Cultural Adjustments

We finally rolled into Progreso last night at about 7:30pm after being on the go for 36 hours. Senor B worked on Thursday and we left shortly after he got home. It's a 3 hour drive to the airport, overnight flight to our connecting city, layover, flight to Cancun, bus ride to Merida and half hour taxi to Progreso. We were beat when we got to the condo and the general lack of sleep (cuz, really...who can sleep on a plane?) made us a little testy towards each other.

On our first flight, we flew with a crew that we'd flown with in November. It made us remark, "You know you're a frequent flyer when..." *grin*

My Spanish lessons paid off during our taxi ride when I was able to direct the driver to our place. It was pretty cool to be able to do that. I have a long way to go before I can say I'm even close to being proficient but being able to communicate, even in a limited capacity, makes me feel a lot less helpless.

We went uptown this morning to go to the bank and get a few groceries. Banking didn't go so well. The bank we usually go to wouldn't process our transaction. We both tried our debit cards without any luck. So we went across the street to another bank. Same thing. The only thing we can think of is that we forgot to let our bank know we were coming and they were denying the transaction. But we haven't always let them know and haven't had any problems before so we're confused. Senor B sent our bank an email so we'll see if it gets straightened out. Fortunately, we had some cash on us so we were still able to get some groceries.

Since we're not renting a vehicle we can't do a big shop like we did in the past. We picked up enough for the day plus a few other items that won't be needed each trip. Things like mayo, butter, olives. We'll have to make more frequent and smaller trips than we're used to. It's just one of those little adjustments to be made when living in another culture. And, hey, it's not like we have a whole lot of anything else to do...lol.

When we had an air-conditioned car, we would run errands whenever the mood hit. Now that we don't have that luxury, we decided that running errands earlier than 11am would be a smart thing. We were gone 2 hours and were about roasted when we got back. Another cultural adjustment to make.

There are 3 little corner stores near us so we can always go there to pick up a few things, too.

Temp today was 35C so that meant a trip to the pool in the afternoon. It was great seeing old friends and meeting some new ones.

Colour Me Happy

The mirror I was having made was supposed to be ready today. Neighbour Liz was taking me in to Merida to pick it up. We decided to get an early start on the day and beat the heat. We arrived at the furniture place about 11am and the guy told us the mirror wouldn't be ready until 3pm. Liz didn't want to drive back to Progreso and then back to Merida so we decided to go shopping. Again. Rough life, eh?

I hadn't yet been to Alta Brisa so we went there to check things out. It's like pretty much any other mall NOB. Lots of NOB retailers and the typical bright and shiny look of modernity. (That's actually a word! I googled it to be sure). Soriana's, which is similar to Walmart in that it has a little bit of everything, is one of their anchor stores and Liz hadn't been there before, either. They have products that her other regular stores don't, so she was excited to find new things. We still had lots of time to kill until 3pm, so we decided to go down to Centro and then come back to Soriana's. We didn't want to leave stuff in the hot truck all afternoon.

Liz doesn't like driving in Centro, so we got a cab. Cost was about 60 pesos. I didn't time the drive but I'm sure it was a good 20 minutes. We had the cab drop us off at a market that Liz said was good. I have no idea what the name of it is and I wouldn't be able to find it again. I picked up a rug/tapestry/woven thing to hang on the wall. Then we went for lunch at a great little restaurant, the name of which I didn't get.

Cabbed it back to Soriana's and picked up a few groceries and some things we needed for the condo. Then on to the furniture store where the mirror was ready. We didn't get back home until about 6:00. Not bad for wondering how we were going to kill 4 hours, eh? lol.

Roberto, the fish guy with the Jay Leno jaw, comes by the complex on weekends. He came today and Senor B picked up some sea bass and shrimp. I'm not a fish fan but I do like the sea bass. That's what we cooked up for supper and it was delicious.

The "colour me happy" part of the day? This evening there was a knock on our door and a friendly "Buenas tardes." It was a relative of the owner of the condo above us. Remember the leak in the bathroom ceiling? She and her young son had come to take a look at it. Of course, Murphy's Law being what it is, it's been dry for the past couple days so there was nothing to see. But...! I had taken a picture of it to document its progress. I showed it to them and the lady had an "Oh my goodness!" kind of reaction. She didn't speak any English but her son, who told me he was in grade 5, did. She makes a phone call and the young man and I chat a bit. We both taught each other a new word...ceiling and mancha. Through her son, the lady tells me that they'll have a plumber come out within the week.

I've read enough posts on other blogs to know that it may, or may not, happen. I really want to believe that they'll take care of the problem. I hope the fact that they even came to look at it bodes well for its repair.

As they were leaving, the boy apologized for his bad English. Is he kidding? I told him that his English is much better than my Spanish. And it is. I'm doing well with my lessons but he's been studying English longer than I've been studying Spanish. Anyways, I imagine he'll be pretty excited to tell his teacher that he got to use his English in a real life situation with someone who didn't speak much Spanish.

A Correction

Well, it seems I did use the wrong term. A blogger buddy who has lived in Mérida for quite some time and who actually speaks Spanish, tells me that La Muchacha means "the girl" and is the term Yucatecans use to refer to their household help. As we would say "housekeeper", they would say "the girl". While Daughter does help around the house, she doesn't help enough to have earned the title of La Muchacha...lol. So now I have to come up with a new name for her.

There's the ubiquitous DD...Dear or Darling Daughter, to which I would add a 3 to denote which DD. I have 3 girls, so she would be DD3.
Or YD...Youngest Daughter.
Or Hija, which my friend tells me is daughter in Spanish.

Now here's a little funny about how to say that. In Spanish, the "h" is always silent. "I" is pronounced as "ee" and the "j" is pronounced like an English "h" but it's said in the back of the throat. So it sort of comes out sounding like ee-hah. Which is remarkably close to Yee-haw. Daughter is a born comedian and we joke a lot in our family, so I'm going to get lots of mileage out of Yee-haw...lol.

So which one to use? I'm going to go for YD. It'll be quicker and easier to explain later on, should I have to.