Ooh, we had a big wind and rain storm last night. Mucho flooding. So what happens when certain neighborhoods get too much precipitation? The water goes out in the houses, of course!

Traffic jams in some parts of the city were biblical this morning. Driving to work, I came across a puddle that was more than 5 lanes wide. It covered an entire intersection. At a 4.5-lane-wider, a bus driving by threw water high enough to cover a small car.

Hail-damaged cars are still on sale at dealerships in El Paso from the last hailstorm. Some colonias got a little more last night, too.

© 2007 http://cjmex.blogspot.com/

Our Spanish teacher told us that the border agents who are meanest towards non-Americans entering the country are Hispanic Americans. Go figure.

He said that when he crests the top of a bridge leading to a multiple-lane "port" of entry, and sees what agent is working his lane, he's relieved if it's someone Caucasian. Otherwise, he cusses.

He pretends that he doesn't speak English well when he gets a Hispanic agent, though he speaks it very well, and listens to what they say about him. He's been called a monkey, and worse.

© 2007 http://cjmex.blogspot.com/

If children are Mexico's greatest treasure, why do no Mexican parents supervise their kids -- riding their bikes on the road, playing with sticks, climbing on the playground equipment -- while they're running around our compound?

Here's something else they should be looking out for: peeing! A notice went out to all the compound families, which said that kids both large and small had been observed peeing in the park: in the grass and in the sandbox. The letter urged parents to watch their kids, as "we do not want to have to send pictures [of the perpetrators] with this kind of communication." (i.e. a community-wide bulletin)

© 2007 http://cjmex.blogspot.com/

Uh, oh -- it was still 90 degrees at 9 o'clock tonight. I think summer has arrived....

Last night, a family in our compound hired a four-man mariachi band to play for a dinner party of theirs. A party of 10 people.

Sometimes I think we might be on the poor end of the compound families, and not just because we don't dust our car regularly. But now I know.

But here's something low-rent that some neighbors here do and we don't: let their dogs bark on and on. We live next to a super-wealthy family that has a large Labrador. They never take it out of their tiny yard to run and play with other dogs, so sometimes it barks and barks when it's outside. She's probably begging other dogs to come and spring her from prison. The neighbors say they never expected her to grow so big. Whatever.

When their dog gets to barking next door, it sets ours off. As does the outdoor toy poodle at #13 and the 3 outdoor dogs across the park. Imagine how fun it must be for 3 dogs to live in a yard that's about 7' by 40' -- they never ever go out either -- and you can guess how much they bark. Off and on all day and night. I was up at 3 a.m. once, and that gang of 3 were yelling away. How the neighbors on either side of them can stand it, I can't figure out.

So when these 5 dogs go to DEFCON 5, we can't get ours to shut up. Sadly, this now goes on in our house day and night. Hope we get to move on before it's too late.

You can't blame the dogs, though. The ones in our neighborhood must be bored and lonely. The 3 across the park from us live surrounded by a 2-story townhouse, a 20' wall and a 15' wall, and only have a 3' view on the world, through an iron fence. The two that can see over the bottom of the fence have a view of the world, that is. The shortest one can see nada.

Some of the owners in the neighborhood around the corner, the one that has a big park along one end, just let their dogs loose. That park is nice, but has broken glass in it and the area is more urban than suburban. And the owners don't supervise their dogs. So what's to prevent those dogs from being hit by cars, stepping on glass, getting bit or pregnant by others (because few spay and neuter here) running loose? Nada.

There is a pair of Great Danes in a house in that neighborhood. When they come out, (to leave giant poops in the park, of course) you can see they have sores on their elbows and knees, as if they live on concrete or tile most of the time. When a new batch of big, loose males came over to investigate our females one day, we stopped taking them around the corner for exercise. It was always depressing, anyway.

Now we drive 30 minutes each way once a week to a big park in El Paso, where there is no broken glass but no longer any dog runs, either. We can only speed-walk them there on the leash. No more off-leash freedom. They're both getting a little fat from the Juarez lifestyle.

© 2007 http://cjmex.blogspot.com/

Can't we have normal rainstorms, like everywhere else?

We should have known to expect bad weather last week, after washing the car for the first time in months. It's kind of pointless to wash it often, as it just get covered in dust days later. (seriously, people DUST THEIR CARS here) But the tiny bits of road tar should come off periodically. So wash it we did. And the next day: rain, hail and tornadoes. Even though it only rains about once every six weeks here, and then only very briefly.

It hailed on and off for almost a half-hour. Hail about the size of an eye. Luckily, our car happened to be under a roof at work, and the two tornadoes were elsewhere in El Paso County. But the rain turns the area dust into .... mud. And the car got filthy on the drive home.

So this past weekend, K. went at it again. The car sparkled anew. And then Monday night, all of Juarez awoke at 3 a.m. to a hailstorm to end all hailstorms. Eye-sized hail again. There was so much of rain and hail piled up on our back patio, it looked a cranberry farm when they float the berries out of the bogs. Amazingly, some were still there the next morning. (we went back to bed at 4)

So now the car is black again, and will probably stay dirty for a long while. Most of the giant puddles on the roads have dried up. I spent a lot of time Tuesday morning trying to figure out the safest way to work. I opted for the route with the lowest speed limit -- wise choice. There were only a few potholes that would have swallowed a non-SUV wheel.

© 2007 http://cjmex.blogspot.com/