An Evening with a Mexican Family: Talk, Music, Food

Yesterday evening Kelly and I walked across the small Mexican town where we have rented a house, to appear at the door of a Mexican family we know. The invitation was for supper, and we'd been told to come at seven. "Mexican style or American style?" I had asked when we were invited. "American," I was told, so we showed up around seven. "Mexican style" would have likely been more like eight or later. Kelly had been invited to bring his digital saxophone along, and so he had it.

We entered past a bit of construction and a car to a sparkling clean and comfortable house with a lot of art on the walls, where we sat in the living room and visited. Besides the husband and wife and their young daughter, there were two of the wife's brothers -- visiting from another part of Mexico for Semana Santa -- and a cousin on the husband's side. Later another foreign woman joined the group, and as Kelly commented, it was quite the international salon.(I'm not listing their names because I didn't think to get their okay, and besides it doesn't matter to the story.)

Kelly accepted an offer of a small tequila, and got one that wasn't so small. He nursed it for hours, while I had a delicious soft drink of grapefruit flavor and a few sips of his tequila. The others had beer or soft drinks. We munched on crackers with a tuna spread on top of them and little slices of sausage which we speared with toothpicks. These were in a delicious sauce of lime juice, onions, and tiny dabs of hot peppers.

Conversation ranged over many topics. None of the family are really fluent in English but often when Kelly or I didn't know a Spanish word, we said the word in English and the father often knew the word. We've found our conversations with Mexicans helped along because so many of them can understand more English than they can speak. Our host listed off several words that he has trouble with the subtleties of pronouncing: bear, beer, bird, beard. Everyone (but me) thought it was pretty funny that I can't roll my rr's and thus can't really even say my own name, Rosana, quite right! A single r at the beginning of a word gets a little bit of rolling. I got asked to say "ferrocarrill" which provided more amusement.

After some time, Kelly was invited to pull out his saxophone. The cousin is a musician as well, and he had set up a keyboard and brought his guitar. He said he hadn't done a lot of improvising, that in the club where he plays it's usually the more popular, commercial tunes that he does. But he and Kelly started improvising together, as that is how Kelly plays, and they immediately sounded like they had played together many times. We sat spellbound (at least I was, and the others sure seemed to be) for an hour or so as they played in a variety of styles. Our host asked Kelly to start with a jazz tune, and he began with "Summertime" which morphed into pure improv.

When the cousin moved from keyboard to a non-electrified guitar, I quietly suggested to Kelly in English that he unplug the sax for a softer sound. Our host thought I might be suggesting that Kelly stop playing and he objected. My favorite part of the music was what followed.

Eventually the cousin did a few solo pieces where he sang, and then our host sang "Perfidia" with the lyrics in Spanish. I sang along softly in English, glad that nobody seemed to notice I was doing it.

It was about 10:30 by now, and I was beginning to wonder if we should say our thank you's and go home. But then our host said in Spanish, "We invited you for supper, and so now please come into the dining room." His wife and her brothers were putting plates of pasta and meat in a subtly spicy sauce on the table. Conversation was lively and it was past midnight when the gathering ended.

Kelly and I walked home across the quiet streets of our town, enjoying being able to walk down the middle of streets with absolutely no traffic. Well, we did see one car being parked, but nobody else was about. Houses here and there still had lights on, but it was a very quiet town. People had told us it was safe to walk the streets at any hour here, and we did feel safe in our fifteen-minute walk.

A great evening! Oh, and the reason there are no photos is that we forgot to take the camera and for once the shoe was on the other foot: the wife was videoing segments of the evening.

I think that any foreigners in Mexico who made some effort (no matter how basic) to speak Spanish and to meet people would find themselves invited to events like this. Of course, the longer you stay in one place, the more you develop a network of friends, but even travelers experience the wonderful Mexican hospitality and warmth. At one point last night our host asked me to say something about my impressions of Mexicans, and I said that I thought they knew how to enjoy life more than other North Americans. It's one of the main things I love about Mexico!

