Arad´s Birthday Fiesta!

Last Saturday we celebrated Arad´s birthday here at the School. Arad is one of Sandy and Alfredo´s kids and pretty much the coolest kid ever. We loves anything Lightning McQueen--Lightning McQueen shirts, Lightning McQueen Shoes, Lightning Mcqueen pants, Lightning Mcqueen backpack, Lightning McQueen toys--you get the picture right. Lets just say I have never seen him without anything Lightning Mcqueen. So of course his party was all about lightning McQueen as well!

Arad and Atsi can´t wait for the cake and either could I! You can never go wrong with a tres leches cake!

Its sort of a Mexican tradition that the birthday kid gets their face pushed into the cake and they take a big bite out of the cake. However, Arad didn´t want any of that and so instead he decided to just do the honorary cutting of the cake instead.

What´s a Mexican fiesta without a pinata? We still have a ton of candy from America and so we went out and found this really cool Lightning McQueen pinata. The only problem was that Arad didn´t want the pinata to be busted open. Fortunately, the things was way tough and so after all of the kids had their fair share of whacks at the thing (and me as well!) we decided to just open it up and dump all the candy out and so Arad was able to still have is pinata in one piece. Sandy said that he slept with it that night and then forced her to bring it with them in the car to church the next day!

And of course the best part of any birthday is the presents. Every present Arad got had something to do with Lightning McQueen. Becca and I gave him this cool Lightning McQueen ball!

Tuxlta and Canon del Sumidero

The last few days of our trip we spent in the capital of Chiapas, Tuxtla Gutierrez. Right outside of the city is the famous Canon del Sumidero, which is a giant canyon with a river running through it. We decided to take a 3-hour boat ride through the canyon which was well worth it. It was quite the spectaculor sight!

This is a picture of the whole gang right before going on the boat ride up the canyon. We´re a pretty good looking bunch!

This is where the canyon makes a V with a wall in the back--its one of the icons of the state of Chiapas.

Megan, Jessica, Becca, and I were the lucky ones to keep things in line in the back of the boat. We had quite a bit of fun here in the back (I think Jessica had too much fun, especially with picture taking. Unfortunately, she´s got some pretty good blackmail photos on me because of this boat ride.)

Everyone´s favorite part of Tuxtla was the ice cream cones I think. My favorite was the pina colada. Mmmm! Wish I could have another one now!


Jocelyn, Rachel, and Jacque sure couldn´t get enough of the ice cream!


Before heading home we stopped by the temple in Tuxtla and did some baptisms. It was a neat experience and once again the temple was quite the sight to behold. I got a little carried away with taking pictures at this one so here are some of my favorites!

San Cristobal de las Casas

The third day we headed further up into the mountains to San Cristobal de las Casas. Its a smaller town with a rich history and still fairly traditional. The city is also surrounded by many small villages of the indigenous people (Chiapas is known for its rich culture and strong indigenous population).

This is Becca and I in front of the main cathedral in the center of the city. I loved the small feel of this city and its traditional culture.


The city was full of artisan markets full of booths run by the indigenous people from the surrounding villages that come into the city to sell their hand-made crafts. It was a great place to do some souvenir shopping.


Since the city is clear up in the mountains, it was surprisingly quite chilly there even though it is the middle of the summer. To heat up a bit, we decided to do a large bonfire at our hostel and roast hot dogs and marshmallows! I think all the Brits that were staying at our hostel thought we were a little weird but thats okay because it was a ton of fun!

Here´s Brinley, Megan, Marea, and our bus drivers enjoying the fire and roasted marshmallows.


I think I´m getting pretty good at this whole roasting hot dogs thing!

Agua Azul

After going to Palenque we headed over to some famous waterfalls called Agua Azul that were really close. The waterfalls were really big and cool but the best part was being able to escape the humid heat and go for a swim in them!

Palenque

The second day we went to Palenque which was by far my favorite place that I have been here in Mexico. Palenque is the sight of an ancient Mayan city that has several temples and other buildings scattered throughout a mountainous jungle. The ruins looked like they were straight out of the Book of Mormon and were really a sight to behold. Here´s a bunch of pictures from Palenque.

Villahermosa

We finally had our first week long vacation! We all decided to head south and do some sightseeing in the states of Tabasco and Chiapas. Both of the states are full of rain forests, indigenous people, and Mayan ruins!

The first stop on our journey was Villahermosa. We left Tehuacan on Thursday evening right after getting done teaching and arrived in Villahermosa at 5 am. The only problem with that is that our hostel for that night wasn´t in Villahermosa and so we just had too be bums at a random park by a large river there for a few hours until everything opened up. As you can see from the pic below I made quite the good bum with my makeshift bed.


