U3A Benalla and District Inc.
  • Home
  • Benalla
    • Benalla
    • Benalla District
    • Who, What and Where? - Benalla Rural City
  • About
    • Our U3A
    • President's Page
    • Executive Committee
    • Convenors >
      • Convenors
      • Convenors A - Z 2022
    • Program Suggestions
    • Newsletter
    • Website
  • Groups
    • Groups A - Z
    • Recent Groups >
      • Armchair History
      • German - Beginners
      • Meditation
      • Russian Literature
      • Hot Topics/The News - Fact or Fiction?
    • Archived Groups >
      • A - M >
        • A Different View Of German History
        • Armchair Traveller
        • Booker Reading Group
        • Bushwalking - Mid-week Walks
        • Comparative Religion
        • Facebook for Mentors
        • Google Apps/TS Plus
        • History - An Introduction to Western Civilization
        • History - Moments in Australian History
        • Investment I (1996 -2015)
        • Legal Matters (Short Course)
        • Making the Most of the Internet
      • O - Z >
        • On Target - Learning to Shop Online
        • Opera
        • 'Over There'
        • Rail and Tourism
        • Tech Savvy Apple Devices - Intermediate
        • Tech Savvy Community Projects
        • Travel Group
        • Zoom Short Course
  • A-Col
    • A - COL
    • 'A Taste of Art'
    • Art Appreciation
    • Australian History
    • 'As Time Goes By' >
      • Home
      • 'Precious Objects'
      • 'Failure'
      • Our Stories - by topic
    • 'Be Connected'
    • Birdwatching
    • Brain Games
    • Bushwalking - Easy Walks
    • Cards '500'
    • Chat n' Chew
    • Coin Collectors
    • Collectors
  • Col-G
    • COM - G
    • Community Singing
    • Creative Writing
    • Demystifying Psychology
    • Enjoying the Internet
    • Exercises for Fun
    • Exploring the Universe
    • Family Research - Advanced >
      • Home
      • Family Stories
    • Family Research - Beginners
    • Film Discussion Group
    • Garden Appreciation
    • Garden Team
    • German >
      • German Home
      • Lessons
  • I - R
    • I - R
    • 'In the Lap of the Gods'
    • Investment
    • Jane Austen Book Club
    • Let's Talk Books
    • Lifeball
    • Meet and Mingle
    • Music Appreciation
    • Page Turners
    • Patchwork and Craft
    • Photography
    • Play Reading
    • Politics & Current Affairs
    • Recorder Group
  • S - Z
    • S -Z
    • Singing for Fun
    • Sky's the Limit
    • Stock and Land
    • Sustainability
    • Tech Advice
    • Tech Savvy Apple - 'Pages'
    • Tech Savvy Beginners - Android
    • Tech Talks
    • Ukes4Fun
    • Wine Appreciation
    • Wise Guys Book Group
  • Join
    • Join Us
    • Membership Application/Renewal Form
    • Program Guide 2023
    • Timetable - Month Overview
    • Full Timetable with Dates
    • New Courses 2023
    • Venues and Maps
  • News
    • News - General
    • March Newsletter
    • Calendar 2022
    • Monthly Calendar
    • Website & Facebook
  • FB
  • Gallery
    • Gallery 2022
    • Gallery 2021
    • Gallery 2020
    • Gallery 2019
    • Gallery 2018
    • Gallery 2017
    • Gallery 2016 >
      • + Christmas Lunch 2016
    • Gallery 2015 >
      • Christmas Lunch 2015
    • Gallery 2014
    • Lifeball Video
  • Links
    • Resources and References
    • U3A Network Victoria
    • Seniors Online Victoria
    • U3A Albury Wodonga
    • U3A Beechworth (Indigo U3A)
    • U3A Bright
    • U3A Wangaratta
    • U3A Goulburn Valley
  • Contact

A Love Letter to Travel - 'Recuerdos de Mexico, enero 1982'

26/2/2021

 
​"Querida México (Dear Mexico),

I am writing to you to thank you, almost forty years later, for allowing me recover in your beautiful country after an exhausting year teaching in Canada in 1982. 

