August 12th through the 16th
August 12th
(Rebecca)
Today was the first day that we didn’t feel obliged to take care of any particular tasks during the day (i.e. grocery procuring, apartment searching, Instituto investigating, etc, etc..). In other words, we had a play day. It was a lot of fun. First we went to a small store where they sell the hand-blown glass that is ubiquitous in this town. I was full of questions. When I see glass work, I MUST know how it is made. Of course, my Spanish isn’t up to par enough to ask such questions, even if the people working there knew the answers to them. However, we found out that a tour of the glass shop where they are produced is available by appointment. We made arrangements to go there on Monday morning.
Then we went to our favorite cafe and ate lunch. I had my new favorite dish, Sopa de Azteca. It is so amazing… a light tomato and chile broth filled with avocado, tortilla chips and some grated cheese on top. Yum. I’m going to miss it so much when we come back to the states. Funny aside about Mexican food– it all seems to be the same ingredients, just rearranged into different dishes. For example, we could go out to eat and I could order enchiladas and Jon might get quesadillas and Allie might get burritos and we all end up eating a flour tortilla, refried beans, tomato salsa and guacamole. Oh and mucho queso. Mexicans LOVE their dairy products.
So, after lunch we went to La Parroquia (the big pink church). We have passed it every day since we have been here, but this is the first time we ever went inside. It’s pretty incredible. The interior consists of a lot of fancy masonry and huge murals and paintings illustrating the life of Jesus. The most striking thing about the place, though, is the number of icons inside. These little lifelike statues (polychrome) are in every alcove and corner in the building. There must be two dozen of them that we saw. Some wear actual cloth garments and candles and flowers are set in front of them as offerings. It is pretty surreal. The strangest thing, though, was a semi-minature Jesus, post crucifixion, in an ornate glass coffin. I was slack-jawed in front of this crazy thing for like 5 minutes. I really wanted to take a bunch of photos, but Jon suggested that it might be a bit disrespectful. I realized on the way out that if there is anything the Mexicans love more than sour cream, it’s Jesus Christ.
Aug 13
(Jon)
Burritos for lunch, shopping for the rest of the day… We went to a crafts fair at the Instituto which offered a wide range of goods, from sword-canes to folk painting. Needless to say, we made out like banditos. For dinner, we went to a little place on the square and had a strange little dinner. Suffering from something of a “NO MORE FLATBREAD AND BEANS, GOD, PLEASE” meltdown, Rebecca and Allie had some mediocre pasta and I had a mediocre burger. However, the burger did come with a little saucer of ketchup. Which was a strange touch, albeit it almost classy in a strange way. The three-piece mariachi band more than made up for the cheap, kind of crappy meal that we had. Our reward was to come home to more margaritas made from our new favorite tequila (and a great name for a pet) Don Julio Blanco. They were deeeelicious.
August 14.
(Jon)
A real nothing day. We took that day off, feeling an overall sense of accomplishment from having found an apartment for Allie and taken care of our souvenir shopping. We lounged around all day, reading and watching TV. We resolved to have much better dinner than we had the night before and went to a snappy place named Azafran. Their menus had steel covers, if that gives you hint of how neat it was. Allie’s dinner came with rice which was stacked in a cone in the middle of her plate. We made a couple “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” jokes. But dinner was excellent. I mean, really excellent.
August 15.
(Jon)
Today, we made what turned out to be an entirely fruitless attempt to find the local glassblowing facility. At the retail shop, they gave us a printed flier that had a map depicting the shop’s location and the approximate location of the factory. When I say approximate, I mean that the map kind of stops and, a few inches away, is the star marking the factory’s location, as if to say, “It’s over here somewhere, we think. We ran out of map so you’ll have to figure it out from there.”
“Oh? Well, fuck you,” we said after we walked for about a mile and a half and wandered through the only seedy neighborhood in San Miguel, past a little river filled with trash, streets that were running out of pavement, old and young men alike, drinking large beers before noon, kids with no shoes, a couple carwash/chop-shops, and more than a few disintegrating structures. Not wanting to give up the search, but compelled by our natural survival instincts, we did an about face, considering that we were making it pretty obvious that us gringos were quite lost. Anyone with half a brain would have noticed that we were walking in circles. So, yeah, it was definitely time to leave. After walking for a block or two, we hailed a cab and made our way out to the Gigante. It’s a sort of shopping mall/Target/Walmart/Superfresh. A place to buy, liquor, chicken, and underpants. So many underpants! They were unwrapped, too. I’m not sure that I’d want to own a pair of previously fondled undergarments. Ew. There was a small CD store in the facility with some very accommodating staff and wide selection of both native and imported music.
So, a little overwhelmed, and a little nonplussed by the Gigante, we got another taxi back to the center of town. On our way home, we stopped at a place that makes the Eyes Gallery on South Street look boring and agoraphobic and Rebecca and I bought ourselves a pair of fantastic masks. I hope they don’t break in our luggage.
