June 28, 2008

Archive

You know you live in a hot and humid place when…

After shower baby powder is a must The only seats that get much use are those under ceiling fans Sometimes you go grocery shopping to cool off The dogs will lie down only within fur ruffling distance of the fan You give up vacuuming in between maid visits You know why all cookies and crackers are packaged in single serving bags Wearing a dress makes you want to snitch your husband’s cotton mid-thigh undies Taking the dogs for a walk...

Normal life

  • June 27, 2008
  • /
  • Dogs

  I haven’t written much lately because it has just become normal to live here now so it seems like there isn’t much to say! We work on our Spanish, shop, cook,visit with friends, walk the dogs, read, eat out and the rest. More or less the same things anyone does anywhere. But living here makes all the ordinary things so much better. For example, yesterday we wanted to take a walk in the afternoon. It’s much too hot to...

Judge not…..

I’m not a kid anymore. And sometimes it is never more obvious than when I see little gaffes that I can just imagine my mother sighing over. And then I need to slap myself and remember that pretty much anything that someone decides to wear should be fine with me if it’s fine with them. I most recently heard my mother sigh (in my head) when I saw the woman in the photo at the top of the page. and...

Oldies but goodies

  The historic center of Mazatlán has many beautiful homes. Some have been restored to modern standards with new plumbing and updated electrical and some have been maintained by their original families. There is a historic commission that oversees the district and there has been a pretty successful effort to make Centro an appealing place with a program for placing utilities underground and installing curb cuts for wheelchairs and lighting in the sidewalks. I love living here. There are a...

Meltdown

I was a mess in Spanish class yesterday. It has really gotten hard. Something happened as if a blender went on in my brain and all the separate tenses, their conjugations and irregulars all were mixed up into a Spanish smoothie. I can’t even tell you how upset I was. We are in a difficult place as far as learning goes, and our teacher tells us that he’s pushing us, which is usually good for me. But sheesh, I have...

I love gomitas

  • June 17, 2008
  • /
  • Food

In the US my favorite candies were Hot Tamales, Red Vines, and Spice Drops. I seem to like things kind of chewy and sometimes with sugar sprinkles. When we moved here it took me a while to find a new addiction….above, you see my favorite pre-packaged treat and below, the ones I buy at the mercado. I like them both equally, but the packaged ones are more gooey. Yum....

Around town

Our next door neighbor feeds the hummingbirds, and we benefit as they come and hang around our yard and have their territory wars for our enjoyment. Above is a picture of one resting on the palm. We see right into the top of this tree from our office. This is a picture I couldn’t resist emailing to people up North. We are sitting in our favorite palapa restaurant enjoying a Pacifico. Mmmm, pretty good! The picture above is a ruin...

A Slice of Life

  It rained the other night and we just couldn’t stop watching it.   During the first ten days or so of the month we start receiving our utility bills. They don’t come through the mail – they are just dropped through our front gate – usually delivered by someone walking along with a huge stack of bills. We thought it might be interesting to reveal what a few things cost here in Mazatlán. All amounts are in pesos –...

Introducing Waltemo

Meet Waltemo, above. He is a small businessman who works on our block in Centro. His business is washing cars. Waltemo is always friendly and happy. He has a good business keeping the cars of everyone in the neighborhood nice and clean. There are also plenty of people who park to go to the local doctors and businesses and he’ll wash their cars, too. Waltemo works hard, mostly seven days a week. He has a wife and a young daughter...

Why we blog

There’s been a lot of flap lately among the Latin American blogger community about comments. I don’t want to rehash what’s been said – but the more I thought about it the more I knew I needed to get something out. The crux of the matter for me is that it’s MY BLOG and I can set the rules. My blog is a fun place for me to talk about our experiences here in Mexico. I really enjoy it. I...

First rain of the year

We woke up this morning because the bedroom was stuffy and it turned out the power was off so the ceiling fan wasn’t running. Unusual but not that noteworthy. But when Paul got up to open the window we saw it was wet outside. Misting. No, raining! Sort of. More a drizzle than anything. But with the power off there was no chance for coffee so we leashed up the dogs and headed out. The air was smooth and warm...

How to beat the heat

It’s starting to heat up here in Mazatlán…it’s supposed to be 33 C (91 F)today and 59% humidity. We are still sleeping with the windows open and fans on – we aren’t in a hurry to get into air conditioning at night. It still cools off pretty nicely at night, thank goodness. We have great ventilation in our house but most of the time for the last few days the thermometer has been around 84 F inside. We’re fine with...