Back from The Dark Side of the Moon!

I guess I spoke too fast when I last posted! We did indeed have phone and internet when we arrived last Tuesday. Then on Friday morning I had NADA nothing! I thought it was just a minor outage like we often have but by afternoon I checked the phone and it was gone too. Someone ran over the Telmex box in front of our house and wreaked the wiring! I realized this too late to do anything Friday and of course Monday was a big holiday here "Dia de los Muertos" Day of the Dead and the Telmex office was closed.

I cannot tell you how discouraging it was to go first thing Tuesday morning to my nemesis Telmex. I was told 1-3 days for a fix. I really expected it to be a week or more. Imagine our delight returning from a Costco run this afternoon to find both the phone and internet working- exactly three days after reporting the problem. Yeah!!!!

So now our update on the last week:
Things are really quiet here. Not many gringos have returned yet from Canada/USA. That works well for some things- like we managed to get the grass between our two driveways and our pathway removed and concrete +stones installed right away- for us and two of our neighbours who asked us to supervise it for them. There is no competition yet for the workers. On the other hand there are no happy hours or much visiting happening!

When we were in Nogales Arizona, just before we went over the border, I had an email from one of our neighbours here (Mexican who lives in Switzerland) saying she would be in Vancouver Nov 2 and wanted to see us. She looked like she saw a ghost when we knocked on her patio door Tuesday night! Lupita is a lot of fun. She married a German/Swiss man years ago -(he died a couple of years ago in his mid 50's from a brain tumor)and has lived in Switzerland ever since. There are five girls in her family- two married Canadians-one lives in Victoria and the other in Sechelt; one lives in Santa Barbara California and the other in south Mexico. We went to her house on Wednesday night and had a great dinner along with two other neighbours she had met in the couple of weeks she had been here. One is a man from Calgary-renting just until the end of November-and the other a young (mid 30's) georgeous Mexican architect. Miguel is a sweetheart and I know we will be great friends with him. He dropped by yesterday afternoon for an hour or so. He is so sweet and speaks great English! He just moved into his home here-the last one to sell- in October.

What else? Oh,Friday night- because we won't see Lupita again until next fall- we had her over for dinner. We also asked another lady we had met last year- she has bought a place in the next complex which is not ready yet (and it will be years because of the economy the work has completely stopped there)who is temporarily staying in a rental unit here over as well. Lynn is from Pakistan but has lived in Nanaimo for 30 years. She is completely not a Pakistani woman- independent-blonde hair-divorced and gutsy!

Saturday night, Hallowe'en we had about 10 kids from the complex come by screaming "We want candy"! That's what they say here-not "Trick or Treat" which is so much nicer! We offered to take Lupita to the airport-her overnight flight to Vancouver left at midnight so we headed out at 10:30. Other than in New York, I have never seen so many police on the road!

The complex looks wonderful. The guest parking lot is finished, the trees in our interior courtyard were replaced by palms which we love, the sprinkler system is done, the grass is very lush and green after the summer monsoons and our home was clean and ready for us to just move right in. We had hired an older Mexican man to clean and watch our house while we were gone. He had no idea we were returning and the house was spotless. We were truly delighted.

We went for only one long walk on the beach on Sunday. The beach looks much better this year after the rains than it did last year. Our access is just fine- last year it had been washed away. No garbage, lots of restaurants still open- which was so nice to see. We had heard that many places bit the dust because of the swine flu scare and the bad economy.

No pictures -sorry. I'll take lots over the next few days and post them. From now on, if there is a really long break before my updates, you can assume I have internet problems. I want every one of you to think positive for me. No more lost internet!!!!