San Miguel de Allende

A: The housing bubble is at work here just as in the most desirable U.S. cities as well. Last time I did a survey on housing prices was in August, 2005. I happened to pick up the August 2005 Real Estate Review, a 52-page throwaway representing 30 real estate agencies. Twelve houses were listed at more than $1 million, 24 homes including condos were listed at under $150,000 (certainly none in Centro), and hundreds more fell in between. I'm not counting lots and commercial properties. Most of the cheaper places, of course, would not be listed with realtors. Prices haven't gotten any lower since then.

I know of three friends who have found houses recently for $80,000-150,000 that will need probably $25,000 renovation. The $150,000 house that has been completed could probably sell for $225,000 today, a profit of $75,000 in six months. But they love it, it's home for the rest of their lives, they hope.

One friend saw a house listed for around $135,000 one day but was told it was sold. A week later the same house was back on the market, no remodeling done, for close to $200,000. That is the kind of turnaround that is being done right now in this housing bubble.

But she found another house ready to move in condition for $130,000 near the El Pipila glorieta on a bus line and bought that and loves it. The same house back in Phoenix in a similar location would probably have been $175,000 or more, and $300,000 in Santa Fe.

Another friend found a three-level gorgeous house full of architectural details on two lots with two parking spaces for $150,000, a long walk from Centro but on a bus line. He put $20,000 remodeling into it, and he could probably sell it now for $250,000. But he loves it and it's now perfect for him to spend the rest of his life here.

Those of us who are renters or who live in that range of housing have very little contact with those who are buying the million-dollar homes. Just as in the U.S., I didn't know any millionaires personally, I mixed mostly with people in my same economic level, we moved on different planes from the rich. Same here, among Mexicans and foreigners alike. That's the reality of the housing bubble in SMA today. We're not all millionaires in SMA.

Another friend just found a lovely small rental apartment for $200 a month! Another pays $300 for a two-bedroom, two bath, but she put thousands into it to get it up to what she wanted. The landlord didn't mind--when my friend dies the apartment will probably rent for triple that. Still a lot cheaper than buying a similar place. Other friends have found apartments in 2006 for $400 and $575 a month within walking distance of the Jardin. It can be done, but not always on your first trip.

Even though housing prices are going up, and many of the remaining bargains have already been snapped up, I still see nice homes for sale that most people who can afford a house in the U.S. could afford to buy here.

A. Have to warn you, it gets cold in San Miguel up here at 6,400 feet. December and January are our coldest months and it often does get below freezing a couple of nights a year, and some people lose some tender plants in their gardens.

It hit 30 two nights last week and we didn't lose anything, but we're in a sheltered courtyard. One year our three-story rubber plant had a brown halo around it for a few months until new leaves grew back, however.

Mexicans are bundled up in sweatshirts, sweatpants and jackets, while tourists still come in shorts but quickly add a jacket. But then Mexican school uniforms look awfully hot to me for all year long--sweat jackets, wool cardigans and knee socks even in May. Several charities collect sweaters, gloves and socks for the poor for the winter, particularly the aged ones who are seen on the streets begging.

During the day it usually still is in the 70s, often 80s, during the winter, and we wear short-sleeved cotton shirts and pants most days and change to jeans and sweaters as the sun goes down, adding a jacket later.

And a few days or a week in late January often it rains and is gray and cold for a week. We're just pulling out of such a week now. It rained hard one day, an inch, while SMA rainfall average is 27 inches a year. (Compare that to Phoenix which averaged 7 inches of rain a year and is in a drought right now that is the worst in more than a century.)

SMA's rainy season is June-October, and usually a heavy shower falls in the late afternon or early evening and it is perfect the rest of the day. You just duck into a restaurant for coffee until it passes if you didn't bring your umbrella. Occasionally we get a few days of rain in a row, too. We could always use more. Sometimes there's a few days of rain in a row at the end of January.

Mexican building is heavy cement, so walls keep cool, great for summer but not for winter when it is bone-chilling cold. Most places don't have heat, or A/C, and they do use fireplaces, though I hate to use up wood since Mexico is depleting its trees. Electricity is expensive (well, not compared to Phoenix) and power lines in the Centro areas weren't built for such heavy loads of all the modern electric appliances, so many apartments' electricity will blow if too many people plug in electric heaters.

Most gringos who live here in the winter go to propane heaters and have an extra line run from their propane tanks (which are on the roof, next to your water tank, and service your stove and hot water heater). You call for propane delivery and usually they come the same day.

Propane heaters can be very basic for under $200, or you can get fancy ones that look like fireplaces for $600. Propane usually runs us $50 a month most of the year and $100 a month Nov-Feb. (For comparison, when we owned an old country church with high ceilings that we converted to a home in rural Michigan, our propane heating bill was $425 a month, and that was 20 years ago.)

Many tourists still think our winters are lovely compared to wherever they came from farther north. Many Canadians in particular come here for our winters and bask in our sun while Mexicans are bundled up. And Texans come here in July and August because we're cooler than much of the U.S. South.

Only the beach areas of Mexico are warm year-round, and they can get oppressively hot, muggy and buggy in the summer. So many people think Mexico is all alike, beaches and jungle, while it's as diverse as the U.S., on everything.

April and May are our hottest months and often it hits 100 for a few days, not every year. After Phoenix's six months of the year over 100, we find it very pleasant even on the hottest days. It all depends on what you were used to when you come to SMA, and what your expectations are.

Overall, San Miguel has the best weather of anyplace in Mexico, we think! It feels the closest to LA of any place we've lived, and LA has absolutely the most perfect weather, though it has gray, cold winter days as well. Tourists showed up in shorts there in January, too, while the rest of us had on jackets.

Many tourists who happened to come to SMA only in a cold spell will tell you they froze to death here, so be forewarned. Dress in layers.

A. We don't exactly fit any zone in the U.S. seed catalogs' descriptions because we're at 6,400 feet, which counteracts our location farther south. Those who have checked into such things say SMA is closest to a 10 when you're choosing your garden and landscaping.

Remember, we're technically a desert, with only 27 inches of rain a year. Choose plants that don't require much water. Bougainvillea grow beautifully here and are everywhere. In spring when you look out over the city from a view point, the lavendar jacaranda trees turn the entire city into a lilac mist. Poinsettia plants you put into the ground after Christmas may grow two stories high--we have red blossoms peeking in our windows from November to February.

Candelaria Day February 2 is actually a religious day for the blessing of the seeds--farmers bring their seeds to church so that the priests can give them a good start on prosperous crops. That week all of Park Juarez turns into a giant nursery, with maybe 100 stalls selling everything from herbs to frut trees. Fancy orchids, bonzai trees, silly lawn ornaments, fertilizer, pots of all sizes--it is a photographer's delight.

Locals go into the same planting frenzy, snapping up everything, that we saw in rural Michigan at the nurseries each spring--but in Michigan we began planting heavily in May, while here it is in February. (In Phoenix we didn't plant much, we mainly used gravel and rocks for xeriscaping.) At Candelaria this year we're buying fresh herb plants for our kitchen window garden and a few new geraniums since our porch plants got leggy this winter.

Kids borrow wheelbarrows and will approach you the moment you buy your first plant and offer to follow you around with the wheelbarrow as you buy here and there, and then they'll take your plants to your car or taxi, for a $1 tip or so. It's one of my favorite weeks of the year.

Q 4: I understand that most Mexican apartments come pretty much bare walls, or the furnishing are not so hot. What if you fix up your rental and then the landlord decides to raise your rent? Is there a cap on the rent increases you can be hit with?

Yes, a landlord could decide to now rent an improved apartment to a relative, same as in the U.S. I suppose you could write up a contract with a lawyer on the conditions under which you undertake improvements, but I doubt it would stand up in court if suddenly the landlord's family arrangements changed--his kid got married and needs a place, etc.

When we made improvements on our place we knew the history of the rentals here--all the tenants were stable and said the only rent increases have been to compensate for changes in the currency exchange. Rents go up with the new tenants. Everyone here has made significant changes in their apartments and people don't leave here unless they die. We don't make any complaints, we do all repairs ourselves, so we're no trouble or troublemakers.

Renting is always a risk, though problems can occur with home buying as well. We're flexible people and trust in our minds that we can handle just about anything that is thrown at us, so we don't worry about problems until they occur. If you want guarantees, owning a house might be more secure--but still, a hillside can fall down, a truck can run into your house, etc.

You can decide to not put a penny into your rental and live dissatisfied in it just in case you might get booted, or you can make your environment around you pleasing and easy to use and enjoy every minute you're there, whether or not you might get booted.

Everything I've read says that Mexican renters put a lot into their places and then take everything with them when they go that they've added. So the next tenant expects to have to replace towel racks, light fixtures, etc., and then will take them all with them when that tenant moves on. Light fixtures are different from major construction, of course.

If we had to move, we'd take our new refrigerator and stove and fancy chandeliers that we put in, even though the place came "furnished." Who knows what junk the landlord could dig up to replace what we take? Crap was in here when we arrived. I think we'd even take the new hot water heater we put in.

Q 5: What about the large numbers of foreigners moving into San Miguel. Is the community changing because of it?

A. Just about every place on earth changes, and some Mexicans may regret the changes in their populations just as some U.S. residents regret the changes in their populations as Mexicans move to their cities. The Irish were resented when they arrived on U.S. shores during the Potato Famine. Europe is dealing with large numbers of Muslim immigrants. Every desirable place on earth faces influxes of new residents, whether with more money, or less money, or a different race or color or religion than the previous community.

Should you stay away from a desirable place to live that suits your needs because you will change the community? Should you not step into a river because you will change it?

I grew up in Detroit which went from around two million population in the early '60s to under a million today. Back in Detroit Wayne State University downtown did a study in the mid-'60s reporting on the way Detroit was resegregating from all-white areas to all-black. The pattern was that an all-white area would panic when the first one or two blacks moved in, the first flurry of those most able to move out quickly did so, and then the area settled down to a gradual acceptance of the slow integration of more and more blacks, until the magical number of one-third blacks was reached. At that point just about every white still left in the old neighborhood who could, up and moved out fast. It happened on my block. Meanwhile, I had moved more inner city. My foks fled to the suburbs.

Before the 1967 riot, Wayne State was predicting that Detroit would be an almost all black city within 20 years, and lo and behold, that happened.

I think that's kind of the way human groups operate. We tend to form our own enclaves, we can accept a few "others" joining us, and suddenly when enough "others" have joined so that we feel the possibility of being outnumbered, we panic and look for another place where we can feel "comfortable."

"We" does not mean me, or every one, just a kind of general pattern of comfort, and I'm not going to extend the pattern too far or to every instance, just offering it as something to think about. Those of us who move to Mexico probably would not fit that pattern, I think--we tend to be more open-minded and willing to leave our comfort zone.

When some magical number of Mexican immigrants "overloads" a formerly mostly white area, some sort of hackles go up and some people feel threatened and start to react. I think many in the African-American community were less than thrilled when Hispanics became the largest minority in the U.S.

Arizona is a strange state, generally a live and let live conservativism of Barry Goldwater/John McCain, becoming more and more cosmopolitan every day as more Californicating goes on and retirees from all over the country with broader viewpoints move there. But along the border where the vigilante movement arose, I think that magical number was reached and somewhere inside many people came the word, "Enough," and they started to react. I could feel some of that even in Phoenix when I lived there. And now some in the U.S. are pushing for a giant wall between the U.S. and Mexico which won't build good feelings between those on both sides.

Change happens. San Miguel would be changing one way or another even if not a single gringo had ever arrived. I'm seeing a few tour groups from China on our streets now, along with many German and Japanese groups and the U.S., Canadian, and British tourists. Some will undoubtedly move here. (Most tourists to San Miguel, however, are from other parts of Mexico.) Personally I think the amount of money and jobs we bring compensates for the greater congestion and rising prices in some commodities. I don't expect anyone or any thing or any city to stay the same. Other forces for change are at work within Mexico and throughout the world at all times. Mario Llosa wrote a novel, The Story Teller, on how even being observed discreetly by anthropologists changed the Amazon River tribes forever. I don't fear change.

Someone in a recent letter to the editor in Atencion noted that development is not a bad thing for Mexico, even though some gringo newcomers may want it to stay just the way it was when they arrived: "I'm here, now close the door." So many of our charities raise money for college scholarships for local youth, and what do these newly educated young people do when they come back to San Miguel, herd goats and sell embroidery in the Jardin? How do we keep these young people in San Miguel instead of watching them pay $2,000 to a coyote to smuggle them into the U.S.?

If you want to keep San Miguel "quaint," remember that "quaint" won't pay the rent for someone ambitious and educated who wants a better life for the future.

Q 6: Does everybody in San Miguel speak English? When I was there I'd say something to a Mexican in Spanish and he'd answer in English.

A: Wouldn't that be nice for some of us who are more language-challenged--but then one of the main advantages of living in a foreign country, seeing everything from the different perspective a new language brings, would be lost. (You can tell a lot about a culture by number of words or the phrasing about a topic: "The shelf fell"--I had nothing to do with it; even if I overloaded it that was not my responsibility that it fell. Life just happens. God wills it.) I'd be missing out on double the number of word games and jokes, the teasing around the careful use of the word "huevos," for example. If everyone here spoke only English, I wouldn't be getting into all sorts of situations where I direly need to know Spanish better than I do.

Unfortunately, only those Mexicans aiming specifically at gringo clienteles or those who are of higher classes educated abroad are likely to actually be able to carry on a lengthy conversation in English. I'd say less than 10% of those 70,000 Mexicans living inside SMA city limits and almost none of those other 60,000 Mexicans living in the larger region that is considered SMA can do so.

