We had a good old-fashioned thunderstorm today: torrential rain, lightning flashes, thunder and more rain. It was actually quite cool – haven’t been in one in many years and as much as I hate rain, in 30 degrees Celsius even getting soaking wet is not half bad.
Max was brave. When the first big thunder hit he looked at me waiting for my reaction. I laughed and said something like “this is fun” – then he, too, laughed. Uli explained about the electricity in the air and how it creates a big flash and the sound of the thunder but the lesson was somewhat over his head – unsurprisingly – and so he now thinks of it as electricity sort of banging together in the the clouds. Good enough for a three year old.
Everything is soggy now and the inner yard is slippery as hell (the house is a bit funny: there is a entrance “hall” which is pretty much a useless room – unless you are planning on selling custom hats, tamales, or tools there – where we normally kick of our shoes, a “living room” which is now called “play room” as Max’s toys are littered about and then a kitchen, all in a row. Then you need to cross the yard and enter into the bedroom which makes for extremely dirty feet all the time. I am getting used to it, though, sort of. But – to our surprise – no room has so far been flooded. I am really hoping for good light tomorrow morning to show off the freshly washed city: a photographer’s dream – if the photographer can drag her butt out of bed in time, that is.
Today – with Max at school – we went shopping and I am now closer to looking like a Meridian muchacha then I have ever before. I acquired two pairs of tight pants cut off below the knee (would probably be almost full length for most Yucateacas 😉 – now I just need to replace those ugly old Tevas with something a little more golden/silvery/pink or bead encrusted. Seriously, I just needed more stuff and at $12 a pop this doesn’t exactly qualify as splurging.
I can’t believe that it’s only a good week until we leave. It doesn’t seem like we have been here almost three weeks but we have. The usual “end of vacation is in sight” panic starts to set in: we need to go back to Progreso so Max can play in the sand, but we absolutely have to go to Chichen Itza and it would really be cool to go to Campeche – sounds lovely. Whatever happend to the plan to take a trip to Cancun, oh well, that won’t happen this time, we need to come again and see Cancun ….. It’s funny (actually not really funny, rather annoying) how time seems to accelerate during the later part of a several week trip. The first week seems slow – one has the impression that one has all the time in the world, one basks in time, the remaining days seem one long luxurious stretch. Then time accelerates, the end is still nowhere in sight but somehow one seems to loose a day here or there: wasn’t it Wednesday yesterday, why is it Friday today? What happend to Thursday? And then, all of a sudden, the end is in sight, one has – so to speak – reached the summit and is on the way down on the other side. Loosing days seems to happen more often or one looses two at a time and then the end-of-trip panic sets in as mentioned and one starts to wonder whether everything will fit into the suitcases – where are they anyway? And where are the passports? Normally this is when the end-of-trip-is-in-sight depression sets in but fortunately I can shelf that for a bit longer: there are five more months to look forward to.
And now I better get going and charge my camera battery in case the light is good tomorrow because one thing I really wanted to do while I am here is to take early morning pictures of the city.
This is just a somewhat random picture of Merida. I like the fact that the wash salon is called “Faith”. Faith in what? That they don’t make the colors run or shrink the sweaters? Very typical Merida business 😉