So, today’s a quiet day so far. The kids haven’t stopped by yet. Tia’s off at work, and the suegros are at Abuelita Cata’s house. Josue’s still not feeling well, so I’m trying to get him to rest, and I’m using this as a catch up day. Right now I’m doing laundry, journaling and uploading pictures.
Since it’s quiet, it’s giving me a chance to sort out my thoughts and actually try to get out into words all that I’ve been taking in so far.
I just wanted to list some note worthy differences I’ve been noticing:
Like I’m washing clothes today - which I must say I was a little disappointed, because I wanted to give the “pileta” a try, hand washing our clothes, but there is washing machine, so why not save time. However, when washing clothes, first you gotta figure out which water source you’re going to use. The water from the hose by the street only runs at certain times throughout the day, then there’s the water from the tank on the roof, which I think is usually conserved for the times when the running water isn’t coming in. Anyhow, you put the hose into the washing machine and fill it up for both the wash cycle and then listen for the sound that lets you know you need to fill it up again for the rinse cycle. Washing clothes like washing dishes is all usually done in cold water.
The hot water is saved for bathing. Here at one house, the boiler is heated by burning wood below it, so you have to remember to put wood in before your shower and give it a chance to heat up. At the other house you connect up to a gas tank., but you need to restart the pilot everyday, because due to a leak you need to turn it off every night.
Back to laundry, to dry your clothes, you use the dryer from good ol’ nature- the sun! Turn your clothes inside out and hang them on the line. Which is another reason you want to start your laundry early in the day, because as we found out the first time we did laundry here, if you hang them too late in the afternoon, sun goes down, temperature drops and your clothes stay wet until the next day. Which means they don’t dry as fresh!
Same thing with your shower towels, hang them on the line when your done!
Throughout the day different delivery trucks make their way through the neighborhoods selling their goods, such as: a fruit truck, a bread truck (which by the way is the one that smells the best - the back camper full of freshly made sweet breads, teleras y bolillos…mmmm), a gas truck - the kind of gas you need to hook up to your water heater or stove, and of course the ice-cream truck, well, not all things are different.
Dogs roam about through the neighborhoods freely around here, for that matter, so do the kids. Some go to school, but a good number of them do not, so they just come and go as they please. And since we’ve showed them a couple card games, that’s one of the main requests as they come by - “vamos a jugar las cartas?”
I like washing dishes at Abuela Cata’s house, it’s off the kitchen in a little room that sort of feels like you’re outside, the sun shines in on you. You fill up a little pail with dish detergent and water and you wash the dishes, when you’re ready to rinse you dip the clean rinse bowl into the water barrel to your right and fill up a smaller bin so you can rinse the dishes. If any of the pans need deeper scrubbing, she has a little bowl full of a special powder that scrubs (sort of like Bon-Ami, but pink, not sure what it’s called) and a special little rock that is smooth, but scrubs the burnt food right off! Then you place all the rinsed dishes into the laundry basket to your left to air dry. And just a note - the sink is a long shallow rectangle made out of concrete.
(Soon I’ll add pictures, because I just can’t describe it, everything at Abuela Cata’s house is just so, and has such a neat feel to it… there’ll be more on that later)
It’s common to see people with fires burning in their yards, I mentioned “fogatas” earlier, well those are bonfires, but most of the fires are probably just people burning their trash.
When you go to the store, you don’t always have to buy the whole container of whatever it is you are after. Say you need a can of jalapeños, but you either don’t have enough money for a whole can or don’t need a whole can, you can just ask for a few jalapeños, and they’ll bag them up for you and price it accordingly. We went to the pharmacy for some oil for my skin, and he poured me a small amount into another container for 10 pesos.
Forever, mocosa, I needed to blow my nose one day and there wasn’t any Kleenex, so I grabbed some toilet paper instead. I found that the toilet paper over here smells pretty. I guess it has some kind of fragrance/perfume. Nery says it’s because you’re not supposed to flush the toilet paper here, because of plumbing issues, I guess. So it’s an attempt to make the trash cans smell a little better. I don’t know, but I found it pleasant as I was blowing my nose constantly!!
When you go to bed you might want to say a prayer that there won’t be any earthquakes, since the ceilings here are all made out of poured cement, not like drywall nailed to the rafters over there.
Speaking of “over there” that’s another big thing I’ve noticed, how even the little little ones are aware of “el otro lado”. That’s a global awareness that most kids under 8 over there probably don’t share. Josue’s little niece the other day when I first met her, who’s eight years old asked me, “eres del otro lado?” And another nephew asked me “tu lenguaje es ingles, no?” It’s kind of neat that they realize so young that the world is bigger than just what they see around them.
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