Lots of Mexicans will attempt to answer you in English but they know only a few words. If I say, "Buenas Tardes" to a guy on the street and he responds, "Hi, how are you?" that's probably just about all he knows and he wants to practice that little bit anyplace he can, just as I'm practicing my social pleasantries on him in Spanish.

There seems to be a trashing of San Miguel as totally overrun by gringos, most usually done by people who have only heard the stereotypes or who only visited or lived in Centro and never got outside into the majority of the city. We're still only 10% of the city population, 5% if you're counting the larger SMA population.

Even in Centro the majority of Mexicans don't know more than a few words of English, though they may fool you by saying what you and everybody else usually needs to hear, a few stock responses to the few most common stock questions.

The "bilingual" waiter will understand if you say you want ice in your tea but he probably won't understand if you ask whether that ice was made from purified water, or whether there could be nuts in the sauce to which you are deathly allergic. He'll know the menu items in English and Spanish, but don't try to do a substitution of any complexity, or ask if the pasta is from whole grains or if the broccoli is organic.

Sure, you can live in SMA and speak almost no Spanish and deal only with those Mexicans who do speak English and survive, and quite a few expats still do just that. But you'll certainly be insulated, and you'll be in danger of getting into a crisis at any moment.

Say you're hit by a car and you're trying to deal with police and lawyers and angry relatives of the driver and nurses who don't know what you're trying to say about your pain and no English-speaking doctor can be found. Say you're doing a simple business transaction but you misunderstand something crucial, like a no-refund policy. Say you meet somebody you really want, or even need, to know, and you come across as an ignorant fool because you have come to Mexico expecting everyone to speak English for you. Say you've been robbed and you don't even know the word for "Help!" Say your car breaks down and the only gas station anywhere around has only Spanish speakers, and you can't even communicate enough to find out where there is a phone or a phone directory and you can't tell a cab where you are to come get you because you can't read the directions or understand the guy at the gas station. Say your dog is lost and the person who finds it and reads your phone number on its collar calls you up and you can't even understand what the finder is saying so you can get your dog back. Say you want to eat at restaurants outside of Centro to save some money and they don't just have tacos on the menu. Say you've just had your credit card snatched by an ATM and the guy who does speak good English is out to lunch and you're in a hurry but the clerks don't have a clue just exactly what you are saying, and you can't figure out whether they're going to check the ATM right now or you can come back tomorrow or you should talk to your bank in the US.

I don't know of a single gringo who lives here for very long who still says there is absolutely no need to know any Spanish and all Mexicans here know English. All the language schools in town wouldn't be doing such a good business on gringos if we didn't realize we must learn Spanish and not all Mexicans are going to speak English for us. (But some gringos pay for their housekeeper to learn English rather than learn Spanish themselves.)

Friends who are fluent say it takes seven years of hard work and constant practice to actually become fluent. Ten weeks at Warren Hardy or four months at the Academia won't do it. in fact, the Warren Hardy website says that his four levels should be the beginning before you go into an immersion program.

Out of 130,000 residents of the San Miguel region, only 7,000 are foreigners, mostly English-speaking. Of these, I'd guess 10% speak fluent Spanish, 20% can carry on a limited conversation, and another 50% have at least taken a class or two and can do the basics. My estimates only. If my guesses are right, that means "only" about 20% of foreigners know very little or no Spanish. That's 20% too many.

But I still hear those who dislike San Miguel saying that everybody here, foreign and local, speaks only English. (And deals only in dollars, not pesos. Only a few tourist-oriented shops list prices in dollars.)

Of course very few of the foreign tourists know Spanish, and we have plenty of them. Tourists are only here a short time; they can't be expected to be fluent before their vacation to any place. That's why tourist industries spring up to service those who do not speak the language in any desirable vacation area. But remember that most tourists to San Miguel are from other parts of Mexico! This is a historic, beautiful city with lots going on at all times. Mexicans aren't just discovering San Miguel, they've known about this town and loved it for many years.

Again a very rough estimate: I'd say the 10% or so of SMA Mexicans who have many business dealings with foreigners speak very good English, maybe 5% of the others who have lived in the U.S. or who have been educated there can speak excellent English, and only a few of the rest of the Mexican population can say more than bare basics in English. Certainly the 60,000 Mexicans who live on the outskirts and the poorer Indians inside the city limits speak almost no English. (Though they may still say, "Hello."

If you want to do nothing more than just go to gringo-owned businesses and associate only with gringos, yes, you can get by with very little Spanish. But who'd want to do that?

Q 7: Isn't it harder for older retirees to learn Spanish than younger people?

A: I know a couple of gringos who got here after 60 and I would call them fluent after more than ten years here, though they'll still say they aren't. But one had a Mexican partner and he really, really worked at it with that incentive. The other had some exposure to Spanish when she worked at a hospital in a heavily Mexican area in the states so she at least had the sounds right.

Another guy around 65 I met here once had just gone through all four levels of Warren Hardy and now was off to a remote village in Guatemala or someplace for total immersion. He sounded fluent already to me, but what would I know? He also concentrated on getting all his news from Mexican TV and papers, doing his own immersion.

Learning another language over 60 is really, really hard for most of us, though. Seems to me that those gringos with the most money tend to be the most isolated and the least likely to become fluent. If you can pay for all your services from the priciest Mexican companies, they're most likely to be the ones charging more partly because they do speak English well. They have learned how to be reassuringly competent and on time and such for gringos, catering to their dependency You can even pay to have a house manager to handle "stuff" for you, meaning anything requiring Spanish.

But if you're on a lower income and you're struggling for the cheapest prices, you'll need to be in Mexican neighborhoods and stores and hiring Spanish-speaking workers, so you'd better learn Spanish.

I don't know where that statement comes from but I hear it a lot, mostly from people who have never been here. This is the party town of all party towns for the Mexican population, fiestas and parades going on every time you turn around, and the gringo population is far more active than any group over 50 I've ever experienced. This town rocks! Every day there are far more activities than any one person could get to, with live music and/or dancing going on each night in a dozen places for the nights when there aren't art openings, concerts and plays. I'd guess there are at least 75 classes going on each week someplace, and always somebody is leading a tour to someplace else in Mexico. And friends drop in all the time, and call you up when they're cooking a good meal. I've got three dinner parties this week alone.

But you wouldn't know it living out of Centro in one of those wealthier developments going up on the outskirts. Those who say there is nothing to do never venture out their doors or make a phone call. They'd probably say there was nothing to do in New York City. Those who want to gripe and be miserable will gripe and be miserable no matter where they live. You bring your baggage with you when you come.

And there are a whole lot of younger gringos moving here as well, most with little money but a great attitude of openness and a willingness to join in and have fun, too. Yes, we have 80-year-olds still working and playing, but people find their own kinds of friends at whatever age level (or class, nationality, sexual orientation, politics) they prefer.

I probably should add that straight single gringas over 50 far outnumber straight single gringos in that age group. This is not Alaska. But I see little of that desperate searching for a man, any man--there's so much to do here that you have only yourself to blame if you're bored or lonely. Women who decide to pick up and move to another country are usually courageous, open, multi-faceted fascinating people with great stories to tell!

The way to make a small fortune in San Miguel is to start with a large fortune and open a restaurant. (I first heard that adage in the '60s in Detroit, but it applies just about every place.) They come and go--my favorites listed here today may be gone tomorrow. Always a good value is a restaurant's comida corrida, a one-price meal that usually includes a soup and/or salad, entree, a small dessert, and coffee, tea, or a fruit ade. Mexicans tend to eat their main meal in early afternoon--breakfast is desayuno, lunch is comida, and dinner is cena. As in the States, you can get a feel for an expensive restaurant by going there for breakfast or lunch. There's a VIP card you can buy at La Conexion and other places throughout town which gets you 10-20% on selected restaurants and services, but we figured it out and it wouldn't pay for us--the "holes in the wall" don't take it!

We have our favorite splurge restaurants where our favorite dinner and a Diet Coke still will be not more than $15 each. These include Nirvana (big plate of wonderful arrachera and sides for $11), on Mesones across from Teatro Angela Peralta; and Harry's New Orleans, on Hidalgo 12, the first block north of the Jardin (my fried oysters plate is $11 now, and the chocolate truffle cake is like eating a half pound of chocolate truffles.). But you can get lobster for $30 if you're not on a budget.

Sometimes to splurge we'll go to Casa Payo, Zacateros 21, or Tio Lucas, Mesones 103, for beef, since friends love those (Tio Lucas has live jazz after 9 pm). I wouldn't refuse Romano's for their spaghetti and sausage platter. People rave about their huge, pricey steaks.

(Some like Romano's pizza, more like Juanita's pizza on Orizaba, and probably the favorite pizza place in town is La Grotta on Quadrante in Centro. I like the fact La Grotta offers roquefort as an alternative cheese topping. Some people go out a ways to Gombo's in Col. Guadalupe--their deluxe pizza has all kinds of things like shrimp and pineapple, no pepperoni. We're spoiled: Norma makes the best pizza in town at home. Norma also makes SMA's best Chinese food, but there's always El Palacio Chino, Mesones 57, which is supposed to have excellent Peking duck. Too expensive for us)

El Pegaso, across from the Post Office at Corregidora 6, has corned beef and pastrami sandwiches (quality varies) and Kung Pao chicken and beef Thai salad. Their jalapeno poppers are really hot. Cool down with mile-high lemon meringue pie.

La Posadita is on Aldama around the corner from the Parroquia, and its second-story rooftop dining area gives a wonderful view of the city that is better than that of the diners at the more expensive La Capilla across the street. You can wave at them while your tab is probably a third of theirs, for very good Mexican food. It's stll high enough to be a splurge for us, though. We don't even think about going to the more pricey restaurants like the Sierra Nevada, Santa Monica, La Capilla, and Restaurante La Puertecita, not even for splurges. Not on Social Security.

Our average-priced restaurants include Ole Ole (Loreto 66) at $7 for a combination fajita plate, Barbecue Bob's on Ancha San Antonio for jerk chicken at around $5 a half chicken and sides, and Hecho en Mexico near the Instituto on Ancha San Antonio because of their salads and their vegetarian platter for around $6. L'Invito inside the Instituto courtyard is a leader in the "slow food" movement to bring back quality cooking. Much on their menu is out of our range, though. I'Invito offers 50% off on food and drinks 4-7 pm M-F though. (Many restaurants have two for one margaritas or other drink specials, but we're not drinkers so I haven't included budget-busting alcohol in any of these prices.)

La Boca across from Romano's on Hernandez Macias is someplace we'll return to for a meal some day, since they have the same panini sandwich and salads menu as the previous Casa Mia did, and we loved that one. But we usually go there after 9 pm for their excellent live music in an intimate room weekend nights--some couple will probably be dancing salsa, too. They serve little boiled potatoes in Italian marinade instead of peanuts with your drinks.

We love breakfast at Cafe la Parroquia and go many Sundays for brunch. It's at Jesus 11 in the same courtyard as El Tecolote bookstore, which is good, because there's often a wait for a table and you can duck into the bookstore in the meantime. Some dishes are in the inexpensive range--including their very large tamale gratinee casserole. Norma gets that, and I have chilaquiles with chicken served with homemade beans and tortillas (42 pesos), bread and jam, with coffee and a Diet Coke for 120 pesos total. Not totally inexpensive, but there's so much it's our main meal of the day. Closed Mondays, and they close at 4 most days, at 2 Sundays. At night it becomes La Brasserie, a more expensive restaurant.

When we're near the end of the month but still want to go out we'll head for Tortillas de Harina on Mesones between Hidalgo and Relox. It's only open from around 10:30 am until around 3. Look for a yellow painted sign with a burro on it above the doorway, easy to miss. You can buy ten small flour tortillas made in front of you for five pesos, and you can buy four burritacos and a Diet Coke for 20 pesos. A burritaco is a small flour tortilla folded over the filling of your choice--you can just point to whatever looks good to you. I like the pollo verde and the pollo rojo. You pay up front and then go to the back where they make the tortillas and serve the various kinds of tacos, burritos, hamburgers, etc. Just a few seats, and the high school kids take up the whole place when it opens at around 10:30 am and again around 12:30 when they get out of school.

A popular comida is around $4-5 at El Rinconcito (Refugio Norte 7) in San Antonio colonia. For inexpensive seafood we like Mariscolandia on Prolongation Refugio near Vergel, open 11-9, closed Sundays. Cha Cha Cha is also close, at 28 de Abril, corner of Rosales, open 1-6, closed Sundays. We like their sopas, with your choice of four toppings on tiny tortillas. (Yes, I know "sopa" means soup, and most definitely not soap, but that's what the menu calls these little delicacies.)

After 7 pm Los Faroles opens up in the same block as the Instituto, and you can get a flavorful plate of all kinds of combinations of taco fillings, five tortillas, and a half dozen kinds of salsas on the table for $4. I told some friends it was a Mexican hole in the wall, and when we arrived, four out of the five tables were filled with gringos. It's been discovered, with good reason.

Though it had been recommended to us long ago and we forgot about going, we just "discovered" Las Enchiladas on Relox 40A, closed Tuesdays. For breakfast they have excellent chilaquiles and other Mexican specialities for 40-45 pesos, including juice, coffee, and bread or tortillas (ham, sausage or bacon with the egg dishes). The enchilada plates are around 40 pesos, and on the higher end of the menu they even have a few kinds of steak, and arrachera for 90 pesos.

Cafe Colon on Mesones just west of Plaza Civica has a good reputation for inexpensive comida but it is a bit bland to me. I much prefer La Fonda/Aqui es Mexico on Hidalgo just south of Insurgentes, upstairs. Complete comidas start at 45 pesos, including very good chili rellenos. Look for their mushroom soup.

