Quality Control

This may be confusing, because I drafted this post and meant to post it Saturday morning about what I did on Friday. But our weekend trip ended up not having easy internet access, so the update below is Friday May 14th. I was in Manzanillo and Barra de Navidad Saturday through to Monday. I have to go work on an assignment that is due tomorrow but I promise another post before bed. My apologies.

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My sincere apologies for my tardiness but this is Mexico and sometimes things are just out of my control. Or perhaps I just had another night on the town, was exceptionally tired and had to get up early again. Consider the delay quality control.

Yesterday started fairly early, especially considering that many of us had not arrived home at a “reasonable” hour. We boarded a bus around 8:30am and headed out with a number of UofColima students. We were headed to two local markets to collect fresh ingredients for a traditional cooking class we were going to take later in the day.

Our first stop involved breakfast at one of the markets. We sat around watching women make tortillas that they did at a staggering pace, continuously. They were all fried on a flat griddle, it was mesmorizing to watch them puff up. I don’t know what the name of the dish was that I had for breakfast but it basically involved pieces of broken up tortillas fried with eggs in a tomato-y sauce. It was quite good and surprisingly filling. It was served with refried beans and tortillas. So technically you could be eating fried tortilla in a tortilla.

Have I mentioned how much they love tortillas here? They are served with practically every meal and often are eaten similiarly as we eat dinner roles. They are also very strong tasting, our tortillas are not an accurate depiction of tortillas here, I hear they are an acquired taste.

After we finished breakfast we headed downstairs into the market where we were first allowed to do a little personal shopping. There was some great Mexican painted ceramics and clay potter. We all drooled over some of the gorgeous large casserole dishes but it is totally impractical to try and get them home without breaking. Although I might go back and get something before I leave. I ended up buying a very cute mug.

We were responsible for helping to ask for the food in Spanish and selecting the food. It wasn’t long before we were done an on our way to the second market. Here we were served fresh mango. I don’t really like mango, I like the idea of it, I like how juicy it is, but sometimes it just tastes weird. I find that in Mexico mangos don’t taste weird, they taste amazing, or maybe I’m just coming around. I’m also coming around to tequila (yes Dad, you heard right).

After the markets we went to the University to their cooking classroom to take part in some traditional cooking. We split into groups and each were assigned a different dish, there were three total, enchiladas, tostadas, and the dish I made whose name evades me. It was kind of a mish-mash of disorganization which made everything do very slowly. It was unfortunate because I feel like it could have been a lot better than it was. It was fun but there was a great deal of waiting doing nothing because we weren’t given recipes and there was only one person (a very funny chef) who actually knew what was supposed to be done, how it was supposed to be done, and it just seemed like it was a bit of a mess.

Sadly there were mass amounts of fresh garlic in all three dishes so I ended up not eating much of any of them other than a bite or two. They tasted very delicious but for the purpose of keeping my stomach happy I didn’t have much more. It was a long haul too and my back was feeling it.

It happened to be the birthday of one of the girls on the trip. The chef had bought cute little cupcakes for her, this was followed by a small piñata filled with candy, supplied by another student. All we coul find for her to hit it with was a broom stick. Ecause piñatas in Mexico are legitimate and have a clay pot in it so it actually smashes the broom stick roved to be a little too weak to do any damage and even broke off flying at the heads of a group of us watching.

We didn’t leave until after 3:30. Walking home was like trying to walk through an oven. The kind of hot that makes you want to give up and hide in the first air conditioned building you can find. Upon arriving home I realized it was necessary to do some laundry as I was wearing my last t-shirt. Their laundry machine is outside and everything is dried on a line, and it dries so very quickly. Laundry was intermingled with a very necessary nap.

After my nap it was crucial that I got some writing done on a short copy of my essay that is due on Tuesday. I worked at it and actually got a draft done. This was great because for the last few days it has seemed like I’ve been sitting for hours staring at a blank word document. It was also important that I get the draft done quickly so that I be able to go out for the girls birthday party and a potential Mexican bush party.

At 8:30 I met a few other girls to catch a cab downtown. We were all meeting at a lounge restaurant bar place called 1800, we’d been there a few times and it is a really great atmosphere, they have a really nice waitress who speaks very good English, and the owner knows who we are and will come hang out with us. We were supposed to be meeting up with one of our Mexican student guides and a couple of his friends so they could drive us out to the bush party. Around 11 he showed up and his friends ha bailed so we decided to find somewhere else to go that had a little less relaxed atmosphere. Before we left the owner sent the birthday girl a fancey crape.

Our next, and last stop, was a rock & roll bar. It was great, and kind of funny. There was live music and it was packed. The band switched between “top 40” rock hits and rock hits in Spanish. It was entertaining because when some of the clearly popular Spanish hits were played the whole bar went crazy. Nearly everyone was singing along.

I think I’ve established that having such beautifully warm nights confuses my internal clock. It is so rare in Canada to have a night when the air is warm enough that you are never cold and never need to put on at least a light jacket. Well here you never need a jacket, and at 1am it is usually still 25℃. This is so deceiving. I think I arrived home around 2:30 and tried to do a little packing but decided to just go to bed. We are headed to Manzanillo and Barra de Navidad for the weekend! Beaches and shopping will be the order of the day.

Today’s High: 36℃

Today I learned:

• Baseball bats are optimal for piñata breaking, brooms are not

I am grateful for:

• Being able to sleep under covers, it has cooled down enough that I get to sleep under the blankets as opposed to right on top