A Mexican Artist Exemplifies the Money Machine Idea

Yesterday, I mentioned that Kelly and I have earned our living in part from the ideas of a book called The Incredible Secret Money Machine, in that we created books and videos that we could sell copies of while we were on to new projects. Not long after I wrote that entry, we went to the center of town here in Bernal. It's Semana Santa, kids are out of school for two weeks nationwide, many adults have time off from work, and the town is bursting with Mexican tourists. Many buildings have transformed themselves into cute little shops. We had a great time wandering around.

I took Kelly back to a shop I had found earlier. Artist Rocio Cabrer, of Queretaro, had watercolors framed in glass and lead, along with stained glass, up on the walls.

Kelly has done enough watercolor himself that he immediately recognized her artistry and started a small pile of ones to buy. I wanted to get some of her Bernal ones especially.

We chatted with Rocio a while. She works a long time on each watercolor, and then a relative of hers makes lithographic copies, in a variety of sizes. Rocio frames them. I said I wanted to ask her a nosy question: did she make her living just from her art? She said yes, she does now, though she hasn't always been able to. I commented that I have many artist friends in the U.S. who struggle to make a living. She said it's like that for artists here in Mexico too. By using her methods of reproduction, she's able to sell her art at prices that far more people can afford. A win-win situation -- and a great example of what I was talking about yesterday!


Four of Rocio Cabrer's reproductions dress up our kitchen wall.

Living in Mexico for a Sort-of Sabbatical

We're not connected with any university, so I am calling our planned sabbatical a "sort-of" one. We're just doing it ourselves.

Basically, we've recently decided to spend about a year away from our home in Crestone, Colorado, starting several months from now. We intend to spend most of that time living in Mexico, though family visits and some other adventures call too. We're in the process of fixing up the inexpensive little house we rented here in Mexico (more on the house in future blogs -- there's already one entry on March 12), and it will be our base in Mexico. Being near the center of the country, it's good for travel in any direction.

It's not a simple thing to uproot yourself, if only for a while. A key to making it work has been the arrangements we've been making by email lately with some friends who own land in Crestone and will be putting their home in Illinois up for sale this spring. Once it sells (and houses in their area tend to sell pretty fast), they will rent our house in Crestone and take care of our dog and our two cats. Their business will contract with our business to fill orders, etc., while we roam.

We face the daunting task of cleaning most of our stuff out of the house before they come. We will continue to use our garage, which has a large storage area and Kelly's office. We'll live in our motorhome in Crestone for a while once they arrive, to train them in our business. Then our year-or-so sabbatical will begin, again in Cando. We're all working on going with the flow so far as timing. Kelly and I were planning to be home at the end of May, but may return a bit sooner. How long it will take our friends to arrive, and how long it will take us to train them, are wild cards.

You may be wondering how we can afford to do this, since we aren't rich or retired, nor are we getting a sabbatical salary from a rich university. Well, our computers will be with us, and we will keep working on our websites and related projects, though likely at a more leisurely pace. Long ago, we read a book that turned out to have a tremendous influence on our work lives. The Incredible Secret Money Machine advocated creating products that you could sell -- not one-of-a-kind things that you have to keep making, but things that you could duplicate. Kelly and I have been doing this for over 20 years, mainly with books and videos. The idea is that they keep making money for you, once you set up your distribution and marketing systems, while you are on to your next projects. You sell to a wide variety of customers, so you are not dependent on any one customer to keep groceries on your table.

As a former librarian, I often recommend books, but actually I think I have just distilled the essence of this one. It was written long before the internet. We used wholesalers and went to trade shows in earlier years, but now most of our product sales are to retail customers who find our websites online (there's a list at our site www.hartworks.com, if you're curious). I highly recommend this Secret Money Machine strategy, or some variations on it. Nowadays, Kelly does some consulting, and we both do some internet affiliate marketing of other people's products as well.

