7 days

My weeks seem to be overwhelmed with an abundance of strange and wonderful things. Please forgive my recent habit of writing lists for updates instead of prose.

Tuesday:

• I convince myself that I have an infection and need antibiotics since I'll shortly be boarding a plane to a land of no healthcare access (which to an uninsured individual means no access to Mexico..).


• I make a trip just across the border to buy some Cipro (an anti-biotic which kills stomach bugs (picked up by say, drinking the water in Monterrey...), urinary tract organisms, as well as anthrax should one happen to have that too). The pharmacist tells me that it is illegal to bring this specific medication over the border, before offering me a bottle of Toradol to put it in. Thank you shady border pharmacist.


• Giddy with my purchase of Mexican pharmaceuticals at an outrageously low cost (along with my friend who bought a years worth of Yasmin), we skip back across the border and head back to the clinic.


• We receive a call along the way to inform us that our "clinic coup" has happened earlier than expected. I'd love to elaborate on the topic, since my giddiness at that point was uncontainable, but I will err on the side of being "professional." Basically there was a lot of bad stuff going on in the clinic, and when I came here, I realized that perhaps my reason for being here beyond patient care was to help in the revolution and rebuilding of wonderful Holy Family. I am happy that I will be able to leave knowing that the clinic is returning to the wonderful work and care it was built on 25 years ago.


• We went out for margaritas to celebrate. Where? Weslaco residents' favorite "bar:" Chili's. Haha, I will never get over this being one of the "local hot spots."

The Holy Family crew

I go to McAllen, where I've been house-sitting, to pack up my things. Shortly after arriving I begin feeling itchy/burny/tingly: at first in my hands and feet, and then all over. Not wanting to have an anaphylactic reaction alone, I finish up and quickly head for the clinic. Mid-drive, I start blacking out, and pull over to hang my head between my knees. I call the midwife/family nurse practitioner, who reassures me I won't die and that "anaphylactic-like" symptoms can be a side-effect of Cipro. Great. I pull myself together, drive home, and induce a Benadryl-coma.

Wednesday:

• Wake up 6 hours later for the staff meeting which has been moved to IHOP, as the clinic is under siege.


• Hop on the plane to Denver for a "business trip," miss the connection in Dallas due to weather, and finally arrive around 11pm.

In flight entertainment

Thursday:

• Hang out with my family who "just happened" to be in Colorado visiting my sister.


• Cards were played. Food was eaten. Sleep was had. In that order of importance.
  

Friday:

• Business day: I spend the afternoon/evening writing health education modules for my sister's actuarial consulting company.


• All work and no play makes Rachel and Kristen dull sisters: we indulge in some mountain biking and Estes Park's own locally roasted coffee at Kind Coffee shop.

Saturday:

• More work for Kristen. Back on the plane to Texas. Plane majorly delayed due to pressurization issues.


• I have the pleasure of staying at a crappy motel in Dallas' airport-land. I love having a motel room all to myself, especially when paid for by American Airlines. Where do they get the decor for these rooms? is what I want to know though.

Sunday:

• After 6 hours of sleep, I hustle myself out of bed and back to the airport.


• There's a laboring patient when I arrive in McAllen, so the midwives can't pick me up.


• I finagle a borrowed car and make it back just in time for the birth. Beautiful.


• My co-workers attend a Christian rock concert. I opt not to.


• I spend the evening wanting to go to bed, but feeling guilty because there's too much to catch up on, and thus crack myself out on chocolate and home-made tortilla chips and achieve marginal productivity until 1am

Monday:

• Exhausted and hungover from junk-food and insufficient sleep, it's back to work. The office is peaceful and happy under our new democratic rule.


• I am pleased but in denial about starting my last week of work at Holy Family

Playing 6-handed Pitch

A Day in the Life of Danica and Rachel

One of my girlfriends is visiting from Seattle. When we get together, crazy and wonderful things always happen...

7am Wake up at Sister Anita’s House in McAllen

8am order from abundant breakfast taco menu at Mrs. G’s Taco’s

8:15 Be so excited about our impending feast that I back directly into a giant pole and spill hot coffee all over myself—the only pair of pants I’m planning to bring on our trip—but the tacos are safe.

8:16 Drive off as if nothing happened

8:21 Eat epic breakfast taco feast on the porch

8:32 Examine car and find only a small dent and some red paint. Yes!

8:33 Tour the neighborhood lawn displays of exercise equipment, laundry facilities, and various ornaments.

9:00 Buy 2 lotto tickets—win $20—buy 2 more—lose—net win $16

9:20 Board bus to Monterrey, Mexico

12:50pm Arrive in Monterrey. After failing to function the pay phone we are discovered by Luis and Diego, who were sent by Memo (a friend I know from the Iowa City salsa scene) to pick us up.

