El Parque

We love our park!  We live really close to the playground side of the park.  The red car on the right side of these pictures is parked in the driveway next to ours.

In these pictures Joseph and Daniel show off how far they can jump off the swings.  Stephen also enjoys jumping, but I didn't happen to catch his jumps on film.

Stephen and Daniel enjoy the seesaw and Chiara climbs a ladder.  Chiara loves it all.  She tries to copy the boys and climb up the slides.  And she has no trouble going down even though they go fairly fast.

The boys have found this tree that they love to climb.  They actually climb up the fence and then just hang out in the tree. 

In this picture, Daniel, Joseph, and Edgar play frisbee from on top of the playground equipment.  Edgar is Esteban and Marcela's son.  He is eight years old.

Stephen and Karl join in a game of basketball.  The guy they are playing wiht is from Slavakia!  Notice how there are soccer goals below the basketball hoops so that this court doubles as a soccer field.

Elena, Angie (12), Brenda (14), and another friend watch the game.  Angie and Brenda are Esteban's daughters.

Chiara with Brenda and Daniel with Angie.

A little over a week ago (September 19th), a clown came to our park.  There was an announcement posted by the gate, so we showed up on time and were the only ones there.  But when the clown was ready to start the show, people appeared out of nowhere.  The show was sponsered by the taxi company.  They passed out Kool-aid type drinks to everyone, and the clown put on a fun show.

Our Home in Puebla

We moved into our own house on Monday, August 17th.  We had been in Mexico just over one week.  Those of you who have been worried about our safety will be happy to know that we rented a house in this gated community.  There are a couple guards at the gate 24 hours a day.  We kind of feel sorry for them -- it seems like such a boring job to open the gate for everyone.
Gated communities like this one are very common here.  We picked this one because it is where Marcela (and family) lives, and we thought it would be nice to be near friends.

This little fountain is right inside the gate.

One of the things that we really like about our neighborhood is the park in the center.  You can see the playground and water tower in this picture.  Each side of the water tower has a basketball hoop mounted on it, and the kids also like to hit tennis balls off the walls.  Just past it is a concrete basketball court which doubles as a soccer field.  Beyond it is a grass soccer field.
The park is in the center of our neighborhood, and there are streets with about ten row houses on each going out from the park like spokes on a wheel.

Here is the front of our house.  We are the second house from the corner (the one with the door open).  The second story bedroom window that you can see is the window to the boys room.  You can see trash sitting next to the door.  We put our trash out every morning and someone comes around and picks it up. 
Also notice that there is a pump in front of the house and we don't have grass in our driveway.  The week before we moved in, our landlady had a cistern built beneath the driveway to hold water.  They were still in the process of installing the pump when we moved in, so for the first three days of living here, we only had water three times a day which is when the water is turned on for the development.  With the cistern and pump we have water whenever we want.  Most people have tanks on their roofs (you can see two in this picture -- the black things).  Then you don't need a pump because they use gravity.  We don't know why our landlady chose the underground cistern and pump method.  We think the pump is kind of noisy.
Here is a picture of Joseph's bed in the boys room.  We decided to just put mattresses on the floor because we didn't want the hassel of buying and selling beds when we are only going to be here for a year.

This picture shows Stephen and Daniel's beds.  The kids had fun picking out their own sheets even though there wasn't a huge selection. 

This is Elena and Chiara's room.  They have some water damage in the corner of their room (because the roof leaks), but you can't see it in this picture.  Our landlady is trying to get it taken care of.

Here is a picture of the kids on our stairs.  The stairs are the only place in the house with carpet.  You rarely see carpet here in Mexico.  Everything is tile.  It sure makes it easier to clean up all the messes that Chiara makes.  At the top of the stairs is a landing with a sink.  This bathroom is just off the landing, and the kids' bedrooms are also upstairs.  The bathroom is bigger than the ones at Jose's house and the water pressure in the shower is fine.

Our bedroom is downstairs, and it is open to the main room of the house.  You can see a door in this picture which leads to another small bathroom.  We are lucky to have two bathrooms.  The owners of our house added the second one, but most of the homes in our neighborhood only have one.  We have put up a shower curtain so that our room is not so open.

 This kitchen area is right off of the main living area.  We purchased the refrigerator that you see in the picture.  It is smaller than what you would see in the states, but many people here have smaller ones than this.  You can see that we have a stovetop, but no oven or dishwasher.  We have purchased a tiny toaster oven.