Why a Sabbatical?

We've done something like this more than once before. Last time was about nine years ago. These times have been among the most interesting and satisfying in our lives, and in some cases they set us off in new directions. Kelly's involvement in sustainable architecture dates from that last trip. Last night I dreamt that I finished writing a book that I began on that trip, Meetings with Doña Refugio: The Inner Journeys of a Woman and Her Dogs.

Why live in Mexico?

It's got a great climate. People are very warm and friendly. Its culture is fascinating, rich, and complex. Living in a village where we can walk to everything fulfills a dream I have had ever since I lived in a village in Spain in the 1960s. Living in Mexico is less expensive than living in the US. We're enjoying a break from the present intensity of politics and life in the US, but appreciate the closeness to home. We are generally enjoying the challenge of improving our Spanish. There are probably a dozen more reasons. We'll find out!

Spring Equinox in Bernal, Mexico: The Big Day

This morning we got up before sunrise and took our morning tea to the upstairs deck. As the first rays of the sun hit la Peña, the people who had spent the night up there waved large mirrors toward town, and we waved mirrors back. I also held up some crystals we had, to receive the special energy of the Peña at equinox. While I was doing this, Kelly took picture after picture, trying to get one that caught a flash of mirror. He didn't succeed, but here is la Peña, one of the great volcanic plugs of the world, in the sacred moment of equinox sunrise.



The ceremonies of the day were based on the balance of light and dark worldwide, and were for the peace and harmony of the whole world. We were happy to take part in such an event, and spent a little time together in meditation, of a general sort but also with a personal concern. The morning's email had brought some sad news about an American friend here in Mexico, so we were holding him and his partner in our hearts too.

Late in the morning, we went downtown. We wandered separately, but were amused to disover when we got home that we had both taken the same route, first going up la Peña through the town streets before returning to the center of town.

The general atmosphere was jolly but not particularly reverent. I was glad we'd had our moments of quiet. Vendors lined the streets, selling tshirts, snacks, sliced fresh fruit, cold drinks, jewelry, arts and crafts, toys, and much more. Of course, I was hardly immune to the vendors, and bought a couple of Bernal 2005 t-shirts! The people-watching was great too. There were people of all ages, though mostly younger, much like the population of Mexico itself.



Kelly had gone further than I had, up beyond the streets and onto the rock face of la Peña. Here hikers relax and absorb the calming energies of La Peña, high above Bernal.



As Kelly started back down, some traditional dancers were heading up, complete with TV crew. The television crew was in evidence here and there all weekend, even with a helicopter flying over la Peña at one point.



There were more traditional dances going on in the Jardin...



... including ritual blessings.



I considered getting in line for a blessing but I had a large ice cream cone in my hand by then, and thought it would be tricky to get blessed without dripping ice cream all over my new white skirt and blouse and red scarf.

I was wearing them because that is part of the tradition that has grown up here. White clothing is sacred in many cultures, and the red was for the energies.

My friend Ana was busy working in her shop when I'd gone by earlier. (There's a long bit about Ana and her Chichimeca roots in my online book. Her husband Juvenal, one of those who pray all night, is shown there too.) I went back and she was free. "Dame la mano!" she said. ("Give me your hand.") She said something else that I didn't catch, but after we chatted a little, I asked her about the custom of people holding hands, from the Jardin all the way up to the Peña, and singing the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Fifth. She explained that had happened when she asked for my hand. So I hummed a bit from the Ode to Joy, said my goodbyes, and meandered on my way.

Spring Equinox in Bernal, Mexico: Day One

Two years ago, on our first visit to Bernal, people told us we should stay for the spring equinox celebration, when thousands of people pour into town from all over Mexico. We couldn't stay that time, but we've had the full experience yesterday and today.

