Yucatan

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A Measure of Linguistic Confidence

My time and Spain and my interactions with a Spanish teacher in England apparently helped me pass another mental barrier when it comes to my confidence level in my Spanish. I know I did very well at the border and with immigration and customs, but it wasn’t until the last couple of days that I’ve come to realise that I’ve finally settled into a wonderful place where Spanish generally isn’t scary or an effort anymore and things that were mentally taxing just a year ago aren’t anymore.

Take last night for example. I was absolutely brain dead and couldn’t bear the thought of any more mental gymnastics. I wanted to put on a movie and let myself be swept away. Well, the movie I picked, which I can’t recommend highly enough, Lion, was only available with Spanish subtitles over the Hindi and Bengal dialogue. I decided to give it a few minutes and, sure enough, the Spanish subtitles were as comfortable as French or English ones. I think I paused the movie all of four or five times to check a word or verb tense I wasn’t sure about.

Then, there was today, which was the day to finally take Moya to see a mechanic. Money is trickling in and not feeling comfortable taking her far is really beginning to cramp my style. The directions I got to a mechanic who was recommended to me by not only an expat but also a Mexican neighbour were easy to follow. No one was there, so I called out and an elderly woman came out. I asked for the mechanic, she called for him, and then she started chatting. Now, it’s harder to understand older uneducated people and kids using a lot of slang, but I still followed what she was saying. Then, the mechanic came out and I explained what was going on. Now, here’s the thing. I’d only come in with one three new words, the verb dejar that I’ve been practicing and which was useful for saying I just wanted to leave the truck for him to look at whenever he could, the verb girar (to turn), and the noun cojinetes (bearings, as in I think that’s what’s wrong). That’s all I needed.

It’s hard to describe how I felt as I went into the garage, but there just wasn’t that knot in my stomach I’d get at the start of my Mexican adventures when I’d pace back and forth outside of a business going over all the possible ways the conversations could go so I could be ready for them. I don’t do that anymore. I’m at the point where I’ve finally accepted that I’m fluent.

Do I ever fall flat on my face and have failures in communication? All the time. Are they the end of the world? No. I go back over the exchange and look up words I didn’t understand or was missing. Because I’m not needing to pick up a lot at a time, I’m not overwhelmed and often the new words stick, especially if I make an effort to use them. I was dismayed today that I almost forgot about dejar, but when I finally blurted it out, the verb was mine and officially part of my vocabulary, as is girar. I’m not sure I’ll need cojinetes often enough for it to roll off the tongue, though. 🙂

Whether I’m scanning ingredients on a can of something at the grocery store, skimming a trashy magazine at the grocery store, chasing down the guy in a truck with a loudspeaker blasting that he has watermelon, stopping a tortilla deliverer to see if he could come deliver to my house periodically (sadly, no), or taking a funny quiz on Buzzfeed, everyday Spanish has become comfortable. Now, that I’m this point, I need to stop thinking of watching Spanish movies and TV shows or reading Spanish book as “homework” and just start doing it regularly without making a fuss about it. And then, when I finally move to the city in the fall, I really need to start socialising with Mexicans. I’m already doing research on courses I could take, everything from painting to Mayan history, that could get me out of the house and meeting people beyond my immediate neighbours.

So at any rate, the mechanic said he’d look at Moya first thing tomorrow and message me what’s wrong and the cost. Hopefully, it’ll be no worse and ideally better than the brake job I had done (which was over $4,000, or about 300CAD at the time) and I’ll find myself with a trustworthy vehicle again. After I left her, I went into a shop around the corner to get a bottle of cold water for the nearly 3KM walk home, and set off. Well, just as I passed the limits of the town proper, a van screeched to a stop ahead of me. It contained three expat ladies who are basically immediate neighbours! What timing!

That worked out well because it started to storm shortly after I got in. We lost power for a bit and I discovered that the skylights in my suite leak. I spent some time on Skype with the hosts talking about that and some plumbing problems I’m having that I troubleshooted on and off well into the evening.

