Street Market

Going to the street market 2 weeks in a row & I know this will be my Saturday morning routine from now on... Only thing that could change might be the people I go with...

It makes me feel so alive & instills a desire in me to cook & be healthy when I see the beautiful & abundant assortment of fruits & veggies. It also piques my curiosity to see whole pigs and chickens being butchered before my very eyes!

To describe the event, I really do have to start at the beginning... We arrived at a side street that is normally used for traffic M-F, but on Saturday its all street market- at least 1/2 mile long.  A chubby cheeked boy knocks on our car window asking if we need parking...& guides us to "his" spot against the curb which was reserved by upside down 5 gallon buckets.  He will now "watch" our car, and his other customers' cars while we shop. 

Our first veggie stand is the primo stand of the street, has best selection, best location & the girl working it remembered me from last week - or she is a really good sales girl & just made it seem like she did.  She answers Q's, help package up what I want & then volunteers to hold our bags under the table to pick up upon our departure, because they are chock full of leafy green, earthy-smelling veggies!  

As we make our way through the stands that are erected each week, one next to another, I wonder if their placements are assigned or first come first served each weekend..

The veggie stand is next to a fresh fish stand, where huge fish are being expertly filleted - with skilled precision & speed! Of course Kirsti does not like the smell... But it could be the huge vat of oil in the stand behind us, frying pig skins that adds to the aroma.. Or the stand next to that, where the pig was just butchered, his whole head sitting on display, that may be part of what she smells... No coincidence I guess that these stands are side-by-side. What one discards, the other fries & sells as his product.   

No matter, onward we go.. Fortunately, today we have Kirsti's friend & her mom by our sides, to help translate & answer questions about Mexican foods.  Not only do we have food to browse, but a selection of household items, like vegetable brushes & soaps to refurbished blenders - very handy for making smoothies from all this beautiful fruit!  There are shoe stands & purse stands - calling out to Kirsti.. And then several stands that were selling make up. All of it looked new, but all of it out of any sort of packaging... Kirsti said she needs mascara... Not from here I tell her!

Kirsti's friend's mom is looking for a hen.. A chicken? I point to a stand.  No, she wants the mother of those chickens.  Now, what that looks like, compared to the chickens I see on display I do not know!  We inquire a few places & learn we will have to come early next Sat., to get that prized possession. As proof that the owner of the stand really in fact carried hens earlier in the day, she rips open a baggie with the head, larger feet & some innards that earlier today belonged to a hen, that some other, lucky shopper got to take home... So I will have to wait a week to see a hen versus a chicken..

I buy beautiful fruit, pomegranates that are green on the outside, but have a zillion perfect red jewels inside.  How do I know I have good ones?  The stand owner expertly cuts them open with a razor blade, now I too, know this valuable skill that will save stains on clothes & causes the loss of precious juices!!

I also pick some apples, they have produce stickers on them... Product of ?? Guesses??  Product of the USA.  Interesting, huh? 

So we walk on, we meet a woman with an iguana, a huge iguana, clinging to her shirt... Its her pet, they pose for pictures for us.   We pass stands where dried beans & even dried shrimps are sold. We see a stand with large trays of paste - molé - this is something I know nothing about yet... Other than it makes a dark, rich sauce & it contains chilies & chocolate. 

Continue to steer Kirsti away from purses, so she settled on some candies.  Across from that stand was a woman with a propane tank with a huge griddle on it.  I have seen a few women like her, making things on these griddles so we ask..  She made a paste from blue corn. She grabs a handful & kneads it into a ball then flattens it to a thin tortilla, she does this in like 60 seconds!  The she adds refried beans, cheese, meat.. whatever you like, & folds edges so the thin seam in on top & drops it on the griddle... I really want one.. But still too skittish about my food intolerances & know I need to wait a bit..

People are everywhere, bumping into each other, shopping, selling, eating!

There are massive food tables-like lunch lines set up... You get your taco or whatever & walk through the condiment line to fix it your way.. Then walk & eat - this is their FAST FOOD!   I saw kids eating giant corn on the cobs, on a skewer, corn on a stick!  The ingenious part was their use of a cup cake liner shimmied up the stick to catch drips or falling corn kernels!   Here, in Mexico, people eat corn differently..

They slather it with mayo, not butter!

