Hot

It's currently 95 degrees out, but the heat index is 111. I'm not actually sure I've been this hot before. There's a heat warning until dusk. Don't worry about us, Miles and I are staying inside.

Can you imagine living here without AC? How did the pioneers do it?

Otros Gringos

To my surprise, there weren't many foreign tourists in Mexico, especially in DF; most of the tourists were other Mexicans checking out there own country. I imagine in the coastal cities/areas (Cozumel, Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Cabo San Lucas, etc), this is different, since those areas often cater to Americans from North of the Border or Spring Break students. Every once in a while you would see another gringo wandering around, but it seemed like they were few and far between.

[For the most part, Mexicans were pretty dark and short, due to their ancestry of Mayans, Aztecs, Zapotecs, etc, so most gringos stood out like sore thumbs; I was often the tallest person around and Kimberly was almost always the whitest person around. There is some Spanish blood in Mexico, which resulted in some additional height and lightening of skin, but it was a lot less than I suspected before arriving.]

Then we arrived in Oaxaca, and all of a sudden, we were surrounded by gringos. Everywhere: in the restaurants, at museums, in the markets. You name it, gringos were there. But the interesting thing is that barely any of them were USA-ers. I would say 90% of them were French. The other 10% were German or Dutch or English. I suppose that July is vacation month in France, so a lot of French are traveling, but it was pretty amazing seeing some fancy dressed people sitting in the cafes, smoking their cigarettes all French-cool like.

I'm not sure what the point of this post is. I just thought the number of French in Oaxaca was impressive, as was the lack of USA-ers traveling in some of the most culturally interesting cities of Mexico, our closest neighbor (tied with Canada). I would write it off as a microcosm of the traveling attitudes of Europeans vs Americans, but I know there are lots of Europeans that are xenophobic, so I'm not sure this fully explains it.

I guess to sum it up, I think more USA-ers should travel to Mexico since it's close, friendly, has good food, and is packed with interesting history.

Wabbit Season

Look at him sitting there, five feet away from me, all smug and content, chomping on grass like it's his. Doesn't he know that that is MY grass? I eat it, come inside, and throw it up on the carpet. That is how things work around here. He's stealing my food, right from under my nose.

If only this invisible wall wasn't in the way, I'd get that rabbit. And I'd make him pay: we'd cuddle until he couldn't cuddle anymore. Then we'd play. Then nap. Then cuddle. Then I'd make him leave so he wouldn't take away any of my attention.

Murdered

We came home from Mexico to the pleasant surprise of sunflowers growing in our backyard (as Peter described here).

Well, we came home from errands to find an unpleasant surprise.



Apparently in their efforts to mow and shop down weeds, they annihilated our beautiful sunflowers. It's very sad.

"Too much is never enough"

This, I believe, is my husband's motto in life. Perhaps his farming ancestors are part of this but Peter firmly believes that one must always have more rather than just enough. He already has a family story about him. You see, while Dad was in the hospital during one of his operations, Peter kindly offered to bring us all dinner. He picked up some Chinese food and brought it to the weary group at the hospital. You could smell the Chinese food wafting down the hallway as Peter got off the elevator, and we were all blown away by the number of boxes that he unpacked. They just kept coming and coming. Kung pao and General Tso's mixed with some Happy Family and several boxes of potstickers with rice and veggies and more and more. All to feed three stressed out and scared women and one cancer patient. We took most of those boxes home.

I tell you this story to stress that Peter is WELL known for this behavior. But, it still came as a surprise to me when I showed up at THE GARDEN Tuesday morning. He told me it was big. He described the number and variety of plants. But, somehow, the true scale of the garden was lost on me.

We are so screwed.

The garden is really huge. Like crazy. There are at least 60 squash/cuke/melon mounds without an exaggeration and each mound has two or three plants. We'll be sneaking around the neighborhood and leaving squash presents on people's doorsteps in a month or two.
The white marks on the lower right aren't fungus, rather it's a melon variety called Moon and Stars. The Fruit are also supposed to have green with yellow dots.

