Vida

my 6 month mark in mexico city... that means 1/4 of my time here is over. The time passed VERY quickly. i know i am having this experience for a reason and i'm learning so much here (i'm not ONLY learning spanish). So much that I think will change my life forever. Here's a little glimpse into my life... I'm sitting on our roof... I see the hills of Mexico City crowded with houses. (Sometimes even the famous snow-capped volcanoes) I see our water collection tank. This is what supplies most of our house with water. Apparently it pulls the water up at night for the whole day. It's a big tank, but i'm not really sure why we weren't affected by the water cut a few months ago. One faucet is hooked up to spring water, but the rest comes from our big tank on the roof. I smell the Panderia (like a bakery) baking. I move around our yellow-plastic roof to pick where I want to sit today. this is where i find my alone time. I know i need some alone tim

for being such a catholic country they don't seem to take lent very seriously. i never thought of myself as a person who took lent super seriously, but here i could probably be put in that category. for ash wednesday (the first day of lent-Feb. 17th this year) i know it's not a holy day of obligation, but if you want to receive ashes, you go to church and receive them during mass. Not here. Here they only have one mass in the morning and otherwise the church and chapels (like ours for example) have ministers stationed there to distribute ashes. So it literally takes like 30 seconds. And here you don't have to worry about the big cross on your forehead all day. They use a little stamp so the cross is very little and neat. I think of celebrating the day before lent at Mardi Gras and once lent starts the celebrations stop. Nope, not here. I was shocked when I went to the parish at night on ash wednesday to see more vendors than usual on the streets. It was like the

the weather this week was not fun. it was cold and rainy basically the whole week. so i wanted to go on an outing Saturday. I got my bag ready to go, prepared directions and headed out. No problems on the bus or metro. I love the people selling their cds on the metro (for 10 pesos...about a dollar) except as soon as i get excited about a song it changes to a different one. They want to give you a sample of the cd, but i just want to listen to the songs i like. I love that the metro here is 3 pesos and you rarely need to wait longer than 2 minutes for a metro to come. I also love the underground tunnels...I just think they're so complicated....up, down, around. So I arrive at Coyocan to see a mall. Not the part I wanted to go to. So I sat down by the exit to the subway and started reading my book. I mean it was so nice out I couldn't pass it up. After awhile I decided to walk around and see if I stumbled across the part i actually wanted to be at. As I was walk

melissa & i walked up to work today all excited to see our kids again (after a 3 day weekend) with flowers in tow for our boss (at the guarderia) because we missed her birthday on friday. as we stood outside waiting to be let in I looked around and saw Gael's aunt with a woman i didn't recognize and now i am assuming it was his mom. I was at first happy because I think it's good for him to spend more time with his mom. ------------ Apparently Gael's mom abandoned him and his siblings and now his aunt takes care of them. His mom comes in and out of his life as she pleases. Gael will always say he has two moms, but usually when talking about his aunt Mom he'll say Mama _______ (her first name), but when talking about his biological mother he'll say Mama. And he calls me Mamita. ------------ Then I saw Gael once we got inside and delivered our flowers. He had a huge black eye and a bloody nose. I immediately asked what happened, as I do if any o

you all know i am a very independent person. I may be a little nervous before I do something, but the feeling afterwards always makes it worth it. with my arrival here i feel like my independence took a back seat...far in the back and I became very dependent. pushing my independence back, even when it was begging me to let it shine a little. I blamed it on 3 things: not knowing my way around a new place, lack of money, and lack of spanish. But then I started thinking... 1. I didn't know my way around Chicago in the first six months, but that didn't hold me back. The same in LA. I was only there for two months and got on the bus and found my way. Sometimes an adventure, but I did it. In both places I guess I had websites as a resource to use to plan my trip, but here I have plenty of resources/people to ask to get directions. So with this in mind I decided this is not an excuse. 2. I was as frugal as frugal gets before I got my job in LA (sort-of even with my job, b