Here's what I had for breakfast: Cantaloupe (melon), this little flaky slightly-sweet pastry (oreja, ear), and milk (leche).
I though we were waiting for Yuxi (spelling?!?), the niece, to come to the house and pick us up. Again, this is all as I understood it, so maybe the plan changed, but equally likely I didn't understand to begin with. Tere said ready at 11! Yuxi will come and honk the horn and we have to go! I went for a little jog, at a little breakfast, reassured her that I would be ready on time. And I was! At 10:50, sitting in the sala, the living room, waiting for the ride. Around 11:30, shes tells me that Yuxi said it would be 11 at the earliest. So we sit around some more. Her sister, Yuxi's mother, comes over. I meet Chepe for the first time. I'm very confused because she came by taxi, and I expected Yuxi to pick up only Tere and me. I tell Tere I'm going to rest and she says ok.
I accidentally fell asleep until 1! It was one of those naps that is very disorienting. I woke up kinda sweaty too. I get up and find Tere and Chepe just chilling in the sala. Once I come out, they're ready to go. I get the feeling they were waiting on me, but again, I have no idea what's happened. We go out to get a taxi, but two pull up. Apparently they had called for one while I was sleeping, but the first taxi was not the one we called. They say sorry, this is the one we called, and close the door on the first taxi. We get in the second. Again, I'm very confused. Not only do I understand only about 30% of an conversation I'm not a part of, I have been awake for like 3 minutes at the point. I'm still sleep-drunk.
We take the taxi to a restaurant where Yuxi is eating with 2 ladies she works with. We sit down and I pick up the menu and Tere is like, "NO we're not eating here." I was pretty hungry but said ok. I was going to just get water to drink, because the waiter listed off a bunch of flavors of...something--juice? infused water? soda?--and I totally missed it. Tere orders a zarzaparilla and I get that too--whatever it is.
The drinks come. Zarzaparilla is dark, the color of Coke, but not carbonated. It tastes like...root beer? OH! It's sarsaparilla! But it's overly sweet, like I'm drinking a glass of root beer extract. I think if it had been cut with water it would have been better to me. Tere drinks hers super fast. I sip mine and of course finish all of it because I'm polite. I did mention that I thought it was a little too sweet, so hopefully she won't order it for me again.
They ladies are all eating but Tere said I couldn't. As part of the Work Away arrangement, she provides food and housing for me, so if she says "we're not eating here", I don't eat. Yuxi has an order of something that looks like an empanada, I think. Or a taco perhaps. There is something inside a folded tortilla which is sort of stapled shut with tooth picks. It seems like the whole thing was fried, or maybe just baked like this. She shares them with us.
I'm waiting to see how I should eat it, when Tere insists I start. I told her I don't know the proper way to eat it. She says, "take out the toothpicks first do they don't poke you." Well, that bit was obvious. Inside, it's stuff with shredded fish that sort of looks like a tuna salad, but white and served hot. They ask if I'm allergic to fish. I'm not...at least not that I know of. You see, growing up we didn't eat a lot of fish. It's expensive in Omaha and we weren't a fancy family like that (I always though of fish as fancy since I only saw it at nice restaurants). Anyway, I explained how far away I live from the ocean ("I have to drive for 2 full days!") and they say in that case, I definitely have to try it! I have to put mayo and salsa on it though. Whenever I'm offered salsa, I always clarify the heat level...which is pretty useless because everyone has their own tolerance to spicy. Turns out this was hot as hell. I put one little dot in probably a tablespoon of mayo and it was still spicy. Don't worry, I didn't eat a whole tablespoon of mayo. I only dipped.
They told me the type of fish that I was eating. I didn't know what it was. Something about a shark though. It was good, what can I say?
This restaurant is famous apparently. There were pictures from the history of the place. It was square, with a an open area in the middle and the tables at the edges. In the open area there was a huge bird cage. It reminded me of the budgie exhibit they had at the zoo. It had macaws in it. There were also small cages hanging around the edge of the open area with smaller birds that were cockatiel size. There we some that looked like cardinals. It was funny to think that cardinals might be "exotic" here.
Anyway, we sat there for a long time. The waiter came and took away the plates, Yuxi had a card out to pay, but still the waiter didn't bring the check. I asked Tere and she said, "Because she hasn't asked for yet it." What a concept! I'm glad I learned this, or else I might have sat for hours waiting for the check.
Yuxi's car is parked at the restaurant. Sort of a valet situation. We get in but we can't go out of the parking area because a truck is parked in the drive way. Parked with no driver. This seems very disorganized to me but no one was alarmed. After about 3 minutes a guy moves the truck and off we go! I put on my seatbelt out of habit and Yuxi comments on that. Hopefully it's not seen as a reflection of my confidence in her driving.
(Side note about the taxis not having seat belts: I think they are installed in the car, but the backseat has a cover over it which makes them inaccessible.)
