El Patio

Sometimes I forget that I live in a place where things are way different than where I'm from. And even though most of my readers are also living in this same place not all are. I recently made a comment on facebook about hanging out on my roof. The American in me still calls it my roof and not mio patio and yet I think of it as my patio and speak of it as one. So this quite confused a friend or mine. At the end of this post is a link to my FB page where I posted some pictures of my current and first patio. The patios here in Mexico are a great thing because in a lot of towns the houses are literally built on top of each other. To the point that they don't even make an extra wall and just use the wall from the house that is already up. And they are built right on the side walk or with just enough room for a small car port. We have even seen car ports so small that when they put their gait up they have to put a little bubble on it that protrudes into the sidewalk in order to fit their car inside. Needless to say many people do not have yards. I should also mention that houses in Mexico are built in square shapes with flat tops. The only people who have yards are those who live in el rancho and its more like a field. Some people in town here have just enough grassy or dirt area out front, out back or actually in the center of their houses to have a small garden of flowers and herbs. In all the places we have lived our roof is our yard. Mind you the landing is not quite as soft when the girls take a tumble but its an area outside that is our own. The roof always has a set of stairs leading up to it and not always with a railing. Iv been in a few houses where the stairway makes me quite nervous. Because ours is an apartment building the stairs run up the middle of the building and has railing on the side with out a wall. In what I think is the first picture of the four you can see the door that goes inside and leads to the stairwell. The majority of Mexicans do not use a dryer for their laundry and so this roof is also used for their laundry and have built in lavaderos which are sinks with wash boards in them. You can see ours right next to the washer in one of the pictures. Before I moved here to be honest Mexico was the only place I had ever seen a washboard aside from old movies. And I swore I would never use it, and I don't to often. But they sure can be helpful when you have food or a stain stuck to a piece of clothing. As you can see from the picture the place you put your washer is open to the outside except on top. this totally freaked me out when I first moved here, I was sure we would be electrocuted after the first rain. But thanks to the outrageous price for electricity if you use over a certain wattage we unplug our washer after each use. And we have a cover on it as can also be seen in the photo. Because laundry is done outside I actually love doing it now. I take my time hanging and taking down he cloths and enjoy the sun on my face while doing it. When the girls are feeling up to it they play around up there with me while I hang and fold. It truly is a stress reliever for me now. During the warmer months we also have a small pool that we fill with water for Alana and I suppose this year Joslin also and we have a nice little table to have picnics at and Issac has a small grill to make us delicious food. So in an odd since our roof is our laundry room/back yard and we love it, I do look forward to the day we get to build our own house and can construct el patio how we want it and by them we will have lived in enough rentals to know exactly what we want. I hope this post was interesting to those of you not living here and maybe for some who do. For those who do if I left anything out please comment.

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