The Happy Days . . . .

This weekend was another great one.

Well the week was kind of exciting too. It was Mexican Independence Day on the 16th, Thursday. So, no school. And since Thursday is one of the 2 days I have music class at the school it translated into a very short week for me. Here in Mexico I thought the celebration would be at least as big or bigger the Independence Day in the US. Plus it is the 200 year anniversary of their independence. It was a lot smaller than I thought. They have lots of traditions here. Like the "Grito" for example. Everyone goes to the main plaza or zocalo in town on Wednesday night. The parade starts around 10:30 with everyone ending up in the main square. Then comes "Miss Mitla" and her court. Of course, in other towns the "Miss" is whatever the name of the town is :). She then comes to the front while there are guys dressed up like the fathers of Independence. They re-enact the famous speech with everyone shouting "Viva!" after each phrase. Then Miss Mitla comes forward and sings only 10 of the 27 verses of the national anthem. For some reason it is a very difficult song, lots of jumps. Combined with the fact that it is the "in" thing to do so sing incredibly flat. It was slightly painful. So we went and ate fresh french fries, cafe de olla, and empanadas while we waited for it to be done.

It's always interesting being out with this group. One of the boys decided that every guy needs to be in charge of a girl. That way we can keep track of people and it also helps with the harassment problem. If you are with a guy, you are usually left well enough alone by those sometimes aggressive mexican men. So, G and E were the assigned "body guards" for R and I. Part of me thought it was a little odd that the two older boys, one a junior and the other a senior, were assigned to the oldest girls. Shouldn't they watch the little girls and we take the little boys? But oh well. We went and found all kinds of crazy things. I bought face crayon in the pattern of the mexican flag and sported it one my face under both eyes. For some reason though, one was upside-down. So I ended up with the Mexican and Italian flags on my face. I need to find a picture of that. . ..

Thursday tripped us all up. No school mid-week. Weird. We got some lesson planning, shopping, working out, and sleeping done. It was great. Then back to school on Friday. Then the weekend. Very odd.

Two new roommates arrives this week. One on Wednesday and the other on Saturday. Our little family is growing. I hope they don't mind the kids being over here all the time. R and I LOVE it!

Friday night was movie night here at the Pachanga house. They watched Madagascar 2 while us more mature people (cough cough) sat around and talked and watched youtube videos. :) Saturday night was labeled "game night" and a VERY intense game of Scategories broke out. Because there were a lot of us, we teamed up. Our house has tiled floors with concrete underneath. The walls are brick covered in cement. With about 15 youth in here playing games of just talking, it gets VERY loud. I hope our little old lady next door doesn't get mad at us. So far, she hasn't said anything. :)

After we got tired of that game, (E and I won btw), I introduced the game "Scorch". I thought it would be too easy in this house because I didn't think there were many places to hide and it's not THAT big of a house. Boy was I wrong. You couldn't ask for a better house for scorch. I was "it" first and almost caught everyone. It got down to one person left. When I went to go find her, she freed everyone from jail. Ugh. They are all now hooked on this game and pretty much everyone has asked when we are going to play again or how we could play during the day and so on. It's great. Definitely brought back good childhood memories of that game.

Worldview class is this afternoon. I am excited for it.

I am also starting a girl on violin this week. That will be interesting. She is very tall and long-limbed. Reminds of the D kids from our church. I will never understand why tall people want to play such a tiny instrument. Oh well.