life on University street

There is a street here in Queretaro City that ended up becoming my favorite. It's called Avenida Universidad. It was really beautiful during early spring with a lot of purple jacaranda trees. 

The way I got to learn to get around the city with a bus, was quite old fashioned. I had heard already the first day that bus 121 will take me downtown. I however wasn't quite sure where or what was considered downtown. I didn't know the bus schedule either or where the bus stop was. Nothing is indicated. So I just chose a spot, I thought might be a stop, stood there waiting for bus 121 and waved at it when I saw it coming after quite a long wait. Luckily enough I had chosen a good spot and the driver took me on board. The buses are almost always packed with people and I find it amazing how men automatically give their seats to women. At least on bus 121. And we younger women give ours to the elder. This is how it's supposed to be, well at least younger elder part but for me to be offered a seat has only happened once in my lifetime and that was because I was injured and had my leg in a package. I wonder if in this country, gentlemen ride the bus and jerks drive their own car? Because the few times I have found a kind person behind a steering wheel in a car, it has either been a woman or a tourist/expat. The other peculiar thing has been this uneducated male behavior of whistling or yelling something at women. I can walk extremely safely on the streets, passing men either saying nothing and often just looking down at their feet or giving me a respectful hola or buenos días/buenas tardes. It makes me feel safe and ads to the fact why I love Mexico. Clear gentleman behavior that should just be normal human behavior. However honking and whistling from cars happens a lot for some strange reason. I know we women can have our ups and downs a lot and that we are very much controlled by hormones. I'm sure something similar happens to Mexican men when they sit down in a car. A combination of lime, chili and the heat together with the sensation of touching a steering wheel turns them into some weird creature in a very negative way. When they park their car and step out, they return into the nice person they really are. Loving sons, husbands and fathers.  Interesting phenomena. A more everyday life version of the transformers, I guess. 

But back to the bus ride and University street... On my first bus ride, I ended up getting off way before the real center of downtown but that's how I got so familiar with the University street and it has become a tradition of mine to go and walk along this beautiful street that has now become more green as the summer approaches. 

This street has both city bikes and street art to offer. So one doesn't need to walk around missing either Montreal nor Helsinki.

I found my own type of vehicle to get around with so I haven't tried out the bikes yet. I either ride the bus or my lovely "patineta"

It has been another lovely way to feel like a child again and at the same time it has taken me to and from places much faster. Especially handy when doing groceries. At the end of my stay here, I will hand it to some girl or woman as a gift and it will hopefully continue to bring joy. I got to have a proud world auntie moment a few days ago when I made a Colombian boy happy by lending my scooter to him.

Life in Queretaro is very different from life in both Helsinki or Montreal but the 3 cities have a street called University street in common and all 3 streets have a special place in my heart. In Helsinki it's the street where my own precious clothing store was situated. It was my pride and joy for 10 years. My life as a business owner and fashionista. I miss those days dearly.

In Montreal it was the street I would enter from the South shore when coming on one of my escapes/adventures to Montreal. The street has now changed its name to Robert-Bourassa but back in the days when I lived out in the countryside and would take my Mini Cooper and myself to my highly beloved Montreal, it was still called University Street. I still remember the feeling I got when driving the street and looking up at the buildings, so alive and happy.

We passed by here with my husband last time we were in Montreal, as the normal road from the airport was closed. We both looked up at the buildings and then at each other. We both felt that the magical feeling we once had, was gone. I guess there is a time and a season for every city and right now it's late spring in Queretaro for us.