Somehow with all of that, I got through a mountain of work today and still managed to finish early enough to watch another movie. It’s no wonder I’m sleeping so well considering how worn out I am by bedtime! 🙂

I’m trying to take it easy this weekend and possibly go to Mérida for a day on public transportation, but that’s proving more difficult than expected. There are buses that stop very near my house, but they tend to be full and I could wait for hours to get a seat on one, with the same thing in reverse. I might make more sense to wait until I’ve got Moya running again. Thankfully, there’s enough going on here that I don’t feel too claustrophobic yet. 🙂

And with that, ¡Buenas noches, queridos lectores!

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Working Too Hard

Ouf, it’s rare that I think that I’m working too hard, but when I’m transcribing 100+ minutes of audio daily while still maintaining a spotless home and garden, there’s no other way to put it. The days are really running together, but, thankfully, I’m managing to get some quality sleep so I can start fresh every morning. I’m really looking forward to a day when I can drive into Mérida, park, and just amble for an afternoon, but I don’t see that day coming anytime soon.

This continues to be a novelty for me since the famine days of sitting around looking for work really aren’t that far behind me. One of my clients asked me to let him know when my queue is empty so he can send me more work and I was able to honestly tell him that that is not likely to happen in the near future. My queue has been sort of like a merry-go-round where clients have to catch an empty spot when it goes by them because it’ll disappear quickly!

I’m not exaggerating when I said that I landed here broke the likes of which I haven’t been in almost two years and so I would be a moron to turn down work just because I’m tired. Once the May income starts trickling in at the start of June, I’ll have earned myself some breathing room, but, really, I need to keep up this pace straight into July.

Yesterday afternoon, I had to go get groceries. It was one of those do or die moments since I was out of just about everything but rice and peanut butter. We had an impressive storm in the late afternoon as I was finishing up work on a new movie project. The amount of rain made me worry that the roads in my neighbourhood would be impassable, but when I went out about 30 minutes after the rain stopped, everything was fine.

I decided to just go to Bodega Aurrerá in Progreso and come straight back since I had more work to do in the evening. There, I was able to get some of the things on my list, including the so important beer, and a few treats, like dulce de guayaba letting myself be tempted at the till by a display of cacahuetes japoneses, or cracker nuts. I’ve been making some decent tacos at home for my lunches, so I also bought some commercial salsa verde and guacamole to put on them.

I’ve somehow found an hour every night before bed to work at my Spanish, so I also treated myself to a new notebook for that and a package of 10 different coloured pens, a very inexpensive gift (about $50 total) that made my “schoolwork” more fun that night. I’m working on a new verb tense, the imperfect (one of the past tenses) and treating it like a vocabulary lesson. Instead of using the standard verbs, like hablar and comer, to learn the new tense, I’m using new verbs that I’m struggling with, like dejar and romper.

I am once more grateful that I can go from French to Spanish because that makes learning Spanish so much easier. Dejar, for example, translates as “stop” or “leave” in English, but not in the senses that immediately come to my mind. Stop is more like quit (eg. smoking) rather than doing so in a car and leave is more in the sense of something being dropped off than exiting a room. There is no ambiguity as to the meaning if I go from French and so I’m once more understanding what an enormous challenge learning Spanish would be to a native English speaker with no other points of comparison. I mean, the imperfect of, say, comer (to eat) is  comía, comías, comía, comíamos, comíais, comían. In English? It’s ate, ate, ate, ate, ate, ate!

So it’s really just routine here in paradise, but dang, the living is easy. 🙂 Now, I have to really get to work!!!

 

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Some Post Title Are Harder to Come Up With Than Others

I can’t believe I’m already at the two-week mark of being on my own here and the three-week mark of having landed! While I’m disappointed that there’s really nothing for me to walk to, I have plenty at home to keep me busy between long bouts of typing.

My chore list is nowhere near as overwhelming as I thought it might be and I’m having no trouble keeping up with it. I keep a calendar so that I know when I’m due to do things (because the days tend to run together) and I schedule work around the things that can’t be postponed (like watering the garden) and the things that can (like vacuuming the pool).

I’m really happy to have Puppy for company. I was apprehensive at first about minding him, but he’s proving to be a delight and really no work at all, not like my last two dog sits. Several play sessions a day get my heart pumping and give him sufficient exercise, but I’m otherwise not a “slave” to him since he’s an outdoor dog, meaning that he doesn’t have to be let out constantly and I can go out all day if I want. He follows me around the minute I step outside and he’s not shy about literally knocking on my patio door while holding his favourite toy in his mouth so that I’ll go play with him!

