Monday, February 15, 2010

Karl's Birthday

Karl's birthday was on January 21st, and we were in Mexico City at the Fulbright Conference.  At a dinner that evening, everyone sang Las MaƱanitas to him, but other than that, we didn't have time for much celebrating.  His birthday wasn't forgotten, though.  The previous weekend Karl and I had gone out for dinner with four of his friends from school, one of whom also had a January birthday.  We went to a fun retaurant/bar that had a live mariachi band.
Then when we returned from Mexico City, Elena decided that we needed to throw a surprise party for Karl.  While he was at school, I walked over to Costco and picked up one of his favorite desserts - a white chocolate torte with berries on top.  Then Elena took him for a walk while I made him one of his favorite dinners - fish tacos with mangos - and the boys blew up balloons and put up a Happy Birthday sign.  We invited another American family from our stake over for dessert and games.
Blowing out the candles


Laughing as the candles relight!


With our friends, the Seymours

In addition to the surprise party, a group of about ten teachers got together and decided to throw a birthday party for Karl.  It was held the following Friday, and the whole family was invited.  The party was outside in a carport where four or five long tables had been set up for the event.  Most parties here are outdoor events, set up in either a courtyard or driveway.  There was music and great food, and everyone enjoyed sitting around and visiting.


There were three birds at the party, and they could be pretty noisy!  We thought this one was especially cute.

A question mark on top of the cake

Yep - They made Karl stick his face in the cake and take a bite!

Several people had already left by the time we took this group picture.
Back row: Francisco and Enrique (custodians), a former teacher at the middle school, our family, another teacher
Front row: school secretary, Yolanda, Gisela, Diana, Genoveva, Elva, Sarah, and Jesus
We were impressed at how tall this cactus was.

Mini Me

Of course Chiara wants to be just like her big sister.  She is watching the itunes visualiztion of her sing-along cd.

The Boys' Fort

One Sunday afternoon, the boys decided to make a fort in their bedroom.  They slept in it that night, pushing two mattresses together and all three sleeping on them.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Fulbright Mid-year Conference

January 20th - 22nd was a mid-year conference for the Fulbright teachers in Mexico and their families.  The conference was held in Mexico City, and we drove there.

Scenes of Mexico from the car!

There are nine teachers in Mexico with the Fulbright program.  They are pictured here with several of the Fulbright administrators and a library guide at the Benjamin Franklin Library at the US Embassy.  There is only one other middle school teacher in the group, one is at an elementary school, one is at a high school, and the others are at universities.  Two are teaching in Mexico City, one in Tijuana, one in Culiacan, two in Pachuca, and one in Hidalgo.  Karl is the only one in Puebla.
Back row:  Maggie, Shennandoah, Tim, Benjamin Franklin, Nick, Hillary, Kelly
Middle row:  Library guide, Kristin, Fabiola, Nikki, Gretchen
Front row:  A mentor teacher from Culican, Sharon, and Karl

Elena, Chris, Alice, Joseph, Chiara, Stephen, and Daniel

There are three other teachers who have their kids with them, but one family with three kids didn't arrive until Thursday afternoon so they wouldn't miss as much school (the Mom was there the entire time, and Dad brought the kids).  We invited the two kids who were there Wednesday evening to hang out with us while the parents were in meetings.  Chris is 12, and Alice is 8.  Here is our group in front of a fun statue.  We were wandering around waiting for the museums to open.

The Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum and a wax museum were near our hotel.  We visited the  Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum, first.  It would have been more interesting if we could have understood Spanish, but it was still fun.
Here Stephen is standing next to a wax figure of the tallest man, Robert Pershing Wadlow, who was 8ft 11 inches.  
We went to the wax museum later, and really enjoyed it. The only things we had to read were the names of the figures, which included Barak Obama, George Bush, Felipe Caldaron, Michael Jackson, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, other artists,  Miguel Hidalgo and other revolutionaries, Juan Diego and the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Lord of the Rings characters, Tom Hanks and a ton of other actors, and a ton of other people.  There was a gruesome scary section and a fun maze with mirrors.



Waiting for the teachers to finish meetings so we can all go to lunch.

Joseph and Alice waiting.

We all took a chartered bus to a really nice restaurant downtown.

At lunch we were joined by the other three children.  Their Dad and I walked with the kids to see the Cathedral while the Fulbrighters met with SEP (Department of Education).  Someone asked us if all the kids were ours - ten kids!!  

The Cathedral in Mexico City

The Cathedral was a drop off location for donations for Haiti.  In addition to all this water, there were piles of diapers, rice, beans, sugar, etc.


Inside the Cathedral


Mexico City was built on a huge lake bed which was dredged and drained.  Because of the underground water, you can feel buildings shaking all the time.  This pendulum hangs in the Cathedral, showing how much the building has moved and sunk over time.  The streets flood every time it rains because the ground is too saturated to drain.  It's kind of crazy.




