gratitude

Fourth of July in Mexico

July 6, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

We spent Saturday at a barbecue sponsored by the American Benevolent Society and the American Society of Mexico. There weren’t any fireworks, but they had hot dogs and hamburgers, so that was nice. They also had apple pie. And kick-ass brownies.

The party was held at a private home in Lomas de Tecamachalco, a suburb west of here. Most folks there were probably our parents’ age, but we met some interesting people, including a woman who styles food for cookbooks, which I am in awe of.

Next year I think we’ll do our own cookout, assuming our grill works by then. (Update on that front: They have shipped us the part to repair our leaky regulator. Or rather, they say they have. We’ll see if we ever get it.) Can you imagine the spread? I could do mac n’ cheese, now that I’ve found sharp cheddar at the Superama in Polanco; burgers, dogs, my grandma’s potato salad with big chunks of hard-boiled egg and black olives. Mmmm.

Funny, but I didn’t really feel any burst of patriotism being out of the country on Independence Day. Actually, in my life, I only remember getting teary-eyed at one Fourth of July, when I’d just gotten back from studying for 10 months in Spain. My brothers wanted to watch the fireworks at the Queen Mary, but no one could get their act together for the long drive out to Long Beach, so we ended up at some random parking lot in Upland. As the fireworks went off, I stared up at the sky, so grateful and amazed to be back in the U.S., where they had pancakes and giant highways and actual Mexican-Americans! (Who didn’t yell at me for not knowing Spanish.)

Lately I’m just so grateful to be living in Mexico. July 21 will be six months.

Things I’m thankful for today, when we don’t have water, again

March 23, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

1. The Artesanos del Dulce cafe only a few blocks from my house, and their wireless internet, cafe Americano and dark-chocolate cookies

2. The hot showers at my new gym. And, for that matter, my new gym. It’s at the Sheraton Hotel a few blocks from my house. It’s super nice and EMPTY. No guys in mesh tank tops doing tricep curls and kissing their guns. (Talking to YOU, Gold’s Gym Polanco.)

4. The fact that my husband and I are happy and healthy, and so are our parents and loved ones.

5. The “display case” outside this dentist’s office, which I always pass on my way to Artesanos del Dulce.

6. My new iPhone. It took two visits to the Telcel store and a personal reference, but I got it. Now I know why Americans don’t get Mexican cell phone plans.

Could you give me your food?

March 18, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Yesterday, in a burst of stupidity, I decided to walk home from Roma — where I’d been working on that freelance story — to our apartment in Cuauhtemoc. I was hungry and tired and didn’t feel like squeezing myself into the Metrobus. (The thing was so crowded, the doors had actually closed on one man’s belly. Off the bus went, the guy’s stomach sticking out in the night air.) Turned out walking was a worse idea — my laptop bag dug into my shoulder for 30 minutes, my knees ached.

Anyway, I happened to be carrying a to-go container with some leftovers from lunch. As I hurried through the streets, a little girl came up to me.

“Can you give me your food?” she asked. I said no before I even realized what she was saying.

A few minutes later, a teenage boy selling roses approached me. I started shaking my head.

“I’ll give you a rose as a gift,” he said, “if you give me your food.”

Suddenly I realized that among the sea of people hurrying home from work, nobody carried any to-go containers, anywhere. I was the only one.

I said no to that boy, too, and felt like a horrible person. When I got home I dug into the salad and tried not to think of how long it’d been since they’d both eaten fresh produce.

Joining the Newcomers Club, and being a woman of leisure

February 13, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

On the advice of a friend, I joined the Newcomers Club a few days ago. It’s a social organization for English-speaking women, and they offer lots of helpful information on where to find English-speaking doctors, hairstylists, veterinarians, handymen, etc. They also host monthly coffees for expat wives (is that me? Am I really an “expat wife”?), and tours of museums and historical monuments around town.

They held an orientation for new members this morning. It was… eye-opening.
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Things I love about Mexico City today

February 5, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

1. The arcade inside the Chapultepec Metro station.

2. Finding pineapple preserves at a deli in La Roma.

3. That, if I’m feeling hungry on my apartment search, I can stop at a taco stand and get a taco de alambre, covered in spicy green salsa, for 35 cents. And then stand there and eat it on a plastic plate with everyone else, including two middle-aged women in slacks.

4. The fact that this salad only cost me $3:

5. The view from this apartment building’s rooftop deck:

6. That a man washing his car on the sidewalk, using a bowl to rinse it with water, will stop when I get close and turn and smile at me, and say “Pase.”

7. The purples and yellows and oranges of the buildings on Calle Tabasco, and their old-fashioned wrought-iron balconies.

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A water crisis in Mexico City, if you don’t have money

February 3, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Last weekend, the city’s water crisis was all over the news. From what I gathered — and I’m still figuring out how to read newspapers in Spanish — the government planned to shut off water to certain neighborhoods during the last three days of the month, in order to conserve and fix problems with the water system.

I couldn’t ever figure out which neighborhoods would be affected, so I assumed we’d wake up Saturday morning without water. Which, for us, isn’t that huge of a deal — we have purified water to drink and cook with. (And showers, eh, they can wait on the weekend.)

So on Saturday, I turned on the faucets. They worked normally. Then I looked at the paper online. Some of DF’s outlying neighborhoods — where people can’t afford to buy water — didn’t have any.

The fact that these people had no water and we did made no sense to me. If you’re going to shut off water for conservation purposes, why not do it city-wide? I told this to a friend of mine, and she said the city would never shut off water in our neighborhood. Too many embassy employees live here.

Suddenly I felt bad for being so blase about the lack of water in the first place. Of course we can buy our own. We just walk down the street to the supermarket, or tell our doorman we’re out, and boom. It’s there. It’s so easy to forget that there are thousands of people who can’t do this.

Of course, this raises the eternal question about Mexico, which is why so many people here still live in poverty, while the rich — or even solidly middle-class — lead normal first-world lives. It’s part of what makes the city so chaotic and fascinating, with entrepreneurs crowding the subways and the neighborhood knife-sharpener whistling down the street. But the concept of having so much more than so many other people is a hard thing to get used to. I don’t know that I ever will, to be honest.

I was chatting with Lola, our housekeeper, the other day and she mentioned she had a 12-year-old daughter. “But only one,” she said. “I didn’t want another because it’s too tough in this world.”