Posts filed under 'From the Newsgroups'
We’re preparing a newsletter for next week, and learning a lot more about San Miguel de Allende in the process. It’s long been popular enough with the expat community but a lot of talk is being generated lately about San Miguel’s place in the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites.
San Miguel has long been the haunt of some prolific bloggers, creative thinkers, writers, artists and film-makers. But the most comprehensive post about that news was from Mexico Premier. including a nice list of the other 27 UNESCO sites in Mexico.
The UNESCO site itself describes the Inscription of The Protective town of San Miguel and the Sanctuary of Jesús Nazareno de Atotonilco this way:
The fortified town, first established in the 16th century to protect the Royal Route inland, reached its apogee in the 18th century when many of its outstanding religious and civic buildings were built in the style of the Mexican Baroque. Some of these buildings are masterpieces of the style that evolved in the transition from Baroque to neoclassical. Situated 14 km from the town, the Jesuit sanctuary, also dating from the 18th century, is one of the finest examples of Baroque art and architecture in the New Spain. It consists of a large church, and several smaller chapels, all decorated with oil paintings by Rodriguez Juárez and mural paintings by Miguel Antonio Martínez de Pocasangre. Because of its location, San Miguel de Allende acted as a melting pot where Spaniards, Creoles and Amerindians exchanged cultural influences while the Sanctuary of Jesús Nazareno de Atotonilco constitutes an exceptional example of the exchange between European and Latin American cultures. Its architecture and interior decoration testify to the influence of Saint Ignacio de Loyola’s doctrine.
Here’s a link to some very nice photos of both locations, also from UNESCO. There’s even more here, as part of the Flickr Churches of Mexico Photo Pool.
Lastly but well-worthy of mention is this humorous take at San Miguel Gangs on all UNESCO sites, a comparison of San Miguel with Tallinn Estonia, another new UNESCO inductee. Though they may be dead serious. (It’s definitely one of the best blogs I’ve read this week!) Humor from San Miguel Ex-pats remains a rather precious commodity, check their newsgroups if you don’t believe me. Note that word “Civil” in the title and proceed with caution.
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July 31st, 2008
We’re just now getting the ball rolling on our new Facebook Group and already we’ve got lot’s to show for it. Whether you’re interested in Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Dominican Republic or some of the other places we’re just introducing…
Livtopia is passing more and more information through our Facebook group, including updates to our ever growing calendar of events and we’d like to see you there.
In addition to all the fun you already have on Facebook, now you’ll find an increasing number of Livtopians.
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July 13th, 2008
It’s another Livtopia Contest! This is merely the starter post; we’ll be sending a Livtopia T-Shirt to the person who leaves the number one reason for Moving to Mexico in the comments section below this post.
We’ve posted similar lists of reasons in the past, like the 7 ways Latin America is more Accessible post from way back and the top ten reasons to consider Vergel de la Pena. But this time we are hoping to hear from more readers about what your own personal best argument or justification is!
- Mexican Culture?
- Mexican Food?
- Mexican Investment Atmosphere?
Whatever your reason is -Just spell out a 5 word, 10 word or 50 word reasoning in the comments section. (if you need 400 words that’ll be ok too.) We’ll compile the best answers into a top ten, then we’ll email the very best commenter (judged by Livtopia Customer Service) and they’ll receive a custom Livtopia T-Shirt (L or XL) in the post.
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June 27th, 2008
The very name “Oaxaca” rightfully connotes a civilization not at all ready to be tamed and modernized and cheerfully dragged into the antiseptic light of tourism. The at-first unpronouncable spelling gives way to a city and a state equally at odds with an easy definition and that’s what’s made it a favorite for ex-pats and tourists alike.
But the past year has seen some serious trials. In glorious Mexico, where the sun always shines, Oaxaca got better than a fair share of world-wide media attention, when the Teachers Union went up against the governor of the State. The riots claimed at least 9 lives and the center of the city was occupied both by protesters and 4000 federal police, and left a smoldering ruin. To people watching from around the world, the descent into chaos reminded all of us that this is not some Disneyland but a real struggling society willing to fight for its own survival and freedom.
