reconnecting without excuses

Montreal is a beautiful city in many ways. Many, many ways. I feel so fortunate to have the old port so close by, kind of in the backyard. I'm walking around the city trying to enjoy all the beauty, trying not to think of how much I miss Mexico...

I'm going through a kind of a similar situation with myself and Montreal at the same time. 

Trying to reconnect with the both of us, trying to see my own beauty. It's not always easy, especially not the outside. It's easy to feel critical when looking in the mirror this time of the year. The tan from the summer has vanished, the hair just looks thin, dry and greasy, all at the same time. The inner-self is just as pale and disconnected. I try to look for things I'm grateful for, change my attitude. The grateful part is a bit easier. I'm grateful for my health, even though I still suffer from horrible neck issues, that never got solved during vacation or acupuncture sessions later on here in Montreal, I'm none the less in good health. Grateful for a wonderful 6 months in Mexico, grateful for the Spanish I have learned, grateful to have had so much warmth and sun this year ... it all links back to Mexico somehow. I often close my eyes at the gym, listen to the music we were dancing to in Zumba class in Mexico and ups I fly off to Mexico ... I listen to ballads of Alejandro Fernandez and ups I'm back in Mexico. Music is definitely the fastest and most ecological way to travel.

What about Montreal? It's all about our own attitude, it's all about how we decide to see things. Be present in the moment. Enjoy what we have right here, right now.

"For things to reveal themselves to us,

we need to be ready to abandon

our views about them" 

 I got to enjoy skiing in October for the first time ever in my life. That is the one thing one can't do in Mexico.

It was a different kind of experience. 

 I did like the experience if not for the skiing itself but being outside and enjoying the view from the mountain. Why the skiing wasn't as joyful was because it was a very narrow slope packed with people and quite icy. Felt a bit too dangerous for my taste.

As for enjoying Montreal again. My solution is to do fun activities here, especially outside activities if possible. To connect with people. Hopefully finding some Mexicans to hang out with. If you can't go to Mexico ... well, bring parts of Mexico to you. As for connecting with myself, well I will get back to you on that one. I think I have an idea of what I need to do ... now I just need to start doing it ... no excuses. 

Got the right aTeatude

It's been a while, it often has been a while, I feel. Regarding staying connected with others ... oneself ... with life ... Mother Nature. Lots and lots has happened. We ended our 6 month stay in Mexico ... in tears partially. We had a lovely vacation in Europe after it. Now we are back to our "old life" in Montreal. It's back to the same routine, the same stable life ... hmmm or is it? 

Before I get into what life back in Montreal has brought to me, I want to share a few pictures of smooth moments from our vacation.

Relaxing walk in my hometown Porvoo, where I grew up. Relaxing especially for me as while my husband was walking around taking these pictures, I was getting a massage in order to fix a very horrible stiff neck, before our travels continued. 

Our Pura Vida travels continued with the ferry leaving Finland behind and going to Stockholm in Sweden.

In Stockholm we got to spend very royal time with my best friend and her special someone, visiting the Drottningholm palace amongst other things. 

And from Stockholm to Turku 

and then back to Helsinki.

In Helsinki our relaxing walks continued. Same concept, me at the osteopath getting a massage for the same darn neck problem and my husband walking around taking pictures. Nice team work.

Then we flew off to Madeira, Portugal on a nice family vacation including the company of Mother Nature in a very  majestic way ....

It's an island where it's really easy to feel on top of the world. You just need to hike up there.

And we did indeed. We hiked up and got a very strong signal  connecting us directly with Mother Nature. She is powerful and beautiful in so many ways and she whispered sweet, sweet words in our ears.

After you are up well you often must come down. We came  back down and back to Finland enjoying calm waters at the country cottage. 

The signal from Mother Nature here was just as strong. She whispered some wise words to me one fine morning. Something I already knew but had refused to understand or listen to when said to me by others. Addiction can sometimes blur our connection with ourselves like that. 

I'm happy to announce that I no longer am a coffee drinker. It sometimes can be that easy to stop an almost life long habit. I'm now a very motivated tea drinker. Feeling I gave myself one of the most beautiful gifts I have ever received.

