Christmas celebration

The Friday before Christmas break our kids participated in a Christmas Pasada. Basically, this means that my kids loved having a Christmas party for the afternoon. For this party we walked around our kinder area where we stay and sang for the pasada (in Spanish) asking if we could come inside and join the party basically. The party consisted of 3 pinatas, tons of cake, bags of candy, watching movies (thanks for sending them to me Tammy), and playing outside! I also gave my kids their Christmas presents which were just little bags with candy, stickers, coloring page, and a baby ornament for a tree :-) My kids were so generous and sweet to me. I got some awesome Christmas presents from them as well! One of my favorite was chick flicks from one of my sweet boys. They are in both Spanish and English which is exciting because it will help me out later when I'm back in the states!

This video is the song my kids sing for each child as they have a turn to thit the pinata and about how you "do it do it do it (and then it ends with) oh time's up"

Teacher Christmas Pasada

Thursday the 16th or 17th we had our teacher pasada at school. They catered in some amazing food from our favorite restaurant, however they didn't have vampiros our favorite food! We were told this would last for about 2 hours, but in the end it lasted for 4 hours! THe school hired a clown (i have no idea why....) to entertain us and he did some funny things, but generally speaking he was just obnoxious!
This party made me really sad! I noticed a couple of the cleaning ladies standing around and then didn't see them later on...Perla, one of the aids, and my friend came up to me and asked me to help get Stella some food (my cleaning lady...) Because there wasn't a chair for them they went back to work. No one noticed they were missing or did anything about it! And when we did tell a principal and the woman in charge of us, they just tried to make the ladies feel stupid. If there had been 3 teachers waiting around for chairs we would have gotten one immediately, but it just shows me really how much they are disrespected and belittled. It was really sad. I told my roommates at home that night and they felt really bad too.
Also that night we ended our secret santa and got to give them our "big gifts" which mine just got a coffee mug filled with choclate and these really cute 3-d snowflakes that my mom had sent me in a package :-) She was really excited about it which was wonderful!

Christmas Party

The Sunday before flying home we had a dressy Christmas party at Casa E- our neighbors. It was fun to be able to relax with each other and dress up. The girls all wore dresses and the guys had on suits or dress pants and nice shirts. It was our goodbye to a lot of our friends until we came back! People made appetizers and just hung out. We had the party both inside and outside which was fun. I love Christmas parties outside, that never happens in Mexico! :-) Here are some pics of my friends. Sadly I can't tag them all and let you visualize who is who but know that these are most of our friends!

Socccer

My roommate Katie had a championship game and they won! Interesting fact- the team they played against had some Colegio Ingles kids on it (15 yr olds) and Katie's team had up to 30 year olds. After that game we went to our friend David's game. His game is at this giant fake ship caled "la marina" where they play basicaly rec soccer. He ended up playing two games instead of one and then after that was our friends Paco and Juan Carlos' game. The best part was being able to get suntanned in almost December! It's fun to watch soccer in a country where soccer is loved and respected!

Thanksgiving

So it's not exactly the same in Mexico as it is at home. First of all, we had to work on Thursday which was not quite the same at home! And then we came home from school and made our food. We ate at 6:30 p.m. and everyone just made a dish or something. There were things missing from normal dinner such as home (thanks mom :-) ), lefse, pumpkin pie, cheesy potatoes. My dish i made was cheesy corn and noodles, which wasn't the same because there's no Velvetta in this stinking country! Another difference: there was about 30 people there, 18 Americans and 12 Mexicans...I've never eaten thanksgiving in Spanish or had flan as a dessert.

Santos game

We went to the game! This is 4 of Katie's teammates and her coach along with my some of my roommates! Sadly they are out of the finals now, but it was fun to be there!

This is the hall of fame that is outside of the stadium. It's full of players and looks wonderful. This is Sarah and I :-) Thanks for coming to visit me!!

