Felíz Cumpleaños

Wednesday, 09 Nov. Happy birthday to Carmen! Ania and Frank invited us for a birthday dinner. Ania made a vegetarian borscht-type soup with fresh beets, which was delicious. Next we had some specially made three-sided filled tortillas, stuffed with mashed black beans cooked with avocado leaves and then browned lightly. These triangulos are made by a family in Coscomatepec, and are one of Frank & Ania's rare and special treats that they wanted to share with us. They are thin and you add other goodies (thick cream, shredded meat, cheese, avocado, etc) on top al gusto. Really good. For dessert she had made a banana cake (with their own fruit), chocolate, and coconut with a dash of cinnamon, which was magnificent. Carmen made a wish and got the candle blown out while other hands were protecting the candle flame from the light breeze. We ate outside on the front patio, with Merle Haggard playing in the background-- Carmen's chosen music from Frank's CD collection. One of the palms out in the lawn had a huge flower or seed pod almost two feet long.

This is only the second time that someone made a special birthday dinner for Carmen, since she was a child, so this was extra special. Must say that Dan has done some birthday cakes in the past though. What a perfect day!

And Carmen's perfect birthday breakfast that started the day? It was a chocolate frosted vanilla cupcake, pineapple tart, bread pudding, all shared with Dan. On the side was fresh banana and mandarin. Plus a bit of yogurt for health. Wish you could have been here. We are fine, just exhausted from being on the go too much. Looking at houses, walking, just enjoying life. And what have we accomplished since then? Read on...

Friday, 11 Nov. Frank picked us up to help him move a bed frame and mattress to a downstairs room in their house. Ania's mother would be arriving soon for visit of a several months, and their den/office will be her bedroom during that time. This 83 year woman from Poland speaks at least Polish, German, English and Spanish. We look forward to meeting her. Then Frank drove us in his pickup back into Fortín with his extension ladder, so he and Dan could inspect the upper regions of two of the places we are looking at as a possible house purchase. They climbed on top of and around on roofs looking at the condition of the tiles and materials. One is in good shape--the other (which we call the blue house) is in need of eventual surface repair, but not critical except near the tinaco (a roof-top water storage tank which gives pressure for the house water). This tinaco might have a leak. At least there was a puddle under it and it had almost no water in it. Missing roof tiles and water system faults will give us some bargaining power, as we will probably make an offer on this house.

Saturday, 12 Nov - been here one month. We took a bus east into the city of Córdoba, the nearby city of about 200,000. We were able to walk around many, many, many blocks and not get lost. All thanks to the fact that Dan had printed maps from Google for most of the places we want to go, and unlike Carmen, he almost always knows where he is on those maps. We stopped by the oficina de turismo, which is in city hall across the street from the central plaza. The fellows in the office were very helpful in telling us on which of the one way streets to catch the bus back and where some stores were that we were looking for. We were there mainly to look for furniture for the house we do not have yet. We are quite disappointed in the selection of living room furniture, which seems to all be puffy and overstuffed. We have found that many of the businesses, for which addresses we have copied from a year old yellow pages, are no longer at those locations. This trip into the city is just to see what is available, at what price. Lots of street work going on there. Last year when visiting, we were unable to find a bus to return to Frank & Ania's B&B, where we were staying, and had to take a taxi.

Shoe stores. There were so very many blocks of nearly all shoe stores. A few eateries amongst them. You just can not imagine what it is like to keep walking and walking past shoe stores. How can there be so many people needing shoes? This is a Saturday. There were thousands of people crowding the retail stores of all kinds. They were buying too. We ducked into a Sears store and it seemed to be wall-to-wall shoppers. Does Christmas shopping come early here? Never have we seen shopper crowds like that in the US.

Tuesday, 15 Nov. Wandering about one day, Dan has finally found some tuna (fruit from a prickly pear or nopal cactus). He saw some the first day we were in town and when we went back to the store a day later, they were gone, never to be found anyplace til two days ago, in a tiny stall in front of a house on an otherwise residential street. Tastes a bit like a honey dew melon. Even tho' ostensibly de-spined, one must be very careful not to pick up an irritating near-invisible prickly mini-spine that might have been missed on the outer skin of the fruit. Despite taking care, however, this morn, Carmen took a tiny spine from Dan's finger with the tweezers. He still has one more tuna fruit to eat. They are full of tiny seeds, so Carmen does not indulge.

