Wednesday, August 13, 2008(Click on any photo to enlarge it.)
I wasn't sure where I was going when I got up this morning, but I hoped it would be to some Spanish-speaking country! I was off on another adventure by myself - enjoying the last few days of summer vacation. After my dad dropped me off at the MetroLink terminal in Claremont, I rode the train to Los Angeles Union Station, then boarded a FlyAway bus to LAX airport, then hoped to board United Flight 817 to Mexico City at 12:59 P.M. Since I was flying "standby", and the flight was oversold already, I had prepared myself mentally to be willing to board any direct flight that United had to Latin America, whether it was to Cancún, Guatemala City, or Buenos Aires! If those didn't work out, I had even considered Tokyo!
Luckily my name was called and I flew to Mexico City. Once there, I looked for an airline flying to Oaxaca and I was able to purchase a ticket for the next flight leaving at 9 P.M. (I didn't know at the time that it was the last flight into Oaxaca on ANY airline that night!) When I landed, I bought passage on a "colectivo" van (only $7.80 compared to $30 in a taxi) that would take me to my friend's house. As it turned out, I was the last passenger on, and it was the last van out of the airport that night - of course, I was the last passenger dropped off, so my friend was quite worried when I didn't show up till very late.
My friend, Cecilia Eslama; whom I met in Grants Pass a couple years ago
, lives with her teenage son, Juan, and daughter, Edith, in an apartment across from the cemetery in a colony called "Exmarquesados". It's a very small apartment, maybe about 250 square feet, with only one bed - a twin - and I was wondering how we would work out the accommodations! As it turns out, Edith is away on a business trip, so that helps. There is no actual bedroom, just a 1/2 wall divider between the bed area and the dining room. So I sleep in the bed, Cecilia sleeps on a mattress on the floor beside the bed, and Juan sleeps on a mattress on the dining room floor - just in case you were wondering! (They haven't mentioned my snoring yet, but I won't be surprised when they do! ha ha)
I've noticed that the home has no cabinets anywhere - stuff is just stored under counters and on a set of concrete s
helves in the sleeping area. Also, the water and/or pump gets shut off A LOT so we just fill the toilet with water from a bucket to flush it. And we never put used toilet paper in the toilet bowl - it gets folded and put in a wastebasket. And we don't run the shower to bathe because only Edith knows how to light the 3-gallon water heater outside and she's not here, so we heat a pot of water on the 2-burner gas hotplate in the tiny kitchen, add it to some cold water in a bucket in the less-than-standard-size bathroom, and bathe out of it. I am happy to report that I can bathe (including washing my hair) with less than 2 1/2 gallons of water, and can brush my teeth with less than 1/4 cup of purified water out of the 5-gallon bottle on the kitchen floor!
Cecilia mentioned that, if
I need to, we can wash clothes upstairs in the "lavandero" then, after me nodding a few times, asked me if I knew what a "lavandero" was. I suggested that maybe it was a laundry room with automatic washers and dryers? She showed me the rooftop "lavandero" which is a series of 6 clothes washing facilities (there are 6 apartments in this complex). By this I mean 6 concrete sinks with ridges in them, and each one has a single faucet and some rope strung up. And the view of the city and surrounding hills is awesome. So if I don't want all the neighbors viewing my "tidy whities" I think I'll check out the neighborhood for a real laundromat!!!