While Sarah was here I wanted to take her to a Santos game (the professional soccer team here), but because it was a qualifying game all the tickets were sold out but, Friday night Katie's soccer coach called us and asked if we wanted to go! He had wonderful box seats wtih free drinks and free food. The tickets were supposed to be $1,500 pesos (like 130 dollars), but instead we only paid $500( $38) for them! It was a wonderful game and Santos won which means they got into the semi finals. It was great to see our kids at the game as well!

Sarah's visit!!

My cousin Sarah came to see me!!! It was so fun to have a visitor and to have someone come visit me here and get to see where I live and what I have to see and do. She stayed in my room which made me remember having a rommmate in college! It's fun to get to tell stories until you fall asleep! She also came into my classroom and helped me all day long! It was wonderful to have someone who actualy likes kids (unlike my aid) and knows how to help those kids! My kids covered twice the amount of material as we normally accomplish. Also that day we got to play with the parachute she brought me! It's like about half the size of the one we use for AWANA. The kids thought it was the coolest thing and so much fun. We went out to eat at a fun restaurant called Taco Stao. We also got to watch soccer both my roommate Kaite's and the Santos game. We also got to go to our friend Cecy's birthday party Saturday night, unfortunately it was outside and freezing cold, but Sarah got to try some nasty candy and experience a birthday party here!

The girls :-)

Here are some snapshots of the people I've been hanging out with! The 5 of us from Casa D de dedo and our two friends from Canada! One of the girls from Canada is the other one who teaches Prepri (kindergarten) with me so we spend lots of times together sharing stories and hiding in each others rooms during recess! It's pretty fun because we all get along and our personalities mix pretty well! We of cousrse all have different opinions and things that make us get annoyed, but we also know each others buttons and avoid them.

acueducts in zacatecas

This one is for you mom :-) These are the crazy acueducts we drove all over Spain trying to find. I think that Spains was way cooler, but it was fun to find them in Mexico. Remember where we slept that night? ;-)

La Mina

The mine!

Zacatecas is famous for it's mine. For over 300 years slaves and children dug this mine out without using any dynamite. Our guide said that between 8-10 people died everyday for 300 years. The children had to work in the mine when their parents died to "pay off their debt"...was super sad to hear that!

In order to enter the mine you have to wear a yellow hard hat and hair net (super nice...not) and then take a little train that has glass surrounding it. Our tour guide kept making fun of us because when he asked us where we were from we said Torreon and he was like no...like where do you live and we answered Torreon he was just getting frustrated with us. I felt pretty good about this day because the tour was all in Spanish and yet I understood everything he was saying! He liked us so much that he gaves us each a stone to keep :-)

Inside their a statue that supposedly if girls rub his tummy and touch the rock in his hand you will have good luck for the rest of your life. The men have to hold his gun and touch the stone in order to have good luck.

It was kinda creepy because once the tour was over they say you can leave with the tour guide or you can walk out the other entrance to the cable car. This is what we did, but there is no guide and you just follow random arrows...major difference between america and mexico! We would never let people wander a historical site where they could get lost or hurt or damage something by themselves!

Also interesting info about the mine is that during the day it's a touristic attraction, but at night it turns into a club. It's the worlds first mine club. now there are like 4 one in mexico, germany, australia and somewhere else.

Views from the trolly....

Here the cables are kind of close to our heads, but there were times when we were sitting and had to duck so we didn't lose our heads. A couple times we had to make people sit down so they didn't get hurt!

This was a beautiful way to see the city. Most of our time we were only within our 4 block radius, but we loved being able to see how big and old and pretty everything was! We all were dreading going home on Monday and wished that we had two or more days to see more!

There was a beautiful park which reminded me of being in Spain, we didn't get to go back and see it, but it looked really pretty....it was where our hostel owner suggested we go eat a picnic lunch and if we had had an extra day I think we would have!

