My Girlies!

I love my girls. They are angels. They have their laughing fit moments or their tired days, but they're amazing and bunches of fun. I also teach boys and little ones, as I've said before. These pictures are from opening exercises and playing the Human Knot game in class.

The third class is of Nelly, Ximena (Kindergarden age), Liza and Megan. Ximena is such a cutie! She gives hugs and holds our hands and has the cutest smile in the world. Yay!

ANTS

Yup, they're everywhere. Super. So Nelly and I were walking home from school when she said, "Spiders!" Turns out we were about to walk down a whole trail of these gigantic ants. They really do look like spiders. They have legs that are all poky and sharp, and heads that look like sideways jelly beans. Yugh. Needless to say we walked down the street the rest of the way down that street.

The Walk to Church

The walk to church is a gorgeous one. There are flowers that hang from walls and sprout up in the dirt. The trees are all green and the cacti are painful. Not speaking from experience, no worries. It's nice and sunny and warm, just right for a walk. I love it! I also love Nelly's camera. She's been so kind to let me use it, because mine's always dead. And hers takes Far better pictures.

Also, the weather is perfect right now for a lovely walk home from church and a short (or not) nap. Mom, this picture is for you. I have officially turned into my mother. Kicked off my shoes, slipped on some sockies and plopped down on my bed. Thanks for teaching me right, mom. :) I can't get over how much I look like you in this picture. HAR HAR HAR HAR! See? Love ya!

SQUISH!

Ahh the joys of being a birthday girl. :)

Aaaaand More Birthdays. Woo!

We had two birthday parties last Saturday. We had a piñata and amazing food, and of course more face smashing. Mmmm mm yum. :D I hit the piñata Really hard. It was awesome! I've found that piñatas make for quite great stress relievers. And the candy's a tasty bonus.

Clase de Español

I went to my first Spanish class today. That was really fun! I understood a lot of it, enough to understand what I was learning about, which was neat. We're working on conjugations right now. Who knew language could be so confusing? Oh man, I envy the little kids who learn all of this in a heartbeat. Whatever....

But I am So coming back fluent. YAY! :D

Ramon's Birthday

Mexican tradition: Shove the birthday person's face in the cake. See, it's all carefully planned out. They tell you that being the birthday boy or girl, you get to take a bite of the cake that's rightfully yours. Right? So you do. And then as Teo, a staff member here, says, you shove their face in the cake so much that it goes up in their nose and out their ears.

I'd prefer to eat it all through my mouth personally. Anyway, this is Ramon. He's the boyfriend of my older "sister" here. It was his birthday last Saturday. The only problem, he has glasses. We had quite a blast with this cake smashing. Check it out.

Hand Washing My Clothes

Never again will I take a washing machine for granted. Washing things, and washing them well, is hard work!

Artsy Pix

So as always we finished early at school. We were sun bathing one day, and it was rainy another. Crazy huh?

Teaching at Home

I taught Nelly to crochet, and Maggie to sharpen knives. Thank you for teaching me, Mom and Dad! Here's a picture of when I first learned to sharpen knives. I don't think Christina, the mom I'm living with, was too crazy about knife sharpening. That's understandable, right? The first couple rows were really hard with this yarn. I think it was too tight. Anyway, we felt like we were doing surgery on it. It was so funny! So many hands for such a little project.

Girl's Night Out

Nelly and I had a blast running errands, picking out new yarn, nomming some divine food and seeing the sights. We know our way around now. It's a very cool feeling. :D These are pictures of a Cathedral with some food stands in front of it, one street on our way there and us eating some corn goodies.

I'm Not Addicted, I Swear!

My ears have been all blocked up from my cold. The mother jammed a cigarette in my ear and it was good as new! Can you tell I live in the ghettoest part of the ghetto? I was laughing So hard. That was Hilarious.

Colegio Mexico! My new school.

So I'm teaching at Colegio Mexico. It's a cute little private school a few miles away. The kids wear uniforms, and us teachers are required to dress up a little more here than we were at the ILP school itself. Here they have an ILP program. The ILP school is solely an ILP school.

It's warming up! Yes! I wore leggings under my pants, two shirts and two jackets. Needless to say I didn't need all that for once. But hey I was prepared.

It's been so great keeping up with friends and family here. Thank you so so much for all the texts or emails or comments, everything. You're all so amazing! I do have a phone here, but I don't have any credit on it anymore. I made two phone calls to the US and sent some texts. Good byyye money. But I can receive texts and calls. So feel free! PLEASE! *cough cough* So if you want to, I'll email my number to you. My email is black_birdg@yahoo.com.

So. Cold.

It's pretty cold here. One of my host sisters comes home every night with swollen fingers. I wear two jackets everywhere and if I move an inch in bed I'm on longer warm. But hot pizza in the morning makes up for that. I found a gigantor cockroach. I took care of it. It's currently hanging out upside down on the patio. I think he'll be there for a while.

Elote!

These are some of the fun corn dishes from a vendor. The one on the left is Montse's. It's corn on the cob with chile on mayonase and the one on the right is this bready thing with mayo, corn and chile. Very tasty. I love Mexico.... The family I'm with says I'm not allowed to leave home. Woo hoo! Helloooo Mexican food.

Setting up my new life

So first I got all set up at my new Mexican home. It's so great there. I even get to say hello to my breath in the morning. It's quite cold in my room. But really! I love it! My family is great. My mom got to speak to my Mexican mom last night. They clicked.

Then I exchanged money the next day. $25 sure goes a long way here.

While some of us were inside the bank others were waiting outside. There's chocolate jello in Mexico! Whoa! Very nice. Very Weird, but very nice. :) I wish I could mail some to my cousin Erin but I don't think it would be quite the same. Anyway, thinking of you, Erin!

So all is going well, I got to go to a Cathedral last night for church. The Mormon church here is amazing and there are temple trips every month. SCORE!!!! The temple is like chuch, but it's very sacred, and it's my favorite place on earth. If you don't know about them, go to lds.org and look. They're GORGEOUS. In and out.

The Cathedral was amazing. Quite gruesome with crucifixes and blood and all, but it has amazing architecture and amazing decor. Very impressive.

Breakfast!

I made my first Mexican dish! Woo hoo!! These taste so good. I actually had them for breakfast yesterday too. I can't remember what they're called, I'll ask tonight and post it tomorrow. But they're amazing! They're like.. potstickers in a way. Or a turnover. It's a deep fried pocket with cheese or chicken inside. On the outside you can put cheese, cream, lettuce and salsa.

It's drizzling this morning. It was really fun to walk down the street in it. I love Mexico! It's so cool. The people are so different, the food's amazing, the buildings are so different. They are more decorated, more colorful, and the people express themselves more on them. There's graffito about families, lost loved ones, there are pictures and religious objects in windows, very cool. This is a neat place.

Oh- another thing, yesterday I took a little walk with my friend to the library. The keyboards are so different! I kept typing ñ instead of ?. It was pretty funny. Also you have to push 3 keys all at once to make the @ symbol. Whoa....

ILP School

Here's the street my school is on, and the school I teach at.