Yesterday, Dan crafted a long email to the realtor for the blue house, with a purchase proposal. We sent it on to Frank & Ania for a quick look over, and their reply this morning said all looked good. We sent it off at breakfast time.

Today we bused to Peñuela, which is a small town SE of Córdoba on the way to Veracruz City on the coast. Peñuela is much smaller than Fortín, but easily accessible as one of the Córdoba Metro bus lines shuttles between the two outlying towns with the city in between. Frank suggested we go there since we were not happy with any of the furniture we were finding. Many craftsmen here are hand building furniture and in styles that we like! Yippee!. Bedroom, living room and dining room furniture, all made of real wood and not just composite materials and stuffing. They do deliver for free to Fortín and it takes all the shops about three weeks to build what we could custom order.

We took time to walk the extra two blocks to the Parque Central, which is dominated by a huge very modern and dramatically styled church. We always visit central plazas if we can find them. Dan is still waiting for a bird to drop a plop on Carmen's head, since this happened to him while sitting on a park bench last year. There is but one main street thru town here, so we had an easy time finding where the buses stop. We maybe waited five minutes for the bus to Córdoba. Since we had made such good time with our investigations in Peñuela, we decided to stop in the city once again, where we wanted to look for a store stocked with some queen-size mattresses, which we are finding very hard to find as doubles (matrimonial) and kings are more the norm. No luck for the plain foam (without springs), two-face reversible design that we prefer. We have not been able to find one easily in the US either. Our present one needs replaced, presuming that we undertake to bring down the unique six-drawered storage bed that John Janda made for us..


Ania has loaned us a stack of Spanish learning books. Bet they would help Carmen if she would but read them. Dan has found the verb book very useful. Carmen has found more people who speak English, and a lot more of them who won't admit to it. As we know from personal and daily experience here, it is hard to have the fortitude to even make the attempt, knowing that one might be mangling the grammar or pronunciation, and hence, imagined ridicule. Today a bus driver, one day a store clerk, braved the situation and started simple converse in English. The bus driver had lived in Oregon with an ex-wife from Seattle! Small world!

The bus we took from the city center to Walmart is the one that had the English speaking driver. We were the only ones on the bus and he happily chatted to us. Before going into the Walmart, we crossed the busy street to visit a moving van company. Nope, they do not ship down from the northern border--just the Mexico City to Veracruz City corridor. Back to Walmart. And what was the sound in this store today? Why it was Elvis singing Blue Christmas. We discovered this time, that this store does indeed have a small frozen section. With ice cream! What a time we had selecting the flavor for today. The sun was a sweltering low 80s, but the ice cream was still semi frozen by the time we got it home. We also bought some lamb steaks for $4 US a pound. We can testify that they are delicious along with fried potatoes smothered in lime juice and fresh broccoli. We again waited for a bus less than five minutes. They are so very frequent, no matter where you are headed for. One slight problem as we got into Fortn. The stop before we expected to get off was long. We kept considering getting off the bus and walking the one extra block across the park. Finally as we had decided to do so, the bus rolled out from the curb, and would you believe it - it turned the corner away from where we expected it to go. We had an extra block to walk. All buses marked Fortin obviously do not have the same route thru town. This one was going on to Orizaba, the large city which is west of Fortín. Upon arriving home, we discovered that the container of ice cream would not fit in our tiny freezer, so we bagged it in a ziploc and ate all that was melted. Had to then wait awhile before we were hungry for our second meal of the day. While waiting, Carmen did a siesta, then read. Now Dan is indulging in those leisurely pursuits.

The news is that tomorrow the realtors for the blue house owners want a meeting with us at their office. Wonder why? We rescheduled it for right in Fortin, as trying to find addresses in the city, on schedule, is still problematical for us.