On Friday we went to the Dolores Olmeda Museum.  For the kids, the most interesting part of this museum were the peacocks, and the hairless dogs seen here.  The one with it's nose in the air is a statue, and the other two are real dogs.  They are called Xoloitzcuintli, and they are native to Mexico.  They were domesticated by the Aztecs and used for both food and as pets. 

These dogs are the real thing.  It was hard to tell them apart from the statue.

The peacocks were all over.  This tree had half a dozen in it at least.


 Xochimilco, the last of what used to be a giant lake in the Mexico City basin.

The conference was a lot of fun.  The teachers enjoyed comparing stories, and the kids were really happy to be able to spend time with other kids who spoke English and who were going through the same kinds of things as them.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Juice Contest

(Karl writing)
Juice contest at the Constitucion de 1917! Aren't they cute? These are some stellar students and it was a beautiful event. I was asked to be a judge and I got the royal treatment from students like these who really, really wanted to win:) Each group had to have 15-20 types of juices with multiple ingredients prepared on display for the judges to sample. Presentation was one of the criteria as was their ability to explain the various properties of each of the juices. They were fabulous! 









Monday, February 8, 2010

Dia de Reyes and Daniel's Birthday

January 6th is a special day in our home because it's Daniel's birthday, but in Mexico it's also a holiday called Dia de Reyes or Kings' Day.  This is celebrated 12 days after Christmas, and it celebrates the arrival of the Magi bringing gifts for the Christ child.  Kids in Mexico get gifts on this day, left by the three kings.  Many children get gifts from both Santa and the magi.

Before Christmas, you could find Santa in the malls for children to take their pictures with, and here you can see that the three kings also pose for pictures with the kids before Dia de Reyes.

This is a Rosca De Reyes, a traditional sweet bread shaped like a wreath that is eaten on Dia de Reyes.  We picked this one up at Costco, and shared it with Laura for Family Home Evening.
Daniel

Baked into the Rosca de Reyes is a plastic baby Jesus.  There were probably six or seven dolls baked into the wreath that we purchased.  Chiara was thrilled when she got a baby in her bread!


Tradition is that the person who gets the baby has to host the party on Dia de Candelaria on Febuary 2nd.  On this day, tamales are served.  We also had rosca with the ward and Karl shared one with one of his groups at school. Suspicously, his piece held the baby and the students demanded their tamales for La Candelaria. Fortunately, one of the ward members is a professional "tamalero" and he provided a bag full of tamales to share with the students.
The nice thing about not having an oven is that we get to try some of the desserts at Costco that always look so good, but we usually don't buy.  Daniel picked this chocolate cake for his birthday.  It was delicious.  Karl is adding a sparkler to the candles.  We celebrated on January 5th since Laura was leaving early the next morning.

The candles were the kind that relit!

Daniel loved the tradition of taking a bite of cake without a fork!


YUM!

On January sixth we celebrated with the ward with an enormous Rosca de Reyes and a hot drink called atole. 

Visiting Cholula with Laura

We had fun taking Laura to see Cholula.  This was the first time that we hired a guide to show us around.

He took us in the nearby museum where we got to see this model.  It really helped us put everything in perspective.  What we actually see when we go to Cholula is the out buildings that are shown at the left of the picture.  The pyramid is completely underground.  We used to be able to go through a tunnel that had been dug out to view different steps from the pyramid, but the tunnel was closed when we went with Laura because part of it had collapsed when we got a ton of rain, and it needed to be repaired.  We were disappointed not to go through it.


Not a great picture of me, but this shows our cute tour guide.


Daniel, Krista, Chiara, Laura, and Rebecca.  We were able to climb these steps, but they are not part of the pyramid, but part of an building in front of the pyramid.  The pyramid at Cholula is from the same time period, and built by the same people as the pyramids at Teotihuacan.

Karl 

Krista and the boys at the top of the hill that the pyramid is under.  There is an old church on top.

A view from the top.  Notice all the churches.


Looking out in a different direction.


Sunday, February 7, 2010

Hanging out with Laura

Our car was being repaired the entire time that Laura was here.  But the bus system here is pretty good, and there are taxis everywhere, so we still managed to get out and see a few things.  On one of our excursions, we took Laura to see downtown Puebla . . .

The nativity was still up in the zocolo.


 
I like how the shepherds in all the nativity scenes here look like they are native Mexicans.

This is the Chapel del Rosario.  It has tons of gilded plaster sculpting decorating it, and is really an imipressive site, but flash photography is prohibited, so this picture doesn't do it justice.  The first time Karl and I saw this chapel, a wedding had just ended, and the place was all lit up.  Beautiful!

We saw this little girl in the church, accompanied by her brother.  It is her "presentacion" which is celebrated when a child turns three and is no longer considered a baby.  We thought she was adorable!


This is the outside of the Chapel del Rosario, which is only one chapel off a larger church.  On weekends there is a market in the plaza in front of it, as seen in this picture.


Chiara and Rebecca at Costco.  People always wonder whether the children of identical twins will look alike.  For the most part, we don't think they look that much alike, but with these two, we can see some resemblance.  Not identical, but maybe they both got some of the Johnson genes.


Playing in a box.



Peek . . .

a-boo!