PV in General

After reviewing my first couple of posts, I am afraid you may have the misconception that I don't like it here.  I am loving it; new adventures (or problems) every day.  Yes, there are a lot of adjustments necessary (starting with your attitude).   It is not the same as living in the states.  There are items that we consider as essential that are either hard to find or impossible.  When you do think you have found something you need, it turns out not to be anything like what you expected.  What passes for Saran wrap here is unuseable.  After struggling for some time to get a piece out of the carton, you wind up with a wadded ball of plastic in your hand.  I don't know what they make their paper products out of here.  Paper towels, napkins, Kleenex all appear to made out of toilet paper.  They all disintegrate when exposed to any moisture at all.  And they are surprisingly not absorbent.  When you try to wipe up some water on a counter you find that all that happens is that you spread the water across the counter.   Although we have Wallmart, Costco, Home Depot and supermarkets, no one store will have everything you need.

There is a sort of open air farmers market that I like to go to.  Everything is fresh and comes in each morning (if you don't get there in the afternoon, a lot of stuff will be gone).  The fruits and vegetables don't look as pretty, but they are tasty (I advise washing everything before eating).  But we have a new market called Los Mercados.  Everything there is gorgeous and still cheap considering what we pay at home.  It is the one place you can buy good meat, fresh bakery and fruits and vegetables.  The Mexicans say, "It is where the white people shop".  The tomatoes are awsome.

There are somethings that I will never adjust to, like the smell of urine soaked into the sidewalks (I keep hoping it is dog piss).  Fighting dust and dirt took me a while, but I am no longer surprised when I take one of those awful paper towels to wipe something up and it comes up black.  You really should mop the tile floors every day (I do not).   I can not find the mops that have its own devise for wringing it out.  So there I am with a plastic pail full of hot water, wringing the mop out by hand.  The good news is that the floor drys quickly here.

The Mexicans certainly appear to be happy fun loving people.  They are hard working and basically honest (I have only been ripped off twice and it was my own fault or stupidity)  You can get by in the major shops and restaurants without Spanish, but this is not true in all stores.  I am amazed at the lack of English in a city that survives almost totally on tourism (Yes, I am working on my Spanish).  Sometimes you think they understand when they answer, "Si".  In truth they have no idea what you just said.

Since I live in a commercial district (with buses every other minute) adjusting to the constant noise takes a while.  The good thing about living in the commercial district is that trash is picked up every night.  No, you do not put a trash can on the curb.  There are designated corners where you drop bags of trash (garbage).  They never heard of Demspty Dumpsters (or trash cans, I guess).  Most people are pretty good about tying up their bags, but after the garbage truck leaves there will be trash left in the street.  You learn to ignore it and just step over it.

.