Saturday, March 10, 2012

When I become a Spanish Princess.



The more time I spend in Mazatlan the more I love my little quirky peaceful Island but there is a little wee part of me that can get swept away in the magic of Old Mazatlan. Over the years I have probably taken 100s of pictures of old restored buildings. I love the architecture, love the colors, love love love the plants, the courtyards, the big wooden doors, and little balconies.
Maybe some day when I find my Spanish prince I will buy an old fixer uper like this.



Then early in the mornings I’ll stand on the little balcony in my white cotton nightie (that’s what real princesses wear) with my frothy milk and coffee and greet the people walking by. I of course will make a rule that you can’t park your car on my Street because it ruins the photos.



Or I’ll buy one that is already fixed up like this, (pic below) just in case my prince isn’t handy, that would be just my luck, I end up with a prince that doesn’t know how to mix concrete or has a bad back.  I think I would also make all my neighbours go back to burning coal since the power lines also ruin pictures. But then again, with a house this big my neighbours could probably not hear me sneeze....I would miss that.





Don’t you just hate it when it is so hot and humid and sticky that your shutter keeps getting stuck? Since I have spent most of my life in a land that has dry dry dry air, I welcome humid. I love Mexico.




Why I love Mexico



I could add to this almost everyday, but today I found myself saying “I love Mexico” a few times.
Remember these shoes (pic) www.blukicks.com 



I bought a pair online and should have bought one size bigger; they are wearable but not overly comfortable. This morning a friend showed up at my house and asked me if I wanted to go with her to Mazatlan, she needed to take her daughter’s shoes in to get fixed, she needed to have an arch put in, her feet are flat and did I want to get my shoes fixed too? “My shoes fixed?”? What shoes, I don’t have shoes I say”. I only have flip flops. “The shoes you bought that you are not wearing because they need fixing” she says. “Why would I have an arch put in to shoes that I am not wearing much anyway?” I ask. “Bring them” she says. Ok, I have learned that when I don’t understand to just follow, listen, look and learn and stop asking questions that I don’t understand the answers too anyway.
I really wish I had had my camera with me to the shoe repair shop, oh my. It was a little hole in the wall, literally a hole in the wall, oh my, the ancient equipment, I can’t even tell you what it all was or what it all was used for...fixing shoes I guess. The equipment looked older than Moses and so did the 2 men working there, or at least older than dirt. Very old it all was. One thing that I did recognize immediately was a shoe stretcher, I had seen one last week in a shop (but didn’t clue in then) A shoe stretcher! Fix my shoes! I get it....we’re gonna stretch my shoes. Genius these people are. For sure I now also want an arch put in, I have flat feet too. All this for a mere 80 pesos. He doesn’t even look at my feet or measure anything or call a foot doctor, or make me walk on a mini foam treadmill to see what kind of foot print I have, nope, I have flat feet, that’s all he needs to know...simple, he’ll put an arch in my shoes. I love how things are just not complicated here. He also doesn’t make me any expensive promises like how this will cure my head aches (I f I had some) or how this will cure my back aches, or how I will be able to run a marathon next week. Nope, just an arch put in. The arch will be put in in an hour but they need be on the stretcher overnight so I can pick them up tomorrow. I love Mexico. I wish I had my brown boots here, they need stretching too.

The next day I head in again to pick up my shoes and I decide I may as well do all my business in one day. I want to have a bone density test done and I want to have an eye exam as well.
First I stop at the market to have breakfast. I order eggs ranchero (look it up) with coffee and creama, she says “I don’t have creama today” What! No creama! How can this be? She says she has milk, “but no creama?” I ask. No, no creama....she must be thinking I am hard of hearing or just dumb, but she feels sorry for me (I must have looked pathetic) She rescues me. “How about milk with coffee?” she asks, hummm, milk with coffee instead of coffee with milk, things are looking up for me now. “Sure” I say. Wow! What a huge difference it makes when you simply switch those words around. She brings me a cup of streaming hot milk, all frothy and white and pretty and the jar of instant coffee, I put a heaping teaspoon of coffee into my hot milk and I almost melted into a pool of warm milky mush, I went to frothy milky lala land, all alone upstairs in the market. I fall in love with milk with coffee. Genius. I love Mexico.
I do eventually leave the market, I don’t ask for a second cup because I am afraid it will never be as good as the first one was.....like a drug, I might spend the rest of my life trying to recreate that warm milky mush rush that I had today. I vow to never forget this breakfast. I move on.