There are 20 or so tomatoes putting out fruit. You can see them here tied to stakes.

You can start to see the scale of the garden in this picture. The lettuce, radish, carrots, basil, and weeds are in the foreground. Tomatoes and beans are in the middle and the squash are there in the back. We still have at least 100 radishes to pull, and I have two bunches in the fridge. The beans are going to go crazy any minute and the zukes are putting out babies fast. There's an entire "field" of basil. We harvested three zukes already as well a few different types of peppers. Our farming companions took home the few peas that managed to grow (it was past their season when they went in the ground). The beans have tiny beans growing (just thicker than a pencil lead) but by next weekend I'm sure they'll be huge. I'm hoping we get enough to can!

The farm project is intense and crazy, but incredibly enjoyable. Of the garden gang, I'm the only one with actual growing knowledge and it's great fun to watch them learn about plants and figure out who needs what. (Although they all need to learn to harden their hearts and THIN seedlings. By the time I got home it was too late and we have so many little two headed radishes).

And we're rather well known now. On Wednesday I went in to campus to lesson plan a bit and say hi to various profs. German prof asked how Peter was doing since his garden had flooded. I explained that he had a new garden project going and that it was a little ambitious. We talked for a while and then I mentioned that it was near PEter's old job. German Prof's jaw hit the ground as he exclaimed, "You mean that's YOUR garden?" He and his kids apparently have walked by regularly. We also get visitors from the gym and the restaurant and people drop off gifts as well (farming tools, hay etc).

I never would have wanted or planned a garden on this scale... but it sure is fun!

Tornados

Well, we're not even home for a week and the storm season is starting. They just interupted NPR with a severe tornado storm warning for our county. This means that they haven't sighted an actual tornado, but that the weather conditions are right to produce one. I've canceled my plans to head out and look for a new laptop and we're staying downstairs near the "tornado shelter" (aka the space under the stairs).

It's not particularly scary, more crazy than anything else. They just announced on the tv of visibility at near zero on the freeway and cars blown off the road.

Interested in following? Put our zip code into weather.gov

Updates to follow

5:00 pm-
Well the rain and excitement have passed safely. No tornadoes were spotted and the cat is coming out of his secret hiding place. We're supposedly in for a week of rain and excitement! Wanna come visit?

Gardening

Peter and I have been working hard these past few days, getting our various garden projects under control. Not only do we have the giant garden... but we also have a few side projects at our apartment.


Today, we worked on our little patch of dirt. We weeded around our volunteer squash which seemed to have sprouted from a rotten squash that Peter tossed outside this spring. So far, it only has male flowers, so we don't know if we'll actually get any fruit from it. This isn't too surprising as it was a commercial plant and probably some sort of freaky hybrid anyway.



We also harvested potatoes. Yep, just as before in the Rose City, Peter and I are doing our heritage and forefathers well and planting potatoes. We picked these beauties that we'll have lightly boiled with butter and thyme for dinner tonight.


We also noticed these. They appear to be potato fruit. After some googling, it seems that they are indeed the fruit of the potato plant (as the tubers are just the roots). Wikipedia says they are highly toxic. We'll probably follow the directions for harvesting the seeds to see what happens. I've never planted potatoes from seeds before, but since it's the International Year of the Potato , I figure we'll give it a try.

We also rescued the chives and a pepper plant that survived the floods from the old garden plot. They are safely replanted up here at the house.

Quick Notes on Mexico

Some things I learned in my short time in Mexico, and which you should know which will make all the forthcoming posts easier to understand:

• In Mexico, Mexico City is called DF (pronounced de-effe), as in Mexico DF. It stands for Distrito Federal. It's like the DC in Washington DC. It also easier to say/write DF than to say/write Mexico City all the time;
• If a store in Mexico makes churros, it's a churreria. If it sells perfume, it's a perfumeria. If it makes shoes, it's a shoeria. If it sells crickets, it would be a chapulineria. Add -eria to anything, and you make it or sell it;
• The Mexican Peso is currently valued at approximately 10 pesos = 1 US dollar. This makes conversion really easy; just move the decimal point over one place to the left. Things in Mexico are cheap, except McDonald's, Coke, and Starbucks. Let me know if you see a trend in those three things.