My first day back in the grocery store in Montreal, dragging my feet, forcing myself to at least get enough things to make a breakfast. Thinking to myself; "oh crap, here we go again, back to this" and I suddenly light up of enthusiasm somewhere between the bred and the cheese; "Oh yes but I get to buy some tea". Since then I found myself big cosy mugs to drink from, tea for the morning, tea for the afternoon, tea after dinner and finally tea for sweet dreams. Life with tea makes even life back in good old Montreal joyful. A hike up Mont Royal and you are almost on top of the world. 

The signal with Mother Nature might be a bit weak but with the right aTeatude you still get well connected.

plantain hunting on common ground

When you are a Finn and you marry a Dominican (or the other way around), there are a lot of cultural differences to get use to. We are both human beings from planet earth so we obviously do have a lot of common ground...as children we both climbed trees and fell down from them, we both loved running in the rain and chasing thunder and lightning and we both played similar games with the neighborhood crowd ... but we have had a lot to adjust to as well and that comes with a lot of bending and flexing, commonly known as compromising. Then again every marriage does, I do believe. One more fun thing I have had to get use to has been exotic fruit. I didn't basically eat fruit before I met my husband. I have always liked vegetables but fruit was not my thing, except avocado. To find a man in Finland who eats avocado is extremely difficult. It's considered a female thing. In Caribbean countries, it's basically part of the daily intake and my husband is no exception. Another thing that is very much part of their food, is the mighty plantain.

In Costa Rica, where the picture was taken, you basically get your plantains right out of the tree where ever you are. And during our 2 week honey moon we ate them for breakfast, lunch and dinner more or less. In Mexico, we had to spend 3 months without any until I finally managed to hunt down some good green plantains... 

at an indoor market place about 6km from where we live called Mercado La Cruz.

Since I found my reliable plantain source, it has become part of my weekly routine to walk down to this market place. It's a really nice and colorful walk through a few different neighborhoods. I feel so good and so alive, when I walk these streets as they are so full of life in so many ways.

And finally ending up on Avenida Universidad, the street that just gets more and more beautiful for every time I pass.

We now have less than three weeks here in our beloved Queretaro and we are both feeling very sad to leave this city and country. I have had to stop listening to Alejandro Fernandez when walking the streets as I just end up crying. Instead I have made sure to download crazy, happy and chaotic music from Zumba class. So I'm pretty much up to date with the newest latino rhythms. Something that comes pretty handy, in case you want to go out clubbing on Saturday nights and still feel young and alive. When you know the music, you dance and party with the rest of the crowd. When you don't know the music... well that's when you start looking around and realize people around you are half your age.

A thing that is hard to find in Finland, is a man who likes to dance. Something latino men tend to be pretty good at and something fun I got quickly used to with my husband. So lately we have sparked up our Saturday nights at Pepe el Toro. It's a fun and relaxed night club with no entrance fee, Moët & Chandon champagne bottle to Canadian store price and while you dance the night away to great music you can look up at the moon and the stars as they open up a wall so it becomes like a roof terrace. The Dj is great and the people who go there are friendly party people. Honestly I can't think of it getting much better than this.

My Dominican and I might be from very different cultures but I really enjoy the Caribbean breeze my husband brought to my life when he first asked me out, one fine evening in June 4 years ago. In a few days we will celebrate our first wedding anniversary. Out of our 1 year marriage, we have spent 6 months in Mexico. 6 absolutely amazing months, filled with a lot of flexing and bending in all kinds of ways but with it a lot of great moments. We will leave this place with a great amount of sadness in our hearts but with lots of wonderful memories and a few great life lessons in our pockets. We will be going back home... home, home, home. Wherever that is.

I do believe home for us is in each others arms on whatever ground our feet might be standing. I can only hope that we will be coming back standing on Mexican ground again. It's really sunny, warm and friendly ground to stand on.

false evidence appearing real

I was happy to say goodbye to our rainy June. As much as I appreciate seeing another side of Mexico, (the wet and muddy side) I'm happy to get to enjoy the sunny dry side I fell in love with. 

