Shopping trip/ESL/Life

Alex didn't have school today, so we decided to take a field trip to Tonala, Mexico. It is basically a city that has a TON of pottery, furniture, and just about anything that you could want for your house, decor wise. It is about a 45 min drive from our house in San Antonio. The walls are looking pretty bare, so we were looking for strictly bargain merchandise, so that when we left this house, it could all just stay here. We found a bunch of Sun/Moon combos for $3 each, and gecko's for $2.5 each. It was a lot of fun, but when we got home, we hung up what we bought, and wished we would have bought more. We really liked the gecko's and Alex and Alan loved the ones we hung in their rooms. It did give the place a bit more color. We couldn't believe the deals we got. We are planning a return trip in a month or so. While we were there, we ate lunch at a taco stand. Joe got a few pictures. This was actually one of the nicer ones. We got gordita's. We had never eaten these at a "stand" before, and they were excellent. The kids liked the potato/cheese ones the best, as did I. They are nothing like Taco Bell. They actually reminded us of the perrogies we ate this summer in PA. Just not fried in grease. We wished we would have ordered more after we had eaten them. 10 gorditas and a coke were $8. I know this sounds cheap, but the pop is always the most expensive thing. We have decided to just order one pop and all share. We could always get something else to drink cheaper elsewhere. You can get freshed squeezed juice or fruit just about anywhere for about $1. Viva Mexico!!! I thinking we could eat just about anything, anywhere, and not be sick. Anyway, Alan was still a bit hungry, so I got him his favorite, bag of cheetos! (Thanks Deb and Brian for introducing him to those!) Joe has a video of the boy eating. He eats more than me easily, and is just 17 months. He is heavy. He was chunky when he was a baby, now he's just heavy. Joe and I found a Thai food buffet here for $3.80 per person. (Imagine egg rolls made with tortillas, but the chicken wings are good!) We take Alan with us, and he looks small, so they don't charge us for him. If they only knew. We will only be able to get away with if for a while longer I'm guessing. When they find out how much the boy eats, they may charge us extra.

Not much else has happened in the past few days. Just life. I have my ESL class twice a week, and I have been teaching with another teacher, but I will be getting my own class in January. The guy who is teaching that one is going to India! I guess Mexico wasn't quite cheap enough. So far I enjoy it a bunch. I have actually learned a lot of Spanish. I have been trying to learn the Spanish equivalents with each class. I am going to write an article about the class and send it to the local "free" paper. They have two pages of English each week, and are looking for articles to fill them. Joe and I are going to start writing about different stuff in the area, and see if we can get "published".

Joe did get invited to a cock fight on Sunday. We walk past this guys yard every day, and tonight he was holding one of his roosters (he has about 15). He waived at us and said, "come on in." We did! He had some beautiful birds, and was telling us that he was planning a "match", but it would be quick (5-10 min) because the Policia might show up. Anyway, the lucky bird might have his debute this weekend. At least will will know what all the commotion is at the end of the block if it goes off. The guy was very friendly and spoke pretty good English. He said he lived in Vegas for a while. Too hot though, so came back here. He is now a gardener.

I may have a job making potato salad and cole slaw for a guy that runs a BBQ stand. He is one guy by himself, and he smokes ribs and chicken on this little grill, and then sells what he has until it is all gone. So far his business is just starting, but he needs someone to make his sides. I am going to make him some samples and see what happens. It could turn out to be something big if his business does well. It could also be nothing, so we will see what happens.

The attached pictures are of us at the taco stand, my ESL class, and Alex's new "french" braid hairdoo. Not much to work with there!!!! She is so proud! Until next time.......

Independence Day/Noise/Misc

Mexican Independence Day holiday is the 16th, but the party is the 15th. We could hear music and shouting until well after 2:00 am. It was raining most of the night, but that didn't seem to stop the party. VIVA MEXICO!!!! All in all, the music didn't bother us much. We went to the parade on the 16th(pictures attached). It was mostly the school children marching, and a few horses and the Queens (Check out that crown). The entire day was very quiet. It was our anniversary (14 years), so we looked around for some place to eat, but most was closed. We did find a taco stand that was pretty good, and the kids behaved well. That is the summary of the holiday.