El Moro and the Magic Churro

You should immediately stop what you're doing, board a plane to Mexico City, and head on down to the Churreria El Moro and get yourself a cup of Chocolate Espanyol and 4 churros con canela (basically a cup of melted chocolate and churros covered in cinnamon). You will never view dessert (or even breakfast) the same again.

Kimberly, her mom, and I were hanging out in the Historical Center of Mexico City when we were approached by some Mexican students who wanted to interview us for their english class. After some questions from them, we decided to ask them where to go eat. One of the kids (who, judging from his portly size, has eaten a churro or two in his lifetime) first asked us if we wanted Chinese food. After a laugh on our part, and a quick explanation that we were hoping for something more Mexican in nature, he told us about El Moro. I'm glad we didn't go for Chinese.

Short, middle-aged Mexican waitresses, dressed in mint-green outfits straight from the 60's, buzz around this diner-like, 24-hour a day, beehive of activity. All they serve is churros. Solo for 6 pesos. Or with chocolate, coffee, or milk for about 30-40 pesos. I think that's it.

It was packed every time we went there. And in the 10 days I was in Mexico, 5 of which were in Mexico City, I visited El Moro 4 times. Almost 5 times, but I expressed some self restraint, which is strange for me.

So what is a churro? It's fried dough, dropped from a star-shaped extruder straight into hot oil, then removed, sprinkled with sugar and/or cinnamon, and dropped directly in front of you. I preferred mine dipped into hot chocolate.

[Chocolate will be covered in more detail in a later post. I look forward to that one almost as much as this one]

I had a churro once in Portland, and I was not excited. It was cold and kind of soggy. I was not excited about going to the churreria in Mexico City. As often is the case, I was wrong.

The churros at El Moro were hot and crispy on the outside, and warm and soft on the inside. The first time we went, we had 2 each; the next 2 times, we had at least 4 each (the sugar coma I went into after the first 3 makes the experience a little hazy); the last time I think we held ourselves to only 3 each.

And if you really go all that way just for a churro, you should probably stay a little longer and check out some of the Azten and Mayan ruins. We'll cover those things in later posts, but for now we're concentrating on the important stuff: food.

Surprise, you're eating a churro!

Chapulines

Or as they're known in English, Crickets.

Kimberly ate them in tacos when she was traveling, where the true flavor could be masked by things like salsa and tortilla. I ate them solo when we were in Oaxaca, where the true flavor of the cricket could come through.

Either way, you get legs stuck in your teeth.

I was a little hesitant about eating the little critters. But really, how could I pass up eating such a different and new thing - when was the next time I would be somewhere that crickets were part of the everyday fabric of life and literally everywhere. I'm all about trying everything at least once. And sometimes twice, just to be sure.

As we were walking in one of the markets, a tiny little Mexican woman came up to me with a basket of chapulines and just dropped some in my hand. After a moment of contemplation, I threw them back. They were really salty and kind of spicy. And soggy. I was expecting them to be crispy and crunchy. She wanted to sell me 5 scoops of chapulines for 20 pesos (about $0.20), but I wasn't about to buy a whole bag full. They weren't terrible, but they weren't very good either. Maybe they're better fresh out of the fryer.

[ps after reading that wikipedia article above, specifically the parts about the nematodes and lead content, I kind of wish I had eaten them in a restaurant instead of on the street. Ce le vie!]

[pps I left the pictures really big, so if you click on them, you will get a super-up-close view of the fried little critters - especially that top photo]

Back from Mexico

We are back home in Ames. We arrived last night, after a fairly lengthy flight for Kimberly [she was routed through Washington DC and Chicago because she used frequent flier miles to buy her ticket], and a mad dash through Chicago-O'Hare by me [I landed in the International terminal at 705, was able to get through the passport check and customs without any hassle (shocking in its own right), take a train to the opposite side of O-Hare, go through security again, and run down the domestic terminal to get on Kimberly's flight at 805 - I didn't have any checked bags, so that helped].

