What a year this has been. The year 2004 was a year of great change for us moving here, and 2005 has certainly turned into a year of new and different experiences also!

Back in January we were finally finishing work on construction of our place here in Paamul. In the winter and spring Dennis worked quite consistently and we were getting into a routine of living down here. Then of course July came along and the arrival of Hurricane Emily which hit us very hard. The clean up was horrendous and I remember as I was cleaning day after day I was thinking to myself “never do I want to have to go through this again”. Well, then October rolled around and there came Hurricane Wilma. Thankfully it was not nearly as bad for us, but there was still a lot of work with getting all our possession sorted out again and the place cleaned up. I have come to the conclusion that we own way to much “stuff” to live in a palapa in a hurricane zone. Although, never would I have thought that in our second year of living here we would have experienced the worst hurricane year in recorded history. We have definitely learned a lot about hurricanes and if in the event we have the misfortune of being hit again in the years to come, hopefully we will be able to be better organized. One thing we found out the hard way, was that there was a ban on alcohol sales for the entire state, with Hurricane Wilma, so we said that what we have learned in preparing for a future hurricane is:  “beer first, plywood second”. We were just finishing up with the reconstruction project that resulted from Hurricane Emily when Wilma hit and luckily we did not have any structural damage after Wilma. Except of course for our garden shed, which once again blew away, but we were able to find all the pieces and Dennis put it all back together.

Kirsten is doing very well. She has many friends at school and here in our neighborhood. She was going to gymnastics two evenings a week for a couple months but she was getting bored with the routine since it was all floor work and she wished they had gymnastic equipment for the children to use. She is not involved in any extracurricular activities right now other than running in a pack with her Paamul friends to the swimming pool or to the beach. She has started some training for scuba diving though she cannot be certified for another year which is good since it will allow her lots of time to practice with Daddy. She is very much looking forward to Christmas vacation from school since hey will be off for two and a half weeks which will be a nice break. We thought the school may try to shorten the Christmas vacation since the children missed 7 days of school with Hurricane Wilma, but luckily everything has remained the same.

Kirsten and I flew back to Canada in July for a visit. The three weeks we were there went very, very quickly – too many people to see and not enough time. Next year we are hoping to spend more time there, but unfortunately my visa renews at the beginning of August and that causes big problems if I am not in the country to renew it at that time. I have tried requesting a date change, but the immigration department doesn’t seem to like that idea.

I seem to spend half my day cleaning our place (darn dusty country we live in). Although, I do manage to meet with friends every week to improve my Spanish (painfully slow process) and go out swimming and snorkeling regularly with a friend. Thus far I am not missing work. I do miss the money, but not the actual work!

Dennis worked consistently throughout the winter and early spring. Things really started to slow down at the beginning of May and then remained slow due to the hurricanes. Typically business is pretty good throughout the summer, but not this year. He has been working steady now for the last month which is great. Hopefully he will have a busy winter and spring.

This past year we had visits from both Dennis and Lee-Anne’s parents. Along with a few other friends that either stayed with us or were in the area and we were able to spend time with them. Dennis’s mother came at the beginning of December for a visit and to do her Christmas shopping for us. We are looking forward to family members coming in February and March along with more friends coming down in February. It is always nice when friends and family can come to visit then it doesn’t seem like we are so far away. Plus the fact we can send them the “list” of things we would like brought down. Chocolate chips are usually high on my list.

We have done some traveling around the Yucatan Peninsula but not nearly as much as we would like. It is hard to balance travel along with Dennis’s work schedule and Kirsten’s school vacation. Unfortunately when she is out of class it is,, of course, high tourist season for Dennis and the school frowns on taking the kids out of class just for vacation, which for right now is probably best since we do not want her missing out on the Spanish portion of her classes. We were able to do day trips out to the city of Valladolid, the ruins at Chichen Itza and Ek Balam and of course thanks to the hurricane, we made it down to Chetumal near the Belize border. This coming year we hope to travel to the ruins at Palenque (in the state of Chiapas) and visit some sites around there.

That’s pretty much it for our year in review. We sincerely hope everyone has a great Christmas Season and the all the best for 2006.

Dennis, Lee-Anne and Kirsten