So I’ve made a friend here, M, who just bought a house in my neighbourhood. I’ve been helping M with temporary storage and supply runs. Today, we headed out to find him a hammock, a purchase I’ve been putting off as well.

I’d already asked about the best places to buy hammocks in town and the unnamed shop by Mercado Alemán was definitely the most promising. We headed there around 9:30 and M found it quickly.

Two things became evident in the shop. 1) I was about to blow my budget; 2) I was in exactly the right place to blow my budget and buy my very first hammock! We were attended to by Doña Carillo who was incredibly helpful and understood our needs (two large one-person hammocks in cotton). M settled on a bright blue one, but I had no choice at all since Doña M read me like a book and pulled out a pink and white one for me.

She unpacked it so I could see it and admire the unusual weave. This one is a fairly loose weave, hence the price of $1,000 (but she offered it to me for $850). She had much finer weave ones for thousands of pesos. Notice the white rope next to it, that’s part of the hanging system (a pair was $60). The very last part of the transaction was her showing me how to hang the hammock, with her making me do it.

At the end, shje actually dashed across the street to get S-hooks and gave them to us!

She insisted on packing my pink hammock into a pink bag to match my pink purse. LOL!

This was an incredibly positive shopping experience. No high pressure sales tactics, explanation of why a product was recommended or not, good deals and general customer care that makes me want to go back and see what else she has. I’m very, very pleased and can’t wait for my afternoon siesta! 🙂

M then proposed we grab some food at Wayan’e, which is apparently THE place in Mérida to go for tacos. It’s been on my List for eons, but it’s just not convenient to get to and doesn’t work with my schedule.

I ordered an ice cold piña agua fresca, which came in this odd glass:

I wanted to try tacos I’d never had anywhere. An intriguing one was… mustard chicken. Mustard! Beef tinga was a no brainer as I know I like pork tinga. The server vetoed my requested for chicken poblano and recommended another beef dish, so I went with that:

As I had expected, the taco fillings were amazing and unusual, the mustard one especially! But the tortillas were quite disappointing (the beigey rather than yellow ones) and the salsas were just the normal ones you find at any taquería. Delicious? Absolutely. Over hyped? Absolutely. Definitely a place that if I was in the neighbourhood and hungry and it was open, I’d be excited to go, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat there.

We got in, M headed out, and I had to make the hard decision of where to hang my hammock. The guest room made the most sense of the myriad of places in the house where I have hanging hooks.

With surprising confidence, I pulled the cord through the hammock loop, hooked it on the S-hook placed in the wall holder, and then did the loop-di-loop to secure.

I then played with the tension until the hammock was hanging just right for me to be able to get into it:

It squeaked and groaned something awful as I got into it, but once I was settled, oh my goodness! I had the fan on and it was dark and I almost rocked myself to sleep!

This is the video I studied months ago for getting into a hammock and how to lie in one. It is spot on!

So just like that, I am REALLY a Yucateca. 🙂

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… at this time in my life, when my job requires so much brain power, live somewhere that I don’t speak the language fluently. The last few days have been ones where I had flashbacks to Bulgaria and how overwhelmed I would have been had I been living there permanently and having to deal with the daily grudge, especially without a support network.

First, there was the matter of the gardener and his shopping list and his request for things that were missing (took a few tries for me to realise he needed a container to transfer paint into, not something to stir it!) and, of course, finding the twine.

Then, I was left with the garbage pile from hell. Being a rich gringa (HA), I decided to throw money at the problem, found three companies that haul trash, sent them a picture, and requested a quote. I scheduled the one that came in lowest and they came late Monday afternoon at the promised hour and took it all away.

Somewhere in all of that Sunday, I realised that I was almost out of coffee, but would conveniently make it to Tuesday, when I meet folks at a coffeshop that roasts its own coffee. So I messaged the coffeeshop to ask if they could prepare me 500 grams of whole beans of my favourite coffee, Veracruz oscuro (dark roast). To my surprise, I almost immediately got a reply that they would have that waiting for me on Tuesday and sure enough, there it was!

Monday evening, I was at dinner at about 7:30 with a friend when my phone rang. Something told me to pick up. I was bewildered that it was an Amazon delivery person standing on my porch with the items I ordered this past Thursday and wasn’t expecting until next Monday! Talk about service! He asked if he could just leave the box at my door. I wasn’t comfortable with that and asked if he could instead leave the box in the back of my truck (I don’t lock the canopy to prevent a damaging break-in). My box was waiting right where I expected it when I got home an hour later despite the phone connection having been less than crystal clear!

One of the items in the box was this earring holder for my dresser that I couldn’t have found or had made here for the few dollars it cost (and before you ask, I was buying something else that had a $4 shipping charge and I was able to “add on” the holder with no additional shipping charges):

I love having them all so easily accessible!

The last linguistic thing that came up today was a guy responding to my garage sale ad offering my chair for sale. I’d posted it for $750, hoping I’d get $500, so when he asked if he could have it for $500 if he showed up within an hour, it was easy to say yes! That chair will serve him just fine for occasional use (yes, he tried it) and now I’ve offset the cost of my new one quite nicely.

It’s been a full few days, especially now that I’m starting to have a social life and work is not letting up (I just scored a really nice contract that’s going to keep me busy through next week after doing so well on the one the company had me do in June!).

It’s also extremely hot, the first week that I’m really feeling the heat. I brought the temperature in my bedroom down to 22C (72F) before going to sleep last night and when I woke up boiling exactly two hours later, the temperature had claimed back up to 35C (95F)!!! I know from my last power bill that I’m not going to go broke running the AC through the night while this heat wave is going on, so I’m going to do that because I really need a good sleep. During the day, it’s fine — my office gets a good breeze and I try not to be out and about in the afternoons. But I am going hammock shopping ASAP since I’ve been taking my siesta almost every afternoon. 🙂

Bonita is doing fine in this heat. I thought she’d try to bolt when I had the garage doors open yesterday (so I had her on a leash), but my clever girl understood that street means burned paws and unrelenting sun while home means cool tile underfoot, shade, and mommy. I think I may get to a point where I’d trust her not to run while I’m taking the truck out of the carport, but I’m not quite there yet.

Can you believe that B and I are one week to our five-month anniversary?! Already!

And can you believe that this day a year ago was the official start of my house hunting adventures?

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