saturday in guanajuato

16 Julio

Zeiva slept fitfully last night and even fell off the enormous king-sized bed. How is that possible? Otherwise, though, I slept quite well all by myself on the little roll-away bed. We made pancakes in the morning with our long-sought-after chocolate chips and then decided that our big adventure was going to be shopping. Lucas asked if we were going to La Mega or the stores down our street. I told him I was hoping to go down the street. He said, “Yay! I don’t like La Mega, it always takes soooo long.” Phew, I had an ally.

So we wandered down our street, and to my surprise, the little birreria (as in serving birria, or goat stew) next to the fruteria and butcher was open – I had never seen it open so far. More to my surprise, the kids both said they wanted quesadillas. So we went in, and they ate quesadillas. The place was small, but several families were in there. They had three things – quesadillas, a huge pot of soup of some sort on the tortilla griddle, and then a quadruple huge pot of goat stew. People would order, and the main guy would open up the giant pot, scoop out some goat meat, trim any large fat or bone, chop it up, put it on the scale, adjust as necessary, pour a sauce all over it and hand it off to be served to a table. With it came a bunch of tortillas wrapped in a dish cloth, and on the table were about 7 different bowls of condiments – one mild sauce, one spicy sauce (there was some left of Zeiva quesadilla for me to try these out on), a mix of diced jalapeños and diced onions, pickled whole jalapeños, onion slices and carrot slices, and more that I can’t remember.

Lucas and Zeiva went over to watch the woman making fresh tortillas, and after about 5 minutes of standing there, one of the customers seated at a nearby table said to the tortilla-maker, “Show them how to do it. They want to do it. Put some dough on there and let them pull the level on the press. That’s what they want to do.” I was a little embarrassed because she didn’t seem terribly eager (she was busy!), but the guy kept telling her to do it. So she set the kids up and let them press a tortilla each. I didn’t pull my camera out in time for Lucas, but here’s Zeiva:

Zeiva pressing tortillas - she's pulling the handle down on the press. Another press is to her left with the handle open, facing the opposite direction (the woman really making tortillas is on the other side of the bench)

Despite the initial reticence, everyone (the presumed owners, other staff and definitely the customers) seemed to enjoy watching them. After thanking them and walking off, Zeiva said, “what was her name?” I told her to go back and ask. I peeked back in as Zeiva was saying, “como te llamas?” which made me cringe a touch because of the lack of formality (not using the usted form), but the woman answered with a smile anyway. Her name is Petra. Hopefully we’ll see her again.

We loaded up again on fruits and veggies. I’m kind of amused because Lucas insists on buying red delicious apples, which are from Washington, and the plums have USA stickers on them. Kind of funny and sad at the same time. And the grapes are exactly what I see in the store – they are from Mexico, but everything on the bag is in English. I don’t know where the tiny, amazingly sweet bananas or the perfectly ripe, delicious figs come from, but hopefully some of the items are local. Here’s a quick shot of one side (about half) of the fruteria:

Next we went to our friendly butcher. He cut and pounded some beef for us for “milanesas”. I don’t what these are in English – breaded cutlets? Chicken fried steak? They are a super traditional Argentinean dish that Nani always made (and still makes – they are one of Lucas’ favorites). I have never even considered making them because of all the prep and pounding I remember my mom doing. So when these guys offered to pound the meat for me on one of my first visits, I figured it wasn’t going to get any easier. The kids finally noticed the giant sides of beef hanging in the back corner and asked what they were, so we talked for a bit about that, you could see all the ribs and everything. A nice reminder of where our food comes from! There is also a little TV in the back corner, which they also noticed, so it was impossible to extract them. I finally said goodbye, that I’d come get them tomorrow, and I left. After I was about a half block down, they came running out of the butcher shop with lollipops. Really kind of the guys in there – the kids were delighted.

We were talking about what we’d do in the afternoon, and we’d seen something about a clown and puppet show this evening, so I called to find out the details. Unfortunately, they were sold out. So I explained to the kids that we couldn’t go, and we’d have to watch for another show. The best part is that Zeiva said, “que pena” ("that’s too bad"), without any prompting - it was awesome! She’s definitely starting to speak Spanish more. Whereas Lucas either speaks complete sentences in either English or Spanish (he’s either talking in one language or the other), Zeiva is know sprinkling almost all of her sentences with a Spanish word or two (or more).

We had a wonderful, warm, sunny, breezy couple of hours at home. The kids were playing in the neighbors’ hammock and with Chocolate. Zeiva took a major header onto a concrete step – I wasn’t there to see it, but she’s got a huge bruise on her forehead. That crying definitely doesn’t count against our no-cry day, those were well-deserved tears.