Things got started last night with several events, including some compelling traditional dancing. We knew Juvenal, one of the group who were to go up to the top of the Peña (see pictures in my next blog entry) and spend the night in prayer and ritual. At its heart, this event is a prayer for peace and harmony throughout the world. It got started about 12 years ago by a group of friends and has grown to the point now that we were told some 40,000 people would come to this town of 5,000. It's hard to estimate but we guessed that at least 20,000 did turn up today.

We were home around 8PM last night, when there was a knock on the door. A couple of Mexican women were looking for a place to sleep. I remembered that a friend of ours down the street rented out rooms to women, so we went down there. I hadn't thought to ask but it turned out that these two women were part of a group that included two other women, a man, and 4-year-old child. That was more than my friend wanted to take on, but she suggested another neighbor. We went there, and he didn't have a place but said all the hotels in Bernal were full and suggested they go to Ezekial Montes, a larger town only about 20 minutes away. That was the best solution, so off they went. Before I realized how many there were, I thought we could have let them sleep in Cando, but there are no drains in town for emptying our RV's blackwater, so it really wasn't an option.

Around 9PM, there was a fireworks display, one of the best I have ever seen. Mexicans love fireworks, and this one really went all out. We watched it from our upstairs deck, also catching views of laser lights playing on the church in the Jardin (Garden, or central plaza) and a searchlight playing on the Peña. Stunning!

As that finished, a van parked in front of our house and disgorged a large number of Mexicans. Over the next hour or two, they unloaded mattresses and other gear from the top of the van and moved into the tiny empty house next door. We had heard that the owners lived out of town and came for special events, so that was evidently the scene. They got right to work straightening the place up, including burning a large pile of brush about midnight. It's fascinating how Mexicans simply go about living their lives without the kind of concerns about noise that are so common at home. We've both lost some sleep as a result, but it's also fun.

The next blog entry continues the equinox story, with some great photos Kelly got.

Friendship and Music in Tequisquiapan, Mexico

A couple of weeks ago we bought a can of varnish in Ezequial Montes, the county seat for Bernal, where we're living. Out of several paint stores on the highway, the one we happened to walk into was owned by a very friendly couple, Luis and Andrea Estrella. Luis speaks excellent English and has worked as a geological engineer in Europe and the United States. Andrea doesn't speak much English but understands quite a lot. Not long ago, they lived for over a year in Sacramento, California, with their three sons, while Luis was working there.

We ended up chatting for quite a while, and it came out that Luis is a musician who sings and plays guitar. Kelly mentioned that he plays a digital sax that he had brought along on this trip, and Luis invited Kelly to sit in for a couple of tunes the next time he had a gig in Tequisquiapan, a very attractive town of about 25,000 where they live.

That happened last night. We drove through a soft evening just after sunset, most of the way to Tequis, as it's called. It's about 40 minutes from Bernal. I had understood that we would meet Luis at K'puchinos, where he was to play right in downtown Tequis, but as we were passing the development where they live, we decided to stop by and see if we could leave Cando there and catch a ride in. It was already arranged that we would spend the night in Cando in front of their house.

Neither Luis nor Andrea was home, but we chatted with their oldest son. He is 18, speaks very fluent English, and is applying to universities for next year. He reminded me of my nephew back in the U.S., who is also thinking about where to apply and who also has an easy manner with adults.

As we talked, Andrea arrived, coming home from the paint store. Luis had already gone down with their other two sons, who were to hang out in the central plaza with their friends. So a little while later, we went downtown with Andrea. We were glad that things worked out this way, things were popping downtown and parking spots were at a premium. Searching through narrow one-way streets in Cando in an unfamiliar town after dark isn't exactly my idea of a good time.

K'puchinos is a cafe with tables out front on a walking street near the main plaza, plus a couple of large rooms full of tables. (The link takes you to their charming website.) The whole place was full of lively people having a meal, a dessert, or drinks. Andrea guided us to the area in back, where Luis and another musician were setting up. She chose a table where we could see and hear the music well but were far enough away that conversation was possible. She had several friends in the cafe, and another musician, Juan Jose, joined us at our table.

