STEPPING OUT

On the mirador at 7:40AM the sun rises as multiple birds sing a dawn chorus.  Mist hangs over the mountains around us.  The lake in front is restless, rippled.  Clouds hover.  But we know they will clear soon & the sky will be a crystalline blue.  Smells of breakfast waft through the air as the man across the street starts his quiet motorcycle & heads off to work, his small boy waving & calling out “dada!”
Neighbor Gethyn (married to Pete) waves from her terrace.  Come over for coffee?  “You’re using plastic ware???  Here, have some silverware.  Need plates & bowls?  Take my extra set for now.  Your washer’s broken?  Use mine.”  UH-mazing!!!  Good news-the trailer with our household goods should be hitched to a trailer in Laredo soon.  Delivery scheduled for this Tuesday.  Yeah!  In the back of my mind I’m thinking-I bet when they unload that truck we’re gonna realize that we kept more than we thought.  Actually, with the exception of clothes & kitchen stuff, we could do just fine with what we already have.  I’m thinking donations & classified’s may be in order.           

2 days later from the den I hear “Chris, are you there? Want to go shopping later?” Vidette is from Santa Fe, invisibly disabled from a life threatening illness years ago.  She is an amazing second hand store peruser & helps me score outdoor chairs & some dishes.  We meet Bill & Barbara outside & on the carretera.  They arrived Tuesday from Ohio.   Behind & around the corner from us are Beto , Sherry & dog Lelu.  Beto came through one morning while Ben was outside, scolding him for leaving trash out.  Dogs had ripped the plastic bags & scattered it everywhere. “You have to have a trash can! You can’t just leave it out.  Listen for the bell.”  That’s right, the bell.  Turns out the trash man wears a loud bell on his trousers as he steps down to pick up trash on the street.  Time to put your trash out!  Time to put your trash out!  They come 3 times weekly.  And they work hard.  Tuesday they left an envelope.  For a Christmas tip.  I can do that.  They deserve it.  Turns out Beto is the neighborhood clean up guy & takes it quite seriously.  After I apologize we break into pleasant conversation which he continues with Ben.  Turns out he’s a hiker & a former bench jeweler.  Other neighbors next door and across the street are Mexican.  Martin nextdoor has a computer job & is gone most of the time.  His place is barely put together & rumor has it it’s up for sale.  Across the street a house half the size of ours holds 3 related families, including 5 small children & 2 pregnant women, 3 men & their mother.  This is not unusual here.  It is these children that we hear outside giggling and playing everyday, sometimes all day.  When I ask their names they speak so quickly that I miss it all. Eventually…There are 3 tinacos (water tanks/cisterns) on their roof & often 3 lines of clothes drying in the sun.  Only Usbaldo speaks English having worked in California at Williams Sonoma & Pottery Barn.  He built the 2 houses across the street where the influence of that work is obvious from the clean lines, tall doors & interesting fabrics. 

On Monday we met with our immigration lawyer to pursue the process of completing our visas within 30 days of crossing the border.  2-3 weeks if we’re lucky.  Then friends drove us by acres & acres of hothouses, through the town of Jocotepec where many of the world’s berries are grown, to Guadalajara COSTCO!  Looks just like any other Costco.  Paid with credit card to avoid peso counting & filled their car to bursting.  Though an hour away, COSTCO seems almost a necessity for buying things in bulk that are so hard to find otherwise.  Our hope is that as we learn our way around we will become accustomed to pequena tiendas that might offer what we need.  Just as in the US, the “small guy” here needs support.  After shopping we’re off to a restaurant for goat stew.  My first.  Yum.

An attempt to buy a car fell through so we (gratefully) continue to take the bus to the village and beyond.  I have come to love the bump bump bump of the smaller buses as they wind their way through village streets.  The skilled drivers safely maneuver in ways you could never imagine.  Occasionally there’s a gringo or two on board but generally it is filled with Mexicans going about their daily chores.  I love being mixed in among them & not a rich gringo who doesn’t want to be involved.  I hope they don’t mind.  

This week I waded into the world of Amazon.com.mx.  Who knows what can of worms I’ve opened up.  Now I have 2 Amazon accounts because it didn’t dawn on me to simply go to my regular account & look for things marked “Eligible for shipping to Mexico”.  So we’ll see what 2 blankets, 1 set of sheets & a book end up costing.  Drove me nuts.  Now, I know some Spanish, but reading Amazon info is a bit beyond me.  So you go to your iPad & you open up the Google Translate camera & point it at the email & do your best to figure it out.  I’ll keep you posted.  By 3pm we were headed out on the bus to the local auditorium for a Christmas jazz concert.  Very professional group of folks with skilled director & pianist (our friend Eleanor) mixed with performances by a local children’s choir directed by a gringo woman.  The young Mexican man who sang “White Christmas” was amazing & loved belting it out.  (Doubt he’s ever seen snow!) Excelente!  Met our friends Dick & Eleanor & other folks at one of the best restaurants in the area-Teocintle.  Great evening.

My  limited Spanish has served us well.  Shop by shop I use a word or two to move us through.  The bank, the restaurant, the mobile phone office, the weaving shop (where I buy seconds of lovely Mexican dishes), the tortilleria (that makes only corn tortillas), the antique store (where I negotiate a deal on a mask for Ben but lose it in the end).  In the bank where we go to set up an account before buying a car, we hand over forms, tourist visas, a bill proving our address & finally Alejandra asks us to show her our house on Google Earth.  Program 2013.  No house for us or Vidette.  Just an empty lot with an old shed.  Like I said, growing fast.

Walls are slowly creeping up behind us as this neighborhood grows just as the one back home did.  West Ajijic is growing so fast that Vidette was told there is no bandwidth left to add more internet users.  A new system is coming & people are paying (dearly) up front to be part of it.   We’ll see.

Mattress time.  Company coming the 29th.  Let’s go to Chapala!  We caught the bus & made our way to Ajijic El Centro first.  Visa pictures to the lawyer’s office.  Back on the bus to the first 2 mattress stores.  The first store is run by 2 Mexican women who speak no English & have no real interest in helping us.  One of the top brands in the fancy store across the street was KINGSDOWN-made 30 minutes from our Hillsborough house.  Funny.  Too pricey.  Lunch at TACO FRIDA.  Best tacos ever.  Vegetarian.  On to Chapala.  Gorgeous little town with a great view of the lake.  Musicians playing.  A group of men dressed in indigenous costumes sit hunched over a makeshift table filled with beads, thread, needles.   Mattress purchased.  Delivery Saturday.  Back on the bus.  Home.  

(I must apologize-Wordpress changed its format & I struggled a bit.  Better luck next time.  Gracias!)