I was in a car today for the second time since I moved here. The first time was the cab ride from the bus station when I first arrived on January 1. This time I was leaving to take a walk, actually to go look at a neighborhood where I might rent a house, and before I got to the end of the block my landlord Martha and her friend Margarita pulled up alongside me in an SUV and told me to get in. They would give me a ride to wherever I was going. I said “I’m going that way,” and pointed. I figured they weren’t likely going that way. They said OK, get in, we’ll give you a ride. So we left the immediate neighborhood and started heading toward the neighborhood I planned to visit, but then they began talking about an exciting new shopping mall they hadn’t yet seen, and her friend was like, “let’s go see the new stores,” and asked if I wanted to come. I said OK, and we drove to the new mall. I think their plan before picking me up was to go out to dinner somewhere, but the new plan was to go see the mall. Along the way my landlord spoke in Spanish and her friend, who was driving, spoke in English at first. I gathered she was visiting from Florida. They told me they met in school in 1962, presumably in Mexico. A little while later Martha told her friend to speak in Spanish so I could practice. We passed the place where I had a taco earlier that day and I pointed it out. They talked about how expensive it was to go the movies in America and so on.
We arrived at the mall and Martha said to pull into the parking lot but her friend said it would be more exciting to enter from the other side of the mall, so we continued another couple of blocks then pulled into the parking area, where we came to a gate with a sign telling us we needed to pay to park. But the sign also said you could park for free if you were there less than a half hour and you got your ticket validated. So we decided to park and go inside to see it, and get the ticket validated. Once inside we asked what store could validate the ticket and a mall greeter suggested the grocery store. The mall was very much a mall, an indoor mall like in the old days, with a cinema and so on, everything very new. Though an American mall wouldn’t have a large grocery store inside. We went to the grocery store and there a greeter told us we needed to spend 100 pesos in the store to get the ticket validated, so we went in and Martha and Margarita started talking about what they could buy for 100 pesos. We walked around a bit and got some food, splitting up at times and reconvening. Then we left, and they talked a bit about how rude the workers at the checkout were, and they they talked about politics a bit but I didn’t understand any of it. In the car Martha gave me three of her tomatoes and all the bananas she bought. Oh, and Margarita said now that they’re old they should get one of those carts old people push around. Martha didn’t seem to like the idea. I almost told them in America we call that a granny cart, but I was a little tired from listening to Spanish so I didn’t say anything.
Back in Martha’s neighborhood they dropped me off at the lavanderia, where I had some clothes to pick up. I got out and thanked Martha for the tomatoes and was going to leave the bananas in the car, because I wasn’t sure I understood correctly when she gave me the bananas earlier. But she said “and your bananas,” so I took those as well.