My friends Peter and Anne had bundled me on to the early morning train at Kamloops Station in late December 1982, my overnight bag full of papers which I needed to finish marking before my students returned after their short Christmas/New Year break.  I wouldn’t be returning to ‘Kam High’, where I’d been on an International Teacher Exchange for the past year.  Looking up from time to time to the terraced views of the Canadian Rockies, this marking needed to be returned before I left Canada after visiting friends in Vancouver to say farewell. 

The next leg of my journey would be from Vancouver to Mexico City, before returning via LA to Melbourne for the beginning of the school year at a new school in Melbourne’s bayside suburbs. 

The timing of my trip to visit you was fortunate.  I arrived at the Bureau de Exchange of the Aeropuerto Internacional de la Ciudad de México to discover that there had been a significant devaluation of the currency overnight.  My US traveller’s cheques fetched at least twice as much as I had expected!  Flush with funds, I booked in to a small, comfortable hotel suite in the beautiful central area of Mexico City rather than my usual single room in a fairly basic hotel.  How wonderful!  I was so tired after my year teaching in Canada.  I remember sinking into the comfortable bed, sleeping for hours and having meals delivered to my room, before eventually venturing out to the hotel restaurant and then on to the streets below.

The Mexico City I remember, the city of artists Diego Riviera and Frida Kahlo, was a city of wide streets, blue high altitude skies and temperate weather.  I’d arrived during the smog free Christmas to New Year holiday break.  Industries had closed.  Many people had left the city to visit families in rural areas or to take a break at one of Mexico’s many beachside holiday destinations.  The Art Galleries and restaurants which remained open in the city were by no means crowded, the people friendly and welcoming.  I eventually surfaced to explore the city, to undertake day trips to Mayan temples.   I particularly enjoyed discovering restaurants and finding waiting staff who had time to chat – I’d lived in Spain five years earlier and was thrilled to speak Spanish again.  Indeed, this was one of my reasons for choosing to return home from Canada via Mexico.

Just as I’d sought out the flamenco restaurants in Madrid, I sought out Mariachi music in Mexico.   In Mexico City (and later in Acupulco and the beach resort of Ixtapa on the Pacific Ocean), I came across Mariachi bands at local markets, restaurants and theatres.   I also followed up the music of a singer I’d seen perform in Madrid, Nacha Guevarra, who was living in Mexico.  On New Year’s Eve, I shared my table with a handsome traveller, recently divorced and keen to have company.  Serenaded by a mariachi band, we were the only diners in the restaurant.

An interest in matters political also tends to surface during my travels.  I had received a letter from friends in my social justice oriented embroidery group at home in Daylesford.  They were working to raise awareness of the work of ‘The Mothers of the Disappeared of El Salvador’ and understood that they had a base in Mexico.  My task?   To locate, and hopefully make contact with, ’The Mothers’.  I love having a project while I am travelling, however found this task enormously difficult.  I contacted a group of women’s lawyers who might have been able to give me a lead.  They couldn’t do so, however were keen to tell me about the work they were doing to raise the profile of women lawyers in Mexico’s legal system.  I sought out alternative music stores for possible leads – again without success.  One store owner showed me artwork and let me listen to cassettes of the music of El Salvador, including a revolutionary song written to lead its disenchanted people through the task of assembling a gun.  (I wonder if that is in an intelligence gathering file on me somewhere?)  Somehow I managed to bring the artwork and cassettes back to Australia to show my friends in Daylesford, eventually giving them to a young musician, an exile from Chile. 

After a year in Kamloops, in the hinterland between Vancouver and Banff in Calgary, I found myself longing to see the Pacific Ocean again.  I left Mexico City’s bus station bound for Acapulco, a rather windy but interesting journey, buying simple silver rings embedded with amethyst at Taxco along the way, rings not worn for decades, long ago taken to a local opportunity shop.