Luis sings many Latin tunes and also quite a few in English. It was a delightful few hours. I chatted with Andrea and Juan Jose about many things. I can still hardly utter a truly grammatical sentence of any complexity in Spanish, but my ability to understand does seem to be improving a lot lately.

When Kelly and Luis improvised together, our conversation stopped, and I was pleased that Andrea, Juan Jose, and a number of other people in the cafe really liked Kelly's playing!


Luis on the right, with Argentinian Jorge Revenko.

It was after one in the morning when we curled up in Cando on the quiet street in front of Luis and Andrea's house. At 6:20 AM loud firecrackers went off, followed by circus music. Andrea later explained it was actually from some distance away. We dozed off again to the hum of a couple of neighbors mowing their lawns.

We had coffee and pastry with them around eight, before Andrea left to take one son someplace. Luis took the other two boys, plus a friend who had spent the night, someplace else, before going off to open the paint store, and we left for Bernal in Cando. As Luis and Andrea did a bit of quick planning, I thought how very easily any U.S. family with three active children would relate to the scene.

As for us, we feel more at home in Mexico, thanks to the warm hospitality of one family.




Andrea and Luis with two of their sons

A Mexican Pilgrimage

This morning, our landlord and friend Francisco drove us to another town nearby, Colon, to see a pilgrimage that is going on this week. He told us that people were walking from 8PM to about 8AM, all night without sleeping. They come from all over Mexico to do this particular pilgrimage, to Nuestra Señora deo Los Dolores de Soriano. It goes on for several days, and Francisco said that over a million people do it each year.

I asked him how people decided to do a pilgrimage, and he said it was often to keep a promise that they had made to the Virgin, giving thanks for a miracle. Other times it could be a request for help.

We left Bernal at 7:30 this morning, and once we got on the road to Colon, we saw lots of people -- mostly young, but plenty who were not -- walking along. Some looked quite tired, many others didn't. A few were carrying small children. There were food stalls set up here and there along the road.

We went through Colon, a town quite a bit larger than Bernal, and continued out on a cobblestone road that Francisco guessed was more than a hundred years old. The road wound up into the mountains, with every now and then a village. It was a great look at an extremely rural Mexico, not that far from where things are more built up. Ancient rock walls lined the road in places, and the whole scene had a timeless feel. It got colder as we climbed. We came to a forest that had been planted some decades ago. Francisco had expected that we would be seeing pilgrims on this cobblestone road, but we didn't. So we stopped at a magnificent overlook and he asked some people there, who said the pilgrims had already passed for the morning.

So we went back down the mountains to Colon, which was full of pilgrims relaxing everywhere. Kelly got some nice photos:



Here, pilgrims are relaxing on the church steps. Below is one of many tents that people had set up to use, with the newer and older parts of the church behind it:




Here's the statue of the Virgin de los Dolores:




There were stalls and stores along the streets near the church, and Kelly got this telling shot:




We had a snack of gorditas and bought a loaf of a sweet bread made on special occasions:






As we drove home, I asked Francisco if people from Bernal were doing the pilgrimage. He said yes, they had done it last weekend, and that the church bells had rung around 3AM to call those who were going. That cleared up a mystery. Normally the church bells ring around 6:30AM, and we often use them to get up. When the bells had rung in the middle of the night, Kelly got up and got dressed, but somehow it didn't seem quite right, so he went back to bed!

Renting a House in Mexico

Recently we rented a little house in Bernal, Mexico.

Before we saw it, we were warned that it was "muy rustico" which you could translate as funky. At 1200 pesos a month unfurnished (currently 108 dollars a month), we weren't expecting much, but were pleasantly surprised. Specially with Kelly's involvement in sustainable architecture, we thought it would be fun to try living in a typical Mexican cement-block house for a while.