a Mexican Mother's Day

It was Mother's Day on Sunday and for some reason that touches me every year more and more. Before I would just say happy mother's day to my mom and go on with my day. My mom would always say, well if you can't be nice to me all year, one day will not help or if you have been nice and thoughtful all year then that's enough. Something like that. She kinda took off the pressure of the day. I'm thankful to her for it and I try to do the same for my husband. We can celebrate each other and our love when we feel for it and it comes from the heart, not because the calendar says so. 
Why Mother's Day touched me more this year, was perhaps because we are in Mexico and surrounded with grandmothers, mothers, kids and families all over the place. The way it should be. You go and see a Cumbia music concert and have kids of all ages running around https://youtu.be/i99COewt0dI
or if you go to a cool bar/restaurant, late Saturday night you have them there. This doesn't happen so much in Canada or Finland. It's a lot of this adults only things going on. A good example was this party we went to with the Finns in Montreal, celebrating Vappu (wrote about it in my last post). Somebody complained that there shouldn't have been kids around as they were playing and making too much noise. I couldn't have disagreed more. Vappu is just as much kids running around with balloons in their hands having an overdose of sugar as it is adults dancing around with sparkling wine glasses in their hands having an overdose of alcohol. Both are equally part of the tradition. Both parties need to behave and control their intake of sugar of course and that is the responsibility of us adults. 
Mexican children are by far the cutest children on this planet. I don't know what is the magical formula but they are adorable. I know how this country has issues with a constantly growing population but there is something about the family values here that I feel at least Finland could learn from. We are a country where people are more and more preferring to live alone, not even being in relationships, even less having children. A lot of us, including myself, tend to travel the world instead of settling down and having kids. A certain amount of sadness and loneliness will slowly start sipping into our lives with this way of living.
So I have decided to become a kind of a world auntie. Play with children who happen to be sharing my path during a certain period of time in my life. Like here in Mexico, I became good friends with a lady from the UK and her 8 year old son. 

We have something in common. We both have chocolate colored husbands working at the same company, more or less the same hours. We clearly understood we didn't need more than that to become friends. Our friendship has given me the possibility to get in touch with my inner child and bringing back sweet childhood memories, playing with my brother or my cousins. So, for the last months, I have been shooting with water-guns in the swimming pool, I have been bouncing around on trampolines,

playing dodge ball, playing table tennis, folding paper planes, 

playing with hot wheels, playing with lego and hearing about the super powers of all kind of weird creatures I can't remember the names of. 

I have tried to take a bit of the load off of my friend when she has needed a break and I have given my presence here a better purpose. Feel like I give a little and help a little. Because when you play with one child, other children see you in a different way and all of a sudden you find yourself folding paper-planes with three boys instead of one and playing with them for several hours and giving a nice break not to one mother but three mothers. 
And as I saw how much I enjoyed it myself, I thought I could share the joy with my husband as well. So I took the two boys trampolining one fine Sunday.

   
Me and my husband were the only adults around jumping on the trampolines. We were playing dodge ball with 20 other children and having the time of our lives. Something that I enjoy about my husband is that he, just like I, can switch off the adult in him in no time and become a child again. I wish more adults would do this instead of complaining about the noise. I wanted to say that to the people at our Vappu party. Join their game and you will see the world from another point of view, instead of the blurry one you now see through your sparkling wine glass.
Not that I'm saying there is anything wrong with enjoying some sparkling wine. It's very much needed when you want to celebrate something, like a mother and her efforts. After all mothers are the ones who are doing the job that is the most important in the entire world. Otherwise none of us would exist.

the F-word

It's been a while since I wrote. We were moving around quite a bit and I wasn't much by the computer. My husband had vacation and so we left our temporary home here in Mexico and went on vacation to our actual home in Quebec. Weird feeling, I have to say. Didn't quite feel like vacation but more like going back in time to how life used to be. We did get to do some fun stuff however, not only take care of tax declarations, bills, insurances etc. We started by celebrating Vappu with our happy Finnish crowd.

I dressed up highly patriotic and was excited as a little kid to see my friends again and get to dance like a headless chicken.

We walked through parts of Montreal waving the Finnish flag proudly. People who recognized the flag probably thought I was super proud of our junior U18 hockey team who a few days later won gold in the World Championships.
I was proud of them but only a few days later when I happened to be on the cross-trainer at the gym seeing the end of the game. I was cheering and happy for them and wishing that I had dressed up a bit more patriotically even that day. 

Our Finnish crowd really knows how to party. There were some none Finns as well at the party and I would be surprised to hear that they enjoyed the music as much as we did. My husband is a Finn a heart. He enjoyes most of it even more than me. If it wasn't for him I would never have danced humppa voluntarily. 