The woman at the tamale handcart that says TexTamales has the best tamales in town, to me, and they're 4 pesos each. She often sells from the Oratorio/Plaza Civica corner, or from Hernandez Macias at Canal.

When she's not there and we crave tamales, sometimes we drive out Ancha to just before Tel-Mex and El Maple bakery, on the bakery side, before the deep ditch off to that side. Theirs are 4 pesos, too. Great to pick up a bunch for a potluck.

La Buena Vida in Plaza Golondrinas across from Belles Artes has some breakfasts and lunches for 50 pesos, and you can always get their mini orange glazed donuts, two for 5 pesos, or a big well-stuffed empanada for 11 pesos. San Sebastian bakeries (on Aurora and Canal) have big empanadas to go for 9 pesos. Another place that sometimes is open that sells empanadas is a window on Hidalgo, just as you turn north from the Jardin. I've mainly seen it open on weekends.

If you're heading to Taboada hot springs to swim, or to Dolores, on the corner just before the turn to Taboada is a roast pork place that is open only on weekends. It has Cruces, cross, somewhere in the name. It's a pretty large restaurant, can't miss it, really. A kilo of delicious roast pork is around 140 pesos, not exactly cheap, but that's enough for six or eight to make three or four tacos each, with all the tortillas and sauces that are on the table. If there are fewer of you, you'll have leftovers for another meal.

La Palapa, the fish taco place tucked in around the corner from Espino's, has big tacos for 15 pesos, though I find them more breading than fish. Their chili hot dogs are pretty cheap and good, and a small bowl of cole slaw is 5 pesos. Their carrot cake is irresistible. Others swear by their hamburgers for 25 pesos.

The taco stand on the street before you get there, immediately around the corner from Espino's, is supposed to be very good but I haven't tried it yet.

For a cheap small meal, the ears of corn smeared with mayo, grated cheese, chili and lime are only 10 pesos from the stands around the Parroquia. The secret: buy when they have just opened and they have a newly opened bottle of mayo and the cheese is fresh, and choose an ear with small kernels so it will less likely be tough.

The gorditas place across from the Biblioteca is also one of our favorites, 11-13 pesos for a large gordita with a lot of filling. I like the beef with potatoes, Norma likes the migas (scrambled egg with everything in it) filling.

The all-you-can-eat Mexican buffet on Relox the first block north of the Jardin changes prices every so often, but I think it was 60 pesos last time I passed by. I've never eaten there but I have friends who rave about it. 60 pesos is out of the inexpensive range to me, but since it's all you can eat, it could be a bargain.

If you go out to Tuesday Market, we've eaten many times at the fried fish stand that's located (if you're in the back parking lot with Gigante on your right), in the second deep bank of stands on the right side, alongside the Gigante rear driveway. So it's about midway from the parking lot to the front street on the Gigante side.

I checked to make sure the fish was kept on ice, and different tongs are used to pick up the fish filets or the whole fish, dip them in batter, and then place them in the boiling fat, than are used to take the cooked fish out of the oil, so there's no cross contamination.

The filets are cooked long enough to be done through and through, and then they are placed on disposable styrofoam plates, usually with some shredded lettuce and sliced tomatoes, which I skip since I don't know if they are disinfected before cutting, and a few freshly fried tortilla chips.

A very large filet of fish is 15 pesos, and there are many kinds of salsas on the tables. A different person takes the money than the ones who handle the food, another good sign of cleanliness.

Good signs of whether a stand is good or not are the number of people waiting in line so there is rapid turnover, whether there is cooling and sufficient heating to keep cool foods cool and cooked foods hot, whether there is no cross-contamination between raw and cooked foods, and whether the food handlers also handle money.

The best Lebanese restaurant in town closed right after I had my last birthday dinner there, but there's still a small Lebanese restaurant called El Harem, closed Tuesdays, on Correo and Murillo 7. Sometimes i just have to have hummus and baba ghanouje.

Other "hole in the wall" restaurants recommended on an SMA email list include (some with Mexican-style directions, sorry, but I don't know the places):

Las Prisas on Ancha de San Antonio a block south of Doal Paint Store on the east side of the street.

El Torta Mundo on Umaran for quick sandwiches as cheap as 12 pesos, $1.20. Grilled burgers close to US tastes.

La Mesa del Matador, next to where Comercial Mexicana is going in. Three kinds of enchiladas: verdes, suises and poblanos. Excellent arracherra, and one person described their hamburgers as big as hubcaps.

La Alborado, east side of Parroquia, turn right/south at first street, Sollano 11, same doorway as La Ventana coffees. Recommended: enchiladas verdes and rojas, and their chicken consomme, 30 pesos, with breast of chicken, veggies, cilantro, onions, oregano. Ask for tomatoes and avocado, too. Open 1-10 pm.

Paella restaurant near the El Pipila glorieta, next to the Estafeta office and a dental clinic, across from where the new Comercial Mexicana will be. Comida is 50 pesos, choice of fish, chicken or beef, with rice, salad and fruit for dessert. (New bookstore for used paperbacks just opened on the left of the restaurant: Buster's Books.) Owner of Paella is Curro, who also manages a flamenco troupe available for hire, often performs at Teatro Angela Peralta.

At Don Quixote on Pila Seca their delicious ribs are in the splurge range but you can get a burger and onion rings for 48 pesos.

Tortitilan sandwich shops on Ancho and by Oratorio church are always packed with Mexicans. The restaurants also deliver and you see young guys on motorcycles and scooters all over town with Tortitlan signs on the back. (Domino's also has delivery--uggh.)

Broasted chicken on Aurora at corner of Calzada de la Luz, and also on Ancha San Antonio. (Norma insists we take the chicken home and bake it some more because she once got a piece that was still pink inside.) You can get two pieces of chicken, fries and a Mexican soft drink for $2.90, 20 cents more if you want Coca Cola or Pepsi.

Many places in town sell whole chickens that you see going round and round on the rotisserie until they're golden brown, for around $4.50, including a few tortillas and chiles.

Vegetarians on a budget rave about El Tomate, Mesones 62B, and you can get a very large vegetable kebob at Ole Ole.

Mostly we cook in--Norma is a gourmet cook who makes better food than any restaurant in town. On Social Security you don't eat out much.

Q 10: Would you recommend living in a gated expat community? So many are being built around San Miguel.

Having lived in several communes (LA in the early '70s), intentional communities (religious groups), and self-selected ghettos (i.e., areas almost totally gay, over-55 only retirement housing, etc.), I am now against anyone living totally within a narrow range of people, by choice or by restriction. Segregation by choice or by law is not healthy for minds and hearts, I think.

Self-selection into a restricted area where others are not being kept out deliberately can be necessary for awhile, such as areas of the U.S. where many Mexican migrants settle to learn the language and customs and to be among the emotional and financial support of friends and family.

And if someone never feels safe leaving such supportive communities, so be it. I'm not going to tell some Mexican grandmother she ought to move out of northeast LA and into West Hollywood or Fairfax or Compton to broaden her horizons. But I'd advise a young Mexican migrant to the U.S. to leave the safety of a barrio and learn as much about the whole world as possible.

Norma has always said that everyone in the Midwest should have to live in Southern California for a couple of years, and everyone in Southern California should have to live in the Midwest for a couple of years. Stereotypes would be broken all over the place. When we lived in LA too many Angelenos thought life ended at the LA County line. Those in the beach cities often felt life ended at Sepulveda Blvd.

There's a famous New Yorker cartoon cover that depicts the entire U.S. as seen by those in Manhattan, with the middle of the country basically blank until a small area of activity is visible on the West Coast. Same concept.

So I personally think everybody should live in many places with many kinds of people and experience all that life has to offer. That includes not moving to any area and shutting one's self off from learning about all those around you. It makes for good neighbors, it makes for greater societal responsilbiity, and it makes it more possible to have a global outlook that encompasses the entire world. That's my own goal in life. Others may differ.

The danger in choosing to only live among other gringos in selective areas within Mexico is that it is too easy to lose consciousness of the entire country and other people so that you block them out of your awareness and become isolated and selfish.

People who do that are "Ugly Americans" in the eyes of the native people around them, who do notice that these gringo communities are isolationist. By human nature, anyone who sees one group of other people who choose to live away from other people and not interact, comes to the conclusion that the group which does not mix must not think that the other people are worth knowing. Resentments and suspicions build. The self-segregationists are seen as having a superiority complex.

It might not be that everyone in that self-segregated community is indeed guilty of feeling superior. They just might be afraid to meet others different from them. Or whatever. But especially when those with more money segregate themselves from those who don't have so much, those who don't have so much will not look too kindly on the self-segregationists.

Add the issues of color awareness--many Mexicans are very color conscious, just as many gringos are, if perhaps in different ways--and the political experience of Mexico with the United States and with the Spanish Conquest and the French occupation, I just think it is better to try to mix with the people you have come to live among, rather than in enclaves apart from them. Mexico is so glorious, why not enjoy the whole range of possibilities available to you? White bread alone is not good for anyone.

But if you are talking about the security of living in a gated community, notice that many Mexicans live in gated communities, with high walls, broken glass implanted in cement along the top of the walls, and decorative iron grillwork over the windows. These kinds of security measures are expected, and you will get used to them. You will be wise to add them to your house or apartment wherever you are. We didn't want to add ironwork to our windows when we lived in Los Angeles but after five robberies in four years we were delighted to have them installed and feel free to leave our windows open during hot spells.

We haven't stayed in any of these ourselves but friends have told us about them. They run $25-50. There's even a hostal in Centro which costs maybe $12 a night. Hostal Alcatraz, Reloj 54, 152-8543.

The Hotel Sautto is one of the oldest establishments in SMA, the Sautto family being one of the original families from Spain that settled the area, and its courtyard was the backdrop for the baptismal scene in "And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself." Rooms are worn but comfortable, and the hotel is the closest to the Jardin of the inexpensive ones. Singles are as low as $25 a night, and there are some kitchenettes for around $40, depending on the season. They're hard to contact and don't take credit cards. An upscale Italian dinner restaurant is on the premises and several breakfast places are within a block or two. Teatro Angela Peralta is across the street. Hotel Sautto, Hernandez Macias 59, 152-0051. It takes dogs and has security parking.

Las Monjas is a favorite of many people, with 64 rooms in many sizes--if one you're shown is dark ask if there is another with better lighting. It's down a hill a couple of blocks west of the Jardin, and they take credit cards. It's around $40 a night for a single. There's a restaurant and bar as well. Las Monjas means "the nuns," and the Las Monjas church and convent are nearby on Canal, adjoining Belles Artes which has many classes by the month open to visitors. Hotel Posada de las Monjas, Canal 37, 152-0171.

Parador de San Sabastian is across the street from the Academia Hispano Americana, one of the Spanish language institutes which offers intensive instruction. No credit cards or restaurant. Lovely courtyard. Hotel Parador de San Sebastian, Mesones 7, 152-7084.

La Quinta Loreto also takes dogs and has parking, and it has some lovely apartments and casas for long-term residents, though there's a long waiting list. It takes credit cards and has a comfort food restaurant for breakfast and lunch on the beautiful spacious grounds Calle de Loreto 15, tucked in by the Artisans Alley, 152-0042.

Recently recommended is the Hotel Casa de Cafe at Hidalgo 18, which in 2006 was charging 400 pesos (about $40 US) for two, 350 pesos for one, with a 10% discount for stays over a week, higher in high season. The person who recommended the hotel on this site's forums wrote, "The owner, Maricela, and desk staff, Emilia & Phillip are all bi-lingual, friendly & helpful. The rooms are very clean, simple as you would expect for the rate. There are only nine rooms, the 2nd & 3rd floor are lighter & more pleasant. The location is excellent, 1 1/3 blocks from jardin, walking distance to everything, very safe location. The cafe is open to the street, so it's fun to sit & people watch; it has just a few tables - people tend to have conversations & share information from table to table with other tourists and locals. 011 52 415 154 5312 from U.S." (And it also sells excellent gourmet coffee, whole bean or ground to your preference, for 150 pesos a kilo, which is around $7 US a pound.)

The Hotel La Siesta has an acre or two behind the hotel for RVs. It's on Salida a Celaya #82 (the extension of Ancha San Antonio when it leaves Centro, near the El Pipila glorieta--that's the roundabout with the statue of the guy with a slab of rock on his back), phone 152-0207. There was another RV park farther out in Los Frailes neighborhood, on the lake (but don't plan on using the lake for any recreational activities), which called itself KDA, the D rounded on the signs so that it looked as if it is a KOA, but it closed recently. We have friends who RV in Mexico, and they recommend that you take items like lawn chairs inside when you are gone or at night. Obviously you will not be able to drive an oversized vehicle of any kind through San Miguel's narrow streets, though the bus drivers seem to have it down pat. You can get a cab or bus fairly easily from La Siesta into town.

A: Hotels that I have heard good things about in the $50-100 a night range include:

Posada San Francisco, Plaza Principal 2, 152-7213, www.naftaconnect.com/hsanfrancisco (right on the Jardin in Centro, two restaurants and bar and other services in courtyard, my number one pick).

Casa Calderoni B & B, Callejon del Pueblito 4A, 154-6007, www.casacalderoni.com (Owner is an artist and each room has the theme of a different artist).

La Mansion del Bosque, Aldama 65, 152-0277, www.infosma.com/mansion. (Owner has been in SMA something like 40 years and has a cookbook of her wonderful recipes from her restaurant, and it's right on Park Juarez).

Monteverde Hotel, Volanteros 2, 152-1814, www.hotelmonteverde.com (three blocks from Jardin, a bit farther out).