How long "a while" will turn out to be, we have no idea. Our tourist visas run out in May and we will be back in Colorado sometime in that month. We'll keep renting this house, hardly much of a cash outlay, and come back as we can.

How easy is it to find rentals this cheap? I really don't know but in this village at least, I think we were quite lucky. I also suspect that relatively few Americans would want to live in it, unless they were fixer-upper types. In Mexico, typically the tenant is responsible for the cost of repairs and fixing up, and that is basically our deal here.


Downstairs it's got one small windowless, doorless room which would probably be a Mexican living room but we are using as a bedroom, having hung a heavy curtain over the doorway to help block noise from the street. It's the only old part of the house and has walls about two feet thick. It seems to stay about 65 degrees, day and night.

There's a small kitchen which is probably the house's worst feature. No refrigerator, the gas stove is on loan from the very nice landlord who is becoming a good friend, and I hope that the smell is only from the drains, as we've found a plastic bottle that pretty well jams into the drain in the sort-of sink. The bathroom is okay, rough cement floors, with a toilet that leaked a little till Kelly fixed it. It came with a jar stuck in the shower drain, and that cuts the smell fine. Both of these rooms open directly into the patio described below.

Upstairs, there are two small bedrooms. You walk outside into the little walled-in yard to go up to those rooms. Each of us will have one of these for an office / solitary space. There's also an upstairs patio, the roof over the kitchen and bathroom.

The total square footage of all these rooms is 500. Then there is another 500 square feet of an open hallway from the front door, a ground-floor patio and the upstairs one I just mentioned, and what's called a "patio de servicio" -- a room with one wall open to the back yard, containing the typical cement scrubbing sink where Mexican women wash clothes, a covered clothesline, and a gas water heater that is not automatic -- you can keep the pilot light on, but have to remember to turn the knob up when you will want hot water and down when you are done. New to us but it must save some gas.

Kelly is planning to put a simple translucent corrugated roof over the ground-floor patio, for solar gain in the winter and with some way to shade it in the warmer months. Seasons are not so distinct here. This will be an experiment and a living room.

The very private yard in back, with high walls around it, is another 500 square feet. We're watering the few plants in it but not doing anything else with it now. Wait and see if we're here more. So all in all, it's 1500 square feet. Definitely indoor-outdoor living. We're in the mountains at over 6000 feet, so it cools down at night year-round. I didn't mention heat because there isn't any.

The kitchen and bathroom are painted, and everything else is whitewashed. It all needed a new batch of whitewash, so we got some, and followed the instructions of a very helpful young man as to how to mix it up with something called "recina" which is a latex add-on. Then we set out to do the bedroom before our second-hand bed arrived. Unfortunately, his instructions gave us such a watery mix that one day's work made the walls look worse! Kelly dumped a whole lot more cal (whitewash) into the bucket, and that really did the job. We'll be doing other parts of the place soon. Since we both have to wear our sunglasses during most of the day to walk from one room to another, we also got some colorant for our whitewash and will be using a lot of blue and a color they call "oxidized red" to reduce the glare.

It's fun.

How real are borders?

We all know that the United States and Mexico are two distinct countries. There is a long physical border, from Texas to California, from Tamaulipas to Baja California Norte. Hundreds of Mexicans die every year as they try to cross the border itself and the unforgiving desert north and south of it. That's all too real.

But one day recently the border dissolved a little for me. I habitually see myself in Mexico as a guest in a country where my understanding of the language and customs is imperfect. This has simply felt like part of my identity, like my curly graying hair.

Nothing dramatic happened. I was just walking across the small town we're staying in, buying some bread here, some fruits and vegetables, stopping in at the ATM machine for more cash. But I noticed with some surprise that I didn't feel that sense of being an outsider. Delicious!