I head over to the lab and walk in with no appointment (that’s how we do things here) and am simply asked for my name, they find me in their system (I’ve had this done before) without even having to sit down in the waiting room I am ushered into the little lab room and we are checking them bones right pronto. I am told my results will be ready in 20 minutes, I sit in the waiting area where I pretend to find the Spanish magazines very interesting, making sure I am not reading them upside down, I don’t even get through the first magazine and I am called, my results are done. I don’t think it was 15 minutes I walk out of there with my results in my hand. I love Mexico.
My next stop is the eye doctor. I have had new glasses made here a few times, the last time was 2 years ago but it has probably been more like 6 years ago since I had an eye exam and since they only cost 200 pesos I decide it’s time for an exam. I had made an appointment yesterday when I was in town (just to be safe) I walk in and again, no waiting. Turns out I need a new prescription, I am not surprised. I decide I want to keep my frames, because I like them so he will just replace my lenses in both my glasses, they will be ready in 4 hours.

From there I head to a store called “muebles Pacifico” they sell Spanish colonial furniture and I buy a high chair for someone at home. I have some friends that drive down here every year from Sherwood Park and they usually haul a box or two back and forth for me, this year a high chair as well. Spanish Colonial furniture is made of a beautiful hardwood and it stained a dark chocolate brown, usually has flowers craved in it and the seating surfaces are of cow hide ( like my new rocking chair). This h chair is a beautiful piece of furniture that will be passed down from generation to generation. This is no flimsy cheesy high chair; it is now a family heirloom. My high chair and I catch a taxi to my friend’s house where I have a rather long winded lunch; we eat progies and laughed about someone that bought a lime squeeze for 100 pesos and chat about things important and unimportant like love, politics and the prices of lime squeezes....just kidding we didn’t talk about politics. We always have a hoot when we together.

I head back to the eye doctors and this is when my world got lit up, you don’t know you need new glasses until you get new glasses. I see things so clearly now....that’s a song isn’t it? I wish I knew what song that was. I decide to walk home instead of taking a bus, good thing I did, I found a treasure at a second hand store. I walk by this second hand store all the time and once in awhile I step in to see if there is anything new, there usually is, and today I scored...these dishes. They are beautiful, I love them, and made in Mexico too. She only had 2 cups so I just bought 2 of each and the teapot. I‘ll keep my eyes (since I can see so clearly now) peeled for another set of 2. I was so excited to buy glass dishes when I moved into my house but hadn’t bought any yet because I don’t have shelves in my kitchen yet so I really don’t have any place to display pretty things but I couldn’t resist. Putting shelves up is just not as easy as I had thought; I’ll work on that next year. I just want to “be” for the rest of my time here. I’m tired of projects, plus I am still waiting on screens. One thing at a time.
Oh, the other day I saw a bus driver brushing his teeth while he was driving his bus down the main street in front of the market. Yup, he was brushing away and spitting out the window and manoeuvring around crazy traffic and pedestrians..... I love Mexico. Of course I wasn’t the one that got spit on.

