The good news from here is that the weather started cooling down about the same time autumn arrived. The nights and early mornings suddenly turned cool enough that I shut windows and have to use a cover. Although it gets hot during the day, it’s not the unbearable heat that it was before, and the humidity has dropped, so it stays cooler in the house. We’re also gradually moving into the dry season, so we’re not getting the torrential rains every day. Of course, that also means that it’s getting dustier. Many people here are sick. It seems that the changes of season affects them.
The bad news is that, because the weeds in my back yard had become a veritable jungle, one of the beasts decided to leave the jungle and enter my house. I came home from classes Mon. evening to find a tarantula on the inside of my back door – not exactly a visitor I had ever hoped to entertain. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do, so I grabbed the Raid (the kind for crawling critters) and sprayed it. It didn’t seem to want to die, sort of like in a nightmare, and I didn’t want to stay there alone with it. Besides, the smell of the Raid was bothering me, so I left home and sought refuge with some friends, who kindly took me in, invited me to stay for supper, then walked along back with me to assess the situation. One of them said the best way to get rid of tarantulas is to burn them. When we got back to the house, it was still alive, although barely, so they started a fire in the front yard, scooped it up with my dust pan, and threw it on the blazing fire. They also came two days later and, armed with their trusty machetes, got rid of the jungle in my back yard so that no more creatures would decide to pay me a surprise visit. By the way, the machete is pretty much the tool of all uses here. I don’t think they have lawn mowers or weed wackers – just machetes. Of course, most people don’t have lawns as we know them, either. I’ve only seen a couple of homes with real grass. Most people just have dirt with fruit trees, flowers, and bushes.
Back to the good news. A hurricane was supposed to have hit here last weekend, but it downsized to a storm and turned in a different direction. Other parts of Mexico have been seriously affected by the hurricanes that have arrived. Flooding has destroyed many lives and much property. Here, should a hurricane hit, at least there would be no flooding, because, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, there is no above-ground water. All water is subterranean, so the water just soaks into the ground. Any damage that occurs here is caused by wind.
Classes are moving along. Most of the kids seem to be excited and are a lot of fun to teach.
