Saturday, July 29, 2017

Is this the real life?

Is it just fantasy?

So far we are just hanging around; in "wait"-mode for our closing date, which has been postponed indefinitely.

To keep busy, we exercise a few days a week, I study to get my TESOL certification, we do our Rosetta Stone and our QROO-Paul Spanish lessons, once a week we walk to the Lucas de Galvez market, we go grocery shopping and visit the local market around the corner twice a week. For our new house, I've sketched a garden layout and Herman is designing the additions to our property in SketchUp. We cook dinner every night, drink some wine, read or chat. It's not a hard life though, just slow, lazy and sometimes boring. For the first time since we were 16, we are not working for someone else. It is liberating. We are also contemplating what the name of our house will be... Most of all we are saving money for when we move.

Herman finally had his eyes tested and got some awesome new frames. The optometrist spoke excellent English and after three days Herman had his new progressives.

Xena has become a true Iguana hunter after she had one by the neck earlier this week and it took some coaxing from me for her to let it go. She now stalks them and tries to dig them out of the block wall. She event tries to climb the wall and managed to get onto the 5 foot ledge at the back of the property. Herman and I think that she may think that these Mexican "dogs" are super cool the way they can climb up the side of a walls... She had her third birthday on July 24th and loves her prickly rubber ball. Our four legged BFF is entertaining in a quiet life kind of way.

As you may or may not know you are not truly Canadian until you get some ink, and because I really don't like wearing jewellery, I decided a few years ago to get my wedding ring tattoo. Since then I've been fascinated with jewellery tattoos. I've wanted a Mexican-themed bracelet for a few years now, but felt that I had to get it done in Mexico, despite nervous comments from friends. One brave Mexican tattoo artist who speaks excellent English (Andrea Espadas from Makech studios) advertised on an Expat Facebook page and I decided to take the plunge. I have to admit I was a little nervous myself, but as in Canada, you have to check out the joint first. And this time, I had my secret weapon: Herman (who hates tattoos with a passion by the way). He was impressed with the cleanliness and large windows letting in light (hee-hee) and it was a go. After several attempts at getting the design just right, we set a date. Then we spent at least 30 minutes getting the positioning right and dropped about 4 glyphs to make it fit better.  The final product after a week is featured in the video below.

Why I picked the images you  may ask? Well here goes:

The centre and main area is the rose with lace, which represents (to me) Mexico, the Day of the Dead and the celebration of life. My grandparents also had a rose garden when I grew up, which was always something I associated with them. The two panels on either side have some of the glyphs from the Mayan farming calendar. The Mayan Haab calendar comprises of 365 days but with 18 months of 20 days plus the 5 unnamed days. Each glyph represents the activity that was traditional for that month.

The eight glyphs in my tattoo represent:
Uayeb: the 5 unnamed days which were the days where you didn't do anything because the belief was that these were bad luck days and if you went outside bad things could happen (rest is always good).
Kankin: No festivals were recorded for this month, but it is believed it celebrated the canine (go Xena).
Keh: It is believed that they honoured deer during this month (who doesn't like Bambi).
Mol: Wooden edifices were made for the gods (artwork is awesome).
Xul: Feast for Kulkulkan the feathered serpent, which featured comedians and burning of incense (major god of the Mayans and everyone needs a laugh now and then).
Yax: Temples were renovated during this month (spring cleaning yeah).
Zip: The month to honour the god of hunting (for the meatatarian in me yum)
Uo: Shamans and physicians gave offerings to the god of magic (what's life without a little magic).

So, not much happening around here right now, but we are going to visit a few craft markets and some festivals over the next few days and hope to take pictures and videos of those to share.

2 comments:

  1. Like the 'jewellery', Denise!
    And if you wanted to name your future casa after me, I would not be offended!
    Xo

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