After an amazing night we had a few days of more serious stuff to take care of but we were able to squeeze some spring skiing in it as well. When you go up the ski lift in Quebec, it's the opposite from Finland. People are strangely talkative and often annoyingly curious. I had to go up the lift a few times alone and I remember checking out who was most likely talkative and who would let me be. I used to ski alone here before my husband took up skiing, so I know the drill very well. First ride, I chose well but second ride out of the blue comes a man sitting next to me. He starts talking about the slope conditions and the weather in French. I was thinking of pulling out the Anglophone card and pretend to only speak English but then I told myself not be rude and started speaking back, mostly just agreeing that the skiing conditions were fantastic and the weather amazing. And then happened what always happens...  -What a beautiful accent you have! -You're not from here are you? Men say you have a beautiful accent, women just inform you that you have an accent. I don't like to hear either, because then I have to explain that I'm from Finland. Often after this if I'm talking to a man we get into a hockey conversation. This time I dived into what first seemed pretty logic put then turned into a complete lie and I was so happy to get off the lift at the top and breathe out and apologizing to mother nature for my horrible behavior. The man asked me if I was there on vacation and as I kinda was, I answered yes. But then he couldn't understand why I spoke french so well, so I said well I have been here quite a few times. So then he thought I came there for work and I answered no, no, I just enjoy Quebec very much. Skiing is great here I said. He couldn't understand it as he along with 90% of the people in Quebec thinks Finland is right next to Switzerland and that we have the Alps right there to enjoy. I would love for that to be the reality but unfortunately it's not. They mix up Sweden and Switzerland and so I always end up explaining that we don't have any big mountains in Finland and especially in the south where I'm from it's really flat. So then the next question is why we are so good at skiing? Winter Olympics or World Championships in any sport is not my expertise. I love sports when doing them but I could not care less to follow it on TV as I don't even own one, so I'm highly ignorant in this subject. This year I however knew that Norway was way better than us, like they are most years, so I just told him that and then remember the golden rule and started bombarding him with questions instead. For a while I was safe and got to hear about his children and how they loved skiing but the conditions right now were a bit to rough for them. Then came the question we women close to 40 without children hate to get. - Do you have any children? I just said yes, yes and thankfully by then we came to the end of the lift and I got to jump out before I had to explain more about my imaginary children.  

I had a few other uncomfortable moments in Quebec. Here in Mexico as a woman you are a mujer, so when you go to the bathroom you need to choose the door than has the M on it.

 It took me a while to get used to this as M for me stands for man/men and the door much to be avoided. Now back in Montreal I went to a cool new restaurant with my friend. 

I go calm and relaxed to the bathroom looking first for the  letter M, I don't see it, so my brain starts digging for a reminder of where I am and the language spoken here. So I start looking for F instead. Femme, femme, where is the darn F? I see door after door but no F on it. I decide that I needed to do my thing so I just chose the door furthest away so I will bug as few as possible. The lock was broken and in the middle of my somewhat stressful situation a woman walks in on me and starts yelling at me to lock my door. I wanted to yell back that I did but instead I just said perdon,perdon, which should have been pardon,pardon. The little difference between Spanish and French. 
I was however glad that I had chosen the right door or then there was another ignorant woman who didn't know where she belonged. When I finally got back to my table and my friend and explained the situation, she laughed and said that yes sorry, I should have told you it's a unisex bathroom.

Then there is that moment when a person sneezes and you want to be polite and say; - bless you! In Mexico you say -Salud! and you get a smile and a gracias from a nice stranger. I love it.
But in Quebec when it happened I was still on Mexican mode and when a woman at the bar sneezed I by mistake blurred out; - Salut! in other words; - Hello! I just got a confused and annoyed look from this woman.

I'm so hopelessly relieved to be back in Mexico. Back to the sun and the warm, where I need to go to the M door and basically nobody knows anything about Finland, so they kindly leave out the Olympic games or any other sport questions. The country where I get to raise my glass and say Salud! and get smiles ... and when somebody sneezes, I again get to say Salud! and receive a smile. So rewarding. Salud, Salud, Salud! 

Splendid indeed. I feel so good in this country, I just wish this would not be temporary but my permanent home. 

(btw this time most pictures taken either by my husband or my friend)