Minimum Wage in Mexico

I read an article in the recent Guadalajara Reporter about the wage increase here in Mexico. The Mexican government announced that the minimum wage as of Dec.1st will go up 10.4 percent, from 80.04 pesos a day to 88.36 pesos a day.  This is the highest annual raise in more than a decade. That is the equivalent to 45 cents a day raise. The bare minimum that a person needs to live a dignified life in Mexico is 2822 pesos a month, which would be 94 pesos a day. It is estimated that a quarter of all Mexicans are living in extreme poverty. 

As of today, this is the conversion rate into American Dollars. 80.04 pesos is 4.30803 American dollars. Remember this is pay for a DAY not for an hour here in Mexico.  88.34 pesos, their raise this year, makes it 4.75245 American dollars. And lastly, 2822 pesos, today is only 151.871 American dollars.

So no wonder many Mexicans think that the expats are wealthy. We ARE wealthy compared to their minimum wages. Remember these figures the next time you leave a tip and you are trying to think of how much to put on the table. Be as generous as you can and still feel good about it. 

New apartment for rent

Through the years I have from time to time put nice rentals on here but doing that mostly caused me a lot of problems. People asking me to act as an agent for them and more questions about the places, so I quit doing it. But today I met a nice young man who showed me his apartment that he just finished and wants to rent. It is furnished with beautiful furniture, including a new stove and frig. It is just half a block up the street from where I live so the shops are all close and the Ajijic Plaza is a fifteen minute walk from it. There is a roof area which I did not walk up to because for now there is no railing on the stairs. He said he will add that. So here are some photos of it. There is a garage in front that you could use for more light. It is a little dark inside. The price pr month is 7000 pesos. Please do NOT contact ME about it. Call the man who owns it, Chuy at 333 956 7323 or Chuy2_roro1@hotmail.com.   Here are some photos

The street the apartment is on

What is across the street from it.

Chuy

The front door.

Porch

Front door

The garage

Kitchen and stairs to the roof

New microwave

Cabinet, pots and pans included.

New stove

New frig

Laundry room, washer and he will get a dryer

Bedroom , just part of it, the dresser and desk. There is a very large bed in this room too.

Sorry I didn't get any more photos. If you are interested, contact Chuy. I just did the currency converter for 7000 pesos. As of today that is 376 American dollars. 

Photos of the Revolution Day parade

These two little kids are stuck in traffic on a float. They look tired. I was tired by then too. It said online that it started at nine thirty. I was there at nine and it had already started. So I chased them for blocks, taking photos all the way. Then I had to walk back home so I took photos from the front of everything. The kids were so cute in their costumes and doing their routines. It was worth all that fast walking for me. 

This is my favorite photo. The little girl was so sweet, on her way to join the parade but she stopped for me so I could take her picture. 

The little girl in the above photo was dancing.

Morning Thoughts

Yesterday was Maket day. I went down for a little while with Chico. I am over the Pneumonia but just doing a little bit each day. I still don't feel strong enough to go to the spa. I didn't even have enough energy to take any photos at the market. I bought a very large pewter bowl for ten dollars. It is on my kitchen table with a screen over it that happens to just fit. Here are some photos of it. 

This is it with the screen on top that I already had. 

It has designs of veggies in it.

This is the bottom of it. 

I always look at the junk dealers stalls for treasures. I have a small collection of pewter. Other than this piece, I just bought a few veggies and walked home very tired. I am trying not to overdo it.

Morning Thoughts

Today is the first day of feeling normal physically in weeks. I must be careful not to overdo it. That is my way. Overdoing everything. And then I pay the price with a setback. So all I am doing today is some housecleaning, laundry and maybe a short walk with Chico. Tomorrow is market day and I will walk down and buy some veggies. Hopefully on Thursday I can get to the spa. I hate that cave steam room but it would be a good thing for my lungs.

The weather here has been beautiful. I sit in the sunshine in the afternoons. Friends have come down and I haven't been able to visit with them. Maybe in a few days I will feel up to doing that. One friend just returned from a trip to Iran and she has a bad case of Broncitis. Another friend has emphysema. I feel for both of them. Not being able to breathe is very difficult. I am glad my problem is over, hopefully, now.

