December-Early January

I haven’t felt like writing in a long time, although almost every day I have said that I wanted to. We definitely had the Holiday Blues, but they lasted longer than expected because we thought the holidays were longer in Mexico. On Christmas, there was no tree, lights, or angels. There were also no presents. I didn’t really miss getting presents, but it was a huge blow to not give any. The spirit of giving has always really gotten into me. Thanksgiving was the best I’ve ever had, but Christmas never even came.

Jose’s family told us that Mexicans wait to open presents until January 6th for Three Kings Day, but they didn’t tell us that they didn’t celebrate it. Jose and I waited through Christmas until early January, thinking we would be able to have some of Christmas in January. We never heard mention of Three Kings Day, and it came and went without any merriment. It seems to mostly be a holiday for children around here, because there were stands lining the streets selling presents, but only plastic toys for kids.

Our apartment also quickly turned into a disappointment. It is pretty, but filled with problems. We have lived there for over a month now, yet haven’t taken a single hot shower, because the water heater doesn’t work and Jose’s family doesn’t appear to find it important to fix. There is no sink in our kitchen, so we have to wash our dishes outside in a small, cement sink that doesn’t fit our pots and plates and is always threatening to scratch or break them. Our front door is too short and has a five inch gap that allows all the dust and cold air to blow into our apartment. We have to dust every few days, and each time we sweep we have piles a few centimeters high. The power goes out at least a three times a week, but it flickers off and on at least once a day. Everything we want to do is in the Districto Federal, which takes almost two hours to get to by bus and metro. We have visited the stall market in Coyoacan, and realized what poor quality food is sold at our market.

We haven’t spent much time with Jose’s family since we moved out. It is partly because we wanted to finally have some privacy and space when we moved in, but also because we weren’t kept up-to-date with what the family was doing. I think Sergio and Maribel knew we weren’t so into hours of department store shopping, and haven’t invited us on any of their shopping excursions since. The night before my family arrived, we spent a few hours in Aunt Irene’s living room with the family, and it felt really nice to do again.

I couldn’t get myself to write a new post, because there was nothing going on that felt worthy of writing about. Life was pretty boring and difficult. Chimalhuacan is more a place to survive than really a place to live and enjoy life. Since Jose and I don’t have school and work to escape to during the day, we had to live in and enjoy Chimalhuacan.

We have been looking for things to do to start a life and be busy. We want to have responsibilities, and schedules, things to look forward to, and maybe even some things that we dread a little bit but need to do. Jose is thinking about going to school, we are going to take language classes, travel with Anna, and find a place to volunteer.