Another morning recently, I woke remembering a dream in which I had been petting our dog Sunbeam, who died in January (as I blogged on January 20th). In the dream I said joyously to my husband Kelly, "Sunbeam isn't dead!" Somewhere in my mind I also knew that back in Colorado there was a box of ashes waiting for us to have a ceremony with them, but the greater reality in that moment was in the connection with Sunbeam.

When I woke and remembered the dream, I cried a little, till I telepathically heard Sunbeam saying to me something like, "I'm NOT dead. The only thing you can't do in waking life is touch or see me, but you can do that in dreams."

How real are borders?

The archives work now... and some translation stories

I haven't been able to get the archives of this blog to work for some time, but yesterday I messed around with the settings long enough to figure it out. My triumph of the day. So now, if you click on any of the months listed, it will take you to the entries for that month.

Yesterday we rode over to a nearby town called Tequisquiapan with a Mexican friend. We went to several stores, and while our friend and I were waiting for Kelly outside one of them, my friend teased me about the tshirt I was wearing. It says on it, "Baca Grande Library, Crestone, CO" and is one I designed when I was running the library. Well, my new friend had no comments on the library or Crestone parts, but he pointed out to me that "Baca Grande" means "big cow," gesturing with his hands as if I had a bosum the size of a cow's. We joked around about it for a while... and I'm not sure I am going to wear that tshirt in public much after this!

Translation can be funny. In that shopping center in Queretaro that I mentioned yesterday, there was a large, floor-to-ceiling poster of a woman athlete, with the words in English: "Impossible is Nothing."

Kelly bought a little Seiko electronic translater that fits in his shirt pocket, and he's found it useful.

Tequisquiapan, often called "Tequis" for short, is an upscale town popular for second homes with people from Mexico City. That may be part of why there is a health food store. We were just about out of green tea and tamari, and happily replenished both. We also got a nice loaf of whole wheat bread. Our friend got wild rice. Good resource!

A Day in Queretaro, Mexico

Today Rob, an American friend who has lived in Queretaro, took us around this clean and interesting city, which has around a million in population. It's known as a clean city, and where we went sure was. Virtually no trash, and we saw no street dogs.

First we went to the workshop of some friends of Rob's, just outside the city in an unprepossessing with no signs out front. Lupe, shown in the picture, makes Day of the Dead dolls and many other things. He also spoke so clearly that I could understand almost everything he said!

Much of what they do is in a kind of papier-mache which is then painted very brightly, a very Mexican art form. They sell some of their work in Mexico, but it also goes to Japan, France, Trinidad, and other parts of the world. They've won a number of awards. They employ quite a few students to wrap the paper around molds, dry them, cut them open, paint them white as an undercoat, and then paint them brightly.

Here's another picture from their workshop, representing souls in purgatory:



We strolled around the historic central downtown area, which has a lot of walking streets and several very nice plazas. We had lunch in a sidewalk cafe, a five-course meal for 42 pesos (under $4) each -- that was with an appetizer, soup, pasta or rice, main dish, and dessert. Vendors of crafts came by from time to time, with baskets, dolls, and other items.

Kelly got a picture of a pigeon on a statue in one of the plazas:



We spent the rest of the afternoon in suburban Queretaro, and we were quite surprised at how modern and posh it was. Another American woman who was with us today had a Costco membership, so we decided it would be interesting to see what a Mexican one looked like. Well, it looked just about exactly like one in the US! Some prices were higher than in the US, most notably computers that duty is charged on, and some were lower.

It was in the same neighborhood as two malls, and we walked through one to get to the other. Both were at least as nice as ones in the U.S., with many attractive shops of the sort you'd expect in a shopping center, not to mention a huge theater complex, I think with ten theaters. Rob said that there was a still more upscale one some distance away.

These were extremely nice. Third world country, not.

