I´m enjoying my temporary home. Rosie cooks fantastic, traditional Mexican food which more often than not includes tacos and black beans, but it´s tasty. This morning I had a pawpaw/papaya (whatever you want to call it) on my corn flakes along with some mint tea. In the first few days I was given a well-stewed cup of coffee with every meal, which in turn found its way to the plant outside my room. I wait with great anticipation to see whether this plant dies or turns into some kind of pimped up Super Plant.
In the mornings before going to the Orphanage, I tend to either walk into town or sit on the roof in the sunshine. Yesterday I accomplished my set mission of Finding The Post Office- Mexicans just don´t seem to send mail! There are hardly any postboxes and you can´t buy stamps anywhere... But there's nothing quite like chilling on the roof with the herbs and the dog faeces. The husband (I still don´t know his name, and everyone tends to refer to him as "Rosie´s Husband") spends most of his time on the roof fiddling about with a broken washing machine. He sits in his coat while I sweat it out in a t-shirt, and spends a lot of time taking the machine apart and putting it back together again. From time to time he growls and mutters at the mad dog who runs around in circles, eating his own foot or tail: "eeeehhhhh.... Pinche Flacco. Flacco loco", which means "Goddamn Flacco. Crazy Flacco..." I am beginning to suspect that the husband doesn´t really want to fix the machine and uses it as an excuse to have some peace from Rosie.
They both like music and always have multiple radios playing the house-mostly cheesy stereotypical Mexican music, but the other night I heard husband singing and playing a ballad on his guitar. I think he thought that nobody else was in.
Rosie sings as she cooks, and does her best to learn the english words for things from me, while I try to learn the spanish from her. We have a slight problem with the word "fork", though. I've decided it's better to teach her to just refer to it as 'cutlery'. The other day Rosie came flying in the house later than usual, and showed me that she'd been to an English class for retired people, which was quite sweet.
I'm finding it really frustrating not being able to understand people mostof the time- especially in the orphanage. NObody here speaks English, apart from Ariel, the co-ordinator guy. I do a lot of miming and muddle through, but I do have to remind myself that I've only been here a week now, and that I am actually picking things up fairly quickly, all things considered. God knows why it makes sense for me to spend two weeks at the orphange to "help my spanish" before I go to the English-language newspaper, where presumably somebody must speak English... Mexican logic.
A police car just drove past which cues the dogs to run the window and howl like some kind of dog-sacred ritual. And I can smell tortillas,which means lunch will soon be ready.
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| Luna (on a rare occasion sans pink fleece) and Flacco, behind |
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| Chucita |
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