We also passed the glass retail shop. Rebecca stopped in to give the lady a piece of her mind. The woman insisted that it was easy and obvious to find the factory. She pointed at the star on the map saying, “It’s right here!” as though the complete lack of any specific detail to its location on the map was easily overlooked. A customer in the store disagreed with the sales woman, confessing to Rebecca that, even though she’s lived here for three years, she still hasn’t actually found the place. Feeling vindicated, we went home, not before making one last, and ultimately crucial, stop at the convenience store. At that store, we had noticed such tempting treats like Bigotes and SuaviCremes (which are just like those vanilla wafer things). But this time, we hit the jackpot. And the jackpot was ¡Sponch! Dithering with the excitement of discovering what joy ¡Sponch! might have in store for us (noticing that the contents were squishy in the package) we rushed up the hill and readied ourselves for ¡Sponch!
We decided to photograph the ¡Sponchventure! (see below) Ripping open the package instantly filled the room with a thick, oppressive, saccharine, strawberry, musk. Although, in retrospect, our first clue to avoid this product should have been its name, the foul, stale, sweet odor should have also deterred us. But, much to the regret of our taste buds, we ¡Sponched! onward. We each removed a ¡Sponch! from the package and examined it. It seemed to be some sort of marshmallowy coconut-flecked substance topping some sort of insulation-esque biscuit that bore it’s namesake stamped on it’s underside. “¡Sponch!” the increasingly less appetizing snacks gloated to us. “Oh, Sweet Fancy Moses,” we replied and took the shameful, irrevocable leap into ¡Sponchland!
Not good. Really not good. It was possibly the most revolting substance I’ve ever ingested that had disguised itself has a tasty treat. I mean, I’ve had pork rinds and I’d chose them over ¡Sponch! any day. We’ve decided that sponch is spanish for “obviously not for human consumption.” Either that or “spongy chicas.” At any rate, I think the pictures tell the sad, tragic ¡Sponch! tale far better than I could describe it.
For dinner, we decided that we REALLY needed a reward after subjecting ourselves to the ¡horror! We went to a place called Casa de Sierra Nevada which turned out to be almost overwhelmingly fancy. Even being the only people in the restaurant, we kept our voices down. As a complimentary appetizer (or as a “lets see if these fucking gringos will eat this” prank by the staff) the waiter foisted on each of us, a small, fried taquito filled with the single substance that we’ve been desperately avoiding since we got here. HUITLACOCHE! Those of you who’ve visited the “Steve, Don’t Eat It!” website, all already aware of this mutant non-food. For those of you who aren’t, huitlacoche is, literally, diseased corn fungus. It really doesn’t bare any more description beyond that.
But, we felt compelled to eat it. The restaurant was so nice that we feared that refusing this complimentary dish would result in either the staff beating us to death (with either the sticks or the taquitos, themselves) or mocking us behind our backs. Neither of those were acceptable and I felt like I was already pushing my luck by not wearing at tie. So, emboldened with our previous ¡Sponch! encounter and operating under the logic that anything deep fried is probably at least palatable, we took the huitlacoche plunge. It wasn’t bad, but I don’t think any of us would or could ever eat it again in another context, simply knowing what it is. At any rate, dinner was only uphill from there. Dessert was an amaretto ice cream in a almond crust dish, which Rebecca and Allie shared, and a small glass of scotch for me. Upon arriving home, we put a ¡Sponch! in the microwave and giggled for about a half an hour.
August 16
(Rebecca)
Today, we made another stab at finding the glass factory. Instead of wandering around in a slum, we decided to take a taxi. It was definitely very far away, however the nice thing about Mexican taxis is that they charge you about $2.50 usd to go almost anywhere. The glass shop is actually a huge facility. There is also a forge where decorative metal pieces are made and a candle making shop on the premises. We only toured the glass shop, though. First we saw a man washing cullet (recycled glass) to be used in the furnace. Turns out the glass they use is old coke and beer bottles. Its tough stuff to work with, but it’s much less fragile than other kinds of glass. In other words, it is made for production work. After that we got to go into the shop It was comprised of a huge warehouse type room in which one half was a hot shop and the other half was devoted to cold working and quality control activities. The hot shop was unreal. There must have been fifty people running around with a very chaotic kind of precision. I was told that they are divided into teams of eight people and each team is supposed to make 400 units in an eight hour day. That’s really fast! The furnaces where they keep the glass were giant–i would guess about 35 feet long. One team member would gather and blow a bubble into the glass, then he would marver and blow at the same time on a teeny tiny little marverer. He would then hand the glass off to another team member to gather more glass or shape the bubble. No part of the process ever required more than one person, that way the minute someone is done with their job they can start it again on a new piece. No one ever looked idle. It was very assembly-line-like. All of this is very different from the kind of glassblowing that I learned, but it is incredibly interesting to see how other people do it. I could have stood there watching them all day.
(Jon)
Anyway, this will be our last post. We’re coming home tomorrow and, as much as we’ve enjoyed Mexico, we’ve all become a little homesick. I think our flight gets into Philly sometime around 9pm. Feel free to give us a ring. Rebecca and I will only have one full day at home, Thursday, before we go camping with her family on Friday. No rest for the weary, I suppose. Our cats are going to be really pissed at us, I’m sure. Our Thursday, I imagine, will be consumed entirely by doing our laundry and cleaning up the cat’s revenge-vomit (those bastards).
We’re all packed, aside from the things that we need for tomorrow. We managed, to my surprise, to cram all of our souvenirs into the luggage we brought. I just hope that it all survives the journey. If not, that’s what superglue is for, I suppose.
See you folks soon.