After bumming it at a park for a couple of hours, we headed over to a giant park that Villahermosa is famous for. The front of the park was a zoo and then the back of it was a trail through dense rainforest that had ancient Olmec sculptures scattered throughout it. This one below is the most famous of all of them and so Becca and I tried to do our best imitation of it--we will have to work on it some more though!

Here´s a bunch of the girls trying to mimic one of the other sculptures. Don´t they all look great!


There is also a temple in Villahermosa and so we were able to go to it before heading out for the day. The temples down here are pretty small but really a sight to behold and very beautiful inside.

Cinepolis

One of our favorite things to do here in Mexico is to go to the movies. The movie theater here is actually nicer than the ones in America and yet the tickets are only 28 pesos which comes out to just over 2 dollars. Needless to say, we head to the movies with everyone quite a bit after class. So far we have seen Harry Potter VI, Transformers, The Proposal, and My Sister's Keeper and in case you were wondering I would give Harry Potter 4 stars, Transformers 2.5 stars, The Proposal 3 stars, and My Sister's Keeper 4 stars.

Discovery Carnival

Summer vacation started last week here in Mexico so we had our carnival last Wednesday at Discovery before heading out on vacation. Basically, the carnival is an English performance for the parents. This semester the kinder school performed Peter Pan and the primary school performed Finding Nemo.

The carnival only lasts an hour but their is a lot of time and preparation that goes into it. I'm sure the kids are excited to have it over with because they will no longer have to practice everyday. Preparation for the carnival was especially crazy because we found out on Tuesday that the kids needed props and so I stayed up real late on Tuesday drawing all of the different characters and then Jessica, Brinley, Becca, Meagan, and I spent all of Wednesday painting the pictures and preparing them for the performance that night.

It took Jessica, Brinley, and I 5 hours to paint all of the pictures but we got them done in time for the performance and actually had quite a bit of fun doing it.


Meagan and Becca were quite the troopers and did the not so fun job of making jellyfish and attaching yarn to all of the pictures.


All of the kids did a great job saying their lines and singing the songs!


Here Rodrigo is performing along with Alexa and Leslie. Rodrigo is always fun to watch because he is very animated and really gets into the actions of the songs.


Take a look at the Primary and Kinder kids performing in the videos below!

Cuatro de Julio

This weekend we decided to have a huge BBQ to celebrate the 4th. We had lots of food, played games, and just had a ton of fun.

All of the girls thought the grill that us men (Alfredo, Teo, and me) were using was pretty funny and so of course they had to take pictures. It was pretty small but it worked and nothings better on the 4th then a good old American hot dog!


I think the best part of our BBQ was the cheesecake though! A couple of weeks ago I was telling Rachel (another cheesecake fanatic) how much I wanted cheesecake and she told me that she had a simple cheesecake recipe. Well, I thought I would give it a try and it was a big success--I can still taste it in my mouth! I'm so glad that I now know how to make some really good homemade cheesecake. I think I will be putting this recipe to good use from now on.


Another highlight of the BBQ was Sandy doing face painting on all of the kids.


It wasn't good enough for the kids to get paintings on their faces though; instead, they also wanted to paint our faces. Madison and Vanilka did a pretty good job painting a butterfly on Becca.


However, the butterfly didn't look good for long as the younger Atsi and Helena also wanted a turn.


After seeing what Atsi and Helena did on Becca, I thought it would be better if they just gave me some tattoos on my hands and arms instead of doing the whole face painting thing.


All in all, it was a really good Mexican-style 4th of July for all of us here in Tehuacan!

More of the Kids and Teaching (which is the best part of Mexico!)

While traveling around Mexico is definitely a ton of fun, none of us would trade it one bit for what we get to do everyday--teach the kids! Well, I don´t even know if we can call it teaching because it is so much fun and more of just playing with them.

As the head teacher I´m not lucky enough to get to teach everyday so I have to take every opportunity I get. I´ve told all of the girls I will teach for them whenever they want me to and so usually I get to teach about twice a week and then I try to play with the kids as much as possible before and after class. After class I really like playing monster or drawing with Atsi, Vanilka, Madison, and Helena. Gotta love the kids!


Becca teaches the elementary level at both Discovery and here at ILP. It can have its challenges (as she has the same kids everyday for the full two hours) but at the same time it has plenty of rewards as the kids are extremely good at English and every so often they get to kick back and relax with a party!


Of course the kids favorite class is kitchen and you can´t fault them too much on that one. It´s my favorite class as well and I probably frequent that class more than any of the others to observe. Here Marea is making yummy peanut butter cracker sandwiches with some of the kids!

This group can be a wild bunch but you can´t help but love them anyways! Here they are making robots in arts class with Meagan.

Drama can be the funniest class to teach and you can see why for yourself. The kids can be hilarious sometimes!