Friday, February 24, 2017

Mazatlán

Mazatlán indicated in red
The five of us, including Rosalia's parents, recently arrived home from a few days in Mazatlán, a seaside city in the north of Mexico. I say north, I find it difficult to judge what actually counts as the north in Mexico given its oddly contorted shape, and when I look at a map I'm not convinced that Mazatlán is all that northerly at all. I'm assured however, by those in the know, that it is culturally part of the north, with above all a distinctively northern accent and cuisine, including importantly ever-so-slightly larger tortillas than in Mexico City. As an aside, tortillas here are generally much smaller than the ones we're used to in Europe. About 10 cm in diameter I reckon (I really should have done my research and measured one, I know). They're also normally made from corn rather than wheat. Mazatlán tortillas are probably about 12 cm on average, in case you were wondering. Only 2 cm difference, but once you get your pi r-squareds involved I suppose that's actually quite a bit of extra tortilla.

Fun in the sand
Early-morning dip in the pool
While Rosalia's parents stayed with family living nearby (there's basically family everywhere), and made the epic decision to drive 13 hours to get there, the less insane of us took a short flight and stayed in a hotel by the beach. I quickly got over my disappointment at the pool bar being closed at 5.30pm when I realised I could still order cocktails from the restaurant direct to my sunbed. Noam enjoyed early-morning swims and playing in the sand with us, but for the most part spent lots of time with his grandparents and great-uncle and great-aunt, even spending a full night away from his Mum for the first time since he was born (against all odds he slept better than ever).

Plazuela Machado
Rosalía and I spent plenty of time lounging around the pool soaking up the sun. I read "Soccermatics", a great book by an Uppsala professor about the mathematics of football. Every now and then we ventured outside the confines of the hotel, enjoying a couple of nice meals in the centre of the beautifully preserved old town. We experienced the music of the region, played religiously at every bar, restaurant, and street corner: shit elevator-music-style covers of classic rock (think Sweet Child O' Mine with its soul ripped out).

Mazatlán is famous, naturally, for its seafood, and the prawn chilaquiles didn't disappoint, even if they were a bit on the heavy side at 7.30am. Machaca, a dried shredded beef, with egg, was also an instant favourite. And finally, in a new twist on putting slithery animals inside bottles of tequila, there was this:

Yeah, that's a massive snake in the bottle. Photo taken approximately 30 seconds after I tutted at the loud group of Americans at the next table who were posing with the tequila in exactly the same way.


Monday, February 13, 2017

A day in the life

Having finally moved into our apartment, life in Mexico City has begun to settle down into something approaching a routine for Rosalía, Noam and me. As nice as it is to occasionally wake up without a clue as to what the day ahead holds, I think we were both craving a bit of structure; not necessarily a blow-by-blow account of exactly what's going to happen, but at least a skeletal outline upon which to build the day.

