In Search of La Virgen de Guadalupe

Yesterday I woke up feeling bitchy - the casa was filled with dust, the work was noisy, and I can only handle so much Mexican music coming from the kitchen. That was, until a rather pretty lady and her 20-something year old mentally-challenged son showed up and wanted to wash the coche parked out front of the house for some food. They were hungry! "No es mi coche" I said. But, I made them each a sandwich, and gave her some cookies and pesos. They ate on the sidewalk then moved on. My bitchiness subsided very quickly as I realized I have absolutely NOTHING to complain about! But that's when I knew for sure I wanted Our Lady of Guadalupe to be part of our casa.

The albañiles, or mason workers, showed up around 8 and went right to work. They started out using the roof of the house as their work site where they are cutting and twisting rebar and building the wooden forms for the stairs and flower box. Terry and I have pretty much hung around the house during all the work, but we had decided we would let the workers be, and we would go for a long overdue walk. 

It was probably a good thing because when we got back, they had hauled numerous bags of rock, concreto, and sand, along with a whole pile of cinder blocks right through the middle of the house. I don't know that I could've watched that. 

Terry had paid Esad for his week's worth of tiling on Friday evening and he had taken Saturday off to spend the day with his familia. We had hoped all the work would  cease today (Sunday) and it would be recognized as a day of rest, but they insisted, and all of them should be here shortly, including Esad to continue the tile work. 

In search of a tile mosaic of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Back to yesterday, Terry and I decided it was a good time to buy a tile mosaic of Our Lady of Guadalupe to inset into the wall of the front patio. From old pictures, we knew the revered patron saint of Mexico and Catholics worldwide had adorned the front patio in the past but had been chipped out of the wall during the previous renovation. Last year I had seen the tile mosaics like we wanted somewhere in Centro. I thought I had seen them somewhere in the Mejorado or San Cristobal areas east of the plaza, but I can never remember exact locations and then I start thinking I just dreamed it all up.  We searched and searched, and stopped and asked at numerous places yesterday. Each time we asked, we would go off where we were told to look, but no luck. The closest we came was finding ceramic versions, but never the tiled versions like we wanted. We did talk to a lot of very helpful people. If any one of them could have produced Our Lady of Guadalupe from behind their counter, they would have. 

We got back home after a long walk with the intentions of eating some lunch and kicking back, but when we mentioned what we were searching for to Carlos, he insisted on loading us up in his Volkswagen Bug and taking us to some places he thought would have them. A couple of places just south of La Ermita had some beautiful ceramic versions, but no azulejos individuales. Poor Carlos, he wanted to find us what we wanted so badly. He took us to at least 12-15 different places. Finally, we told him there was a tile mosaic just like we wanted on the exterior wall of a house just up the calle from us, so we would go knock on the door and ask where they bought it. But, when we got got back home one of the other albañiles told Carlos of a place over on Calle 61 that has them. We made sure they were the versions made with individual tiles. Carlos promised to take us when they open up tomorrow.

Work continued until around 4pm around here. At one point Terry questioned them about the location of the stoop. It was going to go right over the top of one of two drains on the patio. But what do you do if you're an albañi and the drain is in your way? You move it, Silly. With a little chiseling and rearranging of plastic pipe, everybody gets what they want.  

The beginning of the concreto was poured. The albañiles said they were working on Sunday, and by Wednesday we would be up on the second floor patio celebrating. "Arriva! y Cerveza!", one of them said then laughed and laughed at his own choice of words.