easy saturday

One of the tacos I ate the other night disagreed with me a bit, so yesterday was relatively low key.

I walked to the grocery store and bought milk and yogurt (the yogurt here is great! Not as good as the stuff you get in Europe, but superior to the American variety at least), and walked over to the local Mercado. 

The Mercado del Valle is pretty much a one-stop shop, the consolidated remains of the village market located under a massive sawtooth roof. It's a market divided into a bunch of stalls of varying size, grouped mostly by good or service. Tons of fruit and vegetable vendors, butchers, florists, toys, household repair stalls crammed with an explosion of pipes, tools, fittings, glues, paints, etc. There's also small restaurants of the comida corrida type, and taquerias and fruit juice squeezers, plumbing specialists, picture framing, bike repair, gift wrapping, woven baskets, dairy products, pinatas, cookwear, dishes, ad infinitum. And a high end coffee shop. I pushed some low-hanging pinatas out the way and found myself next to chemex offering expressos, cappuchinos, speciality hand brews, and a small seating area under their second floor shop which sells specialty teas and coffee making equipment. 

Mexico city continually catches me off guard with these kind of juxtapositions. I got a cappuchino and they gave me a stamp card with my first star. 15 stars gets me a free drink.

I need to do more price research at the supermarkets here before I go back again. Without any idea of what the price of things should really be, I got ripped off by the one-armed avocado lady.

Later in the afternoon, I took the metro to the Zocalo to the National Art Museum, a beautiful palace of arts containing a great cross section of the history of Mexican artwork, from 17th century religious paintings to Diego Rivera to more contemporary vanguards of the 1950s. The building itself is worth seeing.

I walked by the Palacio Belles Artes where across the street I saw the figure of lady death, in a white plumed black hat and flowing black gowns. I've been in this city so long and reading too much Octavio Paz, that my first thought was "am I imagining this?" I think she was coming from the Monsanto protest going on in front of the museum, complete with chanting, prayer, and placards.

Afterwards, I took a very long and circuitous route to get back to the mercado at the Ciudadella, the giant tourist market. I'm trying to make my room more personalized, and for me, I want to a live in a space that has much more of a cultural texture to it. I want to wake up and feel like I'm in Mexico. So picked up a striped blanket I'd seen before to use on my bed for about $20, and also stopped by my favorite shop which sells Jalisco style pottery to pick up a pair of shot glasses ($3.50). I also stopped by a bookseller who was hawking vintage photos and picked up four black and white studio portraits of revolutionaries and revolutionary era couples. I put these above my headboard, and hung my two Mexican style woven fedoras above the bed, and I really liked the change.

I spent the rest of the afternoon at home resting and skyping Saorichan, and then headed out to the birthday party.

One of my coworkers, J, facebook invited me to her birthday party at a Japanese restaurant in Roma Norte, a chic and bohemian part of the city about a 30 minute walk from where I live. The invitation said dinner, and 9, so I was in a bit of a quandry. On the one hand, if its a dinner reservation for 9, then I should probably be there at 9. However, the saying goes that Mexicans are only on time for funerals and bullfights, so I should get there closer to 10.

My conversation with Saori ran long, so I ended up making it to the restaurant around 9:45, which turned out to be the time that birthday girl and a few guests actually showed up. It also turned out to be just drinks, which was fine since the restaurant looked freaking expensive. The restaurant was called Omiya, you entered on a theatrical Japanese footbridge into what was once a palatial home on the street corner. The interior was nicely and interestingly decorated, and they served serval types of Japanese beer along with the usual offerings. Lots of different rooms offering different things- a main dining room for noodle dishes, a few sushi bars, and a few rooms upstairs for DJ music and more drinking. 

I got myself a Sapporo and settled in. The drinking arrangement turned out to be bottles of Jack Daniels. In Mexico, at least with the circles I run around in, which tend to be overwhelmingly upper class and upper middle class, the drinks of choice are hard liquor, usually Jack Daniels or rum or vodka, usually mixed with (surprise) coke, or soda water. So I threw in my $18 for the drinks and they brought out a tray with the booze and glasses and ice and we got the party started. I had a great time, met some really interesting people who were happy to practice their Englishh as I practiced my Spanish. I met a Mexican (they were all Mexican, apart from a few Chileans and Argentinians) who had just returned from a year of working in Boston, so we had a long conversation across his girlfriend about Boston and the DF. 

More of my coworkers showed up, which was really fun and nice to see everyone in party clothes and makeup. My supervisor, who is actually two years younger than I am, brought two of her friends along, and as the night went on, one of them was really showing a lot of interest in me, and knowing that this could not end well, I politely excused myself and headed home. At this point of the night, our group had finished off the two bottles of jack, and it was about 1 am, and I was going to have to walk home, having spent my cash on drinks. 1 am is early for a Mexico City saturday night, and part of me wishes I'd stayed to see where the group would go next or to see the night out at the bar, but I was feeling a little awkward with the attention. Anyway.

The walk home was about 30 minutes, along a major avenue, in an area I knew well and had walked before, so I wasn't that uncomfortable.