I personally haven't stayed in any of these but have had friends give me good reports.

A: San Miguel is a fairly prosperous town overall, largely because of the tourism and the expat population, but it is important to look at the larger picture. In June, 2005, the Mexican government released a study which was reported in the Mexico edition of the Miami Herald.

Some 49 million Mexicans, or 47 percent, live below what is identified as poverty, less than 1500 pesos a month. That works out to something like $150 US a month or $1,800 US a year.

About 17 percent are identified as living in dire poverty, or under 750 pesos a month, or less than about $900 US a year.

Those figures were actually being celebrated as slight improvements in the Mexican poverty situation. Poverty in rural areas was decreasing, while that in cities was increasing, which analysts thought may be due to more poor people from the campos moving to cities rathen than any real improvement in rural poverty.

The Mexican minimum wage is around 50 cents an hour, though it varies slightly by region and occupation. The highest paying jobs assigned a minimum wage, like news reporter, list a minimum wage of around $12 US a day. Unemployment among the most educated Mexican professionals can be higher than for laborers.

Just some statistics to keep in mind. You can see why many Mexicans try to get to the States to work where the minimum wage is ten times higher.

You will see beggars on the sidewalks, including very old women in native Indian dress, women with several children, blind men, men in wheelchairs, and children selling chewing gum. More will be in Centro during weekends and fiestas. We decided long ago that we'd better have a policy of what we could give so that we wouldn't be torn apart every time we were asked for money. So, being on Social Security without a lot of money, we decided we'd give the first five beggars we met each day two pesos each, around 20 cents. We don't give to the children, not wanting to encourage them to rely on begging. There is one woman with mangled, scarred unusable hands that we give five pesos to when we see her.

Atencion newspaper did an article on many of the beggars seen most frequently in Centro, and their life stories are heartbreaking. No one is faking it here.

A:We wouldn't even have considered having a maid but one was provided us in our first two rentals, for a few hours a week, to keep up the rental. Then we stumbled into a sharing arrangement with our neighbors who loved their maid and asked if we would consider hiring her three afternoons a week, alternating with them. They were afraid she'd find someone who would hire her every afternoon and leave them. That shared arrangement has been absolutely wonderful.

Someone suggested to us when we came that you should always know the maid's parents or family because if they do steal, and you are absolutely sure of it, you can go to their family and they will take care of it, in shame at the disgrace the maid has brought to the family. But we've never worried a minute--she has too many ties we know about. Besides, she's scrupulously honest.

After her three hours we often will hire her for additional time to show us how to make tamales, etc. She's showed us many things about life in Mexico--i.e., what those ugly grainy stones are for that we saw for sale (to get off a hard water ring), and where to get some things cheaper.

We've both come from families of relatives who have been maids, and one family of my rural Michigan relatives worked at a hotel as housekeepers, gardeners, and kitchen assistants. So neither of us was any too happy about actually having a maid ourselves. We used to make the beds and wash the dishes before she came. Now we are so thrilled to have this luxury, at $30 a week for 9 hours plus daily sweeping of the porch and steps. Being able to afford a housekeeper was definitely not a drawing point for us for Mexico but we sure got used to it fast. Norma probably wouldn't have gotten into cooking so much without the help in cleaning our kitchen thoroughly.

Someone did an informal survey on one of the SMA lists and found that most expats paid $2.50-$3.50 an hour for a maid or gardener, perhaps $5 an hour for someone who manages the house or has more responsibility. A small raise once a year is appreciated. Employers are expected to pay in cash on Friday or Saturday, and to pay 15 days salary (whatever you pay in a two-week period) as a Christmas bonus in cash before Dec. 20, and to allow sick days and holidays off, with two weeks paid vacation a year.

If you are the full-time employer you are expected to pay into IMSS, the Mexican Social Security system. Mexican law favors the employee and the renter, and so you may be sued and lose if you fire someone without a very good, provable cause. Mexican miminum wage may be only around 50 cents US an hour, but very few people actually earn that little. You will be known as a good or bad employer and you may be treated accordingly. Mexicans talk among themselves, just as gringos do.

A: Whenever a TV crew decides to find the "real" USA they head for the "heartland" and talk to some Midwest farmer usually spouting code terms for how terrible the folks in LA/NY/SF are for attempting to destroy American "values."

I lived 11 years in rural Midwest towns of under 2,000 population and will never live in any country's "heartland" again. I'm a NY/LA/SF kinda gal, and I enjoy others like me in SMA.

This morning Norma and I walked about two miles doing errands around San Juan de Dios Market and the church, and on Insurgentes and Pila Seca. We didn't see another gringo in two hours.

We spent our Social Security money in tiny Mexican-owned shops who didn't give a damn what we did the rest of the day just so they got a share of the money. They didn't want to be our friends, nor we theirs. Neither of us have any desire to have us in their lives.

This evening after the heat we'll get in another two miles walking to Villa Jacaranda to see "Spanglish", through the Jardin, past the new Italian gelato shop for a 10-peso dip of amaretto, and we'll see about half gringos, half Mexicans in our walk. Both parts of town are the "real" San Miguel.

Both San Miguel and Comonfort are the "real" Mexico, just as Baja and Chiapas and Juarez and Cancun are all the "real" Mexico. We're all real. Somebody in Manhattan dressed in chic black and working in a skyscraper is just as much a "real" U.S. citizen as the gay guy in a yellow Speedo in Provincetown or the muu-muu'd retiree in Palm Beach or the farmer in Dubuque or the lesbian mom in West Hollywood or the machinist in Detroit or the lobster fisherman in Maine or the sharecropper in Arkansas.

A Mexican in the top 1% of the economy living high in DF is just as much a real Mexican as the woman selling rattlesnake skins along Highway 57 or the farmer prodding his burros through a field or the woman frying grasshoppers in Oaxaca or the ceramacist turning out dishes for export in Tonala or the university student hoping to become a professional violinist in Guanajuato. We're all "real." Why the need to assert anybody is more real than anyone else? To each her own.

We all change the world around us, even by stepping into a river and making ripples. The entire world is changing at an ever-more-rapid pace, and not all the change is bad. None of us is particularly important in the larger scheme of the universe.

The hardware store guy I bought some cup-hanging hooks from this morning and the woman who sold me bananas don't care whether I go see a U.S. film tonight at a gringo-owned hotel and don't especially want me at their pentacostal church service tonight. I don't care if they go to that church service, or see a shaman, or pray the rosary tonight, and they're not very likely to come to the Villa Jacaranda tonight, either. That's just fine with both of us. We coexist. I don't think they want me to move next door to them, just as long as I keep dropping some money in their pockets when I spend. I can't afford to buy a house and I'll always be renting from a Mexican family, so I'm no threat there.

Not everyone likes it here. A couple of people I really liked didn't like SMA and have gone on, one gay guy even moving back to the Midwest. That's fine. Everyone has the right to pursue happiness.

A: San Miguel is built on a hillside. Some streets are really bad, others are flat for a mile.

When you check rental ads notice if they say something like "a flat walk to the Jardin." If you're in the northern half of the city, you'll find it's mostly flat easy walking. On the south side, which is actually the higher side, get up to Atascadero or Balcones, two of the richest areas, or the luxury homes south of Park Juarez, and you're likely to hit steep streets. If an ad says, "Great view," that tells you you'll be up a hill.

The hills aren't the only problem for walkers, the cobblestones and irregular sidewalks make it hard to walk. People call SMA, "The city of fallen women." Wear comfortable shoes and watch where you walk always. I twisted my knee the first day I arrived; many do.

But the more you walk, and walking is actually great fun here, the easier you will be able to walk and the healthier you'll be. In Phoenix I barely walked from home to car to store in 100+ heat six months of the year, but in SMA I walk at least 2 miles a day with no problems any more.

Q 18: A related question, Isn't walking on cobblestones hazardous to your health?

Study: Walking on Cobblestones Is Healthy
By WILLIAM McCALL
The Associated Press

PORTLAND, Ore. -- The path to better health and lower blood pressure may be paved with cobblestones. When people over 60 walked on smooth, rounded cobblestones for just a half-hour a day over four months, they significantly lowered their blood pressure and improved their balance, a study showed. Behavioral researchers from the Oregon Research Institute investigated the health effects of cobblestones after observing people exercising and walking back and forth over traditional stone paths in China.... The results surprised Fisher and his fellow researchers, who expected to see some general improvement in health but also saw blood pressure drop measurably among the volunteers during the 16-week study.... Nearly all the 108 volunteers in the study said they felt better after the exercise. But only the half who walked the cobblestones showed significant improvement in balance, measures of mobility and blood pressure, Fisher said. He said the cobblestone walking paths are common in China, where traditional medicine teaches that the uneven surface of the stones stimulate "acupoints" on the soles of the feet. The theory is much like acupuncture, suggesting that distant and unrelated areas of the body are linked together at certain points and can be stimulated to improve physical and mental health....>

Q 19: How do I meet someone with my particular interests, say in yoga? Is there one central gathering spot like the Lake Chapala Society?

A: We've got about 6,000 permanent gringo retiree residents here, too many for any one organization! (The other 1,000 or so permanent gringo residents are younger or still working. I'm just guessing at the numbers but they're somewhere near the mark.

Buy an Atencion as soon as you get here and see all the activities going on and which groups interest you. Ahead of time you can check the calendar at http://www.portalsanmiguel.com/ There are a couple of yoga classes where you can meet like-minded people, and other related kinds of groups like the Meditation Center.

I've seen a notice that yoga classes are taught at a place on Mesones near Tio Lucas, almost to Hernandez Macias across from Teatro Angela Peralta. There's always the Social Club which meets weekly at different people's homes. Go to the Unitarians meeting Sunday morning and in the announcements time say that you're looking for people to talk to, or other retirees in general, and over breakfast you'll meet a bunch. The Episcopalians at St. Paul's are very friendly to newcomers as well and have many activities there.

At La Conexion mailing service on Aldama a block south of the Jardin, you can find out about a social group that meets at different restaurants every Wednesday for lunch.

I bet if you hung out at El Tomate vegetarian restaurant on Mesones near Hidalgo you'll run into yoga devotees. Where would people you want to meet likely hang out? Go there.

Just sit around in the Jardin and talk to people you think might be your kind of folks. It won't take long, you'll have plenty of new friends. Hope you enjoy San Miguel!

A. For this answer I'll quote with permission an attorney who responded to this question on an SMA list. He also talks about the legal issues with domestic partners in Mexico, Barry H. Barnett, PC, http://www.barlaw.com/:

Short lesson on inheritance. I am not licensed in MX, nor in any State in the US except NM, IL & FL. This is NOT intended as legal advice, just offered to help which it may or may not accomplish.

First, there is a treaty between the US and MX that, in general, provides for the recognition of our respective contracts and agreements (a trust is a contract). HOWEVER, if the official with whom you are dealing is not aware of that fact and refuses to become aware of that fact, or, even if he/she is aware, you could experience challenges in seeing the provisions timely and fully implemented. Thus, for MX property that is not held in a manner that will pass the property outside the probate process (see below for discussion) it is prudent to have a MX Will. MX officials more readily understand and are comfortable with "their own" documents and there is less opportunity to question, inquire and otherwise delay the process. Delay equals increased time and expense. As I understand the pricing on Wills down here, the cost is relatively minor - especially when compared to the the asset(s) involved and the potential for hassle elimination down the road.

On the other hand, "you" will be dead --- if it takes 20 years to finish the process you will not care. We plan and prepare to a) control our assets; and b) reduce the hassle to our heirs. I am aware of no law that requires you to incur the expense in your lifetime to do either.

Now, for those who have life partners -- same gender or otherwise, the absence of the benefit of the provisions in the law applicable to "married" people require extra steps (and legal documents) to be considered and prepared if you and your partner are going to protect each other from your respective families when "you" are no longer able to interface with them. (Not that your particular family will be a problem, but many are, I have seen too many wasted, stupid fights when the "main player" has departed the scene.)

First and foremost life partners need to give each other Durable Power of Attorney, Medical Power of Attorney and execute a Living Will (it is called an Advanced Health Care Directive in NM and many places). Second, you need to be attentive to how your assets are held and have a Will in place to "catch" any oversights. If tax planning is NOT part of your concern or consideration, there is no reason for any childless couple to have to go through probate if their assets are structured correctly during their life time.

DPoA: This is a document that grants a person the ability to act on behalf of the granting person. Presumably you trust the person next to whom you close your eyes each night and thus giving a DPoA to that person should not be a problem. There are 2 ways in which these documents can be created: 1) Authority "springs" into existence upon the happening of a specified event (e.g., coma); or 2) authority exists immediately. My personal preference is for immediate authority. This not only eliminates a potential fight on whether the Dr. saying "yes" is correct, but allows the use of the document for convenience --- you are there, your partner is here and a document there needs to be signed--- with the DPoA at the ready, you do not need to have your partner go here, use overnight, or any other means to get the doucment there and back for signature. For those living here, my belief is that the real likely benefit of the DPoA is to bolster the rights of the partner to be present and in charge when the other becomes incapaciatated.

Durable Medical PoA: This document is similar to the DPoA, but is limited strictly to medical decisions. I generally do not recommend this document for "married" couples as the law establishes the "authority" that this document conveys. However, for gay and lesbian couples, and for heteros that are "living in sin" as we did so readily in my youth, the absence of this document (even if you have a DPoA) could result in the partner sitting in the hallway while the "family" is in the room.