My new neighbourhood



Wow, is all I can say, I love my neighbourhood. My neighbours must have been brought here by God (weren’t we all brought here by God) I could not have asked for better neighbours, of course I knew most of them before I moved in already which was a deciding factor when I decided to move in. This is as Mexican as it gets, it is rural Mexican Puebla living, and I love it. My neighbourhood is very quirky, but I like that, I do quirky quite well. However as nice as mu neighbours are they are very nosey, even nosier than me if you can imagine that, so nosy that I can’t make a move without the whole hood knowing about it. Before I moved in a guy was building a fence in the my back yard and I came over here to ask him to leave me a gate in the back so that I could being in some dirt and bricks for my patio and gardens and what not. He was a step ahead of me and had already left me a gate; he said that way I could have my company leave from the back because if my company leaves from the front yard the nosy ladies on my street will be very busy keeping track of the coming and goings from my house. My backyard faces the road and then the jungle beyond that, my neighbours can’t see me coming and going if I go through the back. I thought it was pretty funny that he would think of this and wondered what kind of comings and goings he thinks I have going on here. I use my back gate a lot...a lot.
Every time I leave my house I am asked “where are you going?” When I answer “to the store” I am asked what I need from the store. I have however finally figured this out, this is just in case they have what I need, yup, if I say I need potatoes, either they have potatoes or they just direct me to the guy that sells potatoes (he lives on my street too) One day I needed some tape to wrap a gift and my neighbour lady asked me how much I needed, and I said just a little bit, she goes into her house and comes back with a strip of tape stuck to her finger and asks if this is enough, I say yes and go home and stick the tape to my table (it was no where near enough) and I leave through my back gate and sneak to the store to buy tape. I get to the store and they don’t have tape, (go figure) I am asked what I need it for, I say to wrap a gift, I am sent to a ladies house (on my street) that wraps gifts for a very small fee, but now I have to sneak in so that the lady that gave me the tape doesn’t see me, I come back in the evening when it’s dark and for 6 pesos she wraps my little gift and puts a ribbon and a bow on it and does an amazing job of wrapping it...seriously, you could not see a single raw edge of wrapping paper, it was beautiful and she only used about as much tape as my neighbour had given me. It was a work of art.  I guess I don’t need to buy tape...ever.

There is a lady at the end of my street that cooks food, kind of a street side kitchen type place, good food, no menu, she just tells you what she made that day and you decide if you want that or not...well, sort of you decide, try and get away from there without buying something is almost impossible, but then getting me to buy food isn’t really that tricky at all. She has even shown up at my house and said “I made tamales today, how many would you like?” try and say no to that. Today she sent her daughter over to remind me it was Monday and on Mondays she always makes Birria and when was I going to come and get mine. If I want to eat somewhere else I have to sneak by her house, it can get tricky. Here’s the funny part, then she tells everyone every time that I buy something from her. Oh yes, everyone knows what I am eating, and when I eat and how much. Yesterday she told me that a friend of mine that lives on the beach bought a whole flan from her, seriously, who buys a whole flan....someone that had no choice, that’s who. She asks me “ did you go to her house and have flan, because she has lots, she bought a whole flan” I am staying away from her for a few days until I can be sure the flan is gone, right now I have pozole in the fridge, along with birria, and half a chicken, I do not need flan. Good thing I am feeding the homeless man everyday too. Between the 2 of us we can still hardly keep up.
I don’t even find all this nosiness annoying (not too much anyway) I find it rather amusing. One day I was trying to avoid a particular neighbour because I wasn’t in the mood to try and explain to her (in my Spanglish) where I was going and why, I decided that instead of walking past her front yard I would walk down the back alley, well wouldn’t you know I got caught there, she was in the back hanging up laundry, and not only did she ask where I was going, she asked where I was coming from, when I said my house , she said “why are you coming this way through the alley, it’s way shorter if you come on the street in front”. How do you say “busted“in Espanol. It’s at these times that I pretend I can’t understanding anything and mumble some jibberish and carry on. I do know that that little trick will run out on me at some point but for now I can still pull it off quite well. I am in fact the Queen of “Jibberish.
I can even buy stuff at the little tiendas now, tiendas are little convenience stores that are usually just the front part of someone’s house, there are small, usually about 4 feet deep but they have almost everything in there, they have stuff stashed and crammed in all the 4 corners and usually a floor to ceiling shelf, the tricky thing is you can’t enter the store, you stand at the counter and tell the storekeeper what you want, this meant that I used to have to do some home work first before going there. I used to be intimidated by these stores, plus I thought they didn’t have much stuff anyway and wouldn’t have what I needed and it didn’t help that I had a few bad experiences when a very annoyed and bored teenager had been made to mind the store and she didn’t find my cute Spanglish cute at all and was more interested in her big pink sucker on a stick and her cell phone than participating in my game of charades. So I gave up going to these places but since moving into my hood I have revisited them and love them now, my Spanglish has improved and I have discovered that they have almost everything in there, they are run by my neighbours and they like it when I come and shop at their store, they want to know what I need and will bend over backwards and love playing charades with me if my Spanglish fails me, they think it’s great fun. If they don’t have what I need they will direct me to someone else or promise me they will have it tomorrow and almost always they do. Or they will tell me “you don’t need that, you need this” and will sell me something else, I’m so easy, I go there because I need an onion and by the time there are done with me I walk away with a potato, I’m halfway home until I realize that a potato is not a substitute for an onion, how did I agree to this?
Don’t be misunderstanding this here writing, I love my neighbours, I look at this nosiness just as concerns for my well being. Why just the other day I was in my bedroom and I sneezed and I heard my neighbour say “bless you Maria”, I couldn’t help but laugh as I say “thank-you”, this is now much no privacy there is, yes brick is pretty dense but our doors and windows are always open during the day and really, brick is not quite as dense as I thought it would be. We can hear each other sneeze but we can’t pick up each other’s internet signal.

