Hello again, after a few weeks of silence during which our lives were, in fact, filled with ups and downs, though fortunately, with more of the former. About three weeks ago, we had the opportunity to sample Mexican hospital care, when Stew had to have a knee-replacement operation. We ended up at Hospital Angeles in Querétaro, …
Continue reading Back after a brief and expensive hospital break
The quality and cost of healthcare in Mexico compared to the U.S. is one of those conversation topics among expats that is so contentious, yet shopworn, just the mere mention of it makes me feel like my head is going to explode.Heated opinions range from "Mexico has the best!—not merely better, or comparable, folks—healthcare system …
Continue reading Live report: Health care in Mexico versus the U.S.
It's tough to imagine an upside to the story of a friend from New York who while visiting San Miguel last week fell down in her room and broke her left humerus, the big bone that runs from the shoulder to the elbow. And it wasn't a hairline fracture you had squint at the X-Ray to …
Not a week goes by without Félix, with his usual uninflected delivery, tells us a shocking life-in-Mexico story that strikes Stew and me with the force of a blow to the side of the head."How can that happen?" we ask, while Félix's response to such day-to-day tragedies and outrages—a reaction I find quite common among poor …
Enchiladas, tequilas and mariachis we know, but who would have imagined Mexico as a living laboratory of free-market-to-the-max, let-'er-rip economic policies, a place where the heads of corporations and service providers can wheel and deal pretty much unregulated except perhaps for the long shot of an angry consumer coming after them with a gun?Rand Paul, …
How are your abuelitos doing I asked Félix last week. His grandparents have been on my mind ever since Stew and I brought them a Christmas despensa, a holiday shopping bag of groceries containing flour for tortillas, corn husks for tamales, cooking oil, sugar and other Mexican staples that we supplemented with a couple of packages of …
About the only downside of our marriage in Massachusetts was that Stew and I both got sick with what felt and sounded like serious respiratory infections. We gulped syrups and other cold remedies to no avail and were ready to try anything, including a stop at a pharmacy in the North Mexico City bus station—the …
El Rancho Santa Clara 