Too many things to do and not enough time

October has been very busy for us what with unpacking and trying to get things arranged in the house as well as trying to do as many fun things as possible.  We had a delicious dinner on a rooftop restaurant with a Business School sectionmate of mine.  The restaurant is right next to a church and when the bells started ringing there was no point in trying to talk.  They were loud and went on forever.  Our friends who have lived here for several years were wearing jackets and thought it was cold.  We were in short sleeves and were very comfortable.

We went on an architectural tour, which was interesting, and on Sunday the 6th, we took our little dog and walked to St. Paul's Anglican Church for a blessing of the animals.  We are not at all religious, but this was a lovely ceremony with many dogs and a couple of cats in attendance.  Molly got blessed and was a very good girl.  Later in the day we attended our first ProMusica event, again at St. Paul's.  It was a violin concert by Susie Park, an Australian who was a child prodigy and has now played all over the world.  It is a small venue and she was about four feet away from us while she played.

The other thing we did was go to the dump to get rid of some furniture pieces and other items which were badly damaged during the move.  The dump is pretty far out of town on a very rough dirt road in a beautiful desert landscape, but the dump itself is a strange experience.  We drove on a scale to weigh the car and then drove up a fairly steep dirt road to the place to unload.  There must have been a hundred dogs laying around on the heaps of garbage, and as soon as we arrived, people carrying bags came running up to the car to see what we were dumping.  Some boys helped unload the stuff and others looked to see what was salvageable.  We could see some little shacks where these poor people lived, or at least stayed at during the day.  Very sad.  We gave the boys who unloaded the car some nice tips, then drove back down to weigh the car again and pay the fee.

Every Friday a local newspaper comes out, in English, with a calendar of events.  There are so many things we want to do, but there is no way to fit them all in.  Tomorrow we will go on a house and garden tour which will benefit a local charity.  We will get to see how the more well off folks live.

What a glorious day

We have been so busy that I never got around to publishing this post from October 5.

Yet another day of glorious weather and fun things to do.  We took the bus into Centro and then walked to the San Miguel Playhouse, a lovely small theater in the Independencia neighborhood, to see Lady Zen, a remarkable singer trained as a mezzo soprano for the Met, but who left opera after hearing Bessie Smith.  (http://www.ladyzen.world/) In this show, she was singing Broadway favorites and was extraordinary. Her accompanist was Mark Hartman, a well-known NY musician and performer who was absolutely delightful.  (https://www.hartmanmark.com/) I haven't seen many Broadway shows, but I really enjoyed the music.

After the show, we walked back to Centro, had a good margarita and then attended the Storytelling Showcase.  Six different people took turns standing on stage and telling stories of various types. One was a very amusing tale about a woman trying to keep her own name after getting married back in the early 70s, a story close to our hearts.  One of the reasons we did not get married in Massachusetts in 1971 is because the law said I would have to take my husband's name.  No way!  We lived together in unwedded bliss for 24 years before finally making it legal.

We decided to walk back home and stopped at a restaurant we had heard about called Fiamma.  I had the best vegetarian pizza I'd ever had, hot from their wood-fired oven.  We will definitely go back to try their other varieties of pizza.

Construction Woes

We have two construction sites right next to our house, so it is going to be noisy, dusty and smelly for awhile.  We had to close all the windows today because the diesel smell was overwhelming.  Hopefully that will go away when the ground preparation is finished and the actual building starts.  We are hoping they are not going to build too high and spoil our views, but we also hope the buildings will reduce some of the noise from the highway.

Whatever they are building here will probably overlook our back yard.  That is our wall in the photo.

This site is right next to the other one but is starting off a little lower.  No idea what they are building here.

Boy, did we feel dumb

We contacted the landlady because our hot water heater was not working.  It never came on, so we were taking showers at the gym we just joined.  The landlady sent her plumber, the one who did all the plumbing for the house.  He took one look at the controls and explained in English that we needed to turn the knob the other way for the heat to come on.  Boy, did we feel dumb.  The control knob had a series of dots from small to large, and we thought that the larger dots meant more heat.  Logical, don't you think?  Turns out it was just the opposite.  We had turned it all the way down which is why it never fired up.

