Mexico XVI - Easter, broken elevator, swine flu and the apartment we will not miss!!!

April 2009. Here are the girls, cooped up in the apartment during the swine flu scare. School was shut down for two weeks, as well as restaurants, movies, parks, museums. We stayed in the apartment and rotted - literally.


So when we looked for apartments in October 2008, we chose one close to a large banking building, because that meant 4 extra policemen on one side of our building. This was all good, until there started to be several protests by mining workers. Apparently, several of their men had been killed and the company (whose headquarters were in this building) failed to recompensate those families. The screaming and yelling, the first time, frightened me, but everything was fine. The protestors stayed outside the exit during lunch hour so the "millionarios" couldn't leave on their break. We were just happy they had their clothing on (naked protests are common here). Look to the back on the picture, you'll see Scott - I dared him to go down their with them.

Here's when the protest can get ugly. Extra police are called in to confront the protestors and allow the "millionarios" to leave their building. The poor miners then left, but there were two more protests like this one while we were in that apartment. (These pictures were taken from our family room window)

Here is a picture outside our apartment, located on 510 Seneca, in Polanco with our favorite security guard, Raul. What a nightmare this apartment turned out to be. Besides protests, it had several problems. We were told by the landlord, that everything had been repaired and renovated and we wouldn't have any problems in this building. It turns out, the week before we signed our contract (from Arizona of course) the elevator went out. The landlord, Roberto Charvel, did not have the decency to tell us before signing. When we arrived on January 5th, I wanted to cry when I noticed the elevator was out - but all our stuff was there waiting to be unpacked and there wasn't much else we could do. Roberto reassured us it would be fixed soon. January, February, March..... no elevator! We have 4 kids, buy lots of food at Costco, the water alone is enough to kill someone climbing up two flights of slippery marble stairs. So finally in April, after a lot of fighting with good old Roberto, we were done with that place. So, anyone thinking of renting from Roberto Charvel with either Vander Properties or Pelican Properties - BEWARE. He is totally dishonest... I could go on and on. Maybe this will come up on a google search for him, maybe not. By the way, Roberto did not fix the elevator until August - I'm so glad we moved!

Decorating Easter eggs - note how messy the place is. By May, I wised up and hired a live-in maid. Life is hard in Mexico City - it is good to have a lot of help!

Decorating Easter eggs in our teeny tiny kitchen. In Mexico, most kitchens are built just for servants, not for families. So they are so small and rather depressing. Very little light, counter space, etc.