Twenty years ago, when Carlos Martinez – the director of Insight Academy in Ajijic – was teaching philosophy and physics at various universities in Mexico, he saw how a number of students were ill prepared for university level classes.

After Tuesday’s earthquake in Mexico’s capital, everyone is naturally wondering if such damage and loss of life are avoidable.

Cortlandt Jones considers himself lucky, seeing that his entire dance career was based on work that he never had to audition for.

In Guadalajara’s Centro Historico -  parts of which after sundown are semi-abandoned moonscapes of dark, silent streets swirling with dust and lined with terribly neglected but graceful colonial architecture - a few old hunks of coal refuse to die out, warming the bones and spirits of the loyal drinkers clustered around them. 

Two Saturdays a month, David Rosett hops on a bus headed to Riberas del Pilar from his home in Guadalajara, dons his prayer shawl and yarmulka, and leads congregants in morning services at Lake Chapala Jewish Congregation (LCJC).

Three business partners, who also happen to be good friends, have transformed the Ajijic store once known as Marlowe’s Marvelous Market into “Alquimia” – alchemy in English.