Trip to Atlanta

End of the School Year Party for AIS, Christiane and her Buddies

After a whirlwind tour of Mexico, looking for a town to live in, finding an apartment, making new friends, visiting old ones, making the obligatory tour of Yucatan, and having our first visitor for Holy Week, we headed back to Atlanta for the month of May. As we approached the city after a three-day car trip, Mexico receded back into a dreamland, and our Atlanta life came back into focus. It was nice having an apartment to come home to in a great neighborhood, and it was nice having all that green that Atlanta is so famous for. México is a tad dry.

We had plenty to do, besides revisiting friends to say hello and then again to say goodbye before we left for Querétaro. We sold the Camry to get something with more clearance for the topes (speed bumps), and settled on a Honda CRV, small enough to navigate the historic district, high enough to miss the topes, and repairable in Mexico. We decided to sell the house in Atlanta since we had had virtually no nibbles from renters while we were gone, and even if we rented it 12 months a year we would still lose money on it with the high Atlanta taxes, insurance, upkeep, agent’s fees, etc. We had a garage sale to get rid of the stuff we had put into storage. We only brought in about $150 with maybe 12 people showing up over two days. What a waste of time! So we tried Craigslist, and sold the bedroom and other stuff within a few days mostly by e-mail. We applied for and got our FM3 visa which will allow us to bring in a household worth of goods and our car tax free, and which we can renew without leaving Mexico for up to five years. Problem is we can’t work. We got our international health insurance, which also covers us in both Mexico and the US for less than COBRA would have cost just for the US. We got out Lingo VOIP telephone, which allows us to make unlimited phone calls from Mexico and the US for only $20 a month. The number, (678) 608 1208, is an Atlanta area code and will cost people calling us the same as if we were in Atlanta. For folks in Atlanta the call is just like a local call. We got on each other’s nerves and were happy to be moving back to Querétaro again.

And of course, last, but not least, we attended Nathalie's graduation (MA in Library Science) at the University of North Carolina where her fiancé, Benn J., also graduated. We met Benn's family and generally had a great time and look forward to grandchildren(!) and the ultimate unification of our families.

Nat and Benn, Chapel Hill, May 2006

Nat and Family with Her Advisor in the Background

Benn's Mother, Patricia; Sister, Julie; Father, Donn; and Grandmother, Irene, in Chapel Hill; Plus Nat, Benn and Christiane

On our trip back we stopped to visit Mary P. in Slidell. She had been chased out of her home by Katrina and had moved to Texas. Water reached nearly to the bottoms of the windows on her house, and it just so happened she was back in town that weekend to work on the house, or rather to supervise her brothers who worked on the house. We finally met her daughter, a few of her brothers (big catholic family like Christiane’s), and sisters. They are truly a loving family, and Mary is lucky to have them to help her through the trauma. Oh, BTW, Mary was in the Peace Corps with me in Morocco for the non-RPCVers out there (RPCV = Returned Peace Corps Volunteer.)

I was worried that we would be caught at the border with our car full of stuff that did not agree precisely with the list the consulate had approved. There were a number of things we could not bring with us due to space problems. We had been told to expect a two-hour wait at the border, but we got everything done within 50 minutes, except the customs stuff. Every time I asked where to go for customs, I was told to go elsewhere. Finally, we were told to turn in our list and get inspected at a check point 50 km inland. So we left Reynosa and headed to Monterrey. At the check point, I tried to turn in the list, and they looked at it as if they had never seen one before. We were told that we had to do that back in Reynosa. After 15 minutes of discussion, a lady came out of customs and told us to go on since we did not have enough to worry about. Next time, I will go through the “Nothing to Declare” line.

México was green (sort of) since the rainy season had begun while we were in Atlanta. We got to Querétaro about 6 that evening, were welcomed back by the Canadian and US contingent in the neighborhood, unpacked and went to bed.

Now Atlanta is like this dreamland, and Querétaro is real life. I don’t know how often we can do this without developing split personalities.