The kids today had the corn rolled in shredded cheeses (let me say, cheeses here are different, yummy, so don't judge this concoction.. Yet).

And finally, all corn is GENEROUSLY sprinkled with chili powder & then lime squeezed on top! 

I have to say, it was interesting, it has piqued my curiosity...

We walk back to the car, collect our bags at the veggie stand where they were waiting for us.. The stand "girl" will not accept a tip (??), she is happy to be needed & be helpful!

We get to the car & the chubby faced boy appears to collect his fee - which is whatever we want to pay him because it is after all, a free street..  So our friend asks the boy a question, the answer is the amount of  "tip" she is going to give him... He should be able to answer this Q & be thrilled to receive it.... He cannot answer the Q.... She smiles & gives him the pesos... Our hearts break as we drive away, knowing this is 1 mile from where we live; in extreme luxury, sending our children to one of the top schools in Mexico... This sweet 10yr old boy did not know the answer to 5 x 5.....

KidZania

We went to a birthday party on Sunday, at the mall in Santa Fe, to a place called KidZania..... It should be called Utopia!
The concept is genius! It is a 2/3's scale city, designed for kids to experience jobs and how an economy works - but totally fun!

It starts off by buying an airline ticket into the city.. kids pass thru airport security (like in the good ole days) and then walk thru to the city of KidZania. 
Once there, its like Emerald City in the land of Oz... everything is amazing and perfectly awesome looking...WHAT TO DO FIRST?? 

Go cash in your ticket at the bank for $50 Kidzo dollars.  You can then go out and start supporting the economy by buying stuff or services.  My kids were so overwhelmed by choices they ran around looking at stuff for a while.  First thing they did was to go rock wall climbing - but it was actually building climbing.  They could choose which of 4 building faces to climb.  Inside the building was an obstacle course and some fake windows to look like a dentist office etc.  At the end of the obstacle course - and one of the building faces to climb - was a free-fall bungee drop of 2 stories!  Of course that was something next for my kids to do & a fave of the day! 

Danielle went to a Radio station to be a DJ / news reporter, she got a CD copy of her program. Zach just had to go to Domino's to make his own personal pizza. You could go to the chocolate store to make personal chocolate candies in a mold, or go to Coco-Cola and sterilize a bottle, take it thru the stations of filling and capping and labeling and leave with your own bottle of coke! 
You could experiment with cereal and make your own variety, or go to McDonald's & make your own personalized cheeseburger or shop at Walmart. 

When you run out of money.....You have to GO TO WORK!

So then you can go apply for a job - at places like DHL delivery services, and make deliveries to the stores all over the city with the schedule you are given and if you get all the required signatures, you will get paid upon your return. Danielle & Zachary were Security Guards. They had to go collect money from stores and take it back to the security department for deposit to the bank. Zach was also a Fireman.  This job had more training and would pay more than the security guard.  After the training, the firemen got on an actual firetruck... that drove... around the city!!! It was so cool!  Then they came back to the burning house and put the flames out with their hoses spraying real water!  Each kid was wearing a real, kid-sized fireman uniform - so stinking cute!!!  Now this was not Zachary's finest moment.  After all, we are living in Mexico, where everyone speaks Spanish, so naturally, everyone in KidZania did too, and so... training was in Spanish  BUT, there was a video too & really, you did not need to know Spanish to understand.  And sooooo he was not "feelin' it" and thus NOT the BEST fireman.  When it came time to get paid, Zach noticed the kid before him was paid more than he was... And so I had a little talk with him, about the realities of life... his poor attitude was seen and thus it was reflected in his pay!
If the kids had wanted to make really good money, they could have gone for training to be a doctor!  That's where the big $$ is made!  Those kids rode in the ambulance, brought back patients, performed fake surgeries, the whole 9 yards!

So as parents, you can either come into the city (paying a lesser fee, but not participating at all), OR COMPLETELY DROP YOUR KID AT THE DOOR OF THE CITY!  All kids (& parents if inside the city) wear electronic tracking devices/watches.  Each time a kid participates in any activity, as a job or as a customer, their tracking watch is scanned.  They know where your kid is all the time. When your kid leaves an activity, they are scanned again.  We went into the city, because we had no idea what the place really was, but other parents merely dropped and went shopping, at the fabulous Santa Fe mall with 300 stores in it (yup, you read it right, 300 stores, including 2 full size McDonald's,  8 different frozen yogurt or ice cream stores, 6 levels!)

