Our Mexican Adventure

Last week, we enjoyed Christmas in Chicago with our family. We didn´t enjoy the cold weather, the dirty snow and our bout with the dreaded turista (traveler’s diarrhea). Yes, two months in Mexico yielded no gastrointestinal problems, but a couple days back in Chicago, and we get sick. Figures.

We returned to Playa del Carmen a couple of days ago to much fanfare …

• Our cats excitedly purred and meowed. (They are now back to ignoring us again.)
• Our water was not running yet again! (It was promptly fixed the next morning.)
• We almost got internet service in our apartment. We managed to tell Cablemas, en Español, that we wanted to sign up for internet service. After hearing stories about needing to bribe the cable guy to actually show up, we expected the worst. We were told that he would come out “mañana”. (We´ve told you about “mañana”, right?) Well, he showed up the day after mañana, which we thought was pretty impressive, actually. But, alas, our building does not allow those unsightly above ground cables, so he will need to feed the cable through an underground conduit on Monday. Well, that´s what we think he said anyway.
• We made our most expensive purchase in Mexico yet — a yellow futon. Finally a comfy place to sit and read (no TV to watch), and it acts as another sleeping area for when we have more than 2 guests.
• At a locals´ (non-tourist) eatery, as Libby was reaching for the green sauce, she was aggressively warned by the panicking owners that all the sauces on that side of the table were very hot. Heeding the warning, she decided to sample only a little bit. After trying her taco, she decided that the warning was unfounded and went back for more. The unbelieving owners profusely wished us “Buen Provecho” (Buen Appetit) after that. They must get a lot of wimpy gringas in that joint.
• We got a Sam´s Club membership. We never thought we´d live to see that day!
• We were blessed with the opportunity to practice a whole lot of Spanish at the lavanderia (laundromat). In Mexico, it is very common and inexpensive to have the laundromat do your laundry for you. Right before we left for Chicago, they lost all the dark clothes in our latest load. Needing more time to look for them, they told us to come back when we returned from Chicago. Well, of course, when we returned, noone had any idea who we were and what our situation was, so we got to explain the whole thing a few times. Nevertheless, after several phone calls, confused looks and a search through a meager lost and found, our clothes were nowhere to be found. Sigh! Libby misses her washer and dryer!
• On the bright side, we learned that our friends Lynette, Kevin and Brian will be joining us in Playa del Carmen for New Year´s! Yay!!

Our New Year´s resolution is to update this site more often. What´s yours?

¡ Prospero Año Nuevo !

The past week has been very busy for us. While you have been enjoying company Holiday Parties, thinking of New Years resolutions, and planning ski trips, we’ve been…

Moving into our apartment. (We have some photos of the bare 2 bedroom apartment in our photo gallery.) The move wasn´t too bad, since we don´t have much stuff. However, we have been mostly without water since Saturday. You really learn to appreciate a nice hot shower after 3 days without one!

Becoming intimately familiar with the new Walmart. We have been back there at least once a day since it has opened. Some days we´ve made multiple trips. Thankfully, we´ve now purchased most of the necessities for living in our new apartment.

Planning our “vacation” back to Chicago for Christmas. We’ll be back in town from December 20th-27th. We hope to see as much of our family and friends as possible. We’ve heard that the Midwest is under 9 to 12 inches of snow. Yes, we miss our family and friends enough to put up with that icky snow and cold weather for a while.

Hanging out with some friends from the States. Our friends, Kate and Toni, are down here visiting for a week. They really enjoyed the parade we threw for them on 5th avenue on Sunday evening. Now that our apartment issues appear to be over (cross your fingers!), we hope we’ll have some free time to sightsee with them the next few days.

Moshing with Molotov. Ok, we did somehow end up in the mosh pit during the free Molotov concert (hosted by MTV) on Tuesday evening, but we quickly retreated to a safer location where our friends Megan and Kenny were hanging out. We have some photos of the band and the crowd here.

The Walmart in Playa del Carmen opened today to much fanfare. PDC’ers were out in force, elbow to elbow (and often elbowing each other), to buy televisions, ribeye steaks, Christmas themed towels and Walmart tortillas — don’t knock ‘em ’til you’ve tried ‘em. It took Libby almost 30 minutes to buy a potato masher (machacador), butter, milk and jello. The “express” lane didn’t seem to help.

The Walmart comes just in time as we are hoping to finally move into an apartment on Friday.The landlord assured us that we’d be able to move in today, but this is Mexico, and there has been an unexpected delay. Unexpected by everyone except for us!

Mexican landlords will not make any needed repairs or cleaning until they have a deposit. Luckily, our place only needs a light cleaning and some painting. Another apartment we looked at had extensive hurricane damage. We’re talking ripped out kitchen and bathroom cabinets, living room ceiling fan on the floor and a pool of rust beside it. But no worries, as soon as we put down a deposit, the landlord will have it all as good as new in a week. Right!! We’ve learned that in Mexican Spanish, mañana means a few days, and una semana (one week) means 2-3 weeks.

We hope to post in a few days with more info on our new apartment. We’ll leave it up to you to guess whether that’s a Mexican few days or not.

Weather:

     Two days in a row of overcast skies, rain and humidity.

Apartment Hunting:

     We thought we had a place … We lost it.
     We thought we had another place … We lost it.
     We think we have a place … Stay tuned.

State of Mind:

     Hungover, but we hear the sun will come up mañana.