So, what the heck is happening right now? I'm not really sure. We are going to Yuxi's house? Which is also Chepe's house, I learned once we got there. We drive to Xalapa which is the capitol of the state, Vera Cruz. It's much bigger than Coatepec. I was surprised to see a man riding a horse in the street in such a big city. He looked like a cowboy and was riding in the opposite direction of traffic, in the implied lane between the parked cars and the moving cars. All lanes are implied here, there are few lines. I did see a double solid yellow line which separated two lanes moving the same direction. I'm never going to drive here.
We make a pitstop to pick up Yuxi's daughter from school. Chepe gets out of the passenger seat. Then Yuxi gets out too. I'm confused, of course. Chepe and Valentina (The daughter of Tere's neice Yuxi, so Tere's great-neice) come to the car with ice cream. Huh. Valentina is 8 and tiny, so she comes in the back seat with Tere and me. We leave for somewhere.
Turns out we are going to their house. 5 people live there: Chepe (Tere's sister); her husband Miguelito, so called because he is 5 feet tall at maximu (Tere's brother-in-law); Yuxi, the teacher who drove us (Tere's niece); her husband Jorge, who left as soon as we got there to go to his 2nd job (Tere's newphew-in-law?); and their daughter Valentina, who we picked up from school (Tere's great-neice). They also have a mini-schnauzer named Luna who barked at me every time I moved. There was a thunderstorm too, which scared the dog.
When we get there, 2 additional women are in the house. A person who seems to work as their cook, and a person who introduces herself as the nana of Valentina which I think is a nanny. It Latin America, it's super common to have help in the house, and is not a reflection of person's wealth. I told Yuxi that only rich people in the U.S. can hire help and she was so tickled by that.
Dinner was also confusing, because the cook kept getting up and taking someone's plate, then returning with more food on it. But each person got something different. Anyway, the first course was spaghetti. It was slightly orange as though a tablespoon of sauce had been used on the whole pot. Fine by me, red sauce give me heartburn. After the spaghetti, I was offered pozole and took it. It was left over from Mother's day. Yuxi told the native people of Mexico (Mixtec in this area I think, I'm not sure) used to cook it with their enemies, cannibal style. This had chicken in it. I was also offered mole, which I have been dying to try since I heard of it back in high school Spanish class. Mole is the famous Mexican "chocolate BBQ sauce." It was smoky and a little spicy, and the chocolate flavor was subtle. It was amazing. I dipped a tortilla in it, but it's usually put on chicken I think.
After dinner, Valentina showed me her room and we colored mandalas. Her coloring book was Day of the Dead themed so that was cute. Yuxi pulled out some coffee flavored wine. I told her I don't drink but apparently I didn't say it right because there was a shot in front of me. I drank it in two sips. It had the taste of coffee but the burning in my mouth, throat, esophagus, and stomach of something stronger than wine.
Vale had to go to gymnastics practice at 6:30. She does rhythmic gymnastics. We sat around the house for a little bit until it was time to go. I almost left without saying goodbye to Miguelito but Tere reminded me and I went back. I'm learning to never leave without saying goodbye to everyone. I didn't say goodbye to Luna though, she was hiding from the storm.
We had to park the car about a block away because the street they lived on was under construction. Not a huge deal but there was a downpour when we left. I hopped in the backseat with Vale and Tere and off we went.
After we dropped Vale off, it was time to go shopping. Now, I thought the whole point of the day was to go shopping, that Yuxi was going to pick us up (at 11, remember?) and we were going shopping. It's now about 7. We go to a mall. Yuxi apologizes for how small it is, but it honestly might have been bigger than Westroads. There was only Sears as the anchor store. I bought a shirt. I guess the whole thing was so that Yuxi could buy Tere and Chepe gift for Mother's day, back on the 10th. Tere and Chepe are pretty different for sisters. Tere picked one thing pretty quickly and tried it on. Chepe kept noticing new things, going back and forth to the fitting room. We were there for waaay too long, probably like an hour just in that one section of one store. We finally left Seas to go to stores for with FASHION. I do not understand la moda, the fashion. Obviously. I just took things in, trying to understand what was happening around me.
I saw a store called "Bear and Pull" which looked sort of like Hollister-type clothes. We finally left the mall a bit after 9:00. Then we drove around Xalapa, I think Yuxi was giving me a tour. She dropped us off at a bus stop. This was confusing because I thought she was taking us home. The bus didn't come until about 10:00 so we stood around. On the buss, this girl in front of us turned around and asked Tere, "Where is she from?" And they were talking about me like I wasn't there. She looked at me finally and I said, "You can ask me." and she apologized and said she didn't realize I spoke Spanish. (Even though she started talking to Tere to ask if I was from Germany because of my accent.) We spoke with her most of the bus ride so that was cool. It's nice to talk to someone else too. We didn't get home until 10:30 which was late for me, but we didn't have to go anywhere the next day until noon so we could sleep in.
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