For the first week we were in our house, we didn't have a table or sofa.  I really like having a round table.  You can fit a lot of people around it without it taking up a lot of space, and it feels so cozy to all sit around it.  Karl had picked up these chairs from a street vendor before we even moved in.  It cost less than $40 for all seven of them!  They are unfinished, but will work great for one year.  Our mattresses and refrigerator arrived the day we moved in (delivered from Walmart).  And we got electricity and gas that day.  Karl also purchased a car the same day we moved in -- a 1995 Ford Winstar minivan.  It's kind of ugly and he's had some repairs done already, but it should get us through the year. 

Here is the couch we bought.  It unfolds into a mat, so we will have a place for people to sleep when they come visit.  In this picture the boys and Chiara are watching a movie on the laptop.  We did finally find a cheap TV a couple of weeks ago.

Here is a funny story about moving into our new house.  The first night that we stayed in our house, Karl decided to lock the dead bolt, just to be safe. You have to use the key to lock it. The next morning we were supposed to meet Trini (the wife of the family where we stayed our first week), and she was going to take us to a public school and help us try to get our kids in because she knows the principal. Anyway, the point is that we had a deadline. So we get up the next morning and realize that the lock is stripped or something, and you can't unlock it from the inside. All the windows here have bars on them, so you can't just climb out a window. Karl looked out and didn't see anyone, and he was anxious since we were going to be late, so he didn't want to just wait until someone happened to walk by. So he went out our back door, which leads out onto a small tiled patio (4 ft X 5 ft), surrounded by three walls of our apartment and the shared wall of the adjoining apartment.  Our water heater and some washing mashine hook-ups are out there.  He climbed up the window bars and sills onto the roof of the first floor and from there shimmied around the overhang onto the roof of the second floor. There was no way down so he called to a lady leaving her house to alert the guards at the gate who came over and opened the door from the outside using the key I handed through the window, which worked just fine, And, lucky for Karl, there were some workers that had come in since he had climbed onto the roof, and they had a ladder which they let him use to get down. Now we just don't use the deadbolt. The door still locks automatically every time you close it.  Anyway, we actually were still able to catch Trini on her way to take the bus to work, so it worked out all right.

First Impressions

So, what were our first impressions?  Well, as we rode the bus from Mexico City to Puebla, I tried to stay awake and get a feel for Mexico.  We drove through some beautiful countryside -- green rolling hills.  Now we are in Puebla which is a city of 4 to 5 million people.  I think what surprised me the most was how familiar things seemed.  They have Costco, Wallmart, Office Max, Radio Shack, Applebees, Dominoes Pizza, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Burger King, ets.  And when you go into Wallmart, you see the same brands -- Oral B toothbrushes, Gillette razors, Oreo cookies, Kraft Mac and Cheese, Huggies, etc. Everyhing in Costco's food court is exactly the same except that they have pina colada smoothies instead of berry-berry (which are delicious), and they have hawaiian pizza in addition to the other three kinds.  Oh, and the sodas are different.  It's not like everything is the same, but after visiting other foreign countries, I think I expected things to be a lot more different than they are.

Another thing that struck me was the thrown together feel of Puebla.  For example this is a run-down house on a dirt road near where we live . . .

If you walk up the road about 20 feet from that house, you can see this really nice house (next to a kind of typical video store).  It's on a street made of paving stones.  If you turn the corner, it's asphalt.

This OXXO is like a 7-11.  It is located right outside the housing development where we have rented a house.  (The kids love being able to walk over and buy treats).
Yet if you walk just a couple of blocks away (towards Jose's house) you can find a street with three tiny traditional style convenient stores all on the same street.  (They look more like the video store in the previous picture -- no parking or store sign).

We live about five to ten minutes away from two different Wallmarts (different directions from our house) and from Costco.  There is also a Sorianna and a Mega within 10 to 15 minutes of our house. Both are a lot like Wallmart.  You can walk to all these stores in about 20 to 35 minutes.  We didn't have a car for our first week and walked to both Wallmarts and Costco.  I still sometimes walk to them since Karl takes the car to work.  And yet, even with all the big supermarkets, there are still people setting their wares up in an empty field along the street, or setting up a booth on the sidewalk, and you still find trucks like this fruit and vegetable truck driving around with their mega-phone, calling out what they are selling.

Jose's wife, Trini, ran a summer school in their courtyard.  One day when they stopped for a break, this old man came by wheeling his little cooler full of treats that resembled otter pops.  (All you can see is his yellow hat and striped shirt in this picture).  He really scored that day.  All the kids lined up to buy them, including ours.

Chiara loves the mango pop she got!

When the summer school kids got a break (recess), they would take a ball out in the street in front of Jose's house and play soccer.  Our boys joined in a couple of times.  When a car came by everyone would just stop playing and move out of the street, and then the game would resume after the car passed.