AHCD: Living Will by another name. If you followed the news last year at all you know the problems well-meaning people can cause. Prepare one of these and sign it --- EITHER way you feel. If you don't want the plug pulled - say so. If you do -- say so. It will help ALOT, not only emotionally for those that must make the decision, but for the legal process in reducing the ability of an objecting party to drag things on for ever. Also, make certain you also address the provision of food and water -- you should indicate your preference for receiving or denying either or both. Remember, this document gets used when all hope is gone (in the medical profession). To pull the plug and then live for X more years (as did Karen Quinlen) achieves little. Denying food and/or hydration will insure your objective in pulling the plug is accomplished in 3 days to 21-30 days.

Wills: Wills are a necessary evil IF you want to alter the statutory scheme of inheritance OR you want to designate who "is in charge" of your estate. If you don't care about those things, a Will is not required, the laws of intestate succession will apply and results, probably not to dissimilar to what you were going to specify will happen. Generally speaking the Intestate succession laws pass property down, up, out --- to family members that can be found.

Probate: ONLY assets that have title that need to be passed on to someone need to be probated. Thus, with a little bit of planning (and implementation -- the best trust is useless if you don't take the time to put the assets into it) probate can be avoided.

For example, Joint Tenant with Right of Survivorship (JTRoS) means that ALL names (not limited just to 2 people) own equally the asset (car, house, bank account, brokerage account, etc.). When one JT dies, the remaining JTs, by operation of law, become the owners -- no probate is required. Thus, if you and your partner own all your collective assets that can be held (i.,e. those that have a piece of paper that represents ownership), when the first of you dies, the other will own everything and no "heir" can interfere.

POD: Pay on Death -- this type of ownership is general associated with financial institution accounts (bank, CDs, and brokerage). This designation can be changed as a son, daughter or other loved one gets to the top of you A list (or manages to get to the top of you S list and you want to put your A list people in title). In essence, this ownership says "I own it" when I die the POD designate(s) own it - give to them". You can have more than one POD person named - just remember that if you do not indicate A gets 20% and B gets 80% - A&B will each own 50%.

TOD: This a Transfer on Death -- this is very new and applies to real property. It is NOT available in all States. If it is available in a State where you own real property, you can have a TOD deed prepared and recorded. In that deed you indicate who gets the property when you are dead, IF you haven't otherwise sold the property before you die, revoked the TOD, or given the property to someone else. Again, it is important to be clear and careful on how you designate the recipient(s).

SIA: This is my favorite --- it ties to the best Will I have even seen written.....Being of sound mind and body I Spent It All before I died!

TRUSTS: Trusts are a rip-off IF you put one together to avoid probate. (Whoops, bias slipped!) In most states, probate is neither a major hassle, nor expensive (often times the Trust is more expensive to prepare than the probate -- AND -- the trust cost you money, the probate, cost you nothing - it just reduces what the heirs get.

HOWEVER, there are useful purposes for trusts: A) you are married and have an estate large enough that you can and want to take advantage of tax savings by "splitting" the estate upon the first to die to thus preserve that persons Estate and Gift Tax exclusion amount (now about $3 mill -- headed to ZERO inheritance tax in 2010 and then back to $1 Mill in 2011, unless they change the law AGAIN). Anyway, trusts can be used to preserve that aspect.

Another reason for a trust is that you have a special needs situation. That is, for example, a child that is going to need extra care and who is not capable of managing their own affairs. Another example in this category is if you wish to disown (disinherit) a child, you can make if far more difficult for that child to successfully challenge if you do so through a trust, than if you do so in a Will. The reason is mainly that a Will does not become viable until it is admitted to probate --- shortly before the challenge is mounted. On the other hand, your trust, presumably, will be in existence for years at the time the child discovers "payback is hell" and they have been cut out. A document that has been viable for years is just harder to challenge, if, for no other reason, psychological --- it has been around for a while.

The third reason to consider a trust is to exert control. Through a trust you can control the money for the lifetime of your children and all grandchildren that were alive at your death. A practical illustration would be something like the following. You are not certain when your kids will reach the age of financial reason and so to avoid them blowing it all on trips to Somewhere or their favorite sports car, you can put all the money in trust and give them only income from the time they reach 21 until say 35 (discretion in Trustee to allow access to principal for life events you define, if you want). Then at 35 they get 25% of the principal, at 40, 25%, and so on. Your Trustee can be given discretion to hold back income if the kids are, in your Trustee's opinion, not being responsible with it, etc. Similarly, you can give your Trustee discretion to allow invasion of principal for life events (birth of a child, buying a home, etc.) with guidelines and limitations you specify.

This is not an exhaustive discussion of estate planning, consult your own attorney and acccountant to discuss your personal situation.

I would have to say no if the disability is one involving mobility. Most of Mexico is about where the U.S. was in the '50s on so many social issues, including awareness of disability rights. Mayor Villarreal is making sure that there are sidewalk cuts in Centro remodeling projects, but so many sidewalks are barely wide enough for one person, and doorway steps may halve even that narrow walkway. So many doorways have steps going up or even down from the sidewalk--my first day in San Miguel I fell down a stairwell into a small shop when I didn't see the drop in the sidewalk.

The sidewalks and cobblestones are so irregular, and stairs rarely have steps of the same height, one step being four inches high and the next a foot. I don't see how even a very well trained seeing eye dog could warn of changes in height along a sidewalk every few inches. Sometimes a construction hole will be left in a sidewalk or street with only a few larger rocks to mark the hazards. Maybe one rock will be painted orange, maybe not. I see occasional people with walkers or in wheelchairs, or with white canes, but I think life here would be extremely frustrating and limited for someone with a mobility problem.

We are at 6,400 feet altitude, which means some people with breathing problems like severe emphysema do not do well here. It seems that most people adjust to the higher altitude within a few days but it is best to take it easy the first few days here until you adjust.

If a person's disability requires very specialized medical care and supplies, that may be hard to come by in Mexico outside of Mexico City and Guadalajara.

But every person is different. I have known people with disabilities who would tackle every obstacle just for the challenge, and who would be able to handle anything San Miguel put in front of them. They would relish the opportunity to feel the spirit, the mood, of the town and to bask in the feelings, sounds and smells of a fiesta. In no way would I want to limit someone who really wanted to experience San Miguel, just so they knew what challenges that was going to involve.

Every person has to evaluate his or her personal medical history and needs, plus read the fine print in any existing health insurance. The issue is highly complex. Health care in the U.S. is a crap shoot anyway, we have found. The ideal situation does not exist in the States nor here.

First, Medicare does not pay for care when you live outside the U.S. Both Democrats Abroad and Republicans Abroad are seeking to change that rule, and perhaps make Mexico a pilot study to see how extending Medicare outside the U.S. could work. But that day is not here yet.

Private insurance plans can be very expensive, and often do not cover pre-existing conditions. But if you have an excellent plan and can afford to keep it, read the fine print and make sure it will cover your needs in Mexico. IMSS, the Mexican Social Security, offers lowcost health insurance even to foreign residents, but you may not be accepted if you have pre-existing conditions, and there are many regulations. Even with pre-existing conditions, sometimes you can get coverage, though the pre-existing conditions may not be covered the first year or more. The first year the benefits offered are very limited, for example. With IMSS you go to an IMSS clinic first for most care, and the clinic may refer you to a government hospital. We're going to check out IMSS further soon.

The good news is that medical care here is far cheaper than in the U.S. and so we are able to self-insure--we pay cash out of pocket for all our expenses here at a lower cost than our copays were in the states! We have to have a backup savings for something major, and we'd go back to the States for a long-term medical crisis. I did in 2003 for an extremely unusual, lengthy, complicated surgery.

In San Miguel there are two hospitals. Hospital de la Fe is privately owned by some Mexican doctors and was built with fund-raising help from the expat community. To give you some examples of costs, I have gone to specialists there who charge $30-50 US, very little waiting, and you often receive a full hour or more of undivided attention. I spent two nights in a private room at $72 a night for a temporary intestinal blockage, and the total cost for 2 1/2 days was $270. Half of that was for antibiotics. I was given the same treatment I'd always gotten in a U.S. hospital for a blockage: a naso-gastric tube, IV feeding and antibiotics, and walking the halls to get the juices flowing.

Differences: the IV pole was gravity-only, not a fancy computerized IV pole, and it was so old I ended up carrying it, and then figuring out I needed to carry only the IV bags, when I walked the corridors. The thick plush blanket was far superior in warmth to U.S. hospital blankets--but I doubt if it got washed between each patient. The TV, of course, had only Spanish language stations, not cable or satellite U.S. stations.

Mexican hospitals expect that a friend or family member will accompany a patient and do all the little things that you can ring a buzzer for in a U.S. hospital--pillow fluffing, getting to the bathroom, washing up, eating assistance, etc. Often a cot or bed will be provided for that family member, with meals, at no extra cost.

I had to have a small outpatient operation another time at de la Fe, and that cost me $210 for the surgeon, use of an ER room for three hours, the biopsy and surgical supplies. Lunch was provided for both Norma and me. The downside: the surgery spotlight went out during the operation and the surgeon called a nurse who shook the light until it came back on. (In the U.S. if that had happened, I might have sued. But nobody sues here. Who would you sue? And how would they pay?)

In both experiences with de la Fe, the specialists I saw later in the U.S. said that the Mexican doctors had done everything right.

I also had a colonoscopy at Angeles Hospital in Queretaro, and for the internist and two anesthesiologists and a videotape of the complete procedure, the cost was $400. In the U.S. a colonscopy cost something like $4,000, and my insurance copay would have been more than $400.

A friend had a tummy tuck and liposuction at de la Fe and paid $2,500 for everything, and was pleased with every aspect of her experience.

Another friend had a heart attack and was rushed to de la Fe, where doctors used the paddles to resuscitate him and saved his life. Three days in ICU I think cost $4,000. Angiogram, in Queretaro at Angeles Hospital: $3,000.

Another friend had emergency heart surgery and had to have a pacemaker. His total cost at Angeles was $65,000. He had it to pay. If he'd been able to ge to Houston it might have cost a quarter million dollars and his copay might hve still been $65,000. In the US someone facing a huge medical bill they can't pay might be able to declare bankruptcy afterward, but then what about the next huge medical bill? You can't declare bankrupcty only so often, I think every seven years. You can get screwed over health costs in the US as well as in Mexico.

Now, the other hospital in San Miguel is Hospital General, the government hospital, now a small facility on Reloj by the Biblioteca but soon moving to a 60-bed new facility being built on the outskirts of town. We keep hearing that insurance for anyone, even with pre-existing conditions, will be available there at about $300 a year, and we are surely anticipating that happening! The new hospital will have an MRI and CT scan and will be a class 3 facility, which means it can do just about everything short of a liver transplant.

I woke up recently with rapid heart beat, tachycardia, after having had five cups of caffeinated coffee that day, and of course I jumped on the internet to read up on it. Once I was sure it was probably not serious but I should have an EKG to make sure, we decided to try Hospital General rather than de la Fe.

Hospital General has a program to train U.S. emergency doctors in Spanish in a hospital setting, so very often it is staffed by U.S.-trained ER doctors. The morning I went an English-speaking doctor was found to talk to me, but I don't think he was in the Spanish program, he was a native of San Miguel. I had to wait only a half hour, compared to as much as 16 hours we have waited in U.S. ER rooms.

I had written up my complex medical history on the computer and half a dozen doctors took turns reading it, maybe testing their English, surprised to find a patient bringing her own written-out medical history. I had the EKG, though the machine was not the sleek laptop-sized EKG machine I was used to in the states; this was a clunker. It worked fine, and I was presented with my own printout of my EKG to take with me to my followup doctor.

Patients are responsible for keeping their own medical records in Mexico, by the way. Not every doctor will even take notes while interviewing you, though some enter everything into their laptops and are connected with Mayo Clinic.

Total cost for an hour in the ER and my EKG? I almost fell over when the cashier said 61 pesos. That's $6. My last U.S. ER stay was around $2,000. With Medicare in the States, your basic copay charge for a hospital stay is around $900 just for starters.

I was telling a neighbor about the $6 and she said that was nothing, her friend fell and was taken by ambulance to Hospital General, where he was x-rayed and given a pain prescription. A taxi was called for him, the driver was told where to go to get the guy his medicine, and he was sent off with a total bill of, are you ready, $1! Ten pesos.

Someone wrote on one of the SMA e-mail lists that she received excellent trauma care in Hospital General after an accident, for $23 total cost. But another time she went with what she suspected was a broken bone in her foot, she got the x-rays promptly, but then she sat around for many hours before deciding to go home and handle it herself. She knew there isn't much a doctor can do for one of the numerous small bones in the foot, they tend to just heal themselves, and that's what she decided to do. So she had one very good experience and one not so good.

Another concern is blood supplies. SMA is not that big of a town, and so many times rare blood or a lot of blood has to be brought in from Celaya or Queretaro hospitals, if they have it. Mexicans often put an appeal out on the local radio station if someone suddenly needs a blood donor, and expats sometimes hit the local SMA e-mail lists. Several expats in the past have attempted to put together a blood bank but have not succeeded for very long, for many reasons. When we lived in rural Michigan, blood supplies were non-existent as well, and blood had to be driven in from 70 miles away in any emergency requiring blood, so this can be a real problem in the U.S. as well.

Now there are cases where someone dies because not enough of their rare blood type can be found, or there is a wrong diagnosis, but that happens in the U.S. as well. There is an excellent cardiologist in SMA, Dr. Alvarez, who friends tell me has charged as much as $80 a visit. What does a visit to a cardiologist in the U.S. run now? And can you get in right away? Can you get a doctor to make a house call? Several will come out to your house here.

