Saturday, November 05, 2005

An Interview

An Interview
Yesterday we walked uptown and then hopped the bus to San Carlos, a tourist oriented town about 22 kms. from Guaymas. We wandered around the town and one of the two marinas. There are two different marinas there. While we were walking around looking at all the boats, we heard someone calling out to us. We looked around and were greeted by some very friendly, smiling young people with a video camera. Apparently they were doing a project for one of their classes, university..we assumed, and had to go out and interview tourists (in english). They were laughing and slightly embarassed about some of the questions that they were supposed to ask.... age, etc.. We had a laughing good time with them. They wanted to know about our night life...nonexistent, and our restaurant habits, etc.. We told them that we were just old, and boring and they laughed. Interview completed we went our separate ways, so we thought, a short time later we heard them calling us again. They had forgotten to take a group photo, so we all scrunched together, did the photo and they went on they way to capture some more subjects. An interesting few minutes, I wish my spanish was as good as their english.
After stopping for an ice cold coke, we hopped back on the bus and returned to Guaymas. Before we returned home we stopped at a different grocery store and found my peanut butter, we bought 2 jars this time just in case. They seem to stock a lot of the states name brands and some things, such as kleenex are pricey for here.
Our landlord has had a fellow doing some stone work beside our apt. the last couple of days. The first day he dug out a trench beside the house wall, about 6 feet long and 2 feet deep. End of day one. Day Two, he started taking rocks from the piles beside the street. He would hammer them to the right shape,size and then add them to the wall where he decided they should go. The landlady came out and there was an altercation about the placing of the wall....too long apparently. He continued on. Day Three... kept on building, shaping rock and adding concrete as needed. Now, at home we would just call in a backhoe, dig the trench, call the brick man and concrete truck and voila finished. Here, it proceeded like this. He dug the trench with a spade and pick axe, mixed the concrete in his wheelbarrow with the spade, shaped the stones with his hammer and worked in the 34 degree Celcius heat all day long. End of Day Three...finished, jumped on his bike with a bag of aluminum cans tied behind the seat and took off for town. Returned later with a coke and went to landlord to get paid.
Roy has gone to visit the bakery, our weak spot here, we are trying hard to sample all the different type of baking; but they keep changing what they bake each day. So it is a never ending thing. Tough life, eh.
Weather remains great, highs of 34 C. and lows of 22 C.

2 comments:

Billie Mercer said...

Brenda, Construction here in Mexico is an amazing process. We still get excited when we see a small electric cement mixer. Until just recently they cut tile with a clipper thing. Now they are using a electric saw. How they got the long heavy beams for our tejado up to the third floor is another amazing story of ingenuity and strength.

I know what you mean about the bakery. There is one around the corner from us and sometimes in the morning we get pan dulces. The bakery lady is always getting Ned to try the "new" one. Good marketing plan. LOL!
Billie

Anonymous said...

Hi Brenda,

Tough life indeed. Our nextdoor neighbor just got a load of piedra - $75.00 a truck load delivered. We used tons and tons having our 9' retaining wall built - amazing the process of hammering watermellon sized and larger bolders to fit a puzzle that seems to be only in the maestro's head. A process as old as Mexico itself - amazing to watch.