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2/20/01 9:30 AM

We had no events scheduled for Sunday. The Kids were staying with their host families and the chaperones were going to have a mid-point meeting to discuss the program’s progress in the late afternoon. In the earlier afternoon Begonia and Carlos took us on an informal driving tour and lunch.

The place we had lunch at was a large restaurant that featured live entertainment and various kinds of barbecued animals. They had rabbit, lamb, pork, chicken, and beef. No goat. Miguel and I want to try some before we leave. He says it’s pretty good. All the meat was juicy and tender and was served with great tortillas and guacamole. We ate well yet again as we listened to a very good band playing what sounded like their take on Carlos Santana. I’m pretty sure their lead guitarist was an albino. That’s different. They finished up right after we sat down and a large mariachi group took the stage. They were also very entertaining. Some of the band members appeared to be in their teens. The crowd was appreciative but several of them looked like they were tired of mariachi and wanted to hear disco.

After the mariachis and way more meat than I should have eaten, the earlier band came back on but started playing the theme to Saturday Night Fever. It was just intro music for the next act which was a couple of Mexican lounge lizards. They were presented as comedians which disappointed me since it’s hard to enjoy a joke you don’t comprehend but they mostly sang. It was a two- man team featuring one guy in his early twenties with striking good looks and a slight build and his partner who looked to be in his late forties and about 50 pounds rich of peak condition. Their act was mostly impersonations of Latin American singers. My exposure to their targets was limited to an occasional viewing of Sabado Gigante on TV so as far as I was concerned their impressions were dead on. They sang well and loudly. The younger guy did falsetto parts and at one point even dressed in drag to impersonate some female star or other. He seemed comfortable with that if you know what I mean. Still, the women in the party (which was most of the group of course) were all a-flutter over him. The older guy should serve as a deterrent to anyone pursuing a career in show business. He had a passable amount of singing talent but looked like he was doing this act for way too long. He plainly thought of himself as much more talented and better looking than he was. As Nancy Carlson said, he may be Mexican and singing in Spanish but he’s Wayne Newton. He was. I’ll leave it at that.

After lunch we went to the top of a nearby mountain to view the city. On the drive up we saw some very nice views that sold for about a million pesos which is about $105,000 US. Many of these homes are part of an American expatriate ghetto. I want to join them. We could sell our home in Healdsburg and buy a nice place with a view here in Morelia and own it outright. It’s very tempting. We talked about buying an apartment or condo as a group for 40- 50 grand US and sharing time in it. Begonia offered to help maintain it in exchange for some use. Again, it’s very tempting.

We came to the viewing area next to a very large flagpole that had been recently erected. The flag itself was still being made. It’s supposed to be over 75 feet high. The view was great that day as the smog had blown out for us. It’s always easy to find the center of town where our hotel is because of the twin towers of the cathedral. It is against the city laws to construct anything higher than those structures.

The city center was originally laid out by the Spaniards in the 16th and 17th century. There was no indigenous village on the site already, only an open area on a hilltop. According to Alfredo, who was our guide on a city and other tours, the Spaniards looked for a site to build a city based on qualifications laid down by Plato the Greek philosopher. Plato had 7 conditions to be met for a perfectly located city. The site Morelia stands on meets 6 of those conditions. The 7th condition was that the city have a seaport but that is impractical here at 6500 feet. They laid the streets out in an 8 by 8 grid, like a chessboard, oriented to true north. The Cathedral was in the center of course. Next to the cathedral is a plaza. Unlike the plazas of Spain, this one is rectangular, not square. Also, the cathedral faces the street, not the plaza. The city was not originally named Morelia. It was renamed after the priest Morelos who was a key leader in the fight for independence from Spain. ]

Morelia was designated an historical treasure by the United Nations some time in the 1990s (I think) and much effort was put into restoration and preservation. As I said earlier, the 8 by 8 block city center looks very much like an old European city. No signage is allowed to protrude from the buildings. There are no lighted signs. The buildings are all very old with a few exceptions where fire destroyed buildings which were rebuilt using current architecture until the UN designation stopped even that. The sidewalks are all stone tile. Everything is very clean. People are always sweeping and mopping the sidewalks. There are waste baskets attached to walls at least every block and people use them. The residents are proud of their city.

Let me put in a plug for Alfredo De La Cruz Ibarra . He was our guide on our walking tour of Morelia, our bus trip to the Monarch butterflies, and yesterday’s trip to Pazcuaro. He speaks excellent English and is very knowledgeable of the area and its history. He was very entertaining to listen to while he took us to various points of interest. He is also very skilled at diplomatically managing a large group of people. He kept us moving along without being pushy. He takes setbacks like broken buses in stride. He works for the Bureau of Tourism and if you are ever in the area you would do well to obtain his services. His email address is alfredo.ibarra@eudoramail.com. Telephone (cellular) (43) 31-44-73.

After our return from Begonia and Carlos’ tour we had our mid-point progress meting. Many issues were discussed and tentative suggestions for improvement were made. We will hash these out some more when we return. One issue that we need to research soon is how medical insurance for the Mexican kids is going to work while they are visiting us. If anybody has an idea on that please let us know. One thing we did decide is that chaperones is not a good title for us. We provide psychological comfort for the kids and for the parents at home but we have little actual contact with the children while they are in Mexico. We are ready to help a kid who gets sick or to serve as helpers for Marcella. We help herd the kids onto and off the airplane and on one field trip. We are more like adult assistants or some other thing. Chaperone implies someone supervising or escorting kids, which is something we don’t want to do because it keeps the kids from getting full exposure to the local culture.. I will still refer to us as chaperones in these emails just for consistency.