When we were taking Vioxx it cost each of us around $55 a month, compared to $70 in the U.S., but now we are on indocin, brand name Malival here, which is in the Advil/Aleve/NSAID family and which has been on the market for decades. It costs about $10 a month. We use nopales cactus capsules at $5 a month instead of Lipitor for $50 a month for cholesterol control and so far they seem just as effective. We go to a lab on Hidalgo whenever we want to have a cholesterol test, no prescription needed, to keep track.

Here is my shopping list from a recent trip to Gigante, the major supermarket in town until November, 2006. Then a new Mega/Comercial Mexicana, affiliated with Costco, opened at the El Pipila glorieta at the end of Ancha de San Antonio, but I haven't typed up one of our receipts from there yet. The prices seem comparable. Another major supermarket, a SuperGigante, came to town in December, 2006, but the new Mega is far more popular. We do most of our shopping at the little shops and mercados in town to keep our money in the community, and we also enjoy walking and shopping each day for the freshest of produce. This is a sample price list from the fall of 2006:

Fibra Max cereal, large box, $3.50 US
Box of cereal, Extra brand, 2.62
Box of cereal, Crusti brand, like granola,3.35
2-liter plastic bottle Diet pepsi, 1.20
grapefruit, kilo (2.2 pounds), .49
fresh mushrooms, kilo, 2.55
large can of whole mushrooms, 1.25
fresh carrots, kilo, .49
yellow sweet pepper, kilo, .99
green sweet pepper, kilo .97
orange sweet pepper, kilo, 5.20 (bought one at 1.10)
plastic bag of dried hibiscus blossoms to make several gallons of jamaica tea, 1.55
12 extra large brown eggs, 1.05
small mamey, a melon, .75
large plastic bag of already-sliced coleslaw mix, 3.55
(We didn't notice the price, would have bought a whole cabbage and sliced it ourselves for around .50)
small can of sliced pickled jalapenos for nachos, .40
roll of Ritz crackers, 75 mg, .18
Campbell's can of condensed soup from squash flowers, 1.23
Campbell's can of condensed chicken soup with fine noodles, 1.23
fresh limes, kilo, .61
carton of low-fat crema, similar to sour cream, 1.20
tin of Brunswick picante sardines, .90
pound of unsalted butter, 1.62
Two 40-watt light bulbs, .43
big yellow onions, hard to find, kilo, .62
plastic bottle of low-fat yogurt drink, .57
large canned corn, .88
liter bottle of green salsa, 1.40
cantaloupe, kilo, 1.09
package of dried laurel leaves, spices (bay leaf), .89
fancy whole-grain mustard, small jar, 1.39

There are all-you-can-eat Mexican buffets for $3.50-5 many places. A raw chicken sells for around $1.20 a pound and a whole nicely-spiced rotisserie chicken with a few tortillas and chiles is $4.50 at many shops along the street.

At Tuesday Market you can find all kinds of new and used clothes for low prices, as well as some that are over-priced. A friend stumbled upon an Anne Klein silk skirt for $2.50. I get most of my clothes at Girasol for $20-25 for nice cotton blouses and slacks, plus T-shirt material scoop neck shirts from many shops for $5. Mexican style jackets are as low as $11, and again, you can always find good used clothes at garage sales. Or you can go to Darla and similar gringa-oriented top of the line boutiques and pay $500 for a dress.

A pound of ground coffee is around $4 in a neighborhood shop, up to $8 in a gourmet coffee boutique.

We get 20-pound bags of Costco cat food, good quality, for around $11, and the rest of the Costco prices are pretty close to the US, except for imported stuff. English-language magazines will have a couple dollars tacked on to the price.

Most lectures around town are around $5. Top notch entertainment at Teatro Angela Peralto can be free, or average around $15-20 for the best seats down to $5-10 for the third level. Lots of freeloaders make the rounds of the art gallery openings solely for the free wine and appetizers. Older movies at the Biblioteca are around $5. Lots of free stuff happens many nights at the Jardin.

A paleta (fruit bar) at Dolphy's on the Jardin is 90 cents, or only 45 cents farther out. Dolphy's has a one-scoop small sundae for $1.90. Or, you can buy a two-scoop sundae of deluxe ice cream at Santa Clara for $5. Domino's has two-fer Tuesdays, the basic prices similar to the U.S.

You can get used paperbacks from lots of people, or there are second hand books at Tecolote bookstore, many for very little, or at garage sales. New books will cost more at Tecolote than in the States because of duty and shipping. Cable TV is as low as $22 but we paid around $50 with a lot of English language channels. We had DSL through cable before, too. Now we're on Satellite DISH TV, and it cost something like $700 for dish and installation, and around $50 a month for a hundred channels, and $150 or so for a year's service contract and the legal connection to US channels. (Some illegal services exist.)

High Speed internet thorugh TelMex using Prodigy Infinitum is around $50 a month, and we pay $17 a month for Vonage for our long distance phone service for 500 minutes to or from the States. The basic TelMex bill is around $18 a month.

A five-gallon bottle of purified water delivered to our house is $2, including tip, and we use two or three a week. You can get a haircut from a Mexican haircutter for as low as $2.50, or you can go to Christine, a Brit with 20 years experience in London and Mexico City and she used to cut the hair of Margaret Thatcher, for $25. A few gringo-oriented boutiques charge $40 a haircut.

The daily English-language newspaper, the Mexican edition of the Miami Herald, is 70 cents if you buy from a newsstand or the two stands in the Jardin, or 80 cents if you buy from a guy taking it door to door, restaurant to restaurant. The weekly Atencion with an excellent calendar is 80 cents. Other publications with calendars are freebies.

To have a pet spayed at the Society for the Protection of Animals is $27, or the top vet in town charges $40-70 depending on sex and age and shots needed. Poor Mexicans can get their pets sterilized for free at the occasional spaying weekends by Amigos de Animales.

Teeth cleaning at Dr. Jorge Vargas was $40; a simple cavity repair and x-ray was $45.

But a printer cartridge for an HP photo printer is much higher--$35-45 for each of the three cartridges I need for my phto printer. Electronics seem to be higher overall. You can get a small TV for $90 that would be $75 in the States, or a huge flat screen monster for $5000. Computers cost more overall, though you can have a good basic system built for you here for around $600, not including monitor and printer.

A small stove and oven is around $200 in the local appliance stores, and an excellent standard size one is $400-600, or you can pay $1,000+ for a luxury model. A small fridge is as low as $250, all the way to $1,500 for a deluxe double door one.

A friend bought a stripped four-door Ford Escort for $8,500 US. Tiny cars you see a lot here are even cheaper. But some models are more expensive here.

If you want to live in luxury with products from the States you may need about as much money as you spend in the States for a luxury lifestyle. Or, you can live very simply for far less than you could in the States. Remember, 47% of the Mexican population lives on less than $1,800 a year.

San Miguel is an artsy knd of town full of free thinkers who accept everybody, though we have a few expats who bring more judgmental attitudes from the States. We are totally accepted here and I have not run into a single word of negativity in SMA, less than I experienced in the gay ghettos of Los Angeles! Lots of gays and lesbians and a few bis live here and some I think may consider themselves transgendered, though I haven't met them personally yet.

It isn't like LA where we immediately sought out the gay and lesbian communities and were fairly segregated within them. There was one gay SMA bar that was only open late Saturday nights, 100 Angeles, and then it was closed for a couple of years. It briefly reopened as Proud, which then changed its name to El Rincon del Alebrijes, but it doesn't seem to be open now. Maybe next week, maybe not. It was mainly frequented by Mexican gay men after midnight Saturday nights, after the nightspot had a glorious very integrated reopening.

We miss having a gay bar in town, but there are plenty of other places to enjoy dancing. Lesbians have no problems dancing in public--but then women dancing together are more accepted anyplace. Back in rural Michigan the men rarely danced so it was normal for only women to be on the dance floor at patries and wedding. Gay men don't feel quite that open, though there are numerous gringo benefits and parties where they do.

One of our first experiences in San Miguel, on Virgin of Guadelupe Day, we happened across a Mexican rock band playing on the steps of the Parroquia, the main church in Centro, and about a dozen young gringos who looked like U.S. hippies of the '60s were dancing their hearts out. A blonde 50-ish woman I think was straight was dancing like a fool alone, occasionally convincing another woman or man, gringo or Mexican, of any age, to join her on the floor. We joined right in and not a glare did we see. Fireworks exploded overhead in the cool night and I was in heaven. Have to say I've danced more here than I did in Phoenix!

My gay male friends say that there is a section of the beach at Puerto Vallerta that is almost totally gay and they love it, go there every winter The Lonely Planet Mexico guides give the locations of gay bars in many Mexican cities and say that we're more accepted than you might expect.

Of course the official Catholic line in this Catholic country is very much anti-gay, but the fiestas which have strong pre-Hispanic Indian roots often have men and women cross-dressing. Day of the Locos in June features a parade that has some elements that look like a gay pride march! Part of that is just the shock value of the day, everyone is trying to be outrageous as they can, they're not doing it to be transvestites, they're just having fun. But we can blend right into that, if you enjoy that.

Mexican Catholicism is not like U.S. Catholicism--I've heard it said that it's both the most Catholic and the least Catholic country in the world. Pagan roots run deep. Some of the lecturers in town have claimed that Catholicism did not overpower paganism and swallow it up, paganism just took the parts of Catholicism which fit into paganism and ignored the rest.

I am sure there must be considerable hostility on the part of traditional Mexicans who find their young men and women caught up in the gay scene in one way or another, and I bet some gay bashing does occur. A gay man here might get roughed up just as in the States in the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm not totally pollyannaish, I just haven't encountered it personally.

And not all gays and lesbians here are as out as I am--many still don't want to chance any discrimination, or are in positions where they think being open will hurt them professionally or whatever. They whisper the G and L words. Just like in any U.S. city.

Do gay and lesbian Mexicans mix much with expat gays and lesbians? Some do, some don't. My lesbianism is a small part of the total of who I am, and I make friends usually on the basis of that totality. A Mexican lesbian and I who had nothing else in common but our sexuality would have no reason to be friends, even if my Spanish were better. The straight Mexican man in my art class who is my age, who paints in a similar style, who can give me help when I can't seem to get the perspective right and I can help him point out where there needs to be more contrast, who enjoys the same music, who laughs at the same things, just might turn into a friend even if I'm looking up words on my pocket translator to communicate.

I am sure that there are still gays being killed in Mexico because of their sexuality, just as still happens in the States, though it is much worse in most of the world. There is plenty of very-closeted gay life here, my gaydar tells me that, and my gringo friends who do have gay and lesbian Mexican friends tell me that.

Mexican lesbians do not feel all that safe, far as I can tell, and a seminal book around 1985, "This Bridge Called My Back," about lesbians of color and edited by two Mexican-American Latinas, was full of information about how they came out of a culture which was highly homophobic.

The gay acceptance many of us open U.S. gays and lesbians feel is in some ways real, some ways an illusion, the polite front gringos often get when we are doing something outrageous or incomprehensible in Mexican eyes.

I personally have not had a single nasty look, much less any comments, from any Mexicans here, just the usual trash from a few uptight Americans who bring their bigotry with them. But I know of at least one gay gringo who moved to Mexico and then left partly because he felt the antagonism when two guys walked down the street with their arms around each other or holding hands. But he'd get that in most of the States as well. I know other gay gringos and Mexicans who live in San Miguel and who are very open, even outrageously so, and love it here.

Few straight people knew anything about how lesbians and gays were discriminated against in the U.S. before Stonewall in 1969 brought about our equality movement and our publishing explosion to go with it, telling our stories that we had never dared tell before. Before, we were "The love that dare not speak its name." Now we've been called, "The love that will not shut up." I don't think Mexico has reached that point yet!

A. So many people think everything in Mexico is on the beach! San Miguel is right about in the center of Mexico, hundreds of miles from either the Atlantic or the Pacific. We have a lake but you wouldn't want to go swimming or fishing in it. It photographs beautifully at sunset, though.

We do have excellent swimming because of the thermal (hot tubs!) area nearby, and hotel swimming pools in town that allow public access for a fee or to guests. On the road to Dolores Hidalgo, maybe five miles out of SMA, are my two favorite public pools, La Gruto and Taboada. La Gruta has a series of three caves, getting hotter and darker as you go farther in through narrow tunnels between the caves. I like the cave atmosphere, though it makes Norma claustrophobic. La Gruta can be rented at night, 6 pm to midnight, for private parties. Cost is 2000 pesos (around $190 US) for up to 10 people. No food or drinks can be brought in--if you want refreshments you can have the resort cater the party. But I can see a birthday party or something at a restaurant moving out to La Gruta to end the night. You can even swim nude. Reservations through Sra Flor de Maria Perez, 185-2099.

For real swimming, Taboada (also called Agua Magica) has a thermal Olympic-sized pool with laps, a big hot tub and a children's pool, with a picnic area and light refreshments. At various times groups of women have organized aerobics swimming lessons there, but these groups come and go. Several hotels on the same road, including near the Pemex station at Atotonilco, advertise their spas and various luxury services. I think the daily use fee is around $5 at these spots. There are buses out to that area, which will require an additional lengthy walk, or you can take a cab--negotiate a price first. You'd have to call a cab from the pool for the return trip, and telephoning for a cab means the fare will be double.

Santa Domingo Sports Club, in the condo complex past Las Casas school on Santo Domingo, has a 25-meter covered and heated pool, open for lap swimming 8-2 and 7-8. You can pay by the month, around $45, or $4 a day, and you can also pay for swimming lessons the other hours. Sometimes there are water aerobics classes there.

