Missy’s painting
Just wanted to show off Missy’s completed painting. She has been taking a oil painting course and recently finished this one, which is based from a photograph I took of Maria, a Huichol woman, in Guadalajara one day after taking her sick daughter to the hospital.
CODENI Piñata Party
Today was the posada (holiday party) for CODENI, where nearly all of the kids and their families gathered at a restaurant downtown to celebrate the end of the year, receive certificates and finally break down a piñata.
We have one more week in Mexico before returning to “middle North America” for a few week vacation to see family and friends, and have a lot to do before heading home.
Happy Birthday Missy #33
Spent Missy’s third of a century birthday party in Tlaquepaque, a community on the edge of Guadalajara, with Angie. Angie wanted to get some wedding gifts for friends back in Virginia, and we had a nice lunch outside where a mariachi band sang Las Mañanitas, a Mexican birthday song, to Missy.
At night our neighbors Monica and Jorge, ex-Roanoker, Danielle and her friends, Annie and family, Missy’s Spanish tutor Octavio, and Laurie stopped by for pizza, which Panzon and I cooked from scratch, and cake, thanks to Annie.
So the cake came because Annie won several races at a masters swim meet, and her prize was a gift certificate to a cake shop in town. She gave the gift certificate to me on my birthday to use to buy Missy a cake on her birthday…whew. But it was delicious!
Sadly, Angie left on Saturday morning, a couple days after Pete returned, so we’re back to normal life, which is quite fine too.
First Visitors!!!!
Last week our first visitors from middle North America came to visit us…our very good friends Pete and Angie from Roanoke. It was a bit of a flip of roles from last March when we visited them in San Luis Potosi where they were living while Angie was on her Fulbright.
We packed a lot into the week, beginning with an birthday celebration of the late Mexican mural painter José Clemente Orozco at Hospicio Cabanas where Missy takes her painting class twice a week, and Orozco’s work is featured on the ceilings. The celebration was complete with kids (including those from CODENI) painting their own Orozco-esque paintings outside, as well as Mariachi and tequila.
Unfortunately due to the rules of the arena, I was unable (as of now…stay tuned for pix from there in the future) to take pictures at the Lucha Libre event. Though I have never been a fan at all of professional wrestling, this was unbelieveable. The four of us were shocked, hoarse and totally pumped to say the least when we left.
The next morning, without any planning we decided to head to the beach, in the state of Colima, and only because it is the closest beach to Guadalajara. Rented a car (third time driving in the city in a week) and headed out. After a quick stop in Cuyitlan, where there was nothing open, we were directed to the small friendly community of Paraiso, which became our home for the next couple of days.
There we quickly found delicious food, a horrible but cheap hotel, and met a few fisherman at the local bar, who after a few drinks together, invited us to join them at 7 am for their daily outing into the Pacific to check their nets. Angie decided to take a late night dip into the ocean on the way home, and amazingly we remembered to set alarms and actually woke up the next morning.
The lancha trip was unbelievable. Pete and I helped the men swing the boats around on the beach, and then we accompanied them through the large waves out into the sea, where our boat’s captain caught about 25 beautiful fish, including Huachinanga (Red Snapper). We spent the rest of the day literally eating, sleeping or swimming before returning early the next morning to meet Angie and Pete’s former neighbors Bety and her daughter Adriana, who traveled to Guadalajara from San Luis Potosi.
We’re really looking forward to our next guests…hint hint….