Art Class

We've been looking at Aztec and Mayan designs in the youth art class and a couple of weeks ago we painted the designs onto Mexican roof tiles (tejas). Recently the kids in this class asked if I could help them prepare a dance routine for Mother's Day. They brought me Mexican music videos and showed me the dances they wanted to do. I had a hard time looking at the half naked women shaking their bodies on the screen and kept telling Hizee and Zam to look away. With a slightly reddened face, I suggested that they knew those dances better than I (from watching the videos) and told them they didn't need my help. But they were insistant. Still trying to get out of having to try and move my body like the women in the videos, I then told them I only knew dances for English songs and they said that was fine with them. So for the past week we have been practicing Micheal Jackson's "Thriller" and "The Boot Scootin' Boogie." Hooray for my "Teen Dance" days growing up in Altona! Ha, ha, ha.

Cecina Makes Herself at Home

Ever since she was born Bruce has dreamt about bringing our little burrita into the house. He made his dream come true a few weeks back when he brought Cecina into the house. I wasn't there to witness the event but they tell me she was calm as could be. She's really just a big puppy dog!

Pig Dreams

I'm not sure that I've ever introduced our "new" pig on the blog. We actually got her about 8 months ago but I don't think I introduced her because it took us a while to become "friends." Ziko wanted to name her "Cookie" and Hizee insisted on "Oreo" (because she is white with black spots); so she became both: she is "Oreo Cookie."
When I got Oreo she was nearly a year old and completely wild. She was thin and scraggly and didn't eat when I feed her. Bruce wanted to send her to slaughter even though she was all of 20 pounds but I thought we should stick with her. We dewormed her, kept feeding her (she became fond of left-over pizza and other kid food scraps), and slowly journied toward being both plump and gentle. She now enjoys being scratched behind her ears and on her belly (much like a dog).
Nearly everyone in Zacango knows about my dream to own piglets. (When I was a kid I loved hanging out at my Uncle John and Auntie Rose's pig farm admiring the precious piglets. ) So when we were gone over Christmas our neighbour Luis put Oreo with his boar and 3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days later I had my dream come true.
I sometimes think about how crazy people think I am over my obsession with piglets (sometimes I care, sometimes I don't care) so I felt a bit vindicated when our entire neighbourhood came out to watch the piglets' birth and our teenage neighbour, Herminio recorded the ENTIRE event on his cell phone...maybe I'm not such a crazy gringa afterall!
We are thuroughly enjoying the little cuties: 3 males and 1 female. There names are: Tele, Jig, Eggy, and Strawberry Shortcake. Dreams can come true!!!

Baking Class

Some of you have been asking for an update on the baking group. The classes have been going great and people have been using the bakery independently to experiment on their own (which is what I had hoped for). We have had three classes so far (once every one to two weeks) and recently a group of young girls made pumpkin muffins which they went and sold around the community. A couple of small groups also made the birthday cake for a recent MCC retreat as well as muffins; and a few mom's made cakes for their kids on Dia del Nino (Day of the Child) last week. FUN!

Heat Wave

It's been SMOKIN' hot here as of late (+35 and hotter) so we've been heading out to the presa (pond) on the weekends to swim for the day. A few weeks ago when we went the kids fished for hours and because the water was so low (we still haven't had any rain and are expecting some soon) the tiny fish were jumping. They caught tonnes and later filleted and fried them up for us. We weren't really prepared for a fish dinner: Jose Berto ran home to get a pan, and oil but we didn't have plates so we used bamboo casings for plates.

Studious Hizee

Hizee has 4 days left in her kindergarten curriculum. She is a hard-core learner who just loves "school." She also loves to teach...particularily Ziko as she said she feels he really "needs a lot of work, especially with his numbers." Last week she worked on teaching him shapes. She is also working on experiments with water. She is a joy to teach!