Mexico Part II: "Muchachas"

Can you see this crazy tile in the background?  Why not lay down cement?  Or brick even?

I love this attitude.  Not sure why the picture seems blurry, you can click on it and it seems better.

Around here, well, especially where we live, everyone seems to have a "muchacha."  For 1500 pesos a week (Monday-Saturday from 9ish to 5ish) these girls are there to help around the house.  1500 pesos is about $125 a week depending on how much the dollar is worth, but these services are cheap.  Now you would think that these girls would do it all but that is not so.  Apparently, some people have separate "muchachas" to cook, clean, and take care of the kids.  In fact, I rarely see the people that live in these homes.  Most of the time I see the "muchachas" cleaning or looking after the kids.

So personally, I think it is a waste of time to keep this tile area that I have where we park our car squeaky clean but today I decided to clean it.  Mostly, I have to admit,because I am afraid that my neighbors might be judging me because it isn't as clean as theres.  But, since we have no "muchacha" (well, not yet anyway, I have to say that I am hoping to get one to help me clean the floors and bathrooms for 200 pesos a day.  That's like 15 dollars!) Eva and I went outside and cleaned up the area.  First, we started by sweeping.  By this point Eva's capris were still down and she was wearing sparkley shoes.  Well I got after her because her white shoes were getting dirty so she went upstairs and put on some sandles.  Meanwhile, Elijah was watching from afar and screaming for attention.  After the sweeping I decide that it still didn't look good so rather than busting out the mop, which I think is the proper way to clean this tile outside, I took out the hose.  Like a good teammate of mine would say, I was trying to be efficient.  That's when things got fun.  Elijah REALLY enjoyed the hose just hanging out on the tile and Eva disappeared on me to come back outside with this ensemble.  Is she sassy or what?  We managed to clean the outside in a timely matter, but then 10 minutes later, Matthew came home, drove up and left black, dirt, tire marks all over the tile, yet again.  Pointless I know but it seems like there a lot of things like that in Mexico.  So, now the neighbors, for sure, must think I am the "muchacha" that doesn't know how to clean this tile or take care of the kids for that matter because one of them was slaving away and the other was getting soaked which around here they think leads to pneumonia.