Torreon is a really modern industrial city and Zacatecas was an old historic city that was so full of colors and where people were proud of their city! One morning we were sitting in the plaza outside of a cathedral and an elderly couple came up to us and asked us where we were from and if we were enjoying their city and that they were happy to see young girls like us enjoying the beauty too! People in Torreon don't stop and talk to you unless they are going to say something you don't want to hear!

a beautiful old city....Zacatecas

For the day of the dead (Nov. 2) we had school off which meant we had a 3 day weekend! We left Friday right after school and took a taxi to the bus station and then a 6.5 hour bus ride. This ride was fine, they showed two movies. 1- armagedan in spanish...needless to say we were all crying by the end. 2- lindsay lohans love bug or something like that...the remake of herbie goes bannanas. All my roommates thought I was crazy and didn't believe it was a real movie...I need to bring it back after Christmas dad!

When we got there we took a taxi to our hostle which was in the perfect spot! Right out one of the rooms was the cathedral and out of the other room it was another side of the cathedral. Our side also had a bar outside of it which was a little loud! But it was only open Friday and Saturday night. The other girls' room had the bells that went off ever hour. However, the rooms were so dark that we had no problem sleeping in!

Friday night we went to a little cantina and then went to bed because we were tired. When we were getting ready for bed there was no water...we thought nothing of it...

Saturday morning we woke up and there was still no water. By this point were like crud...but we get ready and we go to this cute little restaurant that apparently has only the best breakfast and the rest of its food is bad....

Then we went to the cathedral which was beautiful and made me think of Europe. Next we took a double decker trolly around the city. We had to duck a few times so we didn't get our heads cut off by cables.

day of the dead. All over the city there were altars to remember the people who have passed before those who are left behind. After walking out of the cathedral we were wandering, trying to find the trolly and saw something very colorful.....a guard told us we could come in and look. What we saw was truly amazing! All of these are created by different colored rocks, pasta, or fruit. It was huge and truly amazing to see how much time and detail they place into remembering those who have passed. The tradition believes that the dead will come and eat what is left for them on the altar. Also, that it's important to remember what the person loved or what made them unique. For example at other altars there were stuffed animal dogs to represent their dogs. Or there are guitars if they played or loved music. Each family decides how the person would like to be remembered.

Halloween party with my kids!

Thursday night Ms. Cassidy and I got invited to the kids halloween party! It was fun, but crazy to see. There was probably 250 people there. Keep in mind that between us we only have 48 kids. Then add one mom to each of those who were sitting at a table and smoking, gossiping, not paying any attention to their kids. Then there was at least one nanny for each kid and an endless amount of sibilings. It was so weird because it wasn't at a house, it was at a party spot. It was strange to see the division and to really watch people not care for their kids. Granted there were some moms who were excited and taking pictures and following the kids around, but there were many who were not.

It was awesome to see our kids so happy to see us there and the parents were also excited that we were all together.

Halloween party Oct 24, 2009

Halloween party!

The week before Halloween we hosted a halloween party at our house. We did it a week early because during halloween there was a puente and we were going to travel :-). The party was a custom party! It was fun to watch everyone preparing their costumes and being inventive. It was a time we wished we had a sowing machine, instead we used hot glue guns, super glue, safety pins, a lot of creativity was used!

The party began at 9pm and did not end until after 8 am. At 8 I finally went to my room and slept for a couple hours! When we woke up our house was completely trashed, but everyone was super excited and said they had a ton of fun. We had pinatas, a giant candy bowl, and loud music.

Here are some pictures to capture the night!

My roommate Eda dressed up as a duck...she was going to be chicken little, but then she got duck feet instead of chicken and changed a little :-)

This is my friend Ale, I have gotten to hang out with her quite a bit and it's nice because she has a car so we have gotten to go to different parts of the city and see new things :-)

Katie and Rulas. This is KT's 3rd year in Torreon.

Jenn is one of the teachers who was here last year and is incredibly helpful!

Little update on my class activities :-)

Check out these awesome things my kids made out of clay! I think this was the quietest they have ever been and they were super encouraging to each other which was also fun :-)

One thing we do in my class each week is have a star student. The star student gets to see lots of things and share with their friends different aspects of their lives. For example, we read their favorite book on Tuesday. On Thursday they get to bring their favorite toy, and on Friday they get to bring someone from their family to share with us or teach us aspects of their lives. This weeks girl brought her mom who made oreo candy spiders and cute origami boxes to take them home in!