Sunday in Ajijic and Chapala

Sunday. I enjoy Sundays. More people are out and the atmosphere is very relaxed. I took the above photos. The first one is of the sunset from the top floor where I am living now. These photos are in reverse of how they were taken. Evening first, morning last...

The next photo is of a woman I met here on my last trip, Aleene Trammel. She has been coming here since 1981. Her little dog, Tiny almost died one week before this photo was taken. He was banged around at the airport and sent through the x ray machine. Aleene gave him mouth to mouth recitation to keep him alive. You can see the love in her face for Tiny.

She is living in Chapala in a motel. It is where I lived on my first trip. The rooms are around two hundred dollars a month and it is just half a block from the Plaza. That works for an elderly person. I liked it the first trip because I couldn't walk much with my bad knee. It is a clean, safe motel. Locked outside gates at night. The people living there are friendly and helpful.

The next two photos are of a young man who makes jewelry from natural objects, beans, etc. I bought a couple of his necklaces at Christmas time for gifts. Most of them cost 150 pesos. That is well under fifteen dollars in American money and it must take him many hours to make each object. Maybe that is why he isn't smiling. I didn't see him doing any business and he couldn't be making much money with such low prices.

The Ajijic art fair is the next photo. I was taking some photos of it when an American woman yelled angrily at me from across the plaza that I wasn't allowed to photograph the paintings. She also shook her finger at me as if she were scolding a bad little girl. I don't know what she thought I would do with them, take the photos and put them on my wall? Or copy them and sell them? She was extremely rude to me and I quickly left the scene.

I took two photos of murals on the walls in Ajijic. There are murals all over town. I will take more photos of them in the future.

The church bells were ringing in the plaza and I photographed two dogs who were looking up at the church. Those bells are loud. They hurt my ears. I can't imagine how loud they must have sounded to the sensitive ears of dogs.

The last three photos were taken at the morning meeting at LCS. Sunday Open Circle. I was a bit bored, as I usually am in lectures so I took a photo of a friend. He loves flowers. Every time I see him I get flowers from his back pack. So I put them on the table and photographed them. They last longer in a photo. He put one behind his ear and smiled. I couldn't resist taking his picture.

The last photo is the Open Circle meeting in progress. I didn't stay until the end. I went out the back and on down to the plaza for the art show and enounter with the angry American woman....

I went on to the American Legion for afternoon hamburgers and lemon pie with my friends. Again I was snapped at by an angry American woman. I bought two pieces of pie and I asked if she would cut them and put them on four small plates so I could share them with my friends. Each piece was too much for one person. She said, You only bought two pieces, not four. We are all volunteers here and we have to wash all these dishes........ Well, okay, at least she cut them in half. But I was put off by her anger. Okay, more than put off, I was shaken.

Twice in one day I was the object of anger from American women. I felt like I was a misbehaving little girl, doing naughty things..... One reason I came to Mexico was to avoid those kinds of feelings. (Americans are generally far more aggressive and outspoken than the Mexicans.) But it isn't possible to run away from one's interior ghosts. I grew up with a lot of criticism and have never learned to deal with it.

I have to work on my reactions so I don't take things so personally and automatically lapse into defensiveness.

That is the story of my Sunday.