There never ceases to be a dull moment in Mexico. Even a day off can turn into a random, strange series of events that you think, this could ONLY happen in Mexico (or any other 3rd world country)!
Sunday night I came home to realize I had forgotten to get the gas truck to come put gas in our tank. Here most houses have stationary gas tanks on their roofs. So every month we have to buy gas from a truck that drives up and down all the streets, selling gas. It comes all throughout the day (there are several brands and trucks), honking its horn, and the man driving yells "gas! gas!" You flag them down, and they put up a huge latter, climb up on top of your flat cement roof, and fill up the tank with a huge hose they have connected to the gas tank on their truck. I usually do this every month, but many times you can totally estimate how much gas you will use, due to how much you cook, bake, use the dryer, take hot showers, etc. So I forgot to get gas put in on Saturday and by Sunday evening, there was no gas. So I awoke on my day off on Monday to get more gas. By 10 am the gas man had come and filled the tank for another month.
At 10:10 am, one of the water spockets out back, connected to the hot water boiler totally busted. It had been dripping a lot since I moved in, and it just began to let water run out in a steady stream. I called our trustworthy plumber/fix-it man, Martin, and he came and fixed the spocket but then all our water stopped working. For whatever reason, there was suddenly no water pressure. He climbed on top of the roof where our water comes in every morning, into a big holding tank, called a tinaco. There, he checked to see if it was blocked or clogged. There was no cloggage in the pipes there, and so today he came back to see if there was a cloggage in the main pipe that carries the water from the holding tank to our pipes. This "main pipe" is only about 3/4 of an inche in diameter, so it would be easy for there to be a cloggage. Again, there was no cloggage, so we are still without water and we don´t know why!
At the same time he was here, he also fixed the electrical wiring where our microwave plugs in. Yet, our microwave still makes the lights turn off and still makes the switch flip about every five times we use it. He says the wires in the walls were done wrong and to fix that means tearing out the walls! I said, I can deal with flipping the switch when I cook, since I am not the owner of the house and don´t feel like investing that much money and time in fixing the problem.
So it has been an eventful time here in Mexico, dealing with the way houses are wired and how plumbing is done, many times in a make-shift way, that causes problems like these!
This morning when the plumber returned to continue to search for the water blockage problem, he found my bike helmet and bike lock totally melted and burnt to the top of our hot water heater. I usually have them hanging off the side of the hot water heater, which is out back in the porch area. However, they must have fallen off where they hang and onto the top of the heater, the part that heats up. Our house still smells like burnt plastic. We´re lucky it just burnt there and melted and didn´t start a fire! As I know, the fire truck here consists of a pick-up truck that comes with a shovel to beat out fires, so had we had a real fire, we might have been in big trouble.
Yesterday my housemate Claire had the day off of school, and we got to go to the tianguis (outdoor market). We had a lot of fun and got some veggies, a dust colector, two freshly made smoothies, and a sandwich and probably paid less than $10 for everything. Another blessing of Mexico.
It´s been beautiful here, in the low 80´s and upper 70´s but with chilly nights in the upper 40s and low 50s. I love this time of the year, because it gets hot again and its so nice to enjoy the time outside. It is getting dark later at night and light later in the morning as well. It would be like June back home in Pennsylvania. I love this time of the year!
The gardener is here and has just finished mowing and weed-wacking our long out of control grass, and the plumber is telling me that he needs to go buy a new faucet. I have a lot more work to get done today as well, and so I´m signing off for now!
One thing for sure, life is never boring in Mexico!
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