The Malanquin golf club has a pool but I've heard the charge is something like $20 a day if you're not a member. The luxury Hotel Mission de Los Angeles at the entrance to Los Frailes neighborhood just outside of town charges $7 a day, $25 a month for its large pool, I have heard. Hotel La Aldea on Ancha de San Antonio is cheaper, around $4 a day. I have also heard that Villa Santa Monica adjoining Parque Juarez and Real de Minas on Ancho de San Antonio at Stirling Dickinson will allow luncheon guests to swim for free that day. I haven't used any of these pools, I love Taboada and La Gruta.

Q 26: I can't stand to see the sight of stray dogs. Isn't anybody doing something about them?

This is another "five blind men describe an elephant" situation. In Centro and the wealthier areas I get the impression that there are fewer strays, and those that are stray, are often fed. One stray dog was so popular that many people kept picking her up and taking her in to be sterilized--finally someone got her a collar, "I've already been sterilized, thanks." I know so many expats who feed many stray dogs and cats and often pay to have the the animals sterilized if they can be caught.

In rural areas I often see stray dogs who are in terrible shape. Sometimes they run in packs. Many Mexicans are afraid of big dogs because of their experiences encountering starving packs. It is not possible to speak about all Mexicans, or all anybody, for that matter, and Mexicans have as varied opinions about animals as those in the U.S. do.

It's often said that attitudes toward social issues in Mexico are similar to the attitudes of the U.S. in the '50s, and I know animal abuse was fairly casual when I was growing up in cities and on a farm. Many Mexicans adore their animals, others would just as soon kick a dog as feed it. Same as the U.S.

Three groups deal with stray animals in SMA. The government agency Ecologica will come out if called and pick up a stray animal that is becoming a problem and usually have it destroyed after a few days wait for an owner to come, just as in the States (where hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of animals each year are killed exactly in the same circumstances).

One of the animal rights groups, I think Amigos des Animales, raises money to give to Ecologica so that the animals are euthanized in a more humane manner with shots than they were killed in the past. Amigos des Animales does wonders several times a year offering free sterilizations for poor Mexicans who cannot otherwise afford to have their animals sterilized. The group sets up weekends with volunteers from the U.S. and here who run hundreds of animals through. They have a good fund-raising program--Doc Severenson has performed in fund-raising concerts here for the Amigos.

The SPA is the largest group and it does its best to be a no-kill shelter, sometimes keeping dogs and cats for years when they are not adopted, but when they are absolutely full up, they are unable to take any more animals in. Animals which are brought to them too young or sick to survive are euthanized; there is no other choice except watch the animal die beyond the help of their vet. They have an ecellent vet on staff who has cared for several of our pets. She does sterilizations on cats for only $27 US.

They have volunteers who will take home a baby dog or cat who might survive given round-the-clock attention and hand feeding, and so often they can save even tiny animals. Our housekeeper has found two pups too young to even have their eyes open, and we've taken them to the SPA where volunteers were found to hand-feed the pups, who were just on the borderline of being able to survive without nursing.

OF course the SPA lacks sufficient money to do all they they want to do for the animals. They write an article with photos for every issue of Atencion; they run ads in all the places where possible animal adopters might be reached. Volunteers keep up scrapbooks of photos of animals waiting to be adopted and place the scrapbooks at the mail services and other places where someone might see a photo of a pet and think about adoption.

Volunteers take a few of the most lovable animals needing adoption to the Jardin every Thursday to let passersby pet the animals and hopefully fall in love. SPA volunteers visit the shelters for a couple of hours every day to pet and socialize the animals so that they will be more adoptable.

(Visit www.spasanmiguel.org and check out the available animals yourself, and learn how to volunteer or to give money.)

I think all three organizations are doing the best they can, and so many volunteers in town are doing the best they can. You can't fault SMA for not having enough money, volunteers, or groups to take care of all the stray animals who need help. The US certainly does not take care of all the stray animals who need help. You read stories in U.S. papers all the time about mistreatment of animals.

Okay, are you going to see a stray animal in such a condition that it will make you sick and you will want to leave Mexico because of it? Probably. If you visit the U.S. animal shelters and follow through on the stories and lives of each of those stray animals, you will want to leave the U.S., or maybe the human race. Is there less money in Mexico to care for animals when 47% of the Mexican population lives below the Mexican poverty line, around $1,800 a year? Certainly.

I don't know how you can escape seeing animal abuse in the U.S. or in Mexico or anyplace in the world. You can't escape child abuse or battered women or neglected elderly or lousy health care in any U.S. city, either.

I have to personally close my eyes to a lot that goes on in Mexico, just as I couldn't save everyone I wanted to save in the U.S. Yes, there is probably more suffering here, of people and animals.

I've had to set my own personal limits of what I know I can personally do, and then just turn off when I can't do any more. I'm not working in Catholic Worker soup lines in Detroit anymore, as I did in college, and I've reached my lmit with three stray kittens we have taken inside ourselves. I've set a realistic personal limit on how much money I can give to human beggars each day, and I just have to close my eyes when I hit the sixth beggar that day when I've already handed out the daily allotment I can afford to the first five beggars I meet.

I don't know how anyone else sets limits on how much each person wants to do for the world, people and animals, and how anyone else can live with seeing abuse and injustice. You just have to do something, I think, or else you are an ice machine. But you also cannot do it all, even a Mother Teresa. (I'm reminded of the joke of someone who dies and is wondering how Saint Peter will judge him, heaven or hell, and the person ahead is Mother Teresa, whom God tells, "Mother, you could have done just a little more." I bet every religion or culture has a similar kind of "joke" which deals with this aspect of the human dilemma.)

No one will promise you that Mexico is a see-no-abuse zone where you can feel comfortable. Neither is the U.S. If you don't see any abuse this moment, dig around, turn the corner and look harder. How do you live in a world where there is so much suffering? That is the measure of your life.

Some choose to go where the need is greatest, others choose to do what they can where they are, others choose to do nothing. We can't judge anyone else from the outside on what we think they are doing or not doing. Walking in their moccasins and all that.

I'm sure the SPA would love to have another animal lover around!

Those who are impatient, those who get outraged at someone cutting in front of them in line, those who think only the U.S. way of life is right, those who absolutely will not try to learn Spanish and Mexican history and culture, those who demand that everything speed up in "efficiency" to match what they expect in the U.S., those who cannot live and let live, those who love enforced rules, those who can't laugh at themselves and their plight, those with a need to change everything, those who always look at the clock, those who cannot just stop and enjoy a long moment reveling in a baby's smile or a wall of bougainvillea, those who cannot see the beauty in peeling hundred-year-old paint and crumbling stones, those who would honk at their street being blocked by burros or conchero dancers or a walking funeral procession, those out to make a killing here just as centuries of exploiters have ripped off Mexico...all should NOT come here and probably will not last if they do.

Q 28: What are the most popular colonias, or neighborhoods, in SMA?

Here's an on-line map that shows the colonias, if not very clearly: http://www.selectrealestate.com.mx/images/lgcoloniamap.gif

Not every map lists the colonias or even anything outside of Centro, though the more expensive ones do. Pick up the free booklet "The Map: Guide to Promoting San Miguel de Allende," from a realtor when you visit SMA, even if you're not interested in real estate, to see where the various colonias are. "Su Casa" is another free real estate quarterly brochure with a good map of the colonias. Of course a realtor brochure will be pushing the most expensive areas with the biggest realtor profit. Atencion on April 30, 2004, had an article on the colonias, ranked by realtors as to desirability. Here's my summary of that article:

Centro, of course, is five star, and that includes El Chorro, near Juarez Park. These are the most expensive areas and contain many million-dollar-plus homes. But Centro also has the most noise and traffic.

Four stars are Los Balcones and Atascadero up in the hills, considered wealthier gringo enclaves;
Arcos de San Miguel, an area started by rich families from Mexico City;
Guadiana, flat, still some homes in the upper-medium range;
Mesa de Malanquin, the golf club resort, very expensive;
Ojo de Agua, expensive, out a ways;
Villa de Los Frailes, farther out, too; a totally residential neighborhood by the lake, some interesting castle-like homes are being built there.

Three stars are Allende, medium prices, farther out than Guadiana;
Guadalupe, some fixer uppers, traditionally Mexican area;
La Lejona, where the new Comercial Mexicana is going up, and El Encanto and other new condo developments. I bet this one is higher ranked now;
Obraje, medium priced, walking distance to Centro;
Residencial la Luz, farther away than Gigante and in that area, a complete Mexican town with lower prices;
Independencia, probably higher ranked today, very popular, some homes with great views;
San Antonio, rising most rapidly in prices, walking distance from Centro.

The Atencion article rated everything else two stars or less. But of those, I see a few foreigners starting to move to San Rafael, a long walk to Centro. It has had a reputation for crime but you can check with poeple living in a block whether they have had any crime experiences. San Rafael has a new Neighborhood Watch program that is a model for the city.

Santa Julia, high in the hills, has some very poor homes but some friends found a house for $50,000 and put another $50,000 into it and now it is gorgeous, and they have six expats on their block. Like San Rafael, it was once considered a high crime area but that seems to be lessening now.

You can always look at the amount of gang graffiti and whether there are valuable cars parked on the streets and items like laundry and toys left unattended to give you a feel whether a particular block experiences more crime. You will often find a very expensive home next to a ruins in the same block throughout the city.
San Juan Dios is a small barrio by the San Juan Dios major produce market and other small Mexican shops. I'm starting to see some foreigners moving there, tearing down homes and starting over.

Five miles or more out of SMA are La Cieneguita and the Taboada area, around Atotonilco, where many buyers find they have hot springs on their property.

Q. 29: My Social Security is $327 a month. Do you mean to say I can live well in San Miguel?

Ouch. I don't mean to imply that those with very low Social Security can live well in San Miguel, I'm thinking more of the average check of at least $1,000 a month. If you make less than that a month, it might be more realistic to stay in the United States where there is some semblance of a safety net and you may be able to find subsidized senior housing, state medical assistance, food stamps, or other help. Mexico cannot help gringos financially--the country has a hard enough time taking care of its own poverty.

In fact, the Mexican government believes that it takes about $1,200 a month verifiable steady monthly income for an expat to live here, and so that is the amount currently required to get an FM3, an extended tourist visa that only has to be renewed once a year and that allows you to bring down a U.S.-plated car for the duration of your FM3's validity.

If you own the home you live in in Mexico, usually you can qualify on half that, and legally married spouses or other immediate family members can get FM3s on only half the additional monthly income of the primary family member. Sometimes you will qualify for an FM3 if you have the required yearly equivalent in the bank and can show three months' bank statements proving that income, i.e., $14,400 a year. Each Mexican immigration office,embassy or consulate may differ slightly on many rules. You need to go to your nearest Mexican authority to verify exactly what is required for that office. That $1,200 a month FM3 requirement is tied to the Mexican minimum wage, so it can vary slightly each year.

If you can't qualify for an FM3 you have to go back to the border to get a new FMT, tourist visa, at least every six months. It can be the Mexican border to another country such as Guatamala as well as the US border. So if you're in the $1,000-$1,199 income range, you'll have to figure in a round trip to a border. Americanos bus line, affiliated with Greyhound, charges about $100 US round trip to Texas.

On $1,000 a month, you'll have to look hard and find an apartment for maybe $350 a month, which is doable, though you probably won't find one immediately. You'll have to walk the streets and look at flyers and window signs and read the Spanish-language papers and ask around. Eventually you will do it. There are even cheaper places farther out, but make sure they are on a bus line. You can't count on always being able to get a six-months renewal of your temporary car permit--computers talk to each other, and you could get caught and not be able to bring your US-plated car down for more than one six-months in a calendar year. But it will be hard to afford the expense of a car on $1,000 a month in SMA.

You can do just fine on buses, taxis and walking, though. You'll miss having a car when you want to go out to see a friend who lives five miles out of town and you'll be getting home late and no buses run there after 10 pm, or you decide on the spur of the moment to go to one of the thermal pools five miles outside of town or so, etc. There are yellow pickup cab taxis called "mixtas" around town which you can hail to help you bring home furniture or other heavy things, and Mexican buses go everywhere very cheaply and comfortably. The ETN luxury line even has only three seats across so that you can really stretch out, if they fit your schedule. Buses within the city are only 40 cents a ride.

Your basic fixed expenses after rent will probably be about $300 a month--electric, phone, cable TV with US networks, high speed internet, propane, water and trash, a housekeeper once a week for a few hours, all depending on what is included and required in your rental. You will probably need some money to fix up your apartment--you'll probably be renting from a Mexican family if you're looking for lower rates, and the tradition is that everyone takes anything they can with them when they leave, because they paid to have it put in when they moved in. So towel racks, toilet paper roll holders, and light bulbs may be your responsibility. You probably will be allowed to paint at your own expense, and you will be better off if you take care of minor repairs yourself rather than asking the landlord. So these kinds of move-in expenses will occur.

You can eat as cheaply as you want--nearly half of the Mexican population lives on almost nothing, so you can get by on rice and beans and tortillas with plenty of fresh produce, and eat out occasionally at the cheapest places, or use your ingenuity on cooking. Someone willing to experiment can eat very well on very little here. You will not be going to restaurants a lot.

So much entertainment is free--I get a high just walking around town people-watching, and there are always art openings and free concerts and parades someplace. When you first arrive you'll want to go to a lot of the educational lectures at $5 a pop. Movies at the Gemelos theaters are only $2.20 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and the first matinee Sunday around noon. More artsy films are $5 at the Biblioteca's Teatro Santa Ana ,and $7 at Villa Jacarana (those include a drink and small popcorn).

Your biggest variable will be health care. If you've got great medical insurance that applies out of the US, fantastic, hold on to it. The Mexican government health insurance plan, IMSS, has many restrictions on age and preexisting conditions and what is covered the first year, but if you can get it, great, it's only around $300 a year. You have to go their route for care, of course. Medical care anywhere is a crap shoot--people rave about their IMSS care, others cite horrible care, same as in the States.

