Thursday, July 06, 2006

Elections, coffee, and a "bazaar sale"

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1First a quick update on the elections. It appears that the official results came out today showing that Felipe Calderon, the conservative candidate, won. Unfortunately for those who don't lean heavily toward the left, he won by a percentage point of .57% (about 200,000 votes out of a total of 41 million). His main opponent, Lopez Obrador, said that there are still "irregularities" in the results and that he will appeal to the electoral court. Thankfully they do have a deadline to clear everything up. By law, the electoral court has to declare a winner by September 6. Their decision then is irrevocable. If Obrador doesn't win, he might call on his followers to protest nationwide, and who knows where that could go...

Here in Mexico, the kind of garage/moving sale we're having is called a venta de bazar (bazaar sale). Today we just opened it up to the greater expatriate community only. Unfortunately the teachers decided today would also be a good day for them to block main roads in town, so we didn't have as many people as we had hoped to have. Tomorrow we're going to put a sign up down the street where lots of people go by and we'll open up the cochera (open-air garage thing), entry way, and front yard so anyone who wants to can come in and buy stuff. Hopefully we'll sell almost everything so we can do something fun on Saturday.

You would think that I would have stuck around the house for the sale today, being the good, responsible person that I am, right? Wrong. Before the sale my mom and I went out to the Italian Coffee Company by the Santo Domingo church to relax for a while. My mom left a couple of hours later to go back and help with the sale, but I stayed on for several more hours to avoid the people coming to our house. I did manage to restrain myself, though, and only consume two Cappuccino frappes. :) :) When I left I was planning on hanging out downtown taking pictures, but it started to rain so I was forced to walk home early. Maybe tomorrow can be my picture taking day, instead!

First pic: Two kids sitting on/in front of a cross in the courtyard of the Catholic church in Teotitlan.
Second pic: Forget about Starbucks; ya gotta love the Italian Coffee Company! (This one was actually at a gas station somewhere, and not by Santo Domingo.)
Third pic: Hard to see, but it's most of our American group that was up in the village together (half just stayed a couple of days). They all are holding at least one glass pop bottle filled with the right amount of water to make a different note on the musical scale. They did quite well playing a couple of simple tunes!

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