DON'T OVERDO IT PATRICIA!  My advice to myself that I hope I can keep today and the next few days. Funny about physical pain, it is so easy to forget once it is gone. Otherwise women would only have one child and say, NO MORE.  I remember when I was in high school and had my appendix out. I thought that if the pain would go away and I could get out of the hospital, I would be happy for the rest of my life. But I forgot once I was well and went on with all the heartaches and triumphs that come with being alive. The memory of that pain completely forgotten. 

This is the high season now, although this entire year has felt like the high season. There doesn't seem to be a low season anymore. The hotels are pretty much booked up now until around April. If you come down without a reservation, good luck in finding anything.

I have been sick for many weeks. I missed most of the Day of the Dead celebrations and I don't know what else. Staying home is now my safety zone and I almost don't want to go out in the world again. Hopefully, in a few days of being well here I will be bored and feel like joining the living again. 

A few Halloween photos

Unfortunately I was sick on Halloween. I was planning on going trick or treating with this group of friends. But my friend Dulce sent me these photos. I was so sorry that I had to miss it. I am feeling better. Maybe in a few days the doctor will say I can go out in public again. 

How could anyone say no to those beautiful smiles? There are a few more photos plus the article about the Thriller Dance posted on accesslakechapala.com 

Morning Thoughts about the doctor and Pneumonia

I was asked again about how I am feeling. So here goes....  I went to the doctor yesterday at the Ajijic Hospital. I usually don't recommend doctors or restaurants or dentists because others may have a different experience but this time I want to recommend the doctor there. His name is Dr. Antonio Herrera Cuesta. He comes in at different hours so it is good to call and find out when he is there. Here is his number: 333 4547783. He is a very young man and very soft spoken. One thing that I love about every doctor I have seen in Mexico, and I have seen a lot, they are all very kind and will listen to what you say. They do not make you strip of your clothes, weigh and measure you and treat you like a body first. First and foremost is that they seem to care about your personality and your spirit, and the body comes next. And they only look at what is troubling you. No invasive other stuff and no sitting half naked in a cold examining room for what seems like hours in the USA.  One of the main reasons I live here is because of the medical care, because of the doctors and nurses I have seen and the hospitals.

Okay, I went in at four thirty and the doctor was right on time. He seemed to be surprised at how much better I had gotten in one week. I have been taking very good care of myself. I told him that is why I didn't want to check into the hospital that first day that I saw him a week earlier. Plus the expense and having no one at home for my animals.  He was dismayed but didn't push me. Later on, when I found out just how dire my situation was, i might have changed my mind about that. But this week there were no more bees in my chest or ghosts talking about what to do with me when I arrived wherever a person arrives after dying. I was much clearer. But i am still not well.

He said it was okay for me to walk a bit so i did walk to the hospital and back but i can't be around people for another seven days and sees him again. He charges 300 pesos. That is around 16 dollars. I noticed on the board, a night at the hospital is only 900 pesos.  They also have an x ray machine but I didn't ask the cost and they have a lab and full operating room and one or two hospital rooms.

Anyway, my daughter-in-law who is a nurse had told me to get pregnazone and use it too. So I bought a box. I told the doctor and he said no, that there was a shot that worked better and has no side affects. So He gave me another bunch of prescriptions. I walked to the generic pharmacy and bought the shot and almost everything else and walked back to the hospital and for 30 pesos the nurse gave me the shot. I have to get another one today. I think it is a steroid.  And I have another round of antibiotics to take and of course the noisy nebulizer.

I walked home. And it takes most of my day just doing all this drug routine but my garden is beautiful and sunny. I have been sitting out there and enjoying my plants. The barking dogs next door--not so much.   No more sightings from the pit bull that so casually walked into my house a few days ago, took a huge dump in my kitchen, drank Chico's water and walked back out the front door. 

I constantly drink herbal tea with honey and then juice.....   So, hopefully this will be over soon and I can get back to the spa and spend a lot of time in their natural steam room.  Thank you all so much for your outpouring of concern for me. I really appreciate that. Looks like i will live a bit longer but i will maybe wait a couple of days before writing again. I wrote an article for accesslakechapala.com under blogs. Maybe it is published now, about the Thriller Dance. Haven't done anything since but I do have photos of the trick or treaters I was sent to put in another article when I am up to writing again. 