1:00 Hit the town

1:15 Enjoy a free Tacate beer at the brewery’s lovely beer garden

2:00 To the art gallery to see Luis’ collage

3:00 Walk around Macro Plaza, see a pony in a store window, next to a jaundiced monkey, but refuse to pay 2 pesos to enter the store. Laugh hysterically outside instead. Woodchips.

4:00 Rachel eats pig. We feast on traditional Mexican soups, carne asada, mole, cheesy plantains, and inadvertently drink a couple glasses of tap water…

5:00 Meet up with Memo and drive to the top of the city to look out. Incidentally, Monterrey is enormous.

7:00 Get lost in the crazily (dis)organized Monterrey and gawk at the rich people’s homes

8:00 Memo turns over his apartment to us for the weekend.

9:15 We meet wonderful Mirna, Memo’s girlfriend, and go out for ceviche.

10:20 Get a table at last, in the unroofed restaurant. People eat very late here.

11:00pm Finally get served. We feast on ceviche tostadas with avocado—much different from the Peruvian ceviche, which is spicier and has more lime and onion, and is served with fried corn and sweet potato or yucca instead of tortillas.

12:15am Arrive home to our new place, and unready to go to bed after our late meal, we do some house cleaning for our outstanding host.

1:30am Giggle about our days of ridiculousness that never cease when we are together.

This was day 1 of 3 for us in Monterrey. We returned late on Saturday night.

Note: If you buy a toothbrush in Mexico, spend more than $1.

5 Things I Never Expected to Spend my Weekend Doing Before Moving Here (but did this weekend)

#1 Spend my Friday night at a country western bar, "boot-scootin-boogying." (Need I sing "heel, toe, dosi-doe" for you to get the full picture?" OH my
#2 Feel under-dressed because I was not wearing a sparkly belt and cowboy boots.
#3 House-sit for and hang out with Catholic nuns.
#4 Do my best to triage a patient over the phone, in Spanish, at 1am
#5 Walk to Mexico...Yep, I finally made it! About 15 min from my house there's a place where you can walk over the border (with your passport as of June 1st). The first thing we saw was a dental surgery clinic. In fact the whole first 1/2 mile I'd say of this town, called Nuevo Progresso, is dental clinics and pharmacies, with some surgeons and general practice docs sprinkled in. And then that is all surrounded by people hawking yummy treats, sunglasses, t-shirts, liquor, and handicrafts. It's una locura (crazy sight, madness), especially considering on the other side of the border lies nothing but tranquil farm land. They must do some huge business when all the "Winter Texans," ie the old midwesterners, come down for the winter.

Dental clinics galore

"Don't let your gun get rusty, use it. Ammunition here." It also appears that they are selling Viagra?

Figs from the tree

There's a fig tree outside the clinic door, and I said to myself when I arrived that I couldn't leave until it bloomed. Well now it's lush with plump and juicy little fruitlings that you can eat right off the tree. Each bite is a sensuous discovery of seeds and sweet flesh...oh my, it's amazing. I can't stop eating them! I think the figs' timing will be perfect, as I've decided to stay only until July 1, so I can spend the 4th with my family in Kansas City, and then prepare to return to Peru for my second Patch Adams clowning mission.

Yesterday I realized a new part of The Valley: an affluent one. I'm used to being in my own little clinical world, where the average family incomes is <$12K/year. I went out to eat with my friends: a doctor and a nurse, and discovered a whole new world in McAllen (The Valley's big city.) Homes with beauuuutiful and immense gardens, swimming pools, and stone driveways. Gated communities. People driving foreign cars (not from Mexico). It was very interesting to see. The funny thing is that many of the people are actually wealthy Mexicans who invest in homes here. It's funny to me that some Americans think Mexicans are border jumping to rob the American welfare system or take our jobs, whereas in reality they're stimulating our economy by big pimpin it in The Valley, haha. (That, or they are working as factory workers or migrant farmers and doing the back-breaking labor that no one else wants to do). I'm not sure what to make of it all--I feel gut reactions like I cannot believe people are living like this when there are 10 person families crammed into trailers who cannot afford prenatal vitamins, but I'm trying to just observe and not judge the ever-stranger Valley. And of course there are wonderful people like my two friends who are using their powers for good.

In other news, this weekend I went to the market per usual. There was a mariachi band playing, and it was so fun to see families gathered to dance and drink and be together after their day at the market. Here it seems like Sunday is just an extra gifted day at the end of the week: one for getting drunk in the middle of the day if you want to, spending a lot of time to prepare good meals (like barbacoa, which takes half a day), and just enjoying life. I was just watching and drinking a cantaloupe agua fresca (juice that is ladled out of big vats into a giant styrofoam cup), when an old guy dressed in his Sunday best (cowboy boots, a bling bling belt, and a cowboy hat) asked me to dance. We danced for about 6 songs and then I slipped away after he called me his girlfriend one or two times. Fun times as always en el mercado.


