I will have a month in San Miguel, which is a decent amout of time to get my project started. In the past, it took me a good two to three weeks to get my projects underway, which is why I was in the field for longer periods of time. Now that I've got some experience, however, I think I can get this project moving fairly quickly.
I'll still have to get there, unpack and settle in. In my first project, I was working with migrant workers and few of them used computers or the internet (although that has changed in recent years). This time around, I have the luxury of dealing with informants who use or are at least comfortable with the internet. So, I decided to start advertising this project on message boards that are geared toward expats to see what would happen.
At first I thought this would be a bust, as most of the lists did not seem to be too active. But last night I struck gold: a man who lives in the state of Guanajuato wrote to me. He and his wife have lived there for a while, and they've even written a few books on retirment in Mexico. (I'll post the titles, etc. as soon as I get them.) Even in his brief e-mail he seemed to have a lot to say, so I'm hoping the three of us can catch up when we get to Mexico (now just two weeks away).
I'm still not sure how helpful the internet will be for the project, but it interesting to see how "connected" my target population is going to be.
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