Our typical day at the moment looks something like this:
  • 06:45 - The three of us wake up. I am nicely rested after a good night's sleep, Rosalía is exhausted having been woken anywhere between four and ten times by a cranky, often hungry baby in the night. Now that Noam is finally in a good mood, I get to play with him for half an hour while Rosalía has to shower and get ready. I make myself a cup of tea from our dwindling supply of Yorkshire Gold (why didn't we bring more with us?) 
  • 07:30 - Having given Noam one last feed, Rosalía heads off to work. I am left wondering how the hell I'm going to survive the next five-and-a-half hours alone with him. Despite a slightly forlorn look as his Mum walked out the door, for the time being, at least, he's smiling and bubbly.
  • 08:00 - Time for Noam's first nap. He's been awake a whole hour and a quarter. Lazy little bastard. I put him in the carrier and stick on the TV for a bit.
    Post-breakfast lull
  • 09:00 - Breakfast time! I make peanut butter on toast and give Noam a couple of soldiers. Most of it ends up on the floor. He gets pretty mad if I leave him for half a second to sweep, so it will probably stay there a good few hours. If things are going well he eats a couple of slices of orange for dessert.
  • 10:00 - Somehow I've managed to change Noam, get dressed myself and brush my teeth, prepare his nappy bag, put him in his pram and get out the front door. We set off towards the centre of Coyoacán, about a 30 minute walk from where we live. It's not exactly a pram-friendly route with sudden unexpected cracks in the ridiculously high pavements and potholes all over the place, but as long as I keep a keen eye out for the broken glass and dog shit, and dodge the occasional hyper-aggressive taxi driver (I know, they exist everywhere!), we normally arrive in one piece.
    The boys in Coyoacán
  • 10:30 - We arrive in the centre of Coyoacán. With its cobbled streets and ample greenery, Coyoacán is a beautiful oasis in the middle of the hectic city. The atmosphere feels cleaner and less oppressive as soon as we arrive. Noam gets admiring glances and cries of "hermoso" from nearly everyone we pass. We both love it here. We wander round for a bit; if I'm lucky Noam lets me have a coffee while he flirts with a group of strangers.
  • 12:15 - Back at home again. Hopefully Noam has had another nap on the way home in the pram. He'll almost certainly have had a temper tantrum at some point during the last couple of hours. He seems to sense if I'm trying to get him to sleep and react immediately and automatically against it, even if he's super-tired. Some days just a minor outburst, other days of the apoplectic variety. Amazingly, there are now only 45 minutes to go until help arrives. Time to play again - our favourite game is that I build a domino tower and Noam knocks it over. He never gets bored of it.
    Probably watching a film
  • 13:00 - Rosalía arrives home with her parents, who've picked her up from work. Like being twelve all over again. Noam gets a decent feed, before Rosalía and I go out and find somewhere to eat lunch nearby and the grandparents take over on baby duty for a few hours.
  • 14:00 - We're sitting in a café working. Rosalía's just discovered yet another section she needs to write or a document she needs to get hold of for the latest post-doc application and is tearing her hair out. I'm pretending to look busy (probably writing this).
  • 16:00 - The working day is over. We arrive back at the apartment and after a protracted goodbye Noam's grandparents head home. The remaining three of us play together, I maybe play some guitar, Noam coos and generally loves being with both his parents at the same time. He eats: plenty of breast milk, most days something solid too (egg, potato, maybe avocado). A happy time.
    This is how you eat avocado, stupid
  • 18:45 - We prepare Noam for bed: change his nappy, put his pyjamas on, set up the baby monitor, turn on the white noise, prepare his cot, turn off the lights, easy. Rosalía puts him to sleep while I do my 7-minute workout (or drink a beer, whatever). 
  • 19:45 - Rosalía and I have some dinner and try not to talk exclusively about Noam. 
  • 21:00 - Rosalía pumps a little milk for tomorrow, while I read half a page of something before deciding I'm too tired to read and should either sleep or open up Netflix. If Noam wakes up around now I sometimes take the fight and try to put him back to sleep, and feel excessively proud of myself if I manage it once.   
  • 22:00 - Bedtime. Let's do it all again tomorrow.

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Getting in the way

One of the delights and frustrations of learning a foreign language is that it's never job done; there's always grammar to correct, new vocabulary to learn and pronunciation to perfect. I've been learning Mexican Spanish pretty much since the day I met my wife, just over five years ago. I'm pretty fluent speaking Spanish at home with her and with close friends, but one of my primary goals for our six months in Mexico is naturally to improve further and gain confidence speaking to others in a wider range of situations.
Canicas de perico?

To keep track of my progress and be able to test myself occasionally, I like to keep a list of new words: I'm up to 46 so far. I've noticed that they tend to fall into one of four categories, including words that are essential for discussing things to do with the baby (pellizcar = to pinch, lamer = to lick, periquera = high chair), words that are essential for understanding the sports news (invicto = unbeaten, racha = streak, derrota = defeat) and words so obscure that I'll probably never need them again in my life (perico = parrot, canicas = marbles).

Most of these terms will be presumably be used sparingly at best, even those that fall into the first two categories. Every now and then, however, a truly useful new word comes along, one that feels like it can be bandied about almost every other sentence; moreover, once you discover it, you realise that other people use it all the time, and you wonder what on earth you thought they were saying before. This is the fourth category; for me it contains one word so far this trip: estorbar, meaning "to be in the way". As well as being convenient in many situations ("me estás estorbando"), it's also highly versatile, with a handy adjectival form estorboso. I don't have to specify whether something's too big, the wrong shape, too ugly; I can simply say "está estorboso". Get it out of my sight, basically.

Saturday, February 4, 2017

Moving day (at last!)