It was so cold, wet and miserable that we started feeling that autumn came to us. We started sleeping with a furry winter blanket during the nights and watched Christmas movies in the evening. I switched from white to red wine. Very confusing indeed. 
Here is a video from our beloved Guanajuato this June. I'm really sad to see how bad they were hit.

Now in July things are looking up. The sun is visiting us more frequently and drying places up.
I don't have to carefully plan when I walk to the local grocery store anymore.  I have several hours to figure it out.

I got to take my scooter back out and go for my favorite ride down the mountain. I really love the view and it's a nice ride, as it's all down, down, down. 

First time I took this route I remember being really scared of facing a scorpion. My friend had reminded me of their existence, a few weeks earlier. I'm not really used to them. Not having to deal with them in Finland nor Canada, so I looked up a few videos on Youtube. They are impressive little things. I have never felt the need to be scared of insects but that is easy to say when you have nothing but mosquito bites and worse case scenario wasp bites to fear. 
In Mexico there are over 200 different species of scorpions but apparently only 8 of these have venom that is deadly to us humans. This fact calmed me down a bit. It however doesn't mean that it's anything but painful when they actually sting you and how are you to know what kind that did so? Or if you might be allergic to them? On my scooter ride, I didn't come face to face with a scorpion but about two weeks ago, during the rainiest time, one paid us a visit in our little back yard. 

It was surprisingly small and peaceful but a scorpion none the less. So now I make sure to clean the house as properly as I can and spray the windows and doors from the outside to help keep scorpions and cockroaches away. So far so good. I chased down a gardener to come and cut our grass in the back where I have to hang the laundry to dry. I seem to speak perfectly understandable Spanish every time I'm in need of help, a peculiar phenomenon. Where does the words go when I just need to do basic small talk? I guess I blame that on my antisocial Finnish roots. Then again, the most friendly social people I ever met in Montreal were all Finns, so I don't think that fits either. But back to the scorpions ... I saw it suitable to have a few sips of tequila while doing household work, just in case. It might sting a little less. So now when I have a cleaning day, I tend to send my husband a text message informing him that some tequila cleaning is being done in the house. I feel less guilty this way.
I learned that the scorpions not only use their venom on their victim but actually on each other as well. The male sometimes use it during mating on the female to paralyze her (I guess that makes her more agreeable). And then after mating the female using it to kill the male (she is clearly less patient at this point). They are pretty passionate creatures and pretty smart to keep at a safe distance. 
To get away from my scorpion thoughts and research I started to go regularly to Zumba class. I had forgotten how much this does to one's mental health, when one doesn't have much of a social life. A female instructor and nothing but female participants, there is just something magical about this. Our instructor is a beautiful girl with long black hair and both energetic and inspiring.  I can be as tired as I want on my way to class but when I come home I feel so hyperactive one could think I was stung by some kind of caffeine creature. 

I get to feel part of the locals and it really lights up my day. Another little hobby I have, is to feed stray dogs. We have a few in the neighborhood. They are very scared and shy and it is really hard to become friends with them. They will not let me feed them from close but if I leave the food and then walk to a certain distance they will eat, so that's what I normally do. I'm a Finn, I understand keeping humans at a safe distance. We call it personal space.

It is however disturbing to see how scared the dogs are of us humans. There is obviously a reason for this fear. The only dogs that have come up to me here have been puppies, so they haven't lived long enough to see torture or whatever they are faced with. We were in Costa Rica earlier this year on our honey moon and there the stray dogs (way less than you have here) would walk up to me one after the next very happy and playful. I guess this means that Mexicans are no as friendly as they seem. Not with animals at least. Then again Costa Rica is known for their respect of nature and that includes all animals in it. Nothing but Pura Vida. I honestly think that Costa Ricans and Finns have a lot in common. We both have a profound respect of Mother Nature. Something that should be a given but rarely is.

I read some disturbing things about how Mexicans exploit scorpions and my husband came home with a morbid story about how in the USA you can buy lollipops with a dead scorpion in it. How horrible isn't that? I looked it up and he wasn't joking. People actually do this and it's called scorpion pops. 

  

So here I went from fearing Scorpions to feel bad for them. Humans are sick but what is new? The best thing is to keep the bad ones at a far distance and be good to the good ones. After all, fear might just be false evidence appearing real.