GPS

First of all, thanks to everyone who has posted a comment or written us an email. We thought we'd head back to Laredo, TX and maybe up to San Antonio...and then we decided to take another route and make our plan to live and teach in Mexico work!

On that note...our Acura had GPS and I never realized how much I missed it until I came to Mexico...

Monday we packed our truck and trailer in record time and at about 5:30pm we decided to head out. Yah, I know - rush hour traffic is about the worst time, but we were ready to go. So we looked at our AAA Mexico map and headed west, looking for Highway 15 to Toluca. We thought it would be a short enough drive to get a room for the night. HA

By some miracle we saw the green directional sign to Toluca simply by driving west. And then there were NO MORE signs to Toluca. I think we drove on every highway in DF and found ourselves high on a mountain, in a very small community, at the end of a dead end road. Mike got out of the truck, helped guide me, the truck and trailer as I BACKED DOWN about 60 yards. People on the streets stopped to watch and all traffic came to a halt. I can't tell you how nervous I was. It was getting dark and I had all kinds of crazy thoughts running through my head. But HALLELUIAH we made it down, turned around and somehow found our way back into crowded DF.

We finally hailed a cab and asked him to lead us to a hotel. We got a room and went to sleep. On Sitka's morning walk I found that the hotel was about 6 blocks from the Inter Act school. Irony. In a city as big as DF, how is it that we would stay in a hotel so close to the school that we were running from???

Tuesday morning we hired another cab and had him lead us to the highway to Toluca. We got turned around in Toluca (habit by now), but eventually made it to Morelia, in the state of Michoacan. Again, we hired a cab to lead us to a Holiday Inn - we saw signs for it, but no hotel.

Now bear in mind that at age 20 I drove myself from South Florida all the way home to Seattle with just the aid of a map. So I know I can read maps, but I think the big problem is that the Mexican directional signs reference towns that aren't on the map and I end up taking the wrong turns. Mike helps as the navigator, but he has the same problems reading the signs and the maps.

Our plan right now is to spend another night or two in Morelia, get some resumes submitted and see if we get any leads regarding teaching jobs. We also had our front brakes replaced today as they had been taking a beating with the trailer and driving through the mountains to DF. Mike sweet-talked (in Spanish-English-body language-pantomime) the guys at the Nissan dealership and we walked away paying only about $700 pesos ($70 US dollars) - what a deal!!! We're in a very nice hotel with room service and I hope to jump in the pool tomorrow!

Regarding Mike, we left DF so quickly that we missed his 6pm appointment with his doc to get the brain scan and blood test results. And we have left her several voicemail messages, but no reply. We presume there is nothing urgent and that maybe the eye strain came from all of the training, reading and writing. We'll continue calling the doc and if necessary we could always turn around and go back to DF.

But tonight I'm taking a shower, getting some clean clothes and going for a walk with my man. Stay tuned!