Work continues to be unrelenting, but I’ll have managed to make this month, even with being off a full week and only working half-days the second week to make, what I make in an average month! I know I can’t keep up this pace, but right now I’m spending money as fast as I’m making it so with some big expenses coming up, I really need to rebuild my savings. On top of house hunting, I’ve got Moya now making some alarming noises, so I’m trying to avoid going out with her unless I absolutely have to. Some trips, she runs absolutely normally and others she doesn’t, so it’s hard to pinpoint what’s wrong and how serious the issue might be. I thought at first that she needs new brake pads already, but it’s really too soon. It could be a bad bearing, rust, a steering component… I know that it won’t cost me much to have her looked at and repaired here compared to Canada, but it’s an expense I wish wasn’t on my list.

So that was one of the reasons I decided that I would walk into Chelem today to pick up some produce. It’s only 5KM round trip, so I thought it would be a quick trip and that I’d soon be home in the pool and then back to work…

Here’s that sand trap I got caught in three weeks ago:

Here’s Called 17, the “beach road,” looking towards Chelem…

And towards Chuburná

It was a very long and rather boring walk, although I did enjoy looking at the variety of houses. I was certain I’d come across a small shop along the way, but no! I finally made it into town and went to Willy’s for a few groceries, including flour, since I want to treat myself to banana pancakes this weekend! I also picked up a box of this:

You’d think that with the word puré in the name that it would be a super thick tomato concentrate, but it’s actually a very thin and well seasoned tomato sauce. It became such a staple my first winter in Mazatlán that I brought some back to Haven for the 2015 summer! I picked up some tricolour noodles on offer at Bodega Aurregá on a recent trip and thought that pasta might be nice for dinner tonight.

I also picked up two Montejo beers, a brand I discovered when I came to Mérida last year, and a few other sundries, including cinnamon-flavoured graham crackers that were quite the surprise when I opened the package while I was making tea a few hours later at home. Well, I was expecting the cinnamon part, but not the graham flour base, and I love graham crackers. I’ll have to remember those!

I also wanted some tostadas, but didn’t find any. Tostadas were quite the discovery my first year in Mexico. They look like a tortilla-sized yellow tortilla chip, but they are baked rather than fried and are not salty. I get all the flavour I like from a tostada and none of the guilt! I have some black beans, onion, lime, and salsa verde here at home and figured that I could pick up an avocado and some tomatoes to make tostadas de frijoles for one of my lunches this weekend. When I got to the till, I was asked if I’d found all I was looking for before and the gal laughed and pointed to a stand behind me. Ah, there they were with the baby food. Because why not?

Next stop was a produce stand. The first one I went to didn’t have anything nice, but the second did. My assessment last February that produce was going to be a disappointment here was correct. 🙁 Yucatán isn’t an agricultural state and it imports everything. So far, only Bodega Aurregá and Costco have had nice looking produce while the other supermarkets carry only very sad looking fare. It’s rather disappointing, but I imagine I’l find my sources for fresh things as I settle in. I did well for onions, lime, and jicama at Super Aki the other day and the stand today had tomatoes, potatoes, and an avocado that looked good. I also picked up what I thought might be the light green zucchini, but when I asked their name was told they are “pepino blanco,” or white cucumber. I bought two. I haven’t been able to find much info about them, but I’m sure I’ll come up with a use for them!

I headed home then and made the mistake of taking a different road, thinking that I could just meander my way back… Well, I found myself in a literal maze where I would reach a dead end and have to double back sometimes up to four blocks to be able to move forward any further. I’d forgotten how hard sand is on the feet and had nasty blisters forming, so the extra effort to get home was not appreciated. I was happy when I finally made my way back to the beach road and was able to make real progress towards home. I was incredibly footsore and exhausted by that point and am fairly certain that I won’t be doing that walk again. I’d really be better off taking the highway so that I can wear proper shoes and walk on pavement! At any rate, I jumped in the pool, then had a cold shower (the pool was too warm to be refreshing!), had a late lunch, played with Puppy, and went back to work.

