stepping...

At the entrance, thousands of steps up a mountain, there was a refreshment stand and a little restaurant.  It made me wonder if maybe there is an alternate route up this thing.  Or an elevator.  All around the refreshment people are enjoying their waters and deepfried bits, being harassed by “Tajones” as they are called in Mexico, though I believe the correct name for them is “Coati”.  I have seen them before in Playa Del Carmen but usually they are timid and run away when they see you, not these: The Tepoztlan coatis attack like puppies.  I watched as they tried to eat a small child and the snack he was holding, I should have stepped in and saved him but he seemed to be enjoying it.

They sell tickets to the pyramid at the top of the hill.  At the bottom of the hill you don’t see any signs thatsay “Pyramid $40 pesos” or anything like that, so my common-sense brain brought up the question of “How many people leave there wallet at the bottom?”  Anyway, we got up to the pyramid and had a little rest, it was a beautiful view, but I was starting to get hungry and I had heard that the market place in Tepoztlan has an amazing selection of food.

The view from the pyramid...

So, we hiked back down the hill and made our way to the market.  We found a nice little place with quesadillas of various things.  I like food, I am what you would call a huge fan.  I really like food that I have never tried before, so I got a few dishes.  I have been meaning to try “Flor de Calabaza” for a long time, sure I have had the canned Cambell’s Crema de Flor de Calabaza soup, but am sure it is not the same thing.  So, I tried a quesadilla made with Flor de Calabaza(which is chopped up pumpkin flowers, by the way).  Excellent.  I also had to try a chile relleno, I have had them before but I was told that the chiles here were excellent.  Another wonderful choice!  So, the next thing that was more ordered for me than was a “Taco de Chapulines”, if you speak spanish you already know…I do, so I knew right away.  Why not though?  Its a traditional food and I should be trying these traditional foods, right?  What you ask are “Chapulines”? See photos:

That is a grasshopper

...And that is a grasshopper taco.

So, I managed to take a bite of my grasshopper taco.  That was it.  I chewed it and chewed it and thought hard about how it was food, not bait…I managed to get down one mouthful, actually swallowed it.  That was it, I couldn’t put any more in my mouth.  I kept thinking about getting little legs in my teeth…eww.  Anyway, I can say that I ate grasshoppers.  Probably won’t have to do it again either.

After eating we wandered a little more in the village, I was looking for little souvenirs from Tepoztlan, nothing really moved me though.  I was moved by the famous Tepoztlan ice cream, I had to try a few different flavors.  They had “Mil Flores”, which means “a thousand flowers”, which sounded interesting so I tried it.  It contained the Jamaica flowers and roses and some others but I forget, it was very good.  I also tried various flavors of chile and fruit icecreams, also good, but I am not so sure about the sweet/hot/sour combination.  I also had to try a traditional coconut ice cream, which is my favorite mexican icecream flavor, but I must say the Merida coco sorbet is much better than that of Tepoztlan.  Overall, I like icecream, so this was good.

The trip back to Mexico City was again uneventful, I have to praise the merits of a good public transportation system, I love bus travel.  It is so comfortable and I think some of the best sleep I get is on the luxury buses.

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Mexico City(Part 2)…

So, the next day in Mexico City I went to Six Flags Mexico.  Honestly, it is not something I would have chosen for myself, but the friend that I was visiting thought that it would be something fun to do.  So we made our way to the huge amusement park, after riding the subway and light train and two changes of taxi, we arrived in the park.  I thought it was interesting that it took us about 10 minutes to find a place to buy tickets, there were lots of ticket windows, just none that were open.

We eventually found our way in, they were offering a two-for-one deal if you bring in a box of “Bang” brand juice to donate, so we went and found a box of juice, then returned to enter the park.

We started out with a river raft ride, I should have known better when I saw the signs that said that this ride would make us “empapado”. Let me tell you about “empapado”, I have always heard this word used as “damp” or “sweaty”, like after a run.  So I am thinking, no problem, a few splashes of water is no big deal.  I had my camera, wallet, and cell-phone with me, but I figured I would be ok.

Now, let me explain about river-raft physics:  The rafts hold six people, you sit around on a big circular bench, so the weight is technically spread around evenly and the raft sits flat in the water.  Technically.  I am almost 200 pounds, so when loaded onto this raft with five average sized Mexicans, the raft tended to sort of droop in the water on my side.  I also am over six feet tall, so much of my body sticks up past the edge of the raft.  So, the raft’s rotation is completely random, usually with the even weight displacement the raft spins normally while the raft travels down the rapids and everyone gets a little splash of water every now and then.  It seems that with the lopsided raft, the lower weight always rides on the downriver side, therefore making a nice plow for every rapid and wave that we met.