Of course a big part of our job is to eat, drink and have fun. We have such a great group of adults here. We all get along really well. Most of us already knew each other because our children are in the Spanish immersion / bilingual program at school. We go to the same meetings, help out in class and many of our kids play sports together. We all worked together for a year prior to the trip to make it happen by raising funds and meeting with school officials and others. This trip has brought us all closer together and given us a chance to get to know each other better.

Monday the chaperones went to lake Pazcuado. It was about an hour’s drive by bus from Morelia. As we drove through the outskirts of Morelia I noticed something about Mexican building construction. The rebar or steel reinforcing bars that are embedded in concrete to add strength are always left protruding from the concrete. As you look at the tops of buildings or even walls around properties, there is with few exceptions a lot of rebar hanging out of the concrete. On roof tops or out the ends of concrete eaves the stuff is everywhere. It gives the impression that the whole area is under construction. It looks bad. I don’t know why they do this. Some possible explanations are:

1. They leave some hanging out so that if they make an addition they can tie in to the existing material. That sounds good but surely everyone everywhere can’t be thinking that far ahead. This stuff hangs out on garden walls and rooftops that are plainly never going to have a second story.
2. They can’t afford a cutting tool so they just stick in whatever lengths they have and let the excess hang out. Maybe. Hard to believe that someone wouldn’t buy a cutter and rent it out or something.
3. It’s an aesthetic or status thing. Look at me, I have rebar in my concrete. Maybe. The problem with this is that just about every building has it so there isn’t much status there.
4. Lightning rods. Could be. They do get thunderstorms here pretty often. The problem is that the rebar doesn’t run to ground and so only serves to help conduct the charge to the walls where it would do damage.
5. They are too lazy to cut it. That can’t be. If they had the energy to build the walls or whatever it just doesn’t take that much additional time or energy to cut the stuff. Besides, not cutting it wastes materials.
6. Building inspection purposes. The inspectors are too busy to inspect each concrete framing job for proper rebar prior to pouring so they leave it hanging out to show that they actually put rebar in. But this only shows that there is rebar hanging out the end, not necessarily inside the pour.

The whole things is a mystery to me. I took several pictures of rebar. These are sure to impress everyone for hours, I’m sure. I’ve already probably written way more than anyone wants to read on the subject so I’ll drop it but if anyone knows the answer please let me know. It bugs me.

Pazcuaro was very nice. Pazcuaro is the name of a large lake that is surrounded by towns, the names of which I have forgotten. There are also towns on islands on the lake. About half of us took a boat out to the largest island and back. They have a slew of boats to serve the islanders and tourists. As we set out to the island a few local musicians played some very nice music for us for some change. The boat held 80 people and was about 2/3 full. The water in the lake is brown from erosion runoff from the nearby mountains and is still polluted from years dumping sewage directly into the lake although that practice has been recently ended. We saw many, many egrets on the water. There were a few scattered small fishing boats. As we approached the island about 5 small boats paddled out to us and put on a fishing demonstration. They dipped their large nets that were formed by twin hoops of cane into the water after herding the fish in a circle. They raised their catch to show us, it look like a couple of minnows. One of them then paddled out to our boat. His hat outstretched for pesos. We obliged.

At the top of the island is a huge statue of Morelos that is visible for many miles away. It is made of stone masonry, the largest of it’s kind that I’ve ever seen. The face bears a good likeness to the paintings of Morelos we saw in town.

We returned from the island and joined the rest of the group for a stop at a restaurant for lunch. Most of us had various presentations of whitefish that was quite tasty. The fish served there came from another nearby lake where they are farmed. The fish in lake Pazcuaro are unfit to eat due to pollution.

We then went to another town famous for its copper wares and crafts. I apologize for the lack of names here but if you actually come to Morelia I’m sure you can find these places by their descriptions. Anyway, we did a lot of shopping and buying here. We all want to buy everything we see, especially the larger items like furniture that we can’t possibly take home with us. The prices, workmanship and artistry are all so good.

I have a cold. I think we who have colds here got hem on the airplane. All that recycling of air in the cabin spreads disease like crazy. Who would be so inconsiderate as to ride an airplane while still contagious? Someone like me when we return home. At least I’ll be doing my part to propagate whatever virus we acquired. It’s not a bad cold as colds go but it is annoying. My sense of smell is pretty well shot so I’m not appreciating the meals and beer as much anymore. That’s a shame since none of us are tired of eating here even though it’s been non-stop Mexican food since we arrived. They do have US-style food such as burgers and fries and steaks and such. There are also Italian and Japanese restaurants in town. It would be interesting to sample Italian food in Mexico. Do the proprietors speak Spanish in Italian accents?

I’m going to dinner with Lily’s host parent tonight. I will ask her for her journal again so I can send you her latest impressions. I bought some flowers to give them as a dinner gift. It will be nice to see their place.

None of us really want to come home even though we all miss our families but it’s getting near that time. We all dread the airplane ride home. We will be stopping at Guadalajara this time so we’ll have an even longer flight. The plane leaves around 5 AM so we are going to leave the hotel for the airport at 2:30 AM. Looks like another fine day spent in transit. Don’t expect much of us when we return, we’ll all be pretty worn out.

I hope to get one more report in tomorrow and then a wrap-up after we’re home. I never did get my package from UPS so no digital photos until we come home. That’s a shame because I could have taken a lot more and gotten them to you sooner. Oh well, I guess we can kiss that plan along with the package goodbye.

Whoops. Spoke too soon on that package. On my way to the Internet café with my floppy disk containing this letter in hand the desk clerk ran up and handed me the UPS package. All right! Maybe I can get those pictures posted after all.