Noise. I want to mention the noise around here. You would not believe it. After living in the almost country, I thought Glade Road was a bit noisy with the traffic. That place has nothing on here. The roosters are crowing at all times of day. Dogs are kept on roofs as security, so depending on the house, a dog will bark at you from the roof. The trash trucks go rumbling by early in the morning. There are NO inspections of ANY kind here, so things are very noisy. Missing mufflers and bolts are very common. Also, the streets are all rocks, so even the nicer cars are noisy. People drive by with the music blasting. The spirit of the Mexican economy is to sell something. The water delivery and gas (propane) trucks drive by with speakers on their roofs shouting the price of gas and that they are there if you want it. People push wheel barrows down the street full of buckets of corn, tamales, taquitos, and just about anything you could sell. We never fail to be offered watches or baskets on certain streets. There is even a guy that drives around every Wednesday in our town selling litro's of bleach, fabric softener, pinesol, etc. Bring your own bottle, and it is even cheaper. The ice cream guy rolls his cooler down the street, and somehow people know to run out and make their purchase. It is overwhelming, and awesome all at the same time. Most of the stores close up from about 2:30-4:00 pm for siesta, but that is easily the noisiest time of the day. I guess they know people are at home, so they concentrate their efforts.

Joe and I took the kids to the Malecon in Chapala on Friday night. We go there occasionally just for fun. I am attaching pictures of the area. There has been an infestation of hiasynth at the lake. It looks almost like grass in the pictures, but it is the water. Charallitos. Basically just fried sardines with hot sauce and lime juice. Great with a beer! Alan enjoying his snow cone.

School Lunches/ESL/Independence Day

Today 9/11/08, it was our turn to make lunch for Alex's class. How it works at the school is they have a lunch menu, and they assign days to each child. There is a big plastic container that has plates, bowls, forks, drink jug, and several large containers. You pick it up the day before your turn to make the food, and it is your turn to wash all the dishes for the day, and prepare the food for the class (according to the menu) for the next day. Our day was hamburgers, peaches and juice. There are 12 kids in Alex's class. Joe is such a trooper and was out firing up the grill by 7:00 am to cook the 12 small burgers. I had to teach my ESL(English Second Language), so I took the food when I dropped Alex at 8:30 am. With groceries, and prep, it cost us less than $10 dollars for everything, and I don't have to cook again until Oct 1st!!!! What a concept. America can seriously learn something from this. I don't have to worry about making her lunch, and she gets something different every day. She really likes it. The school really seems to have themselves together. I think Alex is finally starting to enjoy it. I still don't think she totally knows what is going on because of the language barrier, but she is learning a lot already.

I had my second ESL class today. There are 13 students in the class, most of them are under 25. They all want to learn English for their jobs, and they all seem very motivated to learn. I took a Spanish class at CU, and no one in my class seemed this motivated!!!!! So far I have just been "helping", but I am teaching the entire class next Thursday, Sept 18th, so I hope I do OK. I have never taught anything in this format, but I am sure I will survive. Hey, it's volunteer, so what can they do, fire me???? The hardest part is when you say something, but don't know how to say it in Spanish, and you can tell they have no idea what you are saying by the blank looks on their faces. I wonder if that is the same look I have when they speak Spanish to me? Probably.

The workers are pretty much done with the house, so we started doing some work on the front lawn. They cut down a few cactus, but left the stumps about 2 feet off the ground. We are attempting to chop them down with our primitive tools that the workers left here. Alan was also a big help with the water, until I looked over and saw him drinking from the hose. Ok in US, not OK in Mexico. The roosters on the roof next door had an "outing" the other day, and only one of them returned. The remaining one is the only one who won his match? At least the morning noise is cut down by a bit. We also noticed they don't crow as loud when it is raining in the morning.

We went to one of the Independence Day activities, and we forgot the camera, so we don't have a picture, however, here is the summary. ANYONE, makes a paper mache ballon. They then fill them with Kerosene gas, and light the bottom. The gas is warm air, of course, and they begin to float into the air. As the gas begins to burn, the "balloon" starts to burn up. A successful balloon will burn up before it comes back down. HOWEVER, sometimes the very large ones catch fire before they leave the ground. You would think they MIGHT have a fire extinguisher near by, just in case the burning balloon thing begins to blow toward the crowd in the stands, BUT and army of youths manned with large sticks to beat the fire out seemed to be adequate. Who would have thought? It was quite impressive to see the balloons that were handmade. Some were over 10 ft tall. There is a parade tomorrow, so we will try to get some good Mexican float pictures.

Pictures are of Alex in her sports day uniform, Joe grilling 12 little burgers at 7:00 am, and Alan and I working on the yard.

First week plus adventures

Hola! The first week in the new house has gone pretty well, with only a few snags. The workers are still painting the outside of the house, and we have things pretty well situated inside. We have used things enough times now to remember where we put them. The first thing we noticed when we moved into the kitchen was that there were no drawers. We worked that out, but the water pressure is not strong enough to get our water filter system to work, so we are still trying to figure that out. We are getting used to the noises, and sleeping better at night.