I don't know if Edward A. Murphy Jr. ever visited Mexico City, but I'm beginning to seriously suspect he had the place in mind when he coined his famous adage: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. I started to get a strong feeling for this during our first few days here. Little things at first: a puncture on the pram the first time we took it out, the otherwise dependable Wi-Fi cutting out at crucial moments. Then on one occasion we popped out for breakfast and a quick trip to the supermarket, leaving home just after 9am. We got back at 4.30pm. The breakfast place was closed, the traffic was terrible, we got lost, the supermarket was much further away than we realised and the list goes on. Another time Rosalía and I left Noam with his grandparents and drove to her workplace at COLMEX (Colegio de México) to run a few quick errands; the car broke down in the parking lot, leaving us stranded on the other side of city.

Ok, you got me, it wasn't actually this bad
But perhaps Murphy's law best manifests itself in the story of the apartment in Coyoacán where we are now belatedly but happily installed. Bought virtually new by the family just a few years ago, it was leased out to a reliable-looking señor and his family, who promptly stopped paying any rent. Due to idiosyncrasies of Mexican law that I'm sure I'll never understand, it proved a time-consuming, expensive, and heartbreaking process for my in-laws to extract said persons from the apartment. When they ultimately succeeded after a legal battle lasting the best part of two years, the inhabitants chose as a parting shot to practically destroy the place, leaving sinks hanging off the walls, shelves smashed, and floors ruined.

When Rosalía and I first set eyes on the apartment shortly after arriving, it was much improved after a year or so in the hands of some close family friends, but still in need of major work before we could think about moving in with Noam. We engaged an expensive professional cleaning firm; to describe the job they did as half-arsed would be something of an overstatement (bringing to mind another apt adage: If you want something done right, do it yourself). We hired someone to come in and paint the whole apartment, fix the electricity, replace all the skirting boards and various other odd jobs.

There were a few more bumps along the road (light bulbs that immediately blew out, showerheads that didn't fit, boards that were not quite the right shape), and of course it all took twice as long as the initial time estimate (Mexicans are chronic tidoptimister), but I have to say for once we're delighted with the final result. And so it came to pass that on our 23rd day in Mexico we finally moved in and set about building a temporary life here. Murphy's law will never be far away (a pane of glass even got broken during the move) but I'm learning to appreciate yet another (modified) cliché: patience is a virtue, especially in Mexico City.

Friday, February 3, 2017

Getting to work

As well as being a professional Dad while in Mexico (see my previous post), thanks to Noam's very willing grandparents I have quite a bit of time each day to put to other use.

During the first few weeks here I often accompanied my wife to various cafés for a couple of hours a day (mostly we tried and failed to avoid Starbucks), where she would sit and work on post-doctoral applications--she recently completed a PhD in economic history--and I would try to figure out what to do with my spare time while devouring my absolute favourite new treat: a bisquet with strawberry jam.

A bisquet - something like a scone for fellow Brits, but not exactly the same
(some people seem to feel very strongly about this)

I eventually came up with a bisquet-crumb covered list of possibilities of varying degrees of plausibility, from the reasonable (learn something new by taking a distance course) to the unlikely (make millions as a professional online poker player). Stewing over my choices one morning while out walking with the pram, it hit me suddenly that what I really want to do is write something. As I have the imagination of, uhh, something with really bad imagination, any kind of fiction writing was obviously out the question. Eventually I settled on, you guessed it, writing a blog about my time in Mexico.

As well as filling a little time here and there with something I find highly enjoyable, I hope this blog will keep friends and family who are interested up-to-date with our lives in Mexico, and serve as a souvenir of our time here that one day Noam can look up and dream about the way life was.

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Parental leave

I am on parental leave while in Mexico: a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, for sure, along with the slightly terrifying realisation that my full-time job is looking after a baby, whose only trusted method of communication is to scream at the top of his lungs, regardless of whether he wants to say "I'm in need of urgent medical attention" or "I quite fancy a slice of avocado".

Our extended stay in Mexico is in fact possible in large part due to the generous leave offered to all parents through the Swedish social insurance system (Försäkringskassan). Rosalía and I have 480 days to share between us, of which 390 at 80% of our previous salaries (the remaining 90 at a lower standard rate). Along with very affordable daycare and largely free healthcare, this makes Sweden one of the best places in the world to have children (don't trust me, it's official).

It's also all very flexible; when Noam was born in June 2016, I took two weeks completely off work, then went back half-time for a couple of months over the summer, before working full time through to Christmas. While those last few months were difficult, especially for Rosalía at home all day with a new-born baby and no other family support, we both realise how lucky we are that the Swedish system allows us to spend so much time with our son in this critical early stage of his young life. In many other parts of the world, including Mexico, it would be almost unthinkable for first-time parents to take care of their baby on their own without major assistance from the extended family.