Miles is pretty damn happy to see Kimberly. He greeted us with a series of vomitting and hacking up of hairballs throughout the night.

We were also greeted by these cool sights:

In the ten days I was gone, some of the sunflowers in the front of the house have opened to reveal big heads

and some have gotten about 8 feet tall

In the back of the house, we apparently have an army of volunteer sunflowers from our birdfeeder seed. These have grown from 'unnoticeable' to 'sunflower' in the ten days I was gone.

And our front patio pepper plant is in full fruit production.

As we get settled over the next couple of days, we'll have updates on the mega garden (apparently, they've been harvesting radishes while we were away) and stories of Mexico, including lost Mayan cities (just like Indiana Jones!), the mega-lopolis that is Mexico City, and of course, the food (because, really, isn't this blog just an excuse to talk about food?).

Welcome back, us.

¡In Mexico!

Mexico City is kind of crazy. If you combined the chaos of Italy with the congestion of Hong Kong, you'd be somewhere close.

So far it's been great. We've eaten lots of street food, including tacos al pastor and quesidillas (not liek your mom used to make them).

Kimberly and I are heading to Oaxaca tomorrow, which is the cultural capitol of the country. Also, they make lots of mole and chocolate things. Needless to say, we're excited.

More to come in the future.

Triste...

Well, Friday was my last day at the Tec. And my last day with Gabriela. I'm pretty sad, because we became good friends during our 5 weeks of talking each day. We've exchanged email addresses and offers to come visit (as well as offers to help with our respective languages over email and Skype). And Friday, we discovered that we share a love of Italian food! She's incredibly jealous that I live with such a fantastic cook, and I'm supposed to mail her recipes for gnocchi and pizza dough when I get home.

Although I'm happy to see Mom and PEter and to get to travel and see new parts of Mexico, I'm very sad to be leaving the wonderful friends I've made here. My teacher, Suzie, is absolutely incredible and was wonderful to learn from (both Spanish as well as teaching ideas).

Being back in Queretaro has been a wonderful experience and I'm so sad that my 5 weeks are already over.

¡Miles!

Miles,


I've been hearing that you aren't treating PEter very well. I want you to know that even though I'm gone, you still need to behave appropriately. This means that you shouldn't be howling all night and morning. I know that you are especially scared of the lightning and thunder that's been going on in the Middle. But, remember that you are inside and that the weather won't get you. You shouldn't pee on PEter's stuff just because you're scared. Instead, try snuggling with him. I know he's fidgety, but I'm sure that he'll sit down long enough for you guys to snuggle.


And, if you don't shape up?

I met a very nice cat in Patzcuaro...

Happy Fourth!

And happy special day to a special someone.

-wifey

Ya, ya, I suck...

So, well, the posting hasn't been as frequent as I had either hoped nor promised. But, well, the connection here isn't super speedy and it gets a little tiresome to wait and wait and wait for pictures to load. But, I have been taking tons of photos (way too many, I have no idea how I'll ever reduce them) and so you'll get a stack of updates once I'm settled back in the Middle. It's either that or hoe PEter's garden. In the summer. In the Middle. Trust me, I'll find lots of posts to write!

But, the limited posting is going to get even less as Mom arrives on Saturday and we head off for our adventures together. And then Peter arrives the Friday after... so you can see that I'll be so busy showing my family around this beautiful country I probably won't make it into many internet cafes. Ah well, you'll survive I'm sure. For all those counting the days, I'm here for only 18 more days and then back to the sweaty, sticky Middle.

Peas, Beans, Peppers, and Squash Unite to Save My Summer

I have to say, when I first started the gigantic garden project with people from work, I thought there was no way we were getting anything from it. It would be a nice way to spend some time outdoors, but we were starting everything from seed, most of which we planted in the days just before the summer solstice. I was not optimistic.