Yesterday, I was taking Alex to school, and it looked pretty nice, so I took her on the scooter. We made it all the way to school and it started to sprinkle. After I dropped her off, it started pouring rain. What else could I do, but jump on and ride like crazy. Luckily, the rain kept the traffic light, so only some of Ajijic, Mexico saw a crazy gringo chick flying down the road on the bright yellow scooter in the downpour yelling "YeeHa". I did have my sunglasses. They kept the rain out of my eyes, but didn't do much for visibility. I finally resorted to squinting one eye at a time. Just as I was pulling up to the house, the rain let up. Figures. No shower needed that day.

Today, however, I did have quite an adventure in the laundry area. The door does not have a key, and if you close it, there is no way inside except to have a person in the house to open the door for you. Well, Joe decided to take a nap with the kids, so he was upstairs sleeping, and I went out to hang the laundry...... anyway, I closed the door all the way (we have been trying to keep the flies out), and my fate was sealed. In my attempt to keep quiet and not wake the kids yelling, I tried just about anything you can think of to free myself from my laundry. I tried to pick the lock (yeah right), I attempted to climb the wall, and noticed "Cujo" next door. I attempted the SOS tapping, I attached the dust pan to the broom and tried knocking on the upstairs window. Finally, TWO HOURS LATER, the guys that were working on the house arrived back after siesta, and one of the guys saw me leaning on the window yelling Joe. I can't believe they slept so long, even with the roosters, the announcing vendor trucks, and the barking dog (who saw me looking above the wall and went crazy). Even the broom banging on the open window didn't stir them. Needless to say, I was extremely embarrassed when the worker finally let me out. I was sweating and dehydrated. I'm just glad he didn't know I was there for 2 hours. How is it you beg your kids to take naps, and when they finally listen, you lock your stupid self outside. Now, if Joe asks me where something is, I just tell him that "I am sure it's not out back."

This weekend is 16 de Septiembre. Mexico's Independence day. It should be good for some interesting events. Until the next update....

Pictures are of the kids eating their 'beans", and the neighbors yard from our mirador. Check out that view!

3 nights in the new house

After three nights in the new house, here is the overall rating. The roosters on the next door neighbors roof are not too bad. All hours of day or night, you can hear roosters crowing about town, but luckily these seem to sleep in until about 6:30. Joe found out that they are raised for cock fighting, which is sanctioned in certain areas. Thankfully, none of our immediate neighbors have dogs, or at least really barky ones. You can hear dogs barking often, but not for long periods of time. The church bells ring at 6:30 every morning to let us know that the Rosary is being read, and then again at 6:45 & 7:00 for Mass to start. (I think this wakes the lazy roosters, who then spring into action) Alex does not hold out any love for the roosters. We sleep with all the windows open to keep cool, so you can hear it all.

The trash truck sometimes picks up the dumpster at the end of the street at about 2:00 am. Joe and I couldn't help but laugh at that one. The trash pick up daily and I am trying to get a shot of the trash truck going by. One poor guy is inside the truck stacking bags, and it just rolls really slow down the street and they toss the bags up to him to stack up. That is what you call low man on the pole. The street traffic is a bit loud, as there is no inspection of anything here. Mufflers, windows, doors, taste in music, etc are all optional. It is not uncommon to see about 10 people in the back of a pickup truck traveling down the highway, or a person or two holding on to something being transported. We sometimes hear kids screaming, which makes me feel like mine are not the only whiners in the area. I am sure the neighbors talk about our loud kids. We also discovered the milk cows grazing in the lot across the street. Joe saw one munching on a tree down the road, but we didn't realize they were that close until today. Pic attached.

The house itself is huge, and we found some cheap rugs at the market to cover some of the floors. We found some used living room furniture, and got the internet working. We should be falling into a rhythm of life sometime in the next few weeks. The plumbing works pretty well considering the town shuts the water off at 7:00 pm, and you are running only on your cistern (giant jug on the roof which gravity feeds the house). Joe got some clothes lines hung for me today, so by the time I got the laundry hung, it was late in the day. I will leave it out all night, and hope it doesn't rain.

The guys have been working on the house all week, and will hopefully be done in a few more days. They have gotten most of the outside patched and some painted. If the weather holds out, they may get it all done. The guys are pretty friendly, and seem to really like the kids. Joe gave one of the guys an outfit and some shoes that no longer fits Alan, and he seemed pretty excited. They have a bunch of highly neglected plants in pots in the yard, and I have started to "repot" them. Mostly just root bound. Joe bought a push (Brady Bunch) mower for $400 peso to mow the yard which is about 12'x20'. We could hire a gardener, but at $10 a week, we thought we could make up the money real fast. Good luck Joe Brady! If they don't finish their work soon, it is going to be tough to push that thing!!!!!! More to come.....

Pictures are the ice cream man on foot, the trash truck, the milk cows across the street, the Mertens' laundry, and more of the house.