Morning Thoughts

The last of the Day of the Dead holidays are finally over, I think. I can never be sure about the holidays here because they last so long.

 I am very sick. I have pneumonia. I went to a different clinic than the expensive one I went to the first time. I had about three days of being well, just enough time to go to the Thriller Dance and then it hit me again. So off I went to the Ajijic Hospital, afraid of what he would say. And I was right. He wanted to immediately put me into the hospital there. I said no. For many reasons, money being one, my animals at home being another and the third is I hate being in a hospital. I can take better care of myself at home. 

So I bought a nebulizer at the Guadalajara pharmacy and a bunch of meds and walked home. It sure seems like a long ways when it is impossible to breathe. But I made it. Put the nebulizer together and no steam. I worked with it most of the day and realized that the instructions inside the box and the photos of the parts did not match the parts, and all instructions of course were in Spanish.   So no treatments that day. The next day I went back to the pharmacy with the useless nebulizer, feeling even weaker, and the manager spent a lot of time there trying to get it to work. He agreed that the directions didn't match the parts. But he finally knew enough about the part that wasn't listed that it was missing a very small and essential part in order to make stem. So he put that other part in and it worked. 

Today is my second day of being home and doing the nebulizer every few hours. Friends have brought me food and I stupidly spend too much time looking at the US news. Making myself depressed. I can't do much else. Just walking from one room to the next is exhausting. I really feel sorry for people with permanent lung problems. And I am hoping mine won't be permanent. It sounds like a bunch of bees are in my chest and also people are having conversations in there. I can't quite figure out their words, just all their noises. Maybe it is ghosts trying to figure out how to kill me off while I am here and sick. I know that some people die from pneumonia. Okay, I am ready. Take me away if that is what you want, you ghosts inside my chest, chattering away. How fitting, to die on the Day of the Dead Holiday. 

But, hopefully, I will get well  and be able to live again. I have had this same sickness twice this month and a cold before that.

The Day of the Dead celebrations were wild here. It was too noisy to sleep. My neighbor spent the day with his friend hammering something between our two roofs. All day long and it sounded like he was right in my house. I have never complained to people here before but I was sick and hurting and it was almost nine at night. They were still hammering. I yelled out the window, asking when they were going to finish. They said, another hour. Then I heard a strange noise in my kitchen. It was their dog. He somehow had climbed up their roof and over to mine and fallen down onto my patio after he tore down my sun shade. Then casually walked into my house, took a huge three piece dump in my bedroom and walked into my kitchen and started drinking Chico's water. This is a big, very strong looking pit bull.  Scary looking but very gentle. Chico and Olive were too stunned to do anything but watch him drink. 

At that point I went off the rails. I made him go out my front door and yelled at my hammering neighbors that their dog was in my house. I forgot that I hadn't combed my hair that day and was wearing my night clothes which means an old t shirt and old lady cotton under pants, nothing else below that.

As I was yelling at them, the dog just casually walked home and I realized that I looked like a total fool . Maybe one of the scary trick or treaters.    That was my Halloween night......

Other than that excitement, I have just been stuck in my house trying to keep on breathing......  and hoping those chattering ghosts in my chest don't win this battle.  Maybe I will spend some time sitting in the sunshine in my garden today. I hope your Day of the Dead holiday was more fun than mine. 

Photos of the Thriller Dance at the Ajijic Plaza

I am sick again. So I didn't make it to any other Day of the Dead celebrations. But here are some photos of the thriller dance.

Above is Cortlandt Jones. He directed the dance. Below is him without make up.

Below is a photo he sent me of him in the original Michael Jackson Thriller Dance. He said he is behind Michael Jackson and on the right.

I really wanted to interview him but I got sick again. I have the same problem I had a couple of weeks ago. Guess I will have to force myself to see a doctor today. Here are a few more photos.

At the end of th dance they did a line dance and everyone was invited to join in

Each year the dance is for a nonprofit organization. This year it was for the Tepehua Center. 

Later on, when I feel better, I will write an article with more information for Accesslakechapala.com blog. This is about all I feel like doing for now. I think the men in the above photo were about as tired as I feel now.