This morning I woke up to the sound of hands slapping tortillas and the
song “If you’re going to San Francisco…” playing in the kitchen. That was followed by a woman singing a
Spanish-language version of the song “Runaround Sue,” which I’d like to think
was some kind of progressive gesture. My
host mom Alicia was completing her bi-weekly task of making fresh corn
tortillas for the family, and I love the rhythmic nature and sounds of this
process. I learned this morning that
flour tortillas will burn in a pan without Teflon but corn tortillas will not. That knowledge sadly came at the expense of a
young quesadilla’s life.
This week's adventure, finding fresh coffee beans, straight off the tree.
Lovley view looking towards the ocean.
Lush green views in the mountains.
Beautiful flowers.
Alicia and I started talking about shoes as she just purchased some new
ones and I’ve had a strong desire to own more shoes since arriving in Mexico. Here’s what I learned during our conversation:
I need much fancier shoes, with heels.
I’m guessing my Birkenstocks, flip flops, Tevas and Toms have not been
winners here but I’m a grungy Peace Corps volunteer now, so that’s what I’ve
got. Word in my house is that it’s kind of acceptable to wear flats to
fiestas and weddings in the summer, but they need to be fancy and ideally have
a slight heel. The rest of the year, you need to wear high heels to the party.
This presents three problems for me: 1) I don’t own any high heels, 2)
I don’t like to wear high heels and 3) I have one pair of black flats but I’m
not sure they’d qualify as nice enough, or high enough, for any special event
as they are starting to show some real wear and tear. I recently saw a party for a quinceañera and
it was amazing. The young woman was beautiful
in a colorful, poofy, prom-type dress, and was accompanied by what looked to be
the entire pueblo dressed to the nines.
I wish I had looked more closely at all the women’s shoes to see what
I’m aiming for. Alicia indicated that
there was a probability of gossip if your shoes are bad at a fiesta sooooo….
let’s just hope I don’t get invited to any fancy parties anytime soon.
I spend a lot of time with cows these days; no high heels required.
Big pile of dry corn cobs.
There’s no chance I’ll be having any fancy parties at my new house, but
I am happy to announce that I finally found a permanent home! For the first time in 5+ months, I will have
to shop and cook for myself, which suddenly feels a little intimidating. I was at the local grocery store the other
day and realized that there are zero aisles with frozen or pre-prepared food to
purchase. I repeat: there is NO FROZEN
PIZZA in my town! This is the kind of
thing you only realize after living in a place for almost 3 months when you actually
need to purchase your own food. (PS. I
really want frozen pizza now.)
Living room - pretty sure I will never be cold enough to need that fireplace.
View of my lovely back patio.
Kitchen, sans a refrigerator.
Bedroom - with great tiles and a bathroom!
It has been one of the greatest gifts of my life to have home cooked
meals from my host moms here and I’m eager to try and recreate some piece of
their magic in the kitchen. However, the
first thing I want to cook for myself is bacon.
Hot, crispy bacon, all by itself.
That will be followed by guacamole with chips. I will eventually make real food,
but I only have a stove top here (no oven or microwave), and I may have gotten
a little lazy living in the lap of (food) luxury since March.
Some of that delicious food other people have made for me.
The coolest building in town: Cafe Don Balbino (photo by Cindy).
Most artistic coffee-processing site ever (photo by Cindy).
This weekend I took a 14-hour trek into the mountains to visit a small
pueblo in the mountains. This trip had all
those golden nuggets that I’m starting to take for granted here:
- We left an hour late, and stopped for an hour to look at a super cool building for coffee processing (and taste delicious coffee).
- We saw two newborn calves, one of which could barely walk (and was super cute).
- We gave a lift to a man with two live chickens in a bag.
- We got stuck on a muddy road in our 4x4 truck.
- We spent a fair amount of time looking for animal bones on a hillside: first for a dead cow, then a jaguar, then a horse (thankfully we found that one).
- We got about half a mile from our destination when we reached a random short stretch of wet concrete on a dirt road. We walked the rest of the way and it’s now a great mystery why there was one small piece of concrete road nowhere near any other stretch of paved road.
- We watched our coworker deliver some great workshops on organic practices and natural fertilizers while smoke billowed, mosquitoes bit and sweat dripped down my face like a river.
- We ate a delicious lunch in a woman’s house with fresh corn tortillas, jamaica water, nopales and more. She had the world’s largest roll of toilet paper that was the size of a small ferris wheel. This thing measured like 5 ft x 3 ft.
Just a couple of chickens in a bag.
A random stretch of concrete too wet to drive on.
I know, you're jealous. Giant toilet paper rolls, beautiful mountains, opportunities to walk on country roads.... It's hard to capture all the great things that happen here on a regular basis or to explain how hard I laughed when we hit that wet concrete. I'm pretty sure I can survive without frozen pizza for awhile, but heads up to my family, I'm probably gonna need that in December :)
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