Oaxaca: One Year Later, in the Washington Post this past week, gives a sobering look at what the city is like today. After what it’s come through, it’s a welcome relief that the situation is not much worse.
One of the real pleasures of writing about relocation to Mexico is that is has always attracted not only people whose eyes are already open, but people who want their eyes open. Of course there are gated communities where nothing so much as a leaf out of place will set off alarm bells, and one can spend a lot of time bemoaning the presence of the people filling those places. One person may actually believe that purchasing a home in a gated, security lock-down development was the wildest, craziest thing they’d ever do. And for that person, of course, it probably is.
But for others, seeking affordable healthcare and housing, not to mention a sense of adventure and the feeling of really living again, places like Oaxaca and many of the shaded cities therein offer a chance to do just that. See Kat Snyder’s post at the Daily Texan:
[Carole] had toured the U.S. in her FEMA trailer which she had been living in since a hurricane hit her place in Florida a few years back. With the cost of living going up in the U.S., she decided that a retiree such as herself would fare better in Mexico. She and her late husband had good memories of Oaxaca, she said, and she could see herself being happier there than in the U.S. with the money she had.
Snyder’s post asks some pointed questions, about the immigration debate at home for example, but she doesn’t address the problems of the previous year in Oaxaca. Perhaps they are already receding in scale when put in a proper perspective.
Return to Livtopia.com
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December 1st, 2007
I’ve been really lax lately at reading all of the other great things going on out in the blogosphere, with so many things going on close to home. Among them, the still struggling to soft re-launch Livtopia.com itself. (sigh) It’s happening soon.
That said, I am always delighted to see the blogging boomers carrying on with their carnival. This is the 41st already, hosted this time at So Baby Boomer.
Highlights, there are always plenty, include the discussion at LifeTwo: Midlife and always single women, by the newly prolific Catherine from Our Lady of Perfection. It’s the sort of chain of comments that make me thankful there is a blogosphere.
Along the same lines is the Gen Plus+ survey result release. Not because the survey results are inspiring (they’re not!). But because someone is doing good work to address the issues facing job-seekers later on in life.
“The results were disconcerting. Of our survey-takers, 50 and older, who currently do NOT have a job, 45 percent have been looking for longer than 1 year and 22 percent have been seeking employment between 7 months and 1 year. That means that 67 percent of those 50 years and older who took the survey have been searching for work at LEAST longer than 7 months. That is a long time.”
But from the same press release:
Gen Plus™ provides relevant, current services targeted to the 50 Plus generation. Services include free job search, online dating, products and education. For more information please visit http://www.genplususa.com For Wendy Spiegel’s blog covering issues ranging from Job Search at 50 Plus to Social Security opinion pieces to Aging in China, please visit http://www.genplus.blogspot.com Your comments are invited.
There’s plenty of information about the rest of GenPlus at both the site and the blog linked above.
The illustration is Costa Rica’s Arenal Volcano.
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October 7th, 2007
This is one of those blog posts that is getting scrutiny all around the internet this week. And with good reason. Gregory McNamee put together a nice post of fact-checking tips for those of us who are always searching for information, generally, around the internet. I thought I would take a stab at applying these to our own subject matter, Latin American travel and relocation, as much for the fun of reading McNamee’s post more closely, as for seeing how we stand up.
1. Trust not the first answer the search engine turns up. In the spirit of the tyranny of the majority, it will usually be wrong or, if not outright wrong, not the answer you really need. This is hard to argue with. Livtopia get’s inquiries from people just for the sake of arguing a point. We’re right now placing comments capability on ALL of the written information pages of our websites to better rely on the fact checking capabilities of our readers.
2. Interrogate your sources as Detective Sergeant Joe Fridaywould interrogate a hippie. What qualifies one source to claim superiority over another? Same as above, right? We’re looking for the interrogation, and in most cases, we’re not offering superiority in truth with facts, but superiority with numbers of people on the ground.
