Going to "The Tent" and Tuesday Market

We finally got to one of our favorite eating places we affectionately call "The Tent" and yes, the food was as good as it always was. This is La Palapa and run by a Canadian man. The cover is not a tarp after all, it's a Sol Beer canvas cover and the walls are cyclone fencing with bamboo tied to the inside. Business is steady as many people like this place and it also seems to be a small expat hangout. Lots of expats in San Miguel. We have fried shrimp tacos (the best ever!), chili dog, beef tacos, fried fish tacos and carrot cake. Yum! Yes, we all do love our food...

We visit Mega, the giant supermarket and fill our carts with eggs, ham, cheese, butter, bread, maple syrup, chips and beer. This will go back to our communal kitchen where we prepare one meal a day, usually breakfast, and evening snacks of guacamole and chips. We take turns in the kitchen and everyone has their specialty and contributes what they do best.

Tuesday Market is held on Tuesdays (surprise) and is a GIANT outdoor flea market where you can buy just about anything. Naturally we go to it. We decide we don't need any more bras, Spanish CDs or live rabbits, and go for the good stuff. Namely food. We get 5 kilos (11 lbs) of oranges for 10 pesos (70 cents) that we squeeze fresh into juice each morning. We bought a hand crank juicer in the local hardware store as there wasn't one in the Casa. We get fresh blackberries to make sauce for the French toast. We get a giant papaya, 2 kilos of strawberries for 25 pesos, avocados and bananas. We walk around and munch on fresh fried potato chips, sugared donut sticks and fresh fruit juice. We bypass the snake oil people with all kinds of remedies we didn't even know existed. We do stop and look at the handmade Mexican glassware and decide there's a shape we don't already own and simply MUST have. At $1.50 per glass, we figure this is a pretty good deal, so we fill up our Frida Kahlo mesh bag. We naturally become friends with the proprietor of the glassware table and trade life histories and end up hugging and kissing. We know we'll meet again.

We haul our aching bodies back to La Casa Arriba via taxicab and unpack our goodies. We have a simple dinner on the roofdeck overlooking the city and under the Christmas lights on the roof cover. We put our feet up, chat and rejoice in the opportunity we have to be able to spend the winter in San Miguel. We look at the stars and listen to music on the iPod plgged into the portable speakers. We miss our families and friends, but are glad to have Skype on our laptops and Vonage on the house phone to be able to talk with you. We look forward to visits by some of you and wish you could ALL come and visit. For those of you who will visit, here's a photo of your bedroom in La Casita Escondida.