The evenings are just as magical as they were on the beach, I have feather light curtains blowing in my windows, my bed has vintage cotton sheets on them, I can still hear the ocean, the roosters are still crowing, my neighbour lady very often has a pot of something on a crackling fire in her back yard, there are little kids playing in the yard across the street from me, there are a few houses that have Mexican music playing early in the evening every once in awhile, the crickets, oh my the crickets, I have the jungle behind me and it is full of crickets, they can almost drown out the roosters here, there are a few mother hens with baby chicks that come picking up and scrapes they can find in my yard. I love that when I am making food in my kitchen I can just throw scrapes out the window and either the birds, or the hens, or the cats will come and pick it up immediately it seems, it’s great, no need for a compost pile, just huck it out the window. And of course there is always a whistling cowboy somewhere. I don’t know if I will ever get tired of the sounds of a Mexican evening in a small pueblo like this, it’s pretty sweet. I am blessed.

I'll leave you with some more nopale pictures today. 


oh Mickey what big ears you?






Tuesday, March 6, 2012

My new hood


Wow, is all I can say, I love my neighbourhood. My neighbours must have been brought here by God (weren’t we all brought here by God) I could not have asked for better neighbours, of course I knew most of them before I moved in already which was a deciding factor when I decided to move in. This is as Mexican as it gets, it is rural Mexican Puebla living, and I love it. My neighbourhood is very quirky, but I like that, I do quirky quite well. They are however very nosey, even nosier than me if you can imagine that, so nosy that I can’t make a move without the whole hood knowing about it. Before I moved in a guy was building a fence in the my back yard and I came over here to ask him to leave me a gate in the back so that I could being in some dirt and bricks for my patio and gardens and what not. He was a step ahead of me and had already left me a gate; he said that way I could have my company leave from the back because if my company leaves from the front yard the nosy ladies on my street will be very busy keeping track of the coming and goings from my house. My backyard faces the road and then the jungle beyond that, my neighbours can’t see me coming and going if I go through the back. I thought it was pretty funny that he would think of this and wondered what kind of comings and goings he thinks I have going on here. I use my back gate a lot...a lot.
Every time I leave my house I am asked “where are you going?” When I answer “to the store” I am asked what I need from the store. I have however finally figured this out, this is just in case they have what I need, yup, if I say I need potatoes, either they have potatoes or they just direct me to the guy that sells potatoes (he lives on my street too) One day I needed some tape to wrap a gift and my neighbour lady asked me how much I needed, and I said just a little bit, she goes into her house and comes back with a strip of tape stuck to her finger and asks if this is enough, I say yes and go home and stick the tape to my table (it was no where near enough) and I leave through my back gate and sneak to the store to buy tape. I get to the store and they don’t have tape, (go figure) I am asked what I need it for, I say to wrap a gift, I am sent to a ladies house (on my street) that wraps gifts for a very small fee, but now I have to sneak in so that the lady that gave me the tape doesn’t see me, I come back in the evening when it’s dark and for 6 pesos she wraps my little gift and puts a ribbon and a bow on it and does an amazing job of wrapping it...seriously, you could not see a single raw edge of wrapping paper, it was beautiful and she only used about as much tape as my neighbour had given me. It was a work of art.  I guess I don’t need to buy tape...ever.

