July 4th in Ajijic

I think that I may have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. Our Gringo stereotype of Mexicans is that they do things slowly and continually put off things until “mañana”. That is not my experience, nor of Cathy and Gary. Just 2 more examples: on Monday just before noon, I went in to Telmex to report that our land phone was not working (the internet still was). Just after 3 p.m, the repairman showed up and repaired things in about half an hour. When I was at Z Gas filling the BBQ tank on Tuesday, I asked about home delivery for the big tank for cooking and heating water. It has been going down after about 7 weeks. The young woman took our address and said that they would be there in about 2 hours and they were.

We are getting onto how to do some things here, but one big gap is our land telephone. Our cell phones are ok because they can be set to give instructions in English, although busy signals or no answer brings Spanish. However, our land phone is more difficult. We haven’t figured out how to retrieve voice messages. The telephone book gives instructions on how to get into voice mail--dial *86 (it’s in Spanish, but I can read it with the help of an English-Spanish dictionary). However, once in, one is greeted with a flood of Spanish instructions, probably a menu of different choices. Guessing, I managed to delete at least one message unheard, from Barb’s doctor! The Telmex office does have a telephone help line for English speakers. That is how I reported our line not working. I’ll try to see if I can get some instructions on how to access and handle voice messages.

We got Barb’s 2 hibiscus shrubs planted and she has been busy transplanting plants out of planters into the ground or from one pot into another. I am trying to tell her that she has years to do the gardening; everything does not have to be done this summer. However, I’m kind of rowing upstream with that one.

We are currently hearing a lot of firecrackers going off; it is coming form the direction of the lake. It may well be associated with July 4th as there are a lot of Americans and there were some celebrations planned. It isn’t just Mexicans who are fond of fireworks, although these are at about 9 p.m., not midnight or 6 a.m.