We're Here!!

Mercy! We thought we had a bad internet connection in March. It's almost non-existent now. We've been here since the 30th of Oct and this is the first time I've been able to get online. I brought my iPhone with me, mainly because we live hours away from our home airport and I feel safer with it in case of an accident. (How did we manage before cell phones?) It has been the only way we've been able to stay in touch with our kids. On the plus side, I`ve been forced to learn how to do things with it that I didn`t know how before. Dinosaur that I am, I pretty much just use it for texting and sending pictures. A few apps would make it much more useful down here. Oh well. It`s sufficient for now.

Great news! For us anyways. Not so much for our neighbour across the back. He had a couple of trees that had grown so large they blocked our view of the Gulf. Apparently, he had a break-in this summer and decided to install an alarm system along the top of his fence. It looks like an electric fence and has 5 strands of wire. In order to do this, he had to cut down both of those trees. I tried to post before and after pics, but they won't download.

The mosquitoes have been more present than usual. I've given up trying to kill them before going to bed and in the middle of the night when the sneaky little bleepers decide to have midnight lunch. Now I simply hose myself down with OFF and call it a night. I often use it during the day, as well, and I've used a ridiculous amount since we've been here but the other option is to lose sleep and/or get chewed alive and risk dengue. I don't like using so much of it, but the few bites I've received have swollen and been really itchy. Not to the epic proportions that they did when we first started coming down, but more than they did on our last trip. Sometimes a chemical intervention is necessary.

If any of my readers know of any Remembrance Day services in either Progreso or Chixulub, could you please drop me an email? thebts2000 AT yahoo DOT ca. If you reply here, I may not see it but I can access email with my phone, so that's the best place. The gentleman who normally arranges it isn't here at this time. Thanks bunches.

And that's about it. Hopefully I can post sooner than in another week. Maybe even add some photos.

Lest We Forget

The Remembrance/Veteran's Day ceremony was held at the Bamboo Beach restaurant, in Chicxilub this morning and was very well attended. Both the Canadian and American anthems were sung. The Last Post and Reveille were played via a computer. John McCrea's moving poem, "In Flander's Fields", was read and the computer provided "Amazing Grace" stirringly played on the bagpipes. The restaurant, as well as the street outside, was surprisingly quiet during the 2 minutes silence.

The restaurant provded several varieties of very tasty sandwiches after the service.

Participating in Remembrance Day has always been important to me so I was very happy to find out that a service was being held down here. This was the second year it was held at The Bamboo. I'm hoping it will become a regular thing so I can honour our veterans this way every year.