Pyramids, food, and the circus.

Anne here -

Michael and I went to an interesting talk at the Biblioteca about the pyramid that’s nearby. It’s called Canada de la Virgen and we plan to visit it soon. I was hoping there was some fascinating reason for its name, but no, it just takes its name from a nearby river. Like at many pyramids skeletal remains were found. But the mystery here is that the bones buried in the temple atop the pyramid belonged to a person who lived 500 years before the founding of this pyramid in the 5^th century A.D. This person’s skeleton was looked after and kept intact for 500 years. That’s amazing. It’s like 10 generations caring for this person’s remains.

We are realizing how important familiar food is to our sense of comfort. San Miguel does have quite a bit of international food in the restaurants, but the grocery stores stock very limited items. We miss Trader Joe’s almost as much as our friends and family.  Strangely we can’t get pre- made pico de gallo salsa. So we finally learned to make our own, which was easy enough.  We have splurged and bought cheddar cheese, which we nicknamed queso de oro for its astronomical price. There is no whole grain bread and sandwich bread is a rarity. The pre packaged stuff here is really unhealthy. For example we had to hunt high and low for a peanut butter that doesn’t have sugar in it.  We’re thinking we need to start cooking more from scratch. We have been soaking our beans and cooking them because every single can we can find has chiles on the ingredients list, which Nataly won’t tolerate.

          On the plus side – a kind of natural yogurt that tastes like the tart frozen yogurt. Around the corner from our house is a garage selling delicious homemade paletas de crema (ice cream pops) out of their freezer in lots of interesting flavors (pine nut). 2 different tortillarias within 5 minutes walk, popping out tender, fresh, hot corn tortillas from machines so interesting to watch. I learned that the government controls the cost of tortillas, so that this basic food source stays affordable to the people (about the equivalent of 3 pennies apiece). Also, I’m loving a food I’d forgotten about – jicama. The way they do it here is slice it up into long sticks with plenty of lime juice and then you dip the slices in a spice rub of chile/lime. Es muy rico!!

I was brave one night and went to the biblioteca to check out the ‘conversation entre amigos’. There were about 12 of us, half Spanish speaking and half English speaking. It was actually great and the people were very friendly. There were all different levels but we practiced back and forth in the 2 languages. Besides clerks in tiendas these were the first real local people that I really talked with. The Mexican elections were the day we arrived in San Miguel so we talked a lot about them. No one at this meetup liked the new mayor of San Miguel. He owns a nightclub and is very pro business. As well the people were hinting that he has unsavory connections (narco?) When I told people I was from California several people had their stereotypes at the ready. Was I a hippie? Does everyone use drugs there? Meeting local people from all walks of life was a great experience and I’m trying to persuade Michael to give it a try.

Nataly’s on her second week of circus camp (cirque de soleil style). It’s been an amazing experience for her, but I’ll let her talk more about that. Three of us mommys decided it looked too fun to pass up, so today we had our own class. I sit here feeling sore and physically exhausted, but happy. It was so cool. We did the hoops, silks, and the trapeze. On the silks I went upside down and felt like a gymnast again. The hoop was even more fun, but the trapeze requires superhuman strength. Both Nataly and I plan to take more aerial classes here during the fall.  Ceci told me they will do an aerial nutcracker in Dec. How awesome is that!

Here’s a couple of  pictures to show off some of the art and beauty around every corner in this city.