My lack of optimism was also partially based on this:That is what is left of the garden plot that Kimberly and I started before she left for Mexico. If you remember, it was under some water as part of the Great Iowa Floods of 2008. It looks even more depressing in real life. Obviously, people in other parts of the State have had it much worse than we have, but it's still sad.

I did go down there and deconstruct the fence and posts, which have been moved to the new plot - the lack of fence actually makes it less depressing, as the fence ended up being in pretty rough shape.
But I should have held out hope, because this was still in the plot:

That right there is a pepper. Still growing. After it has been submerged under 8 feet of water for at least a week. And on top of that, we have a patch of chives growing as well (at some point I want to go down to the plot and remove them from the ground and grow them in containers, but I'm going to let them rest for a little while - they've had a stressful summer). (Also, notice the dry, cracking soil, and remember, this was submerged under 8 feet of water, and has been inundated with rain for weeks - yet, it's already dry enough to crack. That's some hearty Midwest soil)

So anyways, back to my new, giant garden plot. Things are happening. And fast. As I said, we planted just before the summer solstice, which was less than 2 weeks ago. Within a few days, we had sprouts: mostly radishes and lettuce, but that was fine. But now, we have these things:

That's four rows of peas and beans, with their accompanying homemade climbing lattices. Can't see them that well, well check these out:

Those are purple peas - their stems are actually purple, which probably won't last, but is ridiculously cool. (I should have mentioned this earlier, but I didn't think of it: Almost all of the seeds in this garden (but not the starts) are from this place in Decorah, Iowa called Seed Savers - they are a seed-swapping and preservation collaborative, working to save and pass on heirloom seeds. They're pretty awesome. The Retro Librarian knew about them and bought a bunch of stuff. Anyways, if you're looking for cool heirloom tomatoes in the future, keep them in mind)

Those are beans of some variety, also with climbing lattice.


Those are bush beans. Kimberly asked for lots of beans for pickling purposes; I provided.

Lastly, there are these:
Those are Provence Squash. We have over 50 mounds designated solely for various squash, including watermelon, eggplant, cucumber, winter squash, zucchini, and 100-lb pumpkins. And all of them are now sticking out of the ground, with many of them having started with their secondary growth leaves (which you can see on some of the leaves above).

So in all, the garden is working out well. It's still ridiculously huge, and needs to be weeded on a daily basis (which is terrible, terrible work), but all of us are now optimistic that we might actually get some produce to eat from all the work we've put into this thing.

You know you're old when...

the students hear things you can't. Let me explain. We had our last class yesterday and students were finishing up their presentations. J and I were leading a discussion about what they had learned from the assignment when a bunch of the students started cringing and holding their ears. I looked around puzzled and they started laughing. J asked, 'what's that sound?' and they laughed even more. I asked, 'what sound?' and they kept laughing while holding their ears.

Well, it turns out that I'm old. You see, people created this high pitched sound to deter loitering by teenagers outside of stores. Those pesky (but smart!) teenagers turned it into a ringtone. The catch is that adults can't hear this high pitched but kids can. So the kids are now using it to get calls during class. Smart! Well, it turns out that I am officially over the hill since I didn't have a clue what was going on. Eventually, as we're laughing and the students are joking about how old I must be, the student turned the sound down (lowered the tone) and eventually I was able to hear it.

The npr article will let you listen to the tone (assuming you can!).

Another day, another verb tense

Well, so the truth is, I haven't taken a Spanish class in 11 years, actually, since the last time I was in Mexico. This means that although I can get around well enough, I haven't the foggiest idea about any of the various tenses. If only I could only live in the present! As I'm in Intermediate 2, we've been spending a lot of time 'reviewing' various tenses* and learning new ones. In fact, since I've been here (3.5 weeks of classes) we have covered: presente, imperfecto, preterito, subjuntivo, pasado perfecto, futuro perfecto, futuro simple, imperativo, pluscuamperfecto, progresivo, y la voz pasiva. Today we added two new ones, condicional and imperfecto de subjuntivo. This adds up to a grand total of 13. Phew. I can't actually control all these tenses (control here meaning that I can use them on my own without prompting) but I can correctly use most of them on tests. It blows my mind that some of the students in my class are getting 60s on their tests... they took spanish just a month ago! How can they do so poorly? (and obviously the answer is that they are out until 3 am most nights while I'm an old lady and asleep by 11 but still...). Study abroad is wasted on the young.


