Grocery Shopping

So this weekend we had a party for Pastor Rance’s 65th birthday, and his change of ministry position. When we were planning, our conversations went like this.
“Well, where can you buy Ginger Ale?”
-“Sometimes they have it at that one store, but also you could check Alfer-mart.”
“Could we get gold balloons?”
-“They don’t sell gold balloons at the party store. Do we want yellow?”

Going to the store here is often a guessing game. One of the ladies used to regularly buy jello, sour cream, and pudding at a certain store, and they don’t stock ANY of it any more. We found sugar free fat free yogurt at a store, and were buying it once a week, when it disappeared again. In the states, if you go to a certain store, you know the same products will be there week after week, and if there is a change, they put up signage “item will be discontinued.” It’s taken some getting used to. It's totally normal for people to come home from the grocery store without getting to buy everything on their list, b/c it's just not there. They also only sell products IN season. For example, when no one was harvesting Cucumbers there were no Cucumbers to buy. Sadness. We also don’t have coupons here, but do talk about which place sales a product at a better price.


(Happy Cinco de Mayo, but I think more people celebrate it in the States, than here in Mexico, except for maybe in Puebla- where the battle that is commemorated happened, and MAYBE in D.F. (Mexico City) )