The gym we just joined is a terrific facility with tons of weight machines and many aerobic machines - treadmills, stair steppers, elliptical and rowing. There are spinning classes as well, which we may try when we get in a little better shape.  (It's the altitude, you know.) Saunas and steam rooms and shower facilities, all for about $25 USD per month.

We took a walk this afternoon and visited a little store called The Pork House, where we bought some frozen pork chops and a package of frozen pulled pork, and a second shop advertising gourmet chickens.  They had fresh chickens on ice, so we bought one and the lady cut it up, all for 36 pesos, about $1.85 USD.

A lovely day and more observations

We were having a lovely day wandering up a street called The Ancha, short for Ancha de San Antonia, in San Miguel de Allende.  We walked from our house almost all the way into historic Centro passing through an area that could easily be called "Restaurant Row."  We took a chance on a place called Le Mexicain Bistro and had a terrific lunch by splitting a Caesar salad and a chicken mole.  It was delicious and the blended fruit drinks were lovely.  And inexpensive given the quality of the food.

After that we went to an art show, expecting paintings and such, but it turned out to be craft show with lots of jewelry, explored a strange shop that was like a maze filled with all kinds of unusual and presumably expensive home dec items, and then started exploring the other side of the street on our way home.  Sadly, the idyll was shattered by a call from the alarm service saying that our home alarm was going off.  They wanted to know if they should send the police.  We didn't know what to do but told them we could grab a cab, which took longer than we expected, and would call them back as soon as we got home.  Thankfully it turned out to be a false alarm, a motion detector triggered by our little Miniature Schnauzer, Molly.  The alarm tech had told us that all the detectors were set to allow for a dog, but this is the second one she has set off.  At least we hadn't left the grounds the first time it happened.  I've been bypassing that first sensor when we leave, but now we have to have someone come out and make some adjustments.

Observations:

Plumbing - Mexican plumbing stinks - literally.  For some strange reason Mexican plumbers refuse to install proper traps under tubs, showers and sinks.  They all drain into the same waste line and the result is that sewer gases back up through the drains.  The house we are renting was just built, so I was hoping we would be spared this problem, but no, after three or four days, a foul smell wafted up through the tub drain.  I poured bleach down it, but then the bathroom smelled like Clorox.  The smell comes and goes without any obvious reason.

Kitchens - Mexican kitchens are "unusual." We have a beautiful kitchen with

lots of cabinet space, but the counters are lower than what we are used to, which is hard on my 6'6" husband, and the upper cabinets are ridiculously high.  We have seen the same situation in several houses, so it isn't peculiar to ours.  I'm 5'3 and can reach only the bottom shelf of the upper cabinets, and the microwave, in its own dedicated space, is over my head.  Plus the upper cabinets are quite shallow which means our standard dinner plates are too wide to fit.  We had to put them in a lower cabinet, but I think we will survive somehow.

There are no natural gas lines in the city and everyone uses propane to operate stoves, ovens, water heaters and dryers.  We haven't use the oven much, but apparently propane doesn't heat quite as hot as natural gas.  It will be interesting to see if the oven will reach 450F for homemade pizza.

Fireworks - Why were fireworks exploding before 4am?  Who knows? This town is obsessed with them, and we hear them at all hours of the day and night, almost every day it seems.  It appears that every obscure saint receives a fireworks salute.  For Mexican Independence Day, there was a huge display right over the Parroquia, the beautiful cathedral in the city center.  We watched from our rooftop almost 2 kilometers away, and it was quite spectacular.  Next year when we know our way around a little better, we may brave the crowds in the central garden and get a closer view.  We've heard that can be problematic since they shoot the fireworks straight up and the remnants rain down on the crowd, sometimes causing burns.

Photo credit: Peter Shumpter

Photo Credit: Sam Perez

Sometimes nature provides its own fireworks for San Miguel de Allende

Photo Credit: The fabulous Sam Perez

Hallelujah, we have a fridge

Praise be, the new fridge fit through the door.  Now we have to wait 24 hours for the gases to settle before we can plug it in.