In one of these shopping centers, we went to the office of Lloyd's, which offers money market funds and many services that expats may need. It's not a bank as such, but Americans can have their social security checks deposited directly there, they offer "cash cards" you can use in ATM machines, and more. Rob has used their services for years and spoke highly of them, and I've read many appreciative comments on the Mexconnect forum. Close to 20% of their clients live outside of Mexico.

Rob had a bit of business to do there, and then we had a chance to chat with the manager. His English could not have been better, and when I asked him, he had some interesting observations on the economic scene. I won't try to quote him from memory and risk getting it wrong, but here is a link to the English-language homepage of Lloyd's site. click on "Economic Report" on the left menu for a monthly far-ranging overview of the Mexican scene, in both English and Spanish.

An ice cream from Baskin-Robbins in the mall wrapped up the day. Amusingly, our malteds cost only pennies less than our full lunch had. We'd seen a lot of the many faces of Mexico!

A Shopping Trip in Mexico

Yesterday morning we went to the nearby town of Ezekial Montes, to do some shopping. It has a large weekly tianguis, or market (also called mercado) and we needed some things we couldn't find here in Bernal.

First, we walked about 5 minutes to the bus stop and then we stood for maybe 10 minutes till the local bus came. Think of a large UPS truck and make it longer -- that's about the size of this thing. Its seats were so close together that my knees were jammed in, and I am not a tall person. But I was lucky to have a seat. Kelly stood for about half of the 25-minute trip.

I was sitting next to a Mexican woman who had put her little girl on her lap so I would have a place to sit. The girl looked to be about two and she was in kind of a bad mood. She stared at me but wouldn't smile. After we'd been riding along a while, the woman directly in front of me shifted her little girl of about the same age, so the girl was looking back at our seat. I was treated to the most blissful smile imaginable, with long eye contact -- not once but several times. It was exquisite!

Gotta wonder about how the lives of these two little children will play out.

The market was great, the largest one we've seen on this trip. Several blocks in size, it contained lots of produce, food stalls that looked a little dubious to me in the hygiene department but may have been fine, used and new clothing galore, lots of tools both new and used, a little used furniture, shoes, artesanias (arts and crafts), dried herbs for healing teas, plastics of all sorts, patent medicines, blender parts (blenders are used a lot in Mexican cooking), other housewares, big bags of dog food open so people could buy a little, and lots more.

We were pretty early and a lot of vendors were still setting up. There was a lot of good-natured chatter going on around us. People were friendly with us... we didn't see any other foreigners the whole day, and I realized later that I hadn't even noticed that at the time!

After a while, we asked directions and headed for the center of town a few blocks away. We did some errands including finding a bank, where the ATM machine worked flawlessly, as they always have for us. (I do prefer the kind where you can swipe your card rather than insert it, as I have heard a few tales of the insertion-type machines keeping travelers' cards and banks not being able to return them due to some regulations. This was a swipe-the-card type.)

Then we had lunch in a restaurant with a lovely tile floor and a sparkling clean bathroom, complete with toilet paper, soap, and a cloth hand towel. Most of the many bathrooms I've encountered in Mexico have been this clean, but toilet paper is usually a bring-your-own affair. Like many of the bathrooms I've used, there was no seat on the toilet.

Back to lunch. I had a quesadilla platter with small portions of rice, beans, and salad for 25 pesos. Kelly had chicken tacos with the same side dishes, for the same price. I had a tall glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice for 15 pesos -- excellent! Kelly had coffee, 8 pesos. It's 11 pesos to the dollar right now, so the very filling meal was (The peso is getting stronger against the dollar, but that's a whole other story.) just over $7.00 US for both of us including tip.

We wandered back to the market as we wanted to buy a few things we hadn't wanted to carry all over town. We'd found unshelled peanuts, one of Kelly's favorite snacks. Our bus was waiting, not nearly so full this time, and like us, most of the passengers had their own big plaid plastic shopping bags filled to the brim.

Great fun.