After the first 100 gallons of water splashed over the edge onto me I decided I had to do something about the phone and camera, so I removed them from my pockets and wrapped them tightly in my shirt, hoping that they would stay dry.  I got out of that ride, dripping wet.  Everything I was wearing was soaked to the skin.  Damp!  Ha!  Luckily, the wrapping the camera and phone in the shirt seemed to work out.  Unfortunately, I got to enjoy the rest of the day “damp”.

Next, we decided to do the “Superman” themed roller coaster, which had quite a large line and was a very impressive loop of big red-yellow-and-blue steel tubes.   So, we waited for about half an hour and finally got on the ride.  It quickly zoomed high above the Mexico City skyline and even more quickly, dropped like a rock and did a cute little half spin on its rails leaving us upside down.  After the first dip and turn I was already thinking terrible little things like “I am gonna die”, “I want off this thing”, “I wonder when the last scheduled maintenance was”, etc.

Fortunately for me and my readers, I made it off this ride alive, but thinking that I might have to rethink the amusement park thing.  I thought about it for a little while, decided I had to change my attitude about the whole thing and made a conscious decision to have a good time.  At that time I also happened to walk by a plaque talking about how Six Flags Mexico had been awarded the 2007 world amusement park of the year award.  This made me feel a little better, you probably can’t get an award like that by killing tourists.

In front of the Batman roller coaster...

The rest of the rides were rather uneventful, lots of screaming and all that.  I was able to have fun for the rest of the park, I finally dried off, everything went well.  A day of roller coasters and the like really can be fun, I guess, but I am not sure if I ever have to do it again.  The last thing we did was a nice ride on the ferris-wheel to watch the sunsetting over Mexico City, this was much more my speed.

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Trip Report: Mexico City(Part 1)…

I have been out of town for the last week, I took a little trip to Mexico City to kind of alleviate the Playa Del Carmen blah before high season kicks into full swing.  I had a great time, got to see a lot of stuff, and took a ton of pictures.  I am pretty backed up with work after being gone for a week, but I will try to put this trip report together in lots of small parts.

I arrived in Mexico City at 2pm and went to the hotel in the “Reforma” district.  It was a nice enough hotel and really close to everything.  After taking a few minutes to relax and get comfortable after my trip I decided to go to see the Zocolo, the main plaza where all the federal government buildings are located.

I made my way to the Zocolo and when I arrived I found it full of people and television cameras and general chaos.  It was possible to walk around in there but quite crowded so I decided to just look around at the federal buildings instead.  Apparently, there was some fundraiser going on that involved the stars of some popular Telenovelas, but I didn’t find this out until later that night watching the news.
I made my way around to various historical buildings and saw the pyramid that is right there in the middle of the city, but didn’t go in because it looked a little bit cramped.  It was starting to get dark, so I walked back towards my hotel.

After wandering around for a while trying to pinpoint my hotel I started getting hungry, so I stopped for tacos and a juice at a little taco place that was pretty busy.  The specialty of the place seemed to be their juices, so I tried the one they recommended, “Lettuce-Cucumber-Lemon”, which was actually really good.

The next day, I went to the “Bosque de Chapultapec”, which is sort of the central park of Mexico City.   The park has been part of Mexican history dating back to the Aztecs, but more recently is the location of the presidential residence and the national history museum.  Chapultapec is about 3 square miles and has an amusement park, a zoo, miles of trails where vendors set up to sell everything imaginable, and some little waterways where you can rent paddle boats.

Chapultapec means “Grasshopper Hill” in one of the native languages, the hill they are talking about is the home to the national art museum.  After a 20 minute walk up the hill, you come to the amazing castle that has been used for everything from the Viceroy’s residence to the Military College and then later the home of Emperor Maximilian.  The castle is now a museum housing thousands of different articles are Mexican history.  Everything from Pancho Villa’s wooden leg to clothing worn by Benito Juarez.

One of the exhibits in the museum is the memorial to the “Niños Heroes” or Child Heroes, military cadets that were killed during the American invasion of Mexico city in the 1830′s.  I felt a little uncomfortable as the only American in the room as we watched the video explaining how the American Military surrounded the school and was shooting kids as they tried to jump out a third story window.

The view from the top of the museum is really amazing, it gives you a great perspective of exactly how huge Mexico City really is.  I tried to take lots of pictures, but the smog was doing funny things with lighting so not a lot of them turned out how I wanted them to.  (After that comment I am going to get comments about how to adjust the settings on my camera to deal with smog.)  The city goes on and on as far as you can see, and being in a valley even the horizon is covered with houses.

After the museum I went to the Chapultapec zoo.  The zoo had a lot of variety of animals and birds and was pretty busy.  The aviary of the zoo is probably the most impressive part, they had huge enclosures with hundreds of different types of raptors.  Zoos always have the same feeling about zoos, caged animals are just that, caged animals; once you have seen one elephant you have seen them all.  I did, however, get a kick out of the Panda bears, all of which were sleeping or trying to find a comfortable place to sleep.