3. Facts are stupid things, as Ronald Reagan said, until we give them meaning. I think in the case of travel and relocation to Latin America, our problem is more that there are too many stupid things; facts, statutes, rules, regulations. Part of what we try to do is break them down into pieces, in English, and make facing them easier, making understanding everything simpler.
4. When evaluating the statements of others who mean for you to take them as facts, look for the passive voice. When someone says, “Mistakes were made,” set your antennae on the most sensitive tuning. See yesterday’s post. Nancy from Countdown to Mexico stepped in as the corrective antidote to our own ridiculous oversight.
5. As a corollary, beware the anonymous. That’s a good point. I am working on a meet the staff page, most of the people I am talking to everyday are natives of the countries where they’re working. Others are expats from the US or Canada with years of experience, but we will fill you in on all of that with the new page. We’re hoping to make the rest of the new pages more accessible such that readers are authors too.
6. Rigorously practice the principle of symmetrical skepticism. Assume goodwill, but also assume that everything people tell you is wrong until you have looked it up for yourself, no matter how much you may agree with your source of information politically, religiously, culturally, or otherwise. and rather brilliant I thought: You have to form the habit of not wanting to have been right for very long. The number of times we have relearned this point is just, well, staggering. We gear a lot of Livtopia’s business toward getting people here, to Mexico, to Costa Rica. And then what? Some rule has changed and we have to roll with it. The consequences are never staggering they just SOUND staggering.
7. If you’re excited by a piece of news or a press release or somesuch novelty, wait a few days before you commit yourself to it. Mistakes are made. Corrections are issued. True enough. We get excited. I am not sure everyone else does. We are getting ready to announce our plan to offer packaged healthcare services to seniors of whatever background all over Mexico and Latin America. The wording continues to change, the marketing is in flux. Check with our Concierge for more information.
8. Have a little fun while you’re doing all this poking around and investigating and challenging. There are so many ways I see this happening all the time. Especially when people move south of the border or to the Dominican Republic. or they are just starting to consider it, and suddenly they start relearning “the History of the Americas.” There are few better places to do it.
9. Be not dogmatic. As the Firesign Theatre rightfully instructed, Everything you know is wrong. Facts are stupid things, but they can entrap the most careful of us. And we are never so certain of ourselves as when we’re incorrect. In my own list, this would be number one. Everything I am doing with my companeros at Livtopia is about “Better Living,” not about being right. Being wrong is among the most perfectly blissful things that can happen because suddenly, you are one step closer to being right.
10. The Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that we all tape this little note to our telephones: “Are you sure?” The message is meant to serve as a reminder to help stem wrongheaded talk, idle gossip, and pointless argument. Perhaps one of the reasons so many of us are interested in leaving el AngloMundo is for just this sort of excitement. The Latin World is, for us, so full of uncertainty, so full of questions and so often we find ourselves in a position of passive receptivity. We’re here to learn, to keep asking questions. These are not our countries, but they are part of our world now, and being sure of that is something we have to work at a little bit everyday.
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July 13th, 2007
Janet is a new poster in our NewsGroup, Live Better Mexico. I think her post below gives lots of details about her biography so I will let that speak for itself. I asked her if I could re-post the below here because it speaks volumes not only about the people you’ll meet in Mexico, but also about why they come and what they find when they get here. Interested in the conversation? Why not sign-up yourself. There’s always something new going on there.
Life is interesting and at times I guess I have taken a few chances that most people wouldn’t do. Moving to Mexico is one of them and the fact that I had never been to Mexico with the exception of an occasional trip to the tourist towns. I read the infamous AARP article a few years back on this area but I was so far from considering retirement that I just kept it on the back burner of my brain as something interesting.
Two years ago a friend of 30 years married a man that read that same article and they came down here to check out the possibilities of moving to Mexico. I stayed in constant contact with them by email as they looked from the west coast to the Chapala area. My only advice to my friend was “Just don’t do anything impulsively”, but they came home with a contract for a house to be built.
