This morning, I awoke to a very heavy sky. It’s now almost 1PM and, sure enough, it’s pouring rain!

The surprise of the day was garbage pickup, which I was told was Tuesdays and Thursdays. I had a hard time understanding the garbage man, who seemed bewildered by me, so I’m not sure if today’s pickup was exceptional or not. I had a bag ready and the other tenant’s bags were by the gate, so I was at least able to get some of the trash out.

I finished off a work assignment, then went for a long walk around Isla. I stopped in at the Super Deli for an onion and some limes for tonight’s dinner and decided to get another container of panela cheese. The total for everything was 28 pesos. I can afford to eat cheese here!!!

The walk along the malecon this morning was lovely, but the beach part not so much. I hope the vendors start to recognize locals…

This was my first time walking at higher tide and I couldn’t believe how different the beach looked!

I came home and minutes later, Dale stopped in and asked me if I wanted to join her on a walk to the Super Deli! I had nothing better to do, so why not?

There, she asked me to find her some whole milk, so I spent some time squinting at labels (the print on food labels is TINY in MX!). I discovered that for a lot of the milk here, they remove the animal fat and add back some sort of vegetable fat. HUH? I found a bottle that said ‘entera’, which I took to mean as whole, and, sure enough, in super tiny print I found some English that said that I was holding a bottle of whole homogenized milk. Dale was grateful for my translation help. 🙂

On the way back, I showed her where the chicken lady sets up her stand and then headed across the street to the peanut guy, my target yesterday until I got sidetracked the smell of chicken. 10 pesos got me a whole big bag of small roasted peanuts in their shell.

We kept walking and eventually passed one of the vegetable men! I stopped and had a look at the wares, picking up a few potatoes, a carrot, a garlic, and a chayote for about 18 pesos. I had never heard of chayote before, but he said ‘es como un zucchini’, so I decided to give it a shot since I started eating zucchini this past summer. I described to him where I live (doing a very good job of it!) and asked when he passes in my area. He said that he is at the corner of my street between 9:30 and 10:00 every day and to listen for his chime.

The problem is that all the services have a chime and I’m starting to tune them out… 🙂

I’m starting to run out of bandwidth, so I have to be a bit more careful with my time online for the next little bit. I don’t want to go pay for a drink to pay for public wifi unless it’s for work purposes and work is not incoming for this week. 🙁 I am feeling very panicky about that and finding it hard to occupy myself because I’m so worried. So if I disappear a bit, I’m just walking around Isla trying to stay busy by soaking up the local culture.