Weekend shopping spree

We spent the weekend equipping our house with some small and large electrical appliances. When you are expatriated by a company to another country it's common for the contract to include a bonus for replacing all of your electrical appliances. It's true that you can't take those things with you, especially in a case like ours where you are changing continents and changing voltage so the little bonus is great.

We had a lot of fun shopping. We haven't bought anything electrical at all in about six years, except for the occasional replacement of a computer that had crashed. When you renovate a house all of your money just goes one place. Broken stuff just has to get wrapped with duct tape. You'll spend a thousand euros in one weekend on a new back door barely anyone notices except you and then of course there's nothing left for frivoulous things like new vacuum cleaners or toasters.

It seems there's no equivelent to Best Buy or Darty in Mexico. After checking prices in Walmart and Soriana we decided Sears was a good store to lay down our pesos because of their customer service and because they were having a sale over the weekend. I attacked the kitchen area and finally found a food processer (not so common--blenders are more common for some reason). Then we chose a matching toaster and coffee machine. Also not so common is an espresso machine. We will find one eventually. I bought a pretty teapot for the stove rather than an electric kettle and I may regret it but I figured I can evenually take it with me. I'm really happy with all of our things. We should be buying our tv soon and we picked out our washing machine too. It will be so nice to have all these nice, new things.

So many people told us we could buy everything used from the revolving door expat community. Someone is always leaving. One unfortunate thing is that it's hard to connect early enough with the expat community to get all the things you need. It's not like you can go without the things and settle in while you wait. You need everything fairly fast to feel good and run your house. Besides the kitchen things were important to me. I´ve been going without for so long that I didn't really want someone else's broken, mismatched things and I didn't want to have to drive around looking at stuff when we´re just learning our way around.

The prices in Mexico for such things are somewhere between American and European prices. The other things we've noticed is that a few brands will be really common and therein lies the scope of your choice. The only blenders we saw were Oster and Hamilton Beach. It seems Samsung and LG rules the tv sections in all the stores. It's not like you can find the exact model you shopped for on epinions.

Walmart is very popular here. The one near our house is actually like a French hypermarche, one half food and produce and one half household and garden. It's more like a supermarket than a goods store. We aren't in our house yet so we haven't explored the food section so much but it seems that the food, especially the produce in Mexico is very cheap. We aren't used to eating fuit out of season so it's a little odd to see such an abundance of choice so late in the season. We also passed a few street markets over the weekend which I'm excited to explore once Little S starts school in January. I don't think I can manoevre baby and toddler through such chaos so I think we'll have to wait.

Otherwise the weekend went well. Seb talked with the manager about our cat and he reluctantly agreed that we could keep her here as long as we payed for the room to be sanitized afterwards. I'm not sure what that involves but it conjures up funny images of men in big white suits with masks and hoses. I think they're being a little dramatic about it.

The hotel had their little party of 700 people on Friday and it lasted until 2am! It turns out it was some kind of medical convention plus party. We were somehow able to sleep with earplugs crammed in our ears and the loud bathroom fan on. It was difficult considering there were tables right against our windows and people talking and laughing until all hours. The hotel staff was really stressed and we had a good time watching them prepare in the earlier part of the evening. We know a lot of the staff by now so we walked around and said hello to everyone. And of course we know the manager too thanks to Milly. Everyone is so nice (except the wenchy maid that ratted us out) that we put up with the inconvenience. It gave us bargaining power for Milly to stay.

The national holiday on Saturday was not all that noisy. The hotel had a small party in their ballroom and it was soundproof. While we were out shopping, the stores were all decorated with the Mexican national colors and flags. The children were the cutest, all dressed in traditional Mexican clothes--girls in puffy sleeved, white shirts and long, black, frilly skirts. We saw loads of mariachi bands everywhere we went. Some of them were really impressive, all dancing in unison while they sang and played. They'd do this thing where they turn and shake their butts in unison and it would makes the bells on their pants jingle. Little S loved that. Everytime he sees a mariachi band he stops and dances now. He gets a lot of attention because here's this little blonde in a sea of dark haired children joining right in. He's not shy!