My recuperation continued rather blissfully in an historic, still beautiful but needing refurbishment, hotel in Acapulco situated high up on a hill side, its view of the ocean including the cliffs of La Quebrada where I could watch the world-famous cliff divers in amazement.  A grand old hotel which had seen better days, I loved its views and the the ocean breezes which swept into my room which look towards the ocean and opened out onto beautiful arched arcade balconies.  Time was spent sitting looking out towards the ocean from the balcony of my room, walking along the beaches, enjoying the relaxed lifestyle, enjoying mariachi music when I could find it, and at times listening supportively over dinner to another rather handsome man who had been recently widowed.  I don’t remember details.   I think I just relaxed and continued to let the stress of the past year leave my body and soul before returning to Melbourne for another busy year. 

My final week was spent at your beautiful beach at Ixtapa, north of Acapulco, a restful way of completing my year away in preparation for another busy school year.   I remember many hours spent walking along the beach, interrupted by a leisurely siesta after lunch, a swim, then an early evening stroll along the beach before dining at a beachside restaurant.  I felt so relaxed, indeed quite restored, when I eventually boarded the plane for San Francisco en route to Australia. 

Mission accomplished!

Gracias por todo, México.

Con mucho cariño,

​
 
Beverley Lee
Febrero 25, 2021
    'Our Stories'
    Picture

    Bev's stories

    As I look through the stories I've written since setting up the memoir writing group some years ago, it seems quite a number of  my stories reflect on my experience of aging! 

    Stories

    All
    2020'
    A Bed Time Story - 'The Little Wallaby'
    'A Childhood Memory'
    'Advice'
    A Friendship Tested
    Alexander Theatre
    'A Love Letter To Travel'
    'A Test Of Courage'
    'Aunts And Uncles'
    'Car Stories'
    'Car Story
    'Causes'
    Claire Bowditch
    'Cockles And Mussels'
    'Community'
    "Cringe"
    'Dear Unfinished Business'
    'Deja Vu'
    'Election Day 2022'
    'Experiencing The Unexplained'
    'Faking It'
    Family Ritual
    'Family Treasures'
    'Fear Of Failure
    'Fiesta Of Festivities'
    'Fish Out Of Water'
    'For Better For Worse'
    Gliding
    Grandparents
    'How I Came Here'
    'I Broke It'
    'If Only!'
    'I Grew Up In...'
    'I Quit'
    'I Was There'
    Jack Manuel
    'Lost And Found'
    Lost In Music
    'Making Waves'
    'Memoir Review'
    Molyullah Sports
    'Monash Modern Dance Group
    Monash University
    'New In Town'
    'Once'
    'On The Job'
    'Paulie Stewart'
    'Peter And The Wolf'
    'Precious Objects'
    'Rebellion'
    'Right Here
    Right Now'
    'Rise And Shine - Waking Up To Milk Arrowroot Biscuits)
    'Running With Scissors'
    'Shaped By Childhood'
    'Stock And Land'
    'The Music Of My Madrid'
    'The Separator Room'
    'The Sky's The Limit'
    TheSydney Tunnels
    'Things I've Left Behind'
    'This (...) Life'
    'This (Time Travelling) Life'
    'Three Wise Monkeys'
    Time
    'Too Hard Basket'
    'Travel Tales'
    'Trees'
    'Trigger'
    'What Happens In Vegas'
    'What I Was Wearing'

    Twitter ....

    @Lee_Bev

    Links

    Coping with Criticism (ie editing!)

    Hannie Rayson memoir interview video link

    The subconscious mind and the creative writing process

    Writing Historical Fiction

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    November 2022
    October 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    March 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    November 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    February 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015

    Attribution:

    Image--copyright Mary Leunig; owned by Beverley Lee; permission to use Mary Leunig.
We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay our respects to their elders - past, present and emerging.
Picture
News
​Newsletter
Facebook Page
​
Program Suggestions
​CO-VID Safety

U3A Benalla & District Flier 2023
​Membership Application/Renewal Form 
​
Program Guide 2023
Semester 1 Timetable with Dates 2023
Semester 1 Timetable Month Overview 2023
Developed and maintained by members, this website showcases U3A Benalla & District. 
​Photographs - U3A members; Benalla Art Gallery website; ​Weebly 'Free' images;Travel Victoria and State Library of Victoria