I continued to stay interested in the area for almost a year while their house was being built and read everything I could about it on the web. I learned quite a bit from www.chapala.com with a web board much like this one. Quite a bit of local chatter. I kept looking at houses on the web in this subdivision and locally. A house came on the market in the same subdivision that my friend moved into and she emailed me pictures inside and out and we made an offer by phone that night, contingent on an inspection of the structure. The first time we came down here was when we closed on the house. After that we went home and prepared to move by putting the house on the market and started getting rid of things. We closed on the house in January and set our sights for the move as August 1st. We actually got moved on the 18th so we were pretty close to our schedule. What I like most about the area is hard to list according to priority but all bunched together it’s:
- the people,
- the weather,
- the location,
- the relaxed stress free feeling,
- the creature comforts I’m used to
- the cost of living
and I think I could go on but most importantly I have not regretted a single day that we made this move.
We’re still in our 50’s, (late 50’s) and my husband is not yet retired. He telecommutes to Michigan each day and is planning on working one more year. I asked him to work for 2 years after the move to replenish what we spent buying the house and now he almost has one year under his belt.
We live in a gated community but it’s not as much for protection and security but more because we don’t speak any Spanish. It would be a bit harder living in the village in a home without the built-in community. We have a fair share of single women living in this subdivision and they all feel very safe secure and happy. A new visitor (single woman) just bought a house here a couple of days ago and attended one of our parties at the club house last night and she said it was the most fun she’d had in the last 20 years. Here we have so many friends that I’m amazed that I can remember everyones’ names. You can get by with little or no Spanish because the local people know enough English to make it do-able although learning Spanish is always a plus.
-Janet
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July 2nd, 2007
Via the Panama Guide, sun bakers in Panama are advised to avoid direct beams for the next few days (April 9th to 15th), as the Sun is moving directly over the isthmus.
the sun’s rays will be striking Panama from directly overhead or from a perpendicular position. It is important to pay attention to the predictions and recommendations published by the Environmental Physics Laboratory of the University of Panama in relation to tolerable levels and exposure times to ultra-violet rays.
Luckily there is plenty to do off the beachfront. Try the Cooking Diva’s Twice Fried Plantains.
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April 10th, 2007
Backdating a little, Rick Lewis’s comprehensive take on IMSS insurance was updated in December 2006, but just came through the Lake Chapala Information feed today. I’m glad it did. Lewis writes for www.mazInfo.com,and is a frequent contributor to the healthy chatter always coming though from their Yahoo Group. Whether you’re interested in Mazatlan, or in Mexico generally, you can get good information on healthcare there in fits and burst, but Lewis’s take on IMSS is an ongoing account of specific treatments, the character and nature of treatment and what you can expect to pay and receive if you’re thinking of retiring to Mexico or even just spending some extended period of time here.
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March 17th, 2007
The Gringa in San Miguel does a truly excellent job summarizing this past weekend’s debate over recent articles in San Miguel, some of them a bit silly. Read her whole post for an accurate breakdown of what happened. This is an example of not only of the fine debate you can get in the newsgroups, but that I hope we can inspire in our own. It is really heartening to see so many people love and defend their city without attacking and belittling one another.
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February 26th, 2007
This is when starting an email news group pays off. Special thanks to one of our new members, sfviking_98, for posting these terrific photos in the photos section. The photos section is there for everyone to use, so sign up and post some. And since all of our users are new, thanks to everyone who has signed up in the past couple of days, too.
I haven’t been to Ixtapa for almost a year, but just a glance at this photo sends me right back. There is a lot to be said for a place that is still only partially developed that I think is evident in the top of that mountain. Maybe they built one too many condos here, but this is nothing like the problems you see in beachfronts that are truly over-developed. You know the ones I mean… Anyway, Ixtapa is not really partially wild or anything like that, but I think this photo gives you an idea of its being a little bit untamed, a little better than merely developed. I’ll be writing in the next few weeks about some of the efforts Mexico has made, since Cancun, to develop with more ecological sensitivity. There really are a lot success stories.
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February 23rd, 2007