There is a lady at the end of my street that cooks food, kind of a street side kitchen type place, good food, no menu, she just tells you what she made that day and you decide if you want that or not...well, sort of you decide, try and get away from there without buying something is almost impossible, but then getting me to buy food isn’t really that tricky at all. She has even shown up at my house and said “I made tamales today, how many would you like?” try and say no to that. Today she sent her daughter over to remind me it was Monday and on Mondays she always makes Birria and when was I going to come and get mine. If I want to eat somewhere else I have to sneak by her house, it can get tricky. Here’s the funny part, then she tells everyone every time that I buy something from her. Oh yes, everyone knows what I am eating, and when I eat and how much. Yesterday she told me that a friend of mine that lives on the beach bought a whole flan from her, seriously, who buys a whole flan....someone that had no choice, that’s who. She asks me “ did you go to her house and have flan, because she has lots, she bought a whole flan” I am staying away from her for a few days until I can be sure the flan is gone, right now I have pozole in the fridge, along with birria, and half a chicken, I do not need flan. Good thing I am feeding the homeless man everyday too. Between the 2 of us we can still hardly keep up. 
I don’t even find all this nosiness annoying (not too much anyway) I find it rather amusing. One day I was trying to avoid a particular neighbour because I wasn’t in the mood to try and explain to her (in my Spanglish) where I was going and why, I decided that instead of walking past her front yard I would walk down the back alley, well wouldn’t you know I got caught there, she was in the back hanging up laundry, and not only did she ask where I was going, she asked where I was coming from, when I said my house , she said “why are you coming this way through the alley, it’s way shorter if you come on the street in front”. How do you say “busted“in Espanol. It’s at these times that I pretend I can’t understanding anything and mumble some jibberish and carry on. I do know that that little trick will run out on me at some point but for now I can still pull it off quite well. I am in fact the Queen of “Jibberish.
I can even buy stuff at the little tiendas now, tiendas are little convenience stores that are usually just the front part of someone’s house, there are small, usually about 4 feet deep but they have almost everything in there, they have stuff stashed and crammed in all the 4 corners and usually a floor to ceiling shelf, the tricky thing is you can’t enter the store, you stand at the counter and tell the storekeeper what you want, this meant that I used to have to do some home work first before going there. I used to be intimidated by these stores, plus I thought they didn’t have much stuff anyway and wouldn’t have what I needed and it didn’t help that I had a few bad experiences when a very annoyed and bored teenager had been made to mind the store and she didn’t find my cute Spanglish cute at all and was more interested in her big pink sucker on a stick and her cell phone than participating in my game of charades. So I gave up going to these places but since moving into my hood I have revisited them and love them now, my Spanglish has improved and I have discovered that they have almost everything in there, they are run by my neighbours and they like it when I come and shop at their store, they want to know what I need and will bend over backwards and love playing charades with me if my Spanglish fails me, they think it’s great fun. If they don’t have what I need they will direct me to someone else or promise me they will have it tomorrow and almost always they do. Or they will tell me “you don’t need that, you need this” and will sell me something else, I’m so easy, I go there because I need an onion and by the time there are done with me I walk away with a potato, I’m halfway home until I realize that a potato is not a substitute for an onion, how did I agree to this? I'm so easy.
The evenings are just as magical as they were on the beach, I have feather light curtains blowing in my windows, my bed has vintage cotton sheets on them, I can still hear the ocean, the roosters are still crowing, my neighbour lady very often has a pot of something on a crackling fire in her back yard, there are little kids playing in the yard across the street from me, there are a few houses that have Mexican music playing early in the evening every once in awhile, the crickets, oh my the crickets, I have the jungle behind me and it is full of crickets, they can almost drown out the roosters here, there are a few mother hens with baby chicks that come picking up and scrapes they can find in my yard. I love that when I am making food in my kitchen I can just throw scrapes out the window and either the birds, or the hens, or the cats will come and pick it up immediately it seems, it’s great, no need for a compost pile, just huck it out the window. And of course there is always a whistling cowboy somewhere. I don’t know if I will ever get tired of the sounds of a Mexican evening in a small pueblo like this, it’s pretty sweet. I am blessed.

so the watermelon truck came again and I was talked into buying the biggest watermelon again...I am so easy

How often can you patch a step ladder...apparently forever

Remember my broken table, I had it fixed

and then I painted it, I couldn't resist playing with the one blue board. My plan was to tile it but now I  am in love with it.

My new desk, I love it

My little composters that live next door

See the screen leaning up against the wall, still there....3 weeks later,  that's how we do things here, slowly

It's just as well, I am loving throwing stuff out the window


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Next time I will tell you all about being a banana farmer it is rather interesting as well.