I don't know what we would do without Google Translate.  I set it to "conversation" and then Spanish to English, and asked the delivery man to explain again what he was trying to tell us.  It worked perfectly.

Our street and house are so new that they are not on any of the mapping tools, so I had to write directions and then translate them into Spanish to explain on the phone how to find us.  I just read them in what I am sure is an atrocious accent, but it worked.

Our first few days in San Miguel de Allende

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We arrived in San Miguel de Allende (SMA), Mexico on Thursday, September 5, 2019, but it still hasn’t sunk in that we actually live here now.  Our furniture, rather badly beaten up by the various movers, is here along with the rest of our belongings and we are unpacking as fast as we can.  Buying a refrigerator and washer and dryer was an adventure of its own since our rental house is brand new and didn’t have those appliances.  It is not uncommon in Mexico for homes to not have major appliances.

Well, the appliances were delivered and it turns out that the refrigerator will not fit through the door to the maid’s room which we are using as a pantry.  The kitchen has a closed-in space for a refrigerator, but it is tiny.  We wanted a bigger unit but it never occurred to us that we needed to measure the doorway.  We sent the fridge back and returned to the store where we bought it.  The very nice salesman refunded our money and then helped us find an equally good unit that WILL fit.  Thank goodness.

Here are a few observations based on about 10 days of being in Mexico:

Driving – Many of the highways have two lanes with wide paved shoulders.  Generally, you drive at least half way on the shoulder so cars coming from behind you can pass.  You also have to move over so that cars coming at you can pass vehicles on their side of the road.  Sometimes there are four vehicles abreast on the two-lane road.  Exciting.

In our small city of SMA, there are no stop lights or stop signs.  There are roundabouts, called gloriettas, which offer more excitement.  This may change due to the building boom and big increase in population recently.  There has been an announcement that there will be traffic lights installed around various places on the outskirts of the city

Don’t believe the GPS about speed limits.  The GPS said the limit was 110 kph when the road signs said 60.  Trying not to call attention to ourselves in order to avoid policemen looking for mordida (bribes), we tried sticking to the posted limits, but we were the only vehicle doing so.  We gave up and just tried to stay with the traffic flow.

The GPS and Google Maps were useless in trying to get around in Queretaro, the closest big city, a little over an hour away on one of those two-lane highways.  We drove around totally lost for a very long time before finally getting to our destinations of Home Depot and Costco.  Then we ended up buying our appliances in SMA at the local department store.

Food – Wonderful fruit and vegetables, fresh and inexpensive.  It is necessary to disinfect everything because of possible contamination from natural fertilizers and often less than sanitary transportation and handling.  Even the locals disinfect everything.  The restaurants in town are very good about sanitizing everything and we have had no tummy troubles so far.

Water – You can’t drink tap water.  It has large amounts of fluoride and arsenic due to the lowering of the water table and the need to drill deeper and deeper.  Lots of agricultural use has depleted the aquifers.  Even though we would rather not use bottled water, it is the only choice.

Security – SMA has traditionally been one of the safest places in Mexico with no cartel activity and relative low crime rates. That has changed in the last 6 months or so, most likely since the national government cracked down on the rampant theft of gasoline from Pemex, the national gas company.  Whole communities in the area made a living by tapping into pipelines, stealing the gas, then selling it to service stations and others.  With that source of income dried up, people have turned to other types of crime including home robberies, muggings and extortion of businesses.  The national government sent in troops and things seem to have settled down a bit, but we are glad our house has an alarm system. Although our community is not gated, there is a private security force which patrols at night.  We hope that will be sufficient to protect us. 

Dogs – Many people keep large, unfriendly dogs for security purposes.  As we walk around our neighborhood, we hear them barking and growling behind walls and gates.  They are also on rooftops since houses are connected and a burglar could go from one house to another.  There are also a lot of unsupervised dogs on the loose.  On our way here from Laredo, we stopped to get some coffee and give our little doggie a break.  The moment we let her out of the car, she was attacked by a big, vicious dog. It tried to get her throat, but I kicked it as hard as I could and it backed off.  Dog attacks are not uncommon, unfortunately.

More observations later.