It was almost seven when I stopped to make dinner. Instead of just the tomato sauce, I added a bit of crema, grated cheese, and a generous handful of dried basil to my noodles. The basil is from my neighbour Caroline’s garden back home. She sent me off with heaps of it, savoury, and oregano, and it is proving to be such a treat! It made my simple meal really something special. I then went back to work for a bit before going back to the kitchen to clean up and take out the trash.

Rediscovering my cooking equipment has been a real joy. I’ve missed it all, from my heavy bottom pots to my cast iron pans and especially my… rice cooker. I still haven’t done much real cooking yet, but I’m still building up my pantry. It’s lovely to be able to buy things with no concern about having to use them within a certain timeframe, plus I have a good sized fridge here so I can get the big jars of things like jam and peanut butter that I eat in large quantities.

I guess one could say that I’m in nesting mode. I had a Skype meeting with a client the other day and he commented on how different I sounded from when we spoke in March when I was still in Quebec. “I can hear in your voice that you’re home,” he said. “I’ve talked to you when you’ve been in half a dozen countries and you always sound different in Mexico, more peaceful.” Isn’t that something?!

I wonder how long this honeymoon period is going to last… However, looking at the stages of immigration, I think I may have very well jumped from honeymoon to ease-at-last. 😀

Well, I suppose it’s bedtime already. I’m going to have a very full weekend, but I’m really going to make an effort to treat myself to a day in Mérida centro next week. Just don’t hold your breath because it’s clear my clients have no intention of punishing me for the time off I just took!

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Once Upon a Time

Stories I will tell when I am an old woman rocking on my porch…

Once upon a time, I had homes with no running water in winter and that required effort to heat. It was normal for me to survive half the year as I hung on to the promise of a few months of respite from the drudgery.

Once upon a time, I had bosses who were downright abusive and made me question my self-worth even as I worked myself to the bone for them. I had jobs that required back breaking manual labour and jobs with mind numbing tedium.

Once upon a time, I believed what my society told me, that to have a “good life” I couldn’t begin to live until I was in my sixties. And that the good life came at a hefty price tag I wasn’t sure I wanted to work hard enough to pay for anyway.

Once upon a time, I finally quit the rat race to search for my own version of the good life. Followed years that had long periods of hunger and drudgery that were a small price to pay for the wonders I saw.

Once upon a time, I found myself having high tea in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I finally understood what people meant when they said they had “arrived.”

Once upon a time, I chose to live where there is a perpetual summer. I turned my back on survival and began to demand more for myself.

Once upon a time, there was a day when the housekeepers took care of the tedium of house minding while I worked hard at my own enterprise. I then had a Skype meeting with a client and cemented a new contract that would secure my immediate future. After, it was time to go for a swim, play with the dog, lie on a chaise longue with a cold beer and bask in the sun for spell, and finally I made a lovely dinner in my spotless kitchen.

Once upon a time, I realised that over the course of several years I had inched my way across a line that could never be crossed again. That I wanted comfort and beautiful things and to be able to take an evening off without feeling guilty about it. I had found the Good Life and, best of all, I could not only appreciate it, I had earned it.

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Peninsula-Wide Power Outage!

I lost power at 11:04 this morning and didn’t think too much of it. But with my computer being at only half charge and the freezer being full, I wondered if it would be worth firing up the generator. I went to the website for CFE, the power company, and there was no message on the main page about the outage. There was, however, a link to their Twitter and through that, I got the Twitter for the account for the whole of the peninsula (which includes the states of Campeche, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo).

There, I found out that it was a peninsula-wide outage! I kept monitoring the account (on my phone, which, thankfully, is now getting decent reception here) and I could see progress being restored along the same route I took to get here from Villahermosa. Shortly after their, “Next stop is Mérida!” message, a full hour and a bit after the outage started, the power came back on! I immediately tweeted that Chelem had power and thanked CFE for their service.

It later came out that there was a problem in the power line between the states of Tabasco and Campeche. It’s rather scary that we have such a tenuous connection to the power grid, but I was impressed by how fast CFE moved to fix the problem.