Ziko getting a hand from his good friends Maribel and Carmelo.
Alberto. A little boy who makes my heart melt with his beautiful, squeezable cheeks!!!

We are continuing to enjoy the kids environmental summer group. We meet Mon-Fri biweekly and explore such topics as plants, animals, water, human health, etc. The kids get especially excited about the crafts!

Members of the kids group harvesting radishes from their garden.

Esmeralda and Hizee washing and preparing their radishes for selling. They sold all of their radishes in less than 30 minutes by running around the community with their bowl of radishes yelling "ravinos." They made 30 pesos (about three dollars) and were completely thrilled with themselves!

The arrival of the rains has meant ploughing and planting over the past month. Bruce and I managed to plough and plant a small plot of maize of our own with LOTS of help from our friends and neighbors. While the rains have arrived, they are not as abundant as they usually are and people are beginning to worry about their crops. Most people in our village are subsistance farmers, so the fate of their crops literally determines the amount of food on their table. Please pray for rain for our area of Guerrero.


Miguel and Jose planting a maze of maize in our front yard. Should be fun once it comes up.

With the rains have also come fun times at the barranca (nearby stream)!

Fun times with Taco! Hizee and her friend Lalo riding Taco back after planting in Lalo's grandpa's field.

Before heading to Guatemala for our visa renewal we spent two weeks in the state of Chiapas, here in Mexico, studying English. We don't really feel like our Spanish has improved too much as a result, but it was a good experience nonetheless. We had an amazing host family (pictured below: parents Ricardo and Mariana with daugher Sophia, son Richard is missing in the pic, and their dog Oso) and the kids loved playing with twelve-year-old Sophia. We stayed in a city called San Cristobal which is somewhat of a hippie-haven and tourist/backpacker hangout. It is a beautiful city filled with Mexican colour (I can't get enough of these brightly coloured buildings) and astounding architecture.

We were in San Cristobal for Father's Day. Here's Bruce's Father's Day haul. We also we to see the movie UP! in 3-D. There is no theatre near our Zacango so this was quite a treat.

Exploring some very cool caves in Rancho Nuevo, just outside of San Cristobal. They also had some super long cement slides at the park that used to have little carts you could rent to go down, but this option is no longer available. The kids just slid down on their jackets. I think it brought back great memories of tabogganing for them.

Our visitor visas for Mexico were nearing their end date (our work visas are now in process) so we had to leave the country in order to have them renewed. Hence, we headed down to Guatemala for a quick three day vacation...lots of time in buses, but nice to see another beautiful country!