Today Esme asked if we could visit the shopping center "Plaza Americas". Yesterday her cousin, Gilmar, visited us, and he told us that there was a big store, Liverpool, that had plenty of books, probably even English books. Since English books are very hard to get in Xalapa, I certainly wanted to visit the shopping center.
Because it was a very hot day, we decided to wait until the end of the afternoon. So after 5 PM we left the house. When we arrived in the shopping center, which is one huge building, we discovered that we could have gone earlier, because inside the center it was cold (well, around 20 C, which coming from outside felt quite cold).
We looked around. The place is quite new, and some shops weren't ready yet. Esme discovered a movies theatre, which probably is going to open soon. The center looked big, huge even, and expensive. So when I checked out the prices of digital cameras I was not amazed that the price of a Canon Powershot A610 was over 5700 pesos, or in US dollars, over 532 USD. Yes, you are reading that right, a Powershot A610 costs that much in Mexico. The same camera can be bought in the US of A for around 220 USD. So next time you think about Mexico as a cheap country to live, don't think about the price of torillas, think about the price of luxery. I often joke that if you want an expensive camera, it's cheaper to buy a plane ticket and get it in the States.
In the same shop we saw a lot of magazines, including magazines written in English. And I finally was able to buy the American edition of National Geographic, which I couldn't buy in the center of Xalapa.
That same shop had another surprise: cookies. Not just cookies, but the kind I really like, and ate a lot in the Netherlands: "Bastogne koekjes" (cookies), and "Schooliertjes" (schoolboys) both made by Lu.
I decided to buy both, especially since both were at a discount. Esme didn't know either of the cookies, but I was sure she would love the Bastogne cookies.
After looking a bit more around, we decided to eat something. And since there was Japanese fast food available, we decided to have some Japanese.