Vida

i had a great time with my parents. it was wonderful for them to see where i live and get a better idea of what my life is like here. except for the bruise i got on my shoulder from carrying so much water saturday i really enjoyed climbing those pyramids. and i was really proud of my dad for getting up the two biggest ones with the best of them and not complaining the whole day, even when he reached his point and didn't go up anymore. one very interesting part for me was while we were at Jonathan's family's house Saturday before the pyramids a person who was immigrating to the US apparently came by. We were all inside the kitchen with his mom when one of his brothers came in and said a migrant was passing by and needed some food and drink. She made a plate and got a drink for the person and gave it to her son. She said they come by all the time. Mom said it seems like a far way from the border and I said people's journeys start all over and they are long. (Th

guest post from my parents.... WEDNESDAY We arrived at the Mexico City airport early in the afternoon. The cab ride was a little wild – sort of a cross between the Gran Prix and NASCAR, and the driver stopped for directions about five times. We arrived and Lisa took us walking to Santa Fe Commercial Zone. A lot of walking-we ended up at the mall, then came back by bus-after I hurt my leg trying to step over a guard rail on a shortcut to the bus. After that, we walked with our luggage to the parish and settled in. THURS The room at the Parish was comfortable, but cold - with lots of covers, we were fine until morning. When we got up and dressed, we met the Padre, who showed us around and played recorded Gregorian chants in the Sanctuary. Lisa took us to a street stand with fresh-squeezed mandarin juice and then a bakery-we ate at her place. We walked with her and Melissa to La Guarderia . The director, Pacquita , seemed really excited and enthusiastically showed us the variou

here i am 23 so overall my birthday was wonderful as i think all my birthday's are. i'm not a big celebrater for my birthday...i like to have a normal day with a few spruces. I've actually never been a huge fan of my birthday (at least not in recent years). For one it's always freezing (I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all my wonderful friends the past few years for braving frost bite and running through the streets of Chicago with me...Kel 2 years ago as we were running in our heels from the eL "I knew I should have bought these pants in a smaller size." as she held them up. So although the weather was awful my friends shined through.) But I think the root if it is I don't like all the attention on me & I am really awkward when I receive gifts so I'd just rather not. I thought this is the perfect year for just another day so I told the girls no gifts with stuff my friends and family sent me from the states and my parents comi

as the kids slowly worked their way back to cla ss there were many celebrations this week... monday 5 kids with the very sma ll amoun t of kids they decided to watch tv, have english class and then play outside all day. this gave us time to distribute all the goodies my aunts collected at their parishes between the teachers and lucy and i worked on these little baskets made out of milk cart ons the majority of the day. i was SO happy to see my kids again...even if there were five. tuesday 7 kids -including a new one, Kevin. He's a twin and he came in my class and his twin is now in Melissa's This is the big balloon day. Here kids write their letters of what they want to the three kings and release them on balloons t he day before. similar to how we write letters to santa. although i think the tradit ion here has to be very hard on parents, which i witnessed tuesday night because when i left to go home at 11:30 the market was still packed with shoppers...they only find

the last week of vacation we took advantage and took the city by storm our lady of guadulape we made ou r way to the virgin of guadulape wi th the girls and looked at all the different chapels and went to mass, had lunch and had a successful afternoon. I think this is the first outing all 4 of us went on... city tour our english student wanted to show us around the town so melissa, two of our english students and i headed downtown to a museum. it was a little upsetting because two floors were closed (so only one was open), but i have no complaints because the one we saw was really cool and it was free! then we headed towards the zocolo and looked and several sites there before deciding to go up in the observatory building (which was about 40 stories up). after going up there we went into the first Sanbourns -which is a chain restaurant here of mexican food- to see the paintings. The building has a lot of history that we heard, but honestly i don't remember a lot. i learned