If you go the Hospital General in SMA, a basic ER visit is only about $6! Doctor visits may be as low as $2 to the guy connected with a small pharmacy who will write you a prescription after barely seeing you, or $20 to a GP who speaks pretty good English, or $40 for a visit to an English-speaking specialist, to even $90 for the best cardiologist. A friend who had a heart attack was revived three times at the private hospital, De La Fe, for around $3,000 over three days. I've got many other posts on medical expenses on this website for more examples. Many of us self-insure--we keep enough in savings to handle the much-lower costs of health care here, and we take that bus back to the States to use our Medicare for some major expenses if possible, and we worry a lot. I worried a lot about health care in the U.S. all the time.

There are no perfect answers to this one. U.S. health care is not great anyway if you're on low income, or even if you have good insurance and income. Many Mexican physicians and hospitals are excellent. Angeles Hospital in nearby Queretaro is one of the best in the country and would compare well to many U.S. hospitals.

If you have high ongoing medical expenses and specific prescriptions for which there are no Mexican generic substitutions, and you need care at very expensive specialized hospitals or physicians, you should think very carefully before you move to Mexico. If you have high existing debt which will take a big chunk of that minimum $1,000 each month, you need to calculate very carefully about that. If you have to see your kids or grandkids once a month in the States, you probably can't afford to do that on that minimum $1,000 a month. There are all kinds of individual conditions which can influence whether you can swing living in Mexico on the minimum we suggest.

You probably can't make much money to supplement your income here as you could in the States. Work permits can be hard to get, and they cost another couple of hundred a year, and you can't take a job a Mexican citizen could do. Mexican wages can be much lower even if you do get a permit--the Mexican minimum wage is ony about 50 cents US an hour. If you work under the table, it is very possible you could get caught and deported or heavily fined, though many do it.

How are you living on your Social Security check in the States? How much of your current U.S. livestyle must you maintain to feel good about yourself? What are the individual variables and preferences in your life?

Pinching pennies or pinching pesos, life on a low income is not easy. But we obviously think we enjoy a better way of live in San Miguel than we could ever manage in a desirable place to live in the U.S.

Q 30: Is it possible to bring our pet parrot with us into Mexico--and then bring him back to the States if we decide Mexico is not for us further down the line?

Bringing a parrot into Mexico is not as difficult as bringing one back into the States--not many people smuggle illegal wild birds back into Mexico! Losing rare species of birds to poachers is a big problem for Mexico and for the world's ecology. Most of the birds which are smuggled out die in the smuggling. And with the possible coming of bird flu to the U.S. and Mexico all bets may be off in the future on transporting any birds across borders.

But for now, it is possible to bring your pet birds into Mexico from the States with some certainty that if you ever do decided to return to the U.S., you could bring your bird back with you. It takes many steps. Be sure your bird is banded or tattooed. Here is what someone who is investigating the process right now has found out:

"1. You must get a permit from U.S. Fish & Wildlife (a CITES permit) in order to EXPORT the bird to Mexico. This can take 90 days. The object is to certify that the bird is captive-born and was not taken from the wild.

"2. You must have an International Health Certificate signed bya vet shortly before crossing. (This is true for any pet)

"3. The bird must be quarantined away from other birds for 30 days prior to taking him/her over the border.
You must get a test for salmonella and one other lab test I don't recall right now.

"4. When you have all this, you approach the border from the U.S. side, stop at U.S. Fish & Wildlife and have them sign off on the permit and health and lab papers

"5. Then, you cross the border and find the Mexican vet at the equivalent office to IMPORT the bird into Mexico. We are still determining if there is a form for the Mexican side. This is a work in progress.

"If you export/import the bird according to this procedure, in theory you can reverse the process and take it back to the States. If you take the bird in without import papers, the bird must remain in Mexico, because there is no proof you brought him there."

I'm wishing her luck. She says there are moments while she tries to find out all the red tape that she contemplates parrot stew!

Many Mexicans love caged birds of all kinds, and you can buy many kinds of birds that would be illegal to sell in the U.S., such as my favorite red cardinals, from many outdoor markets and Tuesday Market.

If you set up an outdoor aviary for your parrot, remember that it can get to freezing some days in December and January, so be sure to have some kind of covering for winter nights.

Added June 11, 2006: Our friends who moved here from AZ gave up and gave their African Grey to a friend in the States because they didn't get information back from U.S. authorities even over a period of months.

In addition to those listed, I'd recommend taking kids who are in the playground age to Parque Juarez, which has a brand new playground with all kinds of playing and climbing and swinging and sliding stuff. Older kids might want to watch local kids playing soccer or basketball, and if they throw back an out-of-bounds ball and think they're pretty good, and they know enough game rules and enough Spanish to at least say "Gracias" and their name and how to ask others their names, they might even join in one of the informal games. Some of the games are structured teams, however.

I think kids of all ages would enjoy swimming in the hot tubs nearby. La Gruta has three cave-like pools ever deeper into the earth, the last one quite hot and lit by skylight. See my SMA FAQ on swimming SMA for more spots.

Teatro Santa Ana often has a kids' movie on Saturday, and the two Mexican theaters at the Gigante mall, the Gemelos, often have children's films, but check whether the films are in English with Spanish subtitles or just dubbed into Spanish. By Christmas, 2006, the seven new movie tehaters at the new SuperGigante are supposed to be open. Some artsy films at the Villa Jacaranda at night might be to their interests.

Several places will be listed in Atencion ads for horseback riding, and you could rent a 4-wheeler ATV and take a mature enough child on the back for an off-road experience. Older kids might appreciate the Botanical Gardens, especially as an anternative to Centro activities.

If you see burros carrying firewood or dirt for sale, make sure to tip the owner a couple of dollars to let your kids pet the burrows and have their pictures taken with them. I think some of the burro owners make more money from picture-taking than they do selling their goods.

You can also take a ride a short ways out of town and see many more burros, often tied close enough to the road to chew the lushest grass that you could get out and get some shots there, too, for free, but make sure the burro can't get close to your kids and make some sudden move that might scare them or make them dart backwards into the street.

Drive down some of the dirt roads outside of SMA and stumble across some of the 540 villages that make up the other hald of San Miguel. Have them note how few men they see--women, children, and older people are left, all the working age men off to the U.S. working, and talk to them about what it would mean to live such a life.

I've seen fairly young kids on Thursday nights at El Ring, Hidalgo 27, dancing right along with the grownups, if they can stay up past 8:30 or 9 pm. They might like a flamenco show at El Rincon Espana on Correo. If they can stay up past 11 pm they'd probably get a kick out of the salsa dancing at Mama Mia's. Really young kids couldnm't make it for all of these late-night entertainment spots, of course.

Besides the classes listed on Portal, check the Atencion classifieds. Joan Goldberg teaches ceramics classes at her home studio, and I bet she could put together something age-appropriate. Lisa Simms teaches paper mache, and although they do serious art, I think both these teachers might be able to work something up. The bead shops in town have classes, often one on one, and I bet one of the shops would be willing to help older kids make their own simple jewelry. I know some of the language schools have summer classes for visiting kids.

The circus tent, La Carpa, at Fabrica Aurora often has classes in acrobatics and other events--just walking around inside a brightly-colored tent for any of their events might be fun.

And Fabrica Aurora itself would be fun to most kids, I think, especially on Thusrdays when almost all of the 25 art galleries and high-end shops are open, because many of the antique stores have things like giant carved chairs and animal folk art and intriguing sculptures. Seeing the factory workings from when the complex was a working fabric factory might interest them--you can still see some of the heavy factory machinery. Probably soem of the artists would be working so that kids could see how artists work differently in different media.

I don't know if would take kids to a bullfight, but look for a charreada advertised. They're Mexican rodeos.

Check the Portal general calendar as well, and Atencion when you get here. All of the parades and fiestas would be enjoyable to kids of all ages, I would think. They'd certainly like Tuesday Market and walking around in the stores around San Juan Dias market. They could sit in the yards before any of the church schools and watch how kids act when they come roaring out at the end of the day. Be around San Juan Dias at 12:30 and see all the kids interacting and watch what they're eating from the stands, quite different from US kids' foods.

If the kids' orchestra playing native pre-Conquistador instruments, something like Collar of Wind, be sure to take the family to that concert.

And I bet they would enjoy just sitting in the Jardin people-watching along with you, their attention on kids the same age range as themselves, Mexican kids entertaining themselves without the need for IPods and Gameboys. I think they interact with their families in far more intimate ways, carried in fathers' arms rather than pushed in strollers, for example. Even buying them some colored soap water to blow bubbles in the park would join them with Mexican kids doing the same.

They'll probably want their photos taken alongside Nacho, the draft horse that brings the red ice cream wagon to the Parroquia on weekends, and with what I call the Tourist Police, who are in sky blue and white uniforms on horseback at the Jardin and at Plaza Civica.

At least have them go inside different churches to see how different the oldest churches look compared to many churches in the U.s discount cardS. Read up on your own Mexican history and take the kids to Atotonilco to see the historic cathedral, and to Dolores Hidalgo where they can visit a ceramics factory and eat shrimp ice cream in their jardin.

They'll enjoy going inside a tortilla shop to see the giant machines that turn masa into tortillas as you watch. Let them duck into the gordita restaurant across from the Biblioteca where the women are making many menu items practically on the sidewalk as you pass by.

Be sure to leave Centro and walk with your kids in the poorer neighborhoods and watch how Mexican kids live, across various economic classes. They'd probably like a walk down Artisan's Alley, all the way to the end, and at the starting point by Hotel Quinta Loreto, be sure to take them through the hotel grounds so that they see the occasional peahen and the parrot cages. The Hotel Sautto also has an aviary in its courtyard where they can bring oranges or other fruit to the macaws.

These are starting points. I'm sure your kids will find plenty to do in San Miguel.

Q 32: I hear that there's a Mexican senior citizen card that expats over age 60 can get?

Yes, it's called the INAPAM card, formerly the INSEN card, and here is the website of the sponsoring agent:

http://www.inapam.gob.mx/servicios.htm#1

A friend translated the section on the qualifications for the card that I have copied below--English first, then the original.

Those of us with FM3s as well as FM2s qualify for the discount card again.

The photo of the card on the website is not the same look as the INSEN card so many of us got in Dolores Hidalgo last year.

Even though the INSEN card says it is good for life, I think we're going to reapply for the INAPAM card very soon--who knows what the rules will be next month?

Will someone at a bus ticket counter 10 years from now recognize that our INSEN cards are the same as the INAPAM cards and still give us the discount?

And we will certainly bring along the link and both translations of the page in case the clerk we are assigned never got the memo that expats on FM3s can qualify if they have all of the paperwork listed and the four infantile size photos.

(Any local photographer can make the small size photos for you. Ours on our INSEN cards last year needed to be in color. I think I'd bring along a set in color and another in black and white just in case. When we got a 5-year renewal of our FM3s we brought color photos and they had to be in black and white.)

Many clerks might only know to ask for your tax ID card because that is the standard photo ID used by Mexicans. They might not know that alternative forms of photo ID such as your drivers license qualify. So bring along a copy of the text below.

====================

First, the English translation of the INAPAM website info:

This credential is for population of 60 years old and more, to have access to multiple benefits and discounts in goods and services in almost 20 thousand establishments at a national level.

To obtain it you may go to any of the 4 centers of Integral Attention in the D. F. or to the Inapam State Representation that corresponds.

• Original and Copy of the Birth Certificate or the CURP.

• Original and copy of the elections credential or any other identification with photography.

• General data of some person to whom it can be advised in case of emergency.

• Infantile size photography.

• In case you are a foreigner, migration forms FM1, FM2 and FM3.

For more information regarding the affiliation card, call to: 56 82 60 77 ó al 56 82 55 75 ext. 130, 55 24 05 18

=================

Second, the original Spanish:
AHORA ES GRATUITA

Credencial provisional
Sirve para que la población de 60 años y más acceda a los múltiples beneficios y descuentos en bienes y servicios en cerca de 20 mil establecimientos a nivel nacional.
Para obtenerla, los interesados pueden acudir con la siguiente documentación a cualquiera de los 4 centros de Atención Integral del D.F. o a la Representación Estatal del Inapam que corresponda:
• Original y copia del acta de nacimiento y o CURP.
• Original y copia de la Credencial de elector u otra identificación con fotografía.
• Datos generales de alguna persona a la que se le pueda avisar en caso de emergencia.
• Fotografía tamaño infantil.
• En caso de ser extranjero presentar formas migratorias FM1, FM2 y FM3.
Para más información acerca de la Tarjeta de Afiliación llame al 56 82 60 77 ó al 56 82 55 75 ext. 130, 55 24 05 18

===================

Last year many of us with only FM3s in San Miguel went to Dolores Hidalgo to get the cards, since we found out that city was issuing the cards to those with FM3s, while the SMA offices had long ago said only FM2 holders could apply. Dolores stopped that practice as of December 31, 2006. But now according to INAPAM' own website, those with FM3s qualify, too.

Here is the link to the INAPAM offices in each Mexican state:

http://www.inapam.gob.mx/delesta07.pdf

Each one has a phone and email to ask where else in each state you could apply for the card.

Also, below is the link to an article on the card. The author lists many of the benefits an INAPAMicle o card brings,
most of the 20,000 places honoring the discount apparently in Mexico
City.

The 50% discounts on buses, free admission to museums, and 3% discount atSupergigante (was 5%) and in some pharmacies, and at
MM~Cinemas for tickets are the main ones of interest to most of us here.

http://www.internationalliving.com/mexico/free/08-16-07-retiree.html