So we realized we were going to be at Kidzania for A WHILE... we stopped trying to make the kids (ours and the others near our kids' age that we were sorta keeping track of) stick together .. we realized nobody was leaving the city without us... So the kids were 'on their own'.  They were in heaven....Utopia!
We stopped looking at our watches, we gave into the reality of their joy and before we realized it, another 2 hours had passed since last looking at the clock, and the mall was closing.  We had spent 7 hours in KidZania, and the kids had only scratched the surface of all that this place has to offer!

The kids left with their official driver's licenses from go-carting and a few dollars left over.  We realized too late that we could have gone back to the bank and deposited the money in an account in their names and not have to keep track of the dollars at home and remember them for next time...chuck-e-cheese coins  & tokens come to mind.  We also realized too late that they could have gone and purchased a Passport.  With that, every time you complete an activity, the store stamps it, that way you can keep track of what you still need to accomplish inside KidZania...

This place is the brainchild of a Mexican entrepreneur who solely owns 3 of these heavenly locations in Mexico City alone.  He has franchised them in other parts of the world now, Asia, the Middle East...The Facebook page does not have a site or date listed for the USA, yet.... Maybe I should contact Bill Gates?  Many thanks to our friends, Bhavani & Aravinda Thota for inviting us to experience the world of KidZania on Sunday, it was awesome, great, more fun than we could have dreamed of.....UTOPIA for kids!

Apartment search...

The apartment search has been harrowing, which is not what I expected!  When we came to search for a home last January, we saw about 18 places maybe.. And most of you know the whole ugly, sorted story... Patrick got the flu, I was on my own, he never saw most of them we had to pick - and when we did, proximity won out.  We then found out we had been suckered into all night dog barking, Saturday night fiestas until 3am, and we were 1 VERY UNHAPPY family!  Fast forward, thru the ugly fight to break the lease and here we are, arriving in Mexico City August 17, ready to search again!
Amazingly, the relo company lined up 2days of back-to-back, to back-to-back viewings... And Patrick was of course too busy to see them with me -his "job thing"! Everywhere I went, I saw something I liked, a beautiful kitchen, or big bedroom for the girls to share, but then there would be no outside lawn that was common area for the kids to play or run.. Or no pool, or no gym -total deal breaker for Mr. P90X!  So it was not looking good... Then I came to realize while I was now driving everyday - and I am getting better at Mexican driving, Sarah J! - that if we lived where I wanted, we'd be spending a whole lotta $$ cha-ching on toll roads! It was looking like we would spend, ready for it? $12-18 per day, that's American $$ I am talking, not pesos! To live in the community where I thought I wanted us to be.  So now.... We are back to looking, right around where we are, just trying to distance ourselves from the all night partying dogs! We had found the perfect place... Had my wish list items, a little private garden/lawn -almost impossible to come by - I have good taste! And a balcony too, I had wanted one or the other, this place had both, who wouldn't like that? And... It had a DISHWASHER!  Now, in Mexico, a dishwasher is a maid, not an appliance.  This one had the appliance.  All apartments have big open gaps for  the appliance, this is where you put your garbage can.  Then you hire a maid.  She can live with you, or just visit as many days a week as you like.  But to not have a maid, is to be depriving a person of a job... And as an American coming here and wanting a DISHWASHER appliance, I am getting "the look", you know the one... But really, it's because I am so Eco-friendly, a dishwasher uses less water than hand washing! I can have a maid, I am getting used to the idea... But I am thinking I will hire a maid that is a fabulous cook and one that can help me learn Spanish.  The dishes can go in the dishwasher!
Well, that fabulous apartment was not to be.. It was was more expensive than we were expecting... The landlord asked for more rent than originally said he was willing to rent it for.  Renting here is like buying a house in the USA.  You make an offer, then negotiate it, have a walk through... The landlord can sit on the offer a few days to see if they get a better offer...ugg! So we let that one  go.  Come to find out, it still has not rented.  So today, if we find out that our  latest offer was not accepted, maybe we will go back and low-ball that place again?!? 

So here we go....

At the suggestion of several people who have enjoyed my commentaries so far on FaceBook, but mostly due to the encouragement of my friend, Lisa, who helps me trouble-shoot/research so many things I mean to get to, I am going to give this "blogging" a try.  So here we go....