criplomats

With Ale, with Angel of Independence in the background

I left on Tuesday to go to our ACS Chiefs’ conference at the Embassy in Mexico City. It’s always fun to see my co-workers from across Mexico and get a chance to interact face-to-face; I was also happy to see my good friend Ale, a wonderful local staff from Juarez who really taught me the ropes in ACS. Tuesday night a lot of us hung out on the rooftop lounge at the hotel, and Wednesday evening we went to a reception at our big boss’s house. My favorite was Thursday night when my good friends Tammy and Wendy and I had a girls’ night out – we went shopping at a little market (where I bought a cool silver Katrina brooch), followed by dinner at a great hole-in-the wall posole place. We were still talking ninety-to-nothing when we got back to the hotel, so we sat together a while longer and had dessert and coffee – very therapeutic! I haven’t really made any good girlfriends here in GDL, so I really enjoyed my time with them.

Last Monday was a holiday (another one!) and we had a good day at home. Yesterday I dug into my closet and tidied things up (amazing how much better I feel, having everything back in its proper place). We were settling in to watch TV when our downstairs neighbors called to invite us down for a game of Settlers of Catan – they have a friend in from Canada. We had four really fun games (with lots of trash talking) and we ended up staying until after midnight – lots of fun!

A great perk of working in the Foreign Service is getting double holidays – U.S. holidays plus those of your host country. For us in Mexico, November is great – this month we have a holiday every week! This week we were off on Wednesday for Veteran’s Day. I walked across the street and had a nice manicure-pedicure, then John met me for lunch followed by a trip to the VIP movie theatre where we saw the new James Bond movie – what a nice day!

Last Sunday I did a lot of shopping – a trip to Costco, the mall and the grocery store. I’m not a huge shopper, but it’s fun once in a while.

I do like shopping at arts and crafts fairs, which we did yesterday. John and I picked up his boss Ray and his wife for a trip to the annual fair in Chapala. It was a lovely day topped off by lunch at a restaurant on the lake. The only down side was the crazy traffic getting out of town – it’s “buen fin” – the Mexican equivalent of Black Friday. Everyone was trying to get to all of the sales around town.

Friday night after work, John and I went to a get-together of his gaming friends. It was at Emily’s house – lots of fun. We grilled and played games – very nice.

Today Rocio and Ana from work picked me up and we went to a party about an hour out in the country. Our co-worker Miguel had invited us for his son’s baptism party. It was in his small pueblo in a nice setting with a band and tacos – a real taste of small town fun! And it was a pretty drive out there and back.

Hurricane Patricia image from weather.com

I left Puerto Vallarta just in the nick of time! Just a couple of days after I left, we started hearing about Hurricane Patricia in the Pacific. It quickly grew to a Cat 4 on Thursday, so my office had to get cracking. We planned to send crews down there on Friday morning before it made landfall, but Patricia quickly grew to a Cat 5 and we opted not to send our people into harm’s way. Long story short, Mission Mexico sent about 35 people down to the affected area early Saturday morning in anticipation of lots of Amcits needing evacuation or other kind of assistance. Most of those folks were either from our office or passed through our office en route, so there was a lot of coordination to be done. John, my boss, and I – along with lots of other folks – worked in the office pretty much non-stop from 6AM Friday morning until Sunday afternoon. Luckily, Patricia went south of Vallarta and didn’t hit nearly as hard as expected, so all of the teams were able to return either Sunday or Monday. It was a crazy weekend, but I learned a lot about disaster assistance.
 
The rest of the week is kind of a blur. I was happy Sunday morning to get in a workout in the gym, because it was impossible since last Thursday. I look forward to getting back into my routine!

Thanks to everyone who called or emailed to check on John and me. Guadalajara had some rain, but I think our friends in San Antonio got it worse than we did.