It's easy to like living in Oaxaca. It's a city of manageable size, we have enough income to send our kids to nice private schools, and a nice house in a very central location. I think we've more or less settled into a rhythm of life here that is pleasant, unless interrupted by illnesses. We've all been sick, on and off, for the last month. I guess Joji going to a day care center for the first time and the change of weather with big temperature swings every day, and simply being in a different environment with different germs, are all to blame. I'm hoping we can all keep well so we can leave for trips for the coming holiday season.
It got cold in October which seemed to surprise the locals, and since then we've had cool mornings requiring light jackets and sweaters, and short-sleeve weather during the day. When the sun is shining it can be downright hot. But it's dark by 5:30 and gets cool pretty quickly. I misjudged the weather and left almost all of my fall clothes at home, so I'm missing my comfortable long-sleeve shirts and turtlenecks.
One particular challenge has been temperature control for Joji's bedroom, which is on the second floor of a separate building in the back of the house. Because of its location and the room has a window only on one side, it heats up during the day and cools down drastically in the early morning hours. This became a problem for Joji because he still doesn't use a blanket and it would be too warm for him to put on a blanket sleeper when he goes to bed at 7:30, but too cold in the morning to just be wearing light pajamas. So we had to buy a space heater with a thermostat. When we put him to bed, we often use a fan to try to cool down his room enough for him to wear a blanket sleeper to bed. Mai's room is right next to him facing the same conditions, but she uses blankets so it's not a problem for her.
We had many complaints about this house such as the quality of furniture (only shelves for furniture and some chairs are falling apart from regular use), the aforementioned temperature control issue, and the ancient tile floors that are impossible to keep clean. But the biggest problem by far has been loss of water. This has happened 3 times since we lived here, and it's a big pain. Here the water supply is unreliable, so people have tanks on the tops of roofs to keep water when it comes in. Once you train your ear, you hear the water dropping into the tanks, often at night and weekends. Apparently the water filters in our tanks were so gumed up that the water supplies were not getting through, so two weeks ago Monday, on the day our cleaning lady comes, we had no water. She did the dishes with water salvaged from the tanks (yuck) and likewise economized on mopping. This happened after Dan told the landlady that the water filter was causing our tank level to fall low and she refused to believe it. Later she reimbursed us for the filter cost, but really it's the inconvenience for which we should be compensated, but of course that would never happen.
The periodic water problems have sensitized us to the limited water supply. So we've started doing things like saving the water from the rinse cycle of the washing machine, which we run very frequently these days since Joji is learning to go to the toilet. We can use that water to flush toilets and clean the floors between the cleaning lady visits. This is possible because of the jerry-rigged nature of plumbing here, where the water from the washer drains into a sink so all we have to do to save the water is to stick the end of the draining hose into a bucket. It wouldn't be possible in the U.S. where the washing machine water just drains away where you don't have access.
The cooking stove in the house is propane gas, and we have to buy tanks of it from trucks playing obnoxious announcements, passing on the streets every day. There are two tanks, so when one becomes empty we have time to get a new one while we're using the other one. One tank lasts about a month and we pay about $20 U.S. I like this stove it because the gas heat is powerful and great for cooking. Water boils very fast! It reminds me of the cooking conditions of Spain (also gas, but not propane from tanks), and wish I had bought these ubiquitous "planchas", basically thick steel griddles great for cooking fish, vegetables and meats doused with olive oil. I haven't seen these things here so I've been cooking on an old teflon frying pan that came with the house. Not great. We do have a "comal", a Mexican cooking instrument on which you heat up tortillas and make quesadillas and tacos. I need to post specifically on food, because we eat so well here.
I think Dan wrote before about the garbage truck routine 3 mornings a week. I used to think this was a big pain in the neck until I realized that the service is free. In Tallahassee we paid something like $16 a month for weekly garbage service. Here they manage to somehow fund it with taxes, which Dan tells me is 15% value added tax on everything but food. I've gotten used to the routine of craining my neck out of the front door to scope out what the neighbors are doing. Many of our neighbors are older, retired folks who vigilantly track the garbage trucks, and they know what's happening better than we do, because we're usually trying to do about 3 things at a time. For some reason the garbage men are always very nice and friendly. They have separate containers for glass, plastic and metal recycling, but not paper. I feel we generate a huge amount of garbage every week, and regret that we can't compost here.
The photo on the left above is of our front door. From the street it's just a wall with a window and a door. The street in front is cobblestone with a narrow side walk. I often block the pedestrian traffic as I park the stroller in front of the door while I open the door. The other photo is of Joji when we had just arrived. The house is narrow and deep, and has an outside corridor open to the sky running through one side of the house, so the rooms can have windows on that side. The corridor further back becomes a patio which we use mostly to hang our laundry.
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