Creepy Crawly Critters

We haven't had as much trouble with bugs down here as you might expect.  Our biggest complaint has been the mosquitos.  Finally, due to the cold weather, we are getting a break from them, but up through November and even early December, we would pull out fly swatters and go on a mosquito killing spree each night.  They seemed to be everywhere. 
We've seen a few crickets and a couple of cockroaches, but we don't see them very often.  One day this cute fuzzy caterpillar crawled under our door.  The kids thought we needed a picture.

Temple Trip

At the end of November, Stephen got to go on his first temple trip.  There aren't nearly as many temple trips for the youth here, and the stake has to supply all the names for them to do, so they limited how many youth could go.  Elena and Stephen were included since it was Stephen's first time.

Thanksgiving

We weren't sure how we were going to celebrate Thanksgiving here without an oven.  At the last minute we ended up throwing something together.  Marcela and kids and the missionaries joined us.  We bought Costco rotissere chicken, made mashed potatoes and green beans, and cut up a cantelope (even though it's not exactly a traditional Thanksgiving food).  We made homemade rolls at Marcela's house, and the juices from the chicken made a delicious gravy.  We also got a Costco pumpkin pie and vanilla ice cream, and Marcela made a fantastic flan.  It was the best flan I have ever tasted!  Hopefully she will teach me how to make it.

The next day we went over to the home of some Americans who live in our stake (Elena mentioned their daughter Jenny in the last post), and we had another Thanksgiving dinner.  This one had all the fixings, and there were four different pies.  It was a lot of fun.  Two sets of missionaries and another American couple from the stake also came.

Africam Safari

Hey all!

Well, it's my turn for the blog - let's see how I do.

One weekend in November, I had the oppurtunity to go on a stake Young Women's one-night camping trip.  I was mildly surprised: Puebla is a huge city with a very small amount of wide-open spaces.  Where on earth could we camp?  It turned out that about forty-five minutes away from Puebla is a sort of drive-through zoo called Africam Safari.  The zoo had a sort of campground for big group camping trips complete with a series of army-like tents filled with rows of cots; working showers and bathrooms; a fire pit; and mess hall.  During our stay at the zoo, we got to sing songs, tour the smallish walking section of the zoo, ride a zipline, roast marshmallows, and take a bus tour of the main attractions in the zoo.  I didn't really understand too much of what was going on, but there's a girl in our stake from California who's been here in Puebla for 1 1/2 years and will be here for 1 1/2 years more.  Her name is Jenny, she's 16 years old, and probably one of my best friends here in Mexico (mainly because she's one of the few people I can really communicate with). 

This is my group.  I don't really know the names of all the girls, but the girl kneeling next to me in the front is Jenny.

This is a fun picture.  We visited the place where the animals' food is prepared, and the girls who wanted to got to chop up frozen dead mice.  It was pretty sick.

In the food-preparation-center was a refrigerator that smelled awful - probably because this was what was being stored inside it. 

Speaking of food, I got to feed the cutest little wallaby (as you can see from this picture).  That was sweet.

A fun little kangaroo in the same area as the wallabies.

This was a fun zipline, but you had to get a good running start because it wasn't too steep.  Quite a few of the girls got stuck at the end.  Fortunately, I wasn't one of them.

 

Hahaha, we're about to be cooked and eaten, and we just stand there smiling.  :)  The girl in the pot with me, by the way, is Angie, Sr. Munoz's second daughter.

This was cool.  There was a pond, in the middle of which were two islands, connected by a single cable.  The monkeys would go from one island to the other by climbing nimbly across the cable.  It was hard to get a picture of it because they would move so quickly.

Well, now, there's my entry.  Now Mom can start adding more posts and satisfy your desire for more.  Sorry I took so long in writing it.  :)

~Elena~

Festival of the Arts

The week of November 6th through the 15th was an international arts festival in Puebla.  This festival is similar to Reno's Artown with tons of free concerts.  We headed in on Monday night to try to see a floutist for FHE, but the theater was full so we went over to the concert in the city center. 
Then on Wednesday Karl and I snuck out for a date.  We went out to eat at a fun seafood place with a live Veracruz-style band.  Karl was excited to hear them do La Bamba in the traditional Veracruz style.  They were great.

This is one of the dishes we ordered.  It is half a pineapple filled with a kind of seafood soup with octopus, shrimp, and possibly oysters or some other kind of fish.  It was topped with cheese, merichino cherries, cilantro, and bell peppers.  It was delicious.

After dinner we waited in line for an hour and a half to hear Tony Sheridan who wrote music for the Beatles and others.  (We were waiting for the concert before him to end).  It was a fun concert with music we knew like renditions of "Yesterday" and "Johnny B. Good."

On Thursday the whole family and Marcela went to the city center to hear Pablo Milanese.  He is a Cuban singer with a beautiful voice reminescent of Andrea Bocelli, very renowned in the Spanish speaking world.

On Saturday we had volleyball in the morning - we're having a stake tournament for both men and women. Both teams are undefeated! Then we headed back downtown with the kids to check out the markets and attend another concert and watch some dancers.  The concert was given by a classical group from England and Elena and Stephen enjoyed talking to them and getting autographs when the concert ended.  The kids also liked sitting in the theater's box seats.

