Tuesdays and Thursdays

To the surprise of some of my friends who have known me for half a century or more, I have become somewhat of a recluse. To be honest, it isn't that I don't enjoy socializing, it's just that I would like to have some control over it. And Lake Chapala, Mexico is a centre of fierce and intense expat socializing. We located ourselves deliberately just beyond the fringe of expat communities, so that we could join in when we wanted but were remote enough to discourage most uninvited guests from inadvertently wandering in. Even so, it takes enormous self- discipline to ignore all the invitations, avoid all the gathering sessions, turn down all the solicitations by clubs for new members.

On the other hand, we also find that Mexico is so seductive in its relaxing atmosphere, that without some social structure, one tends to forget what date it is, what time it is, and what one's own name is. To prevent that consequence, we have chosen one main weekly social activity for Tuesdays and Thursdays to anchor our Mexican life.  And that activity is YOGA CLASS.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3-4PM, you will find me and Rick on the highway heading around the south side of the lake, in the opposite direction from the expat communities of Ajijic and Chapala. One would know immediately that this south shore is completely different. No signs in English. No large gated expat villas. Small, self contained Mexican villages surrounded by agricultural fields and backed up by Mount Garcia, the tallest mountain around the lake at over 8,000 feet. We pass through San Pedro, and then San Cristobal, and just before reaching the municipal seat of San Luis, we turn off and down the hill into a small enclave of modest but very pleasant homes lining the lake.

It is here that a small number of (mostly) women expats cluster on the pool deck of  a retired phys ed teacher from Wellesley Island, NY. My friend Jean taught phys ed for many years in Buffalo NY and now has retired to her summer cottage in the American section of the Thousand Islands, near Gananoque Ontario. She and her husband Frank spend their winters on the south shore of Lake Chapala, and for her own amusement and self improvement she offers free yoga classes to whomever wants to come. I have been coming for 3 years now and Rick joined last year. We have found that yoga can do amazing things to lubricate and expand aging joints and improve posture and balance.

We were away last week at the beach when Jean started her winter sessions. We came home to a terse email message: WHERE ARE YOU she said. WE HAVE STARTED YOGA. I hastened a response confirming we would be there next time and we were.

There is something very pleasing about doing yoga around a swimming pool. It is even more pleasing when looking out across a lake to a village jumbled up a mountainside, and even more pleasing again when the temperature is 74F and the breezes slight. It is to my thinking, quite perfect.

Afterwards, we wandered through Jean's garden. She offered us pomegranates  or oranges or maybe some limes or lemons? but alas the pomegranates  won't be ready until tomorrow.

And besides, on the way home, where we enter our little pueblo off the highway, there is a long line of lime and lemon trees lining the raspberry fields where all of the locals help themselves. That includes us. So we stop the car and pick half a dozen limes,  bounce our way home along the dirt track and decide for yet another time, that next year we will keep up the yoga when we go home and not have to re-adapt our joints every fall at Jean's pool. When we go home this time, we say, we will do yoga every morning, even just 20 mins, just to stay flexible and relaxed. We won't of course. But we always say we will...