Jose's son, also named Jose Angel, was always especially nice to us.  Here he is with Karl and some of the kids.

We Arrive In Mexico

We flew from D.C. to Mexico on August 8, 2009.  We left Shireen's home early in the morning (before 6am) and arrived in Mexico City by 2:30 pm.  Then we waited in line for about two hours to get through customs!  Karl's exhange partner is named Esteban Munoz.  His wife and daughter (Marcella and Brenda), and Marcella's mother all met us at the airport.  They had been waiting the whole two hours for us.  I guess it doesn't usually take that long to get through customs.  They helped us exchange money and rode the bus with us back to Puebla (about 2 1/2 hours) and then helped us get taxis and drove with us to the house where we were staying to drop off all our stuff, and then we all went to Dominoes Pizza.  It was a really long day. 

The picture above show the front of Jose Angel Ramirez's house, where we stayed for our first week.  His house is in the front, and then above his courtyard he has put in about eight rooms which he rents out to students.  (There are a lot of universities in Puebla). 

In this picture, you can see our family on the landing outside our rooms. The girls room was through the door next to Daniel, our room was the door near Karl, and the door to the boys room is just out of view on the right.

On clear days, you could see Popocatepetl (the active volcano) from the balcony.  Here it is with steam billowing out.

Here's the bedroom that Karl and I stayed in.

The boys' bedroom.

And the girls' bedroom.  Chiara made the transition to a bed quite well.  I think she loves sharing a bed with her big sister!  Elena doesn't mind sharing her bed, but she doesn't like it when we put Chiara down for a nap in their room and she goes through all of Elena's drawers dumping earrings and such before settling down to sleep.

Each room had a bathroom off of it, but only one had hot water and only one had a seat on the toilet.  The bathrooms here are tiny.  We would stick the toilet paper outside when we showered so that it wouldn't get wet.  Also, for some reason barely any water came out of the shower.  I finally started taking a cup in with me so that I could dump water from the sink over my head and get through my shower faster.  The water pressure on the sink was fine.

Here's a picture of Jose's bunny.  He was very friendly and would come hopping into our rooms looking for crumbs.  The kids loved him!

I wouldn't say the bunny especially liked to be held.  But he tolerated it (unless it was Chiara).


We were grateful to have a place to stay when we arrived in Mexico, but anxious to have our own kitchen and some space of our own.  Going out to eat and buying sweet bread for breakfast got a little old.  We stayed at Jose's house just over one week.

Some Pictures from DC

We finally got internet service at our home here in Puebla. I know that everyone is anxious to hear about Mexico, but I wanted to share a few pictures from DC first. We had a great time while we were there, and feel lucky that Karl's orientation for this Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program was in such a fun place. We got to see three of Krista's sisters (and their families) while we were there!
We also visited a lot of places including the Museums of American History, Natural History, Native American History, both Air and Space Museums, the Postal Service Museum, Ford's Theater, the National Archives, and the Capital. As you can see from the picture to the right, Chiara was quite the trooper and simply took her naps in the stroller every day.










This picture is from a Children's Museum that we visited in Baltimore. Chiara Stephen is helping pull a bubble up around her.

In this picture Daniel works the controls in a simulation of one of the airplanes built by the Wright brothers.

You should be able to see the Washington Monument in the background of this picture, but it does not seem to be showing up very well. We did a lot of things in DC while Karl was in his orientation meetings. The kids enjoyed taking the metro, but they got a little tired of walking everywhere.

Krista's sister, Shireen, lives in Arlington, VA right outside DC. We stayed with her before Karl's orientation started, and she met us in DC several times. The kids really enjoyed spending time with their cousins. Here they are at the FDR memorial.

Laura, Krista's twin sister, drove up from Blacksburg, VA with her four kids to hang out with us for a couple days, too. We were too busy having fun - swimming at the pool and visiting the Post Office Museum - and we did not take many pictures together.

Here's the Dodini and Watts families in front of the Jefferson Memorial (minus the Dads, of course).

Joseph and Stephen pretend to hold up the Washington Monument.

Elena, Stephen, and Chiara at the Lincoln Memorial.

Krista's youngest sister, Emily, who recently moved to DC, also hung out with us while we were there. She visited most of these monuments with us, and took this picture of us at the WWII Memorial. The Lincoln Memorial is in the background.

Krista and Emily at the WWII Memorial.

We did get to visit the zoo for a short time on our last day in DC. The kids loved it. Washington, DC was such a fun start to our adventure.

The next post will be about Mexico. We're doing great down here.