The last thing I did while in the Bosque de Chapultapec was rent a little pedal boat and ride around in the dayglow green lake for a little while.  It was a nice experience, though I was a little concerned about the signs posted up around the place asking that you not get any water on the life jackets.

That is about if for the first part of my trip report, stay tuned for Six Flags Mexico, Tepotzlan, and the Botanical Gardens in Toluca.

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Praise for the new 115th Avenue

If you haven’t been out that way in a while, the new 115th Avenue has in Playa has been expanded to go all the way from Centro Maya to Santa Fe/Mission del Carmen II.  I am now able to go from my home in the Colosio to PlayaResale in the Ejido to my bank in Centro Maya without waiting in any traffic.  Big time saver.

Also, the neighborhood that is growing up around Plaza Las Americas and Mission del Carmen is pretty amazing.  There is shopping, a gym, even some nice green area.  The other side of the highway is looking very promising for a nice place to live in the next couple of years.

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Regimen de Condominio, part 1

So, I have been busy the last few months trying to organize getting “Regimen de Condominio” for one of the buildings that I manage.  I really don’t have to do a lot, the lawyer takes care of most of the details, but I have to be around to take orders from her.  It has been a long process and I thought I would try to explain what has happened and what I have done so far, as well as what the mystical “Regimen de Condominio” really is.

Regimen de Condomino -
When you build a condominium building anywhere in the world you follow the process of purchasing the land that you are going to build on, build the building and then the separate dwellings, then you have to break the building into legal parcels for sale.  The “Regimen de Condominio” is the official document that defines the legal parcels.

The building that I am getting the regimen for was started about four years ago by a group of guys from the United States. They saw potential in Playa Del Carmen and decided to exploit it for investment purposes, so they found a piece of land and started to build.  They had various problems with contractors and engineers and after two years of struggling to get the building done remotely they hired my company to get it finished.

When the developers turned the building over to me some of the apartments had been presold, but some where still not finished.  There were some basic infrastructure problems that had to be taken care of to make the place inhabitable, city water had to be connected and a few other major things had to be sorted out.  Then I hired a crew to finish the last three apartments that were not yet done.  In the middle of finishing the construction, we ran into a problem with plumbing in one of the sold apartments.  Anyway, it took about a year to get the building ready to actually be functional.

During this time, a local engineer was supposedly working on getting the “Regimen de Condominio” done for the developers so that the titles for the individual apartments could be processed and the builders could turn a profit.  The developers waited and waited and occasionally paid fees here and there, but this past January, the engineer just dropped off the face of the planet.  We couldn’t get in touch with him, the developers couldn’t get in touch with him.  Everyone was starting to get worried.

The developers finally decided to turn the process of the regimen over to us, so in early Spring of this year we brought all of the paperwork that we had to a local attorney and she agreed to do the job of restarting the Regimen.  Nobody could find anything that the previous engineer had done, so we were starting from the beginning.

We had a month of measuring the building and the lot and lots of the attorney calling me for this or that paperwork.  Many times I had to run to the municipal palace or the accountant or no se donde to find just the right piece of paper.  Also, a lot of fees kept coming up, sometimes in Mexico fees come up that seem to need to be paid “TODAY”, so much of my job has been running here or there to get money to so-and-so.

After getting the property properly measured, the attorney worked with an engineering firm in Guadalajara to build a portfolio for the building, which turned out to be a nice leatherbound notebook about five inches thick.  Every room in every apartment and every inch of common area and green area and every cistern have to be drawn up and then described in words.  The book came back after another month.

The building was built on three lots, so the next step was to convert the three lots to one.  This was another long process and involved an engineering team coming to measure the lots and the corners to make sure the records in the state and city registers were correct.  The fusion of the lots then had to be submitted to “Catastro” which is the department of government that keeps track of the ownership of land in the city.

After the fusion of lots was done, the latest step was getting “Factabilidad” from the utilities companies.  This is a written description from the water and electric departments stating the projected usage and availablility of services to the building.  For the water department this included setting up a water usage contract, which is basically paying a contract fee to hook the building up to the system, which ensures a large fund for building future infrastructure in the city of Playa Del Carmen.

Now, the lawyer has to apply for a construction bond for the building, to cover anything that may happen to the apartments for a year after the titles are given.  This was interesting, because very few people know that there is a recourse against faulty workmanship when they purchase a condo in Mexico.  In order to get this bond, the developer’s accountant is working up a financial resume of the company and any of its assets and or business transactions in order for the bond company to get a better idea of what they are dealing with.  After the bond is done, the whole package will be submitted to city and state governments for approval.

So, that is a pretty simple summation of what the regimen has been so far, I will write more when more as it happens.

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Starting a blog…

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