crepes and waffles

i am having a lazy sunday after a saturday full of new friends, rich food and hyper-stimulating visuals. yesterday i had the chance to get together with good friends of mike bosworth... eduardo and layla live nearby in san ángel, another beautiful part of mexico city, that is often paired as the counter-part to coyoacán in terms of location and feel, though i thought it was noticably more upscale, with many more tree-lined streets and fancy stores and residents. they picked me up yesterday morning, and i was introduced to layla's sister and 12 year-old niece who were visiting from colombia.

we started the day with a hearty breakfast at sanborn's. sanborn's is a mexican chain of stores/restaurants that seem to be a bit of a catch-all... cd's, jewelry, chocolates and candies, bakery, and lucky for us, saturday brunch. (sanborn's stores are also, incidentally, owned by the man who owns telmex, among dozens of other companies, and is the third richest person in the world, following our own mr. gates and mr. buffett. but don't quote me -- that comes from my spanish classmate who i don't entirely trust, or like for that matter.) i took layla's suggestion of the huevos divorcados, which i had had once before when brendan and i were in mazatlan. i have learned that you can't go too far wrong with eggs, tortillas and *two types of salsa*, and the side of chilaquiles and refried beans didn't hurt either. i took the easy way out and we spoke english all day. their english was quite a bit better than my spanish, and well, i'm kind of lazy... so we got to know each other over breakfast and i was amazed by pamela's (layla's niece) english. they were all marvelling at it as well, and were relieved by the the fact that her private school's hefty price tag seemed to be proving its worth. she is possibly the sweetest 12 year-old i have ever met. very thoughtful and earnest and free (for now) from any of that adolescent garbage that i know wreaked havoc in the jones household as elsewhere. when we were driving around mexico city after breakfast, she gave me a beaded bracelet, since she had two. i want to take her home with me, but i wouldn't be able to afford her tuition.

i got mabye a little glimpse of how any latina woman feels when she is told that she looks so much like salma hyek, or penelope cruz (or insert other famous latin woman of your choice here) when pamela pulled a *cinderella barbie doll* off of the sanborn's shelf and told me "you are like this." i will mark that down as most probably the only time in my life i will be compared to a barbie doll of any sort, much less of the fairy tale variety.

after eduardo drove us all around mexico city - which gave me an even better sense of its size than i had before, since we would seem to leave the city's main central area behind and then emerge alongside a neverending slew of brand new office buildings - we headed to xochimilco. xochimilco is a strange place... one that i had read about and was hoping to make it to... dubbed the "venice of mexico." as was asserted by eduardo when we were preparing to embark on our "gondola" xochimilco, in reality, has absolutely nothing to do with venice. it was still really neat though -- we floated along the waterways for a bit, passing other boats where men and women were selling beer, and potato ships and the ubiquitous pork rinds - at this point, i would swear that the atkins diet staple got its start in mexico city. i took a bunch of photos, which will eventually make their internet debut. kind alfredo at GIRE is still trying to work his magic to get me set up with some sort of reliable system for posting photos.

from xochimilco, we went to a big mall in the south of mexico city to have some lunch and then go to see the new pirates of the caribbean movie. my favorite fact of the day: the restaurant where we ate lunch - crepes and waffles - is a colombian (the name baffles me too) chain of restaurants with just this one spot in all of mexico, and in colombia their policy is to only hire single mothers. there were quite a few men working at the one where we ate, so apparently this policy didn't accompany the restaurant's expansion into mexico. maybe i am being naïve, but this idea seems so simple, but so brilliant, particularly in countries where - thanks to strong religious institutions - family planning policies might be less than progressive. i will step down from my GIRE soapbox now. to me, the idea here gives jobs to those among the people who need them most, and it would seem to create a great support network for women who are in what is bound to be a trying situation. i started envisioning all of these scenarios where it is so much easier to get your coworkers to cover for you and vice versa, and you can come to work and talk about how hard things have been with your teething baby and everyone understands. my little crepes and waffles fantasy land. the food was great too. i have to give a short presentation in my spanish class on tuesday, and the topic will be crepes and waffles. so simple, but so enlightened. i love it.

the movie was just fine too. i am generally not one for action-adventure movies, but i am generally one for orlando bloom, so it all worked out okay. i don't think i have seen johnny depp in a movie since benny and joon (i am conveniently excluding my painful viewing of edward scissorhands, dubbed in spanish, a few weeks ago) so that was a bit of a blast from the past. the bad guys were really bad, and i wondered if pamela was as worried about the potential for nightmares as i was. have you ever seen a man with a face morphed into an octopus? with lots of tentacles, but no nose? you don't want to.

i am getting very excited for the arrival of the jones contingent. my sister gets here tomorrow, and ma and pa follow on wednesday. i stocked my kitchen with delectable fruits and mexican beer in honor of the occaision. i also got some chicken soup just in case montezuma should have the gall to show his face again.