Alex and Stephanie

it appears that my main concerns here in mexico, thus far, are pretty much limited to a place to sit and what food i eat. but what can i say. i am american. sitting and eating is one of the things we do best.

that being said, when i return to the states i will probably become one of those annoying americans who constantly mention how such-and-such food is just simply not as good as whatever they had while traveling. at least that will surely be true when it comes to mangoes.

on saturday, i finally made it to the nearby covered market, and found myself in one of the lower rings of heaven. (okay, maybe dante only talked about the rings of hell, but he never went to mi mercado either.) i love a good food market any day, and this place is awesome. throw in the fact that i have pretty much abstained from fruits and veggies since arriving here, based on advice about avoiding montezuma and his infamous revenge, and you might assume that my feelings about this market and its mounds of fruit are slightly inflated.

but you didn’t taste the mango.

for anyone who has ever cursed at a tough, woody mango they just paid five dollars for and now have mangled into inedible pulp on their cutting board, i have one piece of advice. not all mangoes are created equal. the monster i purchased for 20 pesos was larger than most colorado cantelope, lovely shades of orange, green and red, and flush with enough sticky flesh the texture of firm butter to feed four. one of my colleagues once joked about her british friends who threw about the term orgasmic for anything they mildly enjoyed. i myself do not use the word lightly. but in this case, it is absolutely 100% appropriate. the worst bite of that mango equalled the best bite of mango i had had prior… i know, this is getting ridiculous. but i am sure that some of you have eaten fresh tropical fruit and know what i mean. our poor paltry refrigerated, planed, trained, and automobiled fruits just can’t compare.

okay. one last ode to my amazing (and now digesting) mango. i once had mango gelato that was less than awesome. a friend pointed out (unkindly) that it tasted of fish. unfortunately, she was correct. a bad mango does verge on the fishy side, and will be ruined forever if you think of that while eating it. but i can guarentee that no fish in this world could be confused with the mango i ate last night.

There is a huge conglomeration of furniture makers and dealers in the df. I think it was called “La Crea.” It must have had 40 individual stores. We had to ride the metrobus (which is like a subway but above ground and the buses have special lanes on the major avenues) for a dozen stops, which was packed on a Saturday. The market is neat, a lot of the sellers make the furniture, and you can get them to make custom things. About half of the shops smell of wood finish and sawdust, and inside someone is finishing a chair or something while his wife tries to sell you some nice furniture. The other half sell factory-made stuff, which is kind of disappointing, because the hand-made stuff is better – solid wood, no veneers, etc. There were also some children who were told to sand some wood when potential buyers were looking. The child-labor-pity/cute-card is played a lot here. There is a good sandwich/burger/cafe in here, too, so you can spend all day – and you might if you get lost among the crazy walkways.

We had a tough time because we were looking for a queen-sized bed frame, and that is not a common size. Many of them would make it, but it would cost more – maybe a thousand pesos more. A queen sized mattress was an easy purchase, but queen sized frames are not. This is annoying. So if you are going to buy a new bed, go with matrimonial, or inidiviual – or buy the frame/headboard at the same time.

Since turistas don’t buy furniture, the Spanish is not slow and easy, it is quick and expected. It was a little intimidating, and we came away with only two lamps. I guess it is back to Viana for us.

Also, they have Costco here. It is exactly the same as in the US except that they had Gran Centenario Reposada. Yay.

UPDATE (by Stephanie):

Our second trip to the artisanal mercado (no longer certain it is called la crea. may have made that up.) was far more successful. Turns out, it’s a whole lot less stressful if you have a definite budget and a clear idea of what you want. Much like everytime I walk into SuperTarget wanting only shampoo and leaving with $50 worth of unnecessary necessaries. In round two we decided to limit our scope to only a table with four chairs and inside our budget. Found a satisfactory solution within a half an hour, then we noticed a sectional sofa in the same vendor’s area that also looked feasible for our apartment. Best part was, we didn’t quite like the finish on the wood, and when we asked the lady how long (and how much) it would take to put on a darker stain, she said it could be ready by 6pm that night, for no extra cost. Sold! We now have seating and table space for ourselves plus a guest or two. We are nearly civilized once more. Such convenient solutions were quite a lovely surprise after having to wait weeks for cable installation and washing machine delivery from large stores far closer to us.

Delivery from the artisan market was also a nice perk. Our vendor tracked down a trustworthy delivery guy (lots of movers hang out in the market, asking if you need help), then we set a time and price and all was set. Of course, he did not get to our apartment till 3 hours after the arranged time, but he did carry all of the furniture up our two flights of stairs single-handedly. Which is pretty much precisely how it works here: You can get anything delivered (really. anything.) so long as you are willing to hang out and wait for it (or pay someone to wait for you.)

We have spent our second night in our new home. We made a video of the empty apartment. It is a 10 MB Windows Media File. I suggest a right-click on this link and ‘save file as…’ or equivalent. For privacy reasons, we’re not posting the video to you tube, and we’ll be taking it down after a while, so downloading the video in this way will give you a permanent copy. It should play fine on a pc, and on mac, you’ll need something like flip4mac, which should be free.

For unknown reasons, Windows makes for crappy video editing, so it is a large file with terrible imagery. If we make a part 2, we’ll try my old mac, which will undoubtedly do better.

We’d like to know who has seen this and who had trouble downloading it, so please leave a comment either way.

ps for you Spanish nerds: the title of this post is tu casa, which means your house. But the posting is about our house, not your house. You see, Mexican hospitality goes so far that the phrase mi casa es su casa is taken to extremes, leading people to say things like ‘there will be a party at tu casa tonight, please come over.’