It was a fun week!

A Wedding

The other English teacher at Karl's school, Angeles, invited us to the wedding of her nephew a couple of weeks ago.  She met us near the highway and we followed her to a small town about an hour or so away from Puebla.  We stopped at her father's home first, and he showed us his fruit trees and geese.  Then we headed to a tiny church on a hill.

Here's a picture of the church all decorated for the wedding. The ninety-two year old man to the right is Angeles' father.

Here comes the bride! You can see how small the church is.  Everyone arrived at the last moment, so by the end of the wedding there were more people standing under the awning than sitting inside the chapel.

Here is a picture of the bride and groom covered with confetti (we don't know who is standing with them - but we guess they know them somehow:)).  Our kids enjoyed throwing confetti and blowing bubbles as the bride and groom came out.

After the wedding, there was an outdoor reception.  Mole is the traditional food at weddings, so we were treated to that along with rice and tamales.  Everything was delicious.  This is what the pot of mole looked like after feeding around 100 guests.

The cake looked beautiful.

Karl and Angeles, the English teacher who invited us.

Chiara makes friends with a dog.

We loved these beautiful red birds that we saw there.  They are a type of cardinal.

We passed an onyx factory on the way from the reception back to Angeles' father's house where we left our car.  The man working there showed us his shop . . .

. . . and some of his work.  This piece still needs the final step which polishes it.  After leaving the town where the wedding was, we stopped in the next closest town, Tecali.  This town has a lot of onyx factories and onyx gift shops.  The kids really enjoyed looking around, and Joseph was especially happy when he found an onyx "sacrificial knife" with a bone handle which he purchased with his money from Grampy.

Days of the Dead - Nov. 2nd

November 2nd is the Catholic holiday All Soul's Day, and Karl had the day off from school.  November 1st is All Saint's Day.  The Days of the Dead are centered around these Catholic holidays, and they are mostly celebrated by Catholics; however, the traditions (like the ofrenda) are Aztec and are actually thousands of years old! 
On Monday, Nov. 2nd, we decided to take a trip to a very old town near Puebla called Huejotzingo.  It was only about 45 minutes away.  There is a very old fortress style monastery there which was one of the first ones built in Mexico after the Spanish conquest.  Unfortunately it was closed, but we still got to see some fun things.

Popocatepetl was looking beautiful that day.

We decided to check out one of the cemetaries in Huejotzingo.  These cute girls were bringing flowers to the graves of their ancestors.  The Days of the Dead are a time to fix up the graves of your family, and the cemetary was really a happening place.  There was music blaring from a sound system in the center, and people were painting, sweeping, and decorating tombs with flowers.

The cemetaries here are full of tombs, so we were suprised to see these fresh graves out in the open.  It looks as if the coffins were placed above ground and then covered.

This picture gives you an idea of the size of some of the tombs here.  We saw even bigger ones in Puebla, but also smaller ones.

Someone had hired a Mariachi band to play at their family's tomb!

We stopped at a private school where they had public bathrooms (for a small fee), and Karl noticed this wasp nest hanging from a second story balcony.

Notice that the door next to the nest is open!

This is still at the school.  There was a man cutting down a tree with a machete, and the boys were facinated.  They didn't want to leave until the big branch that he was working on had fallen.

A small market was set up in front of the cemetary.  There was all kinds of food and treats for sale (cotton candy, ice cream, etc.).  One young girl was selling nuts and other snacks including chapulines, which are a kind of grasshopper that has been roasted in some kind of seasoning.  We decided it was time to try some, since they are very well-liked here.  Everyone, even Chiara, ate at least one . . .

Elena wanted to make sure that we got a picture of this!  She was our child who was the most picky about anything "spicy" before coming to Mexico, so we have been pleasantly surprised at how willing she has been to try new things.

Stephen has also been a champ at trying new things.  Some other interesting foods that we have tried have been snail, octopus, and shrimp tostadas (the snails were kind of slimy), fried cactus, the fruit of the prickly pear cactus (it tastes like honeydew melon, but has seeds throughout it that you just swallow), and mamey (a sweet orange colored fruit).

Karl wasn't too sure about this, but the pressure was on since everyone else had tried one.  They didn't taste too bad - kind of crunchy and salty like eating a sunflower seed with the shell - but the thought of eating grasshoppers was a little too weird for all of us, so no one ate more than one or two.

This was a five hundred year old church at the town center of Huejotzingo.  The front has the famous blue and white talavera tiles on it.

Here's another church that we saw in Huejotzingo.  The state of Puebla is known for it's churches.

We returned to Puebla in the afternoon, and that evening we went to the cemetary in Puebla for a fun family-oriented show.  This picture isn't the best, but there was the host (with the red wig) and several other monsters like the mummy in front and a werewolf, frankenstein, yorona, etc.  They told jokes and sang songs, including the Monster Mash in Spanish.  It was fun.

This picture with Daniel gives you an idea of how big some of the tombs in the Puebla cemetary were.  They almost look like small churches!