I am having a love affair with lime. Thankfully, it's a cheap fix: $1/big bag

Into the woods...I mean my unconscious

Oops, I forgot to post my entry saying that I was leaving for 2 weeks to go "up north." On May 20th I drove up to Dallas, picking up 3 girls in Austin along the way, for a 10 day Vipassana meditation course. Participants arrive on day 0 and leave on day 11, so it's really 12 days. There was no talking during the 10 days of meditation, except for minimal communication with the facilitators and teacher, and other than that: pure breath.

Each day we awoke to a bell/gong at 4am and then started meditating at 4:30. Breakfast was at 6:30. We took several breaks throughout the day, but 11 full hours were spent in seated meditation. I usually passed out around 9:30pm. Mind you, I was not able to focus the entire time, and probably spent hours trying to refocus my mind back to the breath after it wandered into the hills of Peru, to the chocolate I'd eaten before arriving, to that one thing my ex-boyfriend said to me one time, to something I'd been meaning to tell one of my friends, what I wanted to do next in my life's journey, etc etc etc. It was amazing some of the stuff I dug up from the depths of my relatively short human experience. It was amazing too how often I came back to the same thoughts over and over, and how much of our daily mind dribble is just the same record of habitual thoughts repeating relentlessly, whether we realize it or not.

It was very interesting to see how all the internal junk manifested externally. All of the yucky stuff we store deep down inside ourselves, not even anything so terrible necessarily, but maybe some aversion to a specific thing, say green olives, that you've reacted to hundreds or thousands of times with a negative knee-jerk reaction (that "Ick!" face or a shudder even), and then bury it over and over again. There wasn't one person who didn't become ill during the program as a result of all this dis-ease bubbling to the surface. The first day I thought I was going to throw up, and I wanted to leave. The second day I got a rash. Good thing I did ride-share, or I might have fled. My ego said No No No, this isn't for you, you're fine, you don't need to do this...RUN!!! Get away from this discomfort! But I just kept on sitting and breathing. It's so funny to think of all those people (there were about 90), who were by appearances calmly sitting cross-legged on their blue cushions, while inside their minds were going haywire and their bodies were screaming to be let out.

By day 2, for me at least, it was much better. The experience manifested differently for everyone though. I could hear people getting sick in the bathroom throughout the week. And it wasn't the food, which was the one bright and shiny part of the day: the food was incredible. Mmm, I got to be a little spoiled in fact in that respect. When day 5 passed I was relieved that I was half way done, but also felt terrified a little that I still had half the program yet to go. I'm going to die, I thought only 1/2 jokingly. And again how funny and dramatic is that? When all I'm doing is sitting there, in a wonderfully safe and loving and peace-filled environment...and when I've done so much seemingly more challenging things? Ahh but the physical feats are so much easier than the internal ones. Give me a volcano to climb, a mountain to scale, a foreign country and language to penetrate: lovely, but take away my journal, my communication to the outside world (as well as interpersonally), and make me sit cross-legged for 11 hours a day with myself, ah!! It's oddly terrifying. Though actually by the 7th day, I thought, oh no! It's almost over, and I still have so much work I could do. I want to stay meditating forever! It's so beautiful once you find peace in the flow of it all and uncover a sufficient amount of crap. Truly, it's blissful.

All in all, it was incredible and I recommend it to everyone. Above all I feel internally strengthened by the experience. I feel much less hurried and more at peace with myself and others. More patient. More aware. And better equip to handle anything that comes my way. I may have spent 10 days away from work and relationships, but I feel like doing that deep internal work has made me 10x more efficient and appreciative. And like I said anyway, though you might feel like you're missing out on a lot, all that's really going on in your brain for the vast majority of the time is a record of habitual thoughts. Sure there are the day to day variances and events and interchanges that arise, but mostly it's all the same. So better to fill that space with breath and be a happier and more peaceful person because of it :)

One thing I want to share that I was reminded of during the course, is that in each moment we are literally remade TRILLIONS of times. This is because all of our anatomical parts are made up of cells, which are made up of atoms, which spin around trillions and trillions of times every moment, which means that by appearances we are a solid mass, but in reality we are not held together by anything solid at any point in time.

We are just like candles: the flame appears to be continually burning, but in reality the flame is rising and then passing away and rising and passing away. It's also similar to our TVs, which appear to have a constant picture, but if you look in the window at someone watching TV in a dark room, you know that the image is just a bunch of flickers over and over again, and not a constant form. SO, what that means to me is that in every millisecond (indeed more often) you have the opportunity to change it all around. To change your mood, to change your day, to smile, to be something else, to not feel pain. Cool! So go on, smile! And then do it again! And just be! Be happy! :)

Happy June to everyone. I hope all are doing exceptionally.
Love, Rachel

To learn more about the meditation course I did or to find a center, see: www.dhamma.org
Courses are free and are offered all over the world. And they very purposefully have no religious ties, so they are for everyone!