Hace calor y cucarachas

So I've seen my first (and second and third and fourth) Mexican cucaracha! Today one crawled across my bed as I was talking to people online. But at least they are friendly, unlike the scorpions. Luckily I have not seen one of these, but Nadine said she has killed two this week. Oh the wonders of living in paradise!
Last week nothing of too much consequence occurred. I learned how to make a tomato soup with alphabet letters and fish heads from the Mexican woman, Amelia, the family has to help with cleaning and other things. It was surprisingly good. She returned today and will stay through Friday afternoon, so I will hopefully learn some more traditional Mexican recipes. It's pretty cool to learn from someone who just knows these things. Although I should write them down so I don't forget.
This weekend we went into town and I saw some of the old cathedral, a market and some other building in the town center. I will have to return at some point to take pictures and to explore more. It is a little intimidating because the city is huge so I must take a taxi, or a very very long walk to get to the center, and I am a little timid of the taxis since I don't speak Spanish natively and I don't know where anything in this city really is. I am hoping to talk to the former au pair about this, as Nadine has given her my email (and if she does not contact me I will ask for hers).
I spend most of my time with the family and the children, though in the morning I do have a few hours of quiet to myself. So far it has not been a problem that I have not made any friends. I get to talk to different people when I take Louis to swimming and when I go to the pool around here. I do not know if this will become a problem in the future. The only reason it would be nice, would be to have someone to go places with since I would love to go see the pyramids and the rest of the center of town and maybe some other places outside the city. But either I will do it alone or I will find someone to do it with eventually. It is only my second week, so for now I am happy.
This job is fun, but hard. It should be required for everyone who desires to be a housewife. I do many household duties in the morning before I get my 2 or 3 hours off and then I go from the time I start cooking around 1 until 9 o'clock at night. It is a good eight hour job, and most of it I am on my feet doing something or carry someone. As a job it is fine, but I could not dedicate my life to this forever. Although it is not mindless work or useless by any means, I feel after a while it would lose some entertainment value. And in the end the kids are not mine and the house is not mine, so the entire responsibility does not rely on my shoulders. I do not know if I want to have kids, but if I do have them, I have no illusions that it will be an easy task, especially if, as I would like to, work as well. So thank you to all the mothers (and don't forget the fathers...I will explain later why here it was an after thought) out there. You do a pretty damn good job!
Now as for Mexican family relations, I do not think I could do it. Nadine and Juan both own the company that they work for, but Nadine also has all the household duties. I have no clue how she did it without an au pair. Juan helps with the kids often, but when I said that my father often cooks at home she was shocked. Juan has never cooked a day in his life. I find this frustrating. And I know all families work differently, ut the division of labor does not seem to be equal here. There are cultures that divide duties of men and women into separate categories in order to keep the burden of labor somewhat equal, even though the tasks are different. This is how it used to be in the Western world. Women has the house and men worked outside in the work world. But once women enter the work world (and the debate whether this is good or not has nothing to do with it) out of want or necessity it seems that there should be some balancing of the duties. Although this seems common sense, and most people I know share these beliefs, it is interesting living it for real.
Also, I have no clue what the history between France and US is, but I know there is tension. I will have to read up on the problems, but it is definitely apparent. Although, I think in Europe most countries have some stereotype of Americans that I and many would not fit and would be offensive if it weren't laughable. Nadine, as a French woman (and perhaps a Mexican), definitely has her ideas about America. Though she is never rude about it you can tell she thinks we are all wasteful people who don't care about the environment and continually consume packaged products that are bad for us. AND that we are too stupid to see what we are doing.
The latter part is the problem I have with this. Now, yes, many Americans are this way. But there are many countries who have decided to subscribe to this way of life. Are they all stupid too? Because, the US may bring their products somewhere and advertise them and maybe they know they are bad and shouldn't even be selling them, but the people in these other countries could just say no. I understand there is blame to be placed on the US, but not all of it. It is not the fault of Coca Cola that the people want to buy their products. Someone will always buy it regardless of the fact it is bad for them or it kills the environment or small companies or whoever or whatever cause we are defending this week.
These are not well thought out arguments, I know, I am not composing a paper on this at the moment, but they are just some interesting things I have noticed. They are not new arguments and will not be old arguments anytime soon, but it would be nice to not feel it is completely the problem of the US that the world weather system is going crazy. I may be paraphrasing a bit...