Then we decided to head into town for dinner out. We walked to El Pípila, the huge statue by our house that looks down onto el centro, where Nani remotely purchased them these little rubber balls on an elastic band – kind of a cross between a yoyo and a mini-basketball. She’d agreed to buy them each one but we never saw them again while she was here, so she left me the money and made me promise to get them. They only sent them bouncing under moving vehicles twice tonight, Nani. Fortunately, both times some very kind stranger rescued them before the kids threw themselves into moving traffic. ;)

Hey guys - turn around!

That's better! You can see Jardin de la Union where we ate dinner in the bottom right.

Lucas really wanted to go up to this little glass box at the top of the statue where he’s seen other people. So we decided to go tonight. You have to climb up this really tiny stairwell, which zig zags up several times, and then you have to climb a ladder at the end into this tiny hothouse box. The kids got pretty scared, and Lucas said, “mama, I guess my idea wasn’t a very good one!” Poor kid. I told him it was an awesome idea and that they were so brave for going up. Once we were back on the ground, they were pretty proud of themselves. I tried to get a photo of them with the statue showing, but the top got cut off because the lens I had with me wasn’t wide enough.

El Pipila from the front

up in the glass box at the top of El Pipila

While we were at the statue, we heard a ton of commotion in el centro and could see an area all strung up with balloons in may-pole fashion, church bells were being rung incessantly, and a band was playing. So we took the callejones down to check it out. We never figured out what was happening, but something was happening at the University church. The one set of steps along the side of the terrace where a 20+ piece band was playing didn’t actually access the terrace, so it sort of seemed like maybe it was a private event. Either way, we got to see the band for a while, and once we were close, we could see kids way up in the spire going to town on the bell that was 5 times their size.

Lucas started getting really hungry, so we went to eat at a restaurant that we’d heard was good for kids. It’s on one of the main plazas – Jardin de la Union – which is triangular and ringed by this massive, continuous hedge of trees. From above, it looks as though you wouldn’t be able to cross through it, but in fact they are so tall that you can simply walk under them, and many restaurants have their outdoor seating under them, etc. It’s the only green spot in el centro, and you can just see it near the bottom of the picture above. Anyway, Lucas and Zeiva ordered a plate of 3 quesadillas (again) and I tried some enchiladas. Zeiva didn’t like the quesadillas, so Lucas asked if he could eat hers. After he’d wolfed those down, I offered him one of my enchiladas and he wolfed that down, too. I told Zeiva she needed to eat some real food, and she agreed to 10 bites of a milanesa. Lucas said, “Yeah! Order a milanesa and I’ll eat whatever she doesn’t have!” So we ordered more, and Zeiva happily ate her bites. But by the time she was done, I think Lucas’ food had settled so when he put the plate in front of him, he said, “uh, I think I’m too full.” :) Not too, full, of course for an ice-cream cone though!

Our last little indulgence was a few minutes inside a game arcade. I had seen this place several times while walking around town and kept thinking I hoped Lucas never caught sight of it. What I didn’t realize when we sat down tonight was that it was across the alley from one side of the restaurant. So while the kids went in and out to watch the mariachi bands play while the food was coming, the finally noticed it. We’d had such a great day that I didn’t want to fight about not going in there. After some negotiating, they agreed to a quick ride on the horse from the guy from Toy Story whose name I’m supposed to know but have forgotten and a motorcycle. I really don’t like these places, but I suspect Lucas will try to talk me into going back because he desperately wanted to play some real video games and air hockey and…and…and. I had all kinds of excuses – I didn’t have change, the teenagers already playing air hockey might play for hours, etc. But he knows it’s there now, so…

We waited for the bus for about 10 minutes, but it was past 7:30 pm and I was wary of how our evening would go. I had mentioned several times over the course of the day how I really needed their help, especially when bedtime rolled around. So we grabbed a cab and did some last-minute positive visioning for our bedtime routine. And, I am relieved to announce, they got pajamas on, brushed teeth and peed with no hassle. We read a bunch of books with no real arguing. We talked about how me made it through bedtime with no problems. Lucas bolted up and said, “Have you braided Zeiva’s hair yet?!”

“It’s already braided.”

“And you don’t have to do it over?”

“No.”

Lucas threw himself back onto his pillow with a sigh of relief.

When we did our highlights, Zeiva’s first thing was (in Spanish) helping me. I almost cried. Then she listed a bunch of ways that she helped me – she carried the meat from the butcher, she used her strong leg muscles on our walk, she helped brush her teeth, etc. Lucas’ favorite thing was making the tortillas and ice-cream. I had to stop myself from going on and on because there were so many favorite moments of the day.

Then, at the last minute, Lucas was looking for something under the roll-away bed and he smashed his lip on the metal frame hidden underneath his pillow. He yelped in pain, covered his mouth and looked at me with sheer panic in his eyes. I quickly told him, “If you’re hurt, you can cry! It doesn’t count for the no-crying day!” and he burst into tears. Ok tears that were easy to console with ice and hugs. We sang some quiet songs and they drifted off to sleep. We finally did it.