*Note to grammar teachers: I'm not going to distinguish between tense and aspect here... but I do remember that's there's a difference!

What goes up, must come down

This weekend, we joined the college kids for a quick tour of Mexico City (aka DF) and surrounding areas. It was a whirlwind trip, not enough time to really do any of it jusitce, but that's just fine, because... Mom and Peter arrive shortly and we'll have a few days together to explore at a more reasonable pace. Plus, thanks to Oscar, our most fantastic guide, I now can explain a bunch of the things we'll see! Woo hoo!

So, what did we see in this quick tour, well, we started by leaving very early in the morning... mostly we slept on the way down...We first stopped at the Pyramids of Teotihuacan. These gigantic ruins are from 200bc to 600 ad or so and the largest, Pyramid of the Sun, is the second largest in the Americas. This was a highly advanced civilization with a system to bring in fresh water and remove sewage from the city. They installed drains throughout the area (something the Europeans didn't figure out for a long time!). These ruins have mostly been reconstructed (the stones are original but had been covered over the years with dirt, trees, etc. There are still large numbers of undiscovered temples... they expect that every hill in this area is actually a temple.

After hiking up and down the pyramids, we headed into DF itself. We went right downtown to the zocalo (this word means pedastal and the story goes that one of the rulers (current era) was planning on installing some large statue, but he was deposed and all he had finished was te pedastal. Over time, people began to call the plaza 'zocalo' and now you can find zocalos all over mexico, they're always the main plaza). Anyway, we were dropped off in the most enormous plaza and walked over to Palacio National. No pictures for you as we rushed though it (and without flash, they never turn out) although go to this link to see someone else's great photo. However, the murals by Diego Rivera are amazing and recount the history of Mexico.

We also went into the cathedral, a fantastic example of the mix of indigenias and catholic faiths (plus crazy recoccoo art). Then we headed to Templo Mayor. This Aztec ruin was discovered in 1978, right below the streets in DF. They were doing electrical work, and someone hit a rock that turned out to be pre-hispanic. The ended up tearing down some buildings to uncover the ruins (although there is clearly much more as the Spanish built right on top of the Aztec city, however, these are also beautiful historical buildings, and as Oscar put it, 'we're a mix of the two cultures and we need to find a way to preserve both'). The Templo Mayor is celebrating its 30 aniversary (hmmm... just like someone else I know!) and there are great new signs and other information.

We then popped in to the Palacio de Bellas Artes home of more beautiful murals, but weren't allowed to go upstairs as we were running out of time. Peter and Mom will have to tolerate my oohing and ahhing in a few weeks. This beautiful palace is art neuvo on the outside and art deco on the inside and weighs so much that the entire building is sinking. This is a huge problem in DF. The city is built on infill (it was originally a lake) and as the residents continue to use a lot of water, the water table is sinking and the buildings are too. Interestingly, the ruins are rising, so the Aztecs are reclaiming the city!

Finally, after all of this, we arrived at the hotel. A fancy 5 star hotel in fact. It was so great that we didn't really want to leave.


After a bite to eat, we ended up having a little slumber party in our room (a six pack of beer and chips and a movie... yes, I know we were in Mexico City, but it was so great to relax on these comfy beds...)

On Sunday, we went to Xochimilco and took a leisurely boat ride down the floating gardens.

We listened to mariachis

and marimba bands and watched the world go by.

Then we headed to Chapultepec Park and the Museo Nacionale de Antropologia. Here we were very lucky. Our guide, Oscar used to work here and knew the musuem inside and out. We toured several of the civilizations displayed in the museum (there were many more than just the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas that we learned about in Social Studies in 7th grade!).

More pictures to come on Flickr... but the computer connection today is particularly bad. Hopefully I'll get them up tomorrow.