Endings and New Beginnings

I can't believe my time in Cuernavaca is almost over. This week is our finals week. I took my Grammar test on Tuesday and did OK. I'll have my final grade today sometime. Not sure what that will be like. I take the Literature test today and then the school is giving us a goodbye party and taking us to a traditional Mexican comida. I'm excited.

While this adventure is ending, a new one (or two or three) will be beginning. I got the news on Tuesday that I have been accepted into the PsyD. program at George Fox. This is of course contingent on me passing the Psychology GRE in April and paying the $200.00 tuition deposit, but God will provide as always. I am very excited about this program because, as many of you know, I had been wavering between a PhD. and a PsyD. for some time. After much research I discovered that the program at George Fox is a wonderful mix between the two. I will have a be a doctor of Psychology, but I will have much of the experience of a PhD. as well. In other words I will have research experience as well as practical clinical experience. My fifth year of school is an internship. I will have to apply at many APA approved sites, and with my new Spanish skills I will be more valuable to any program and hopefully I won't have to move to another state, which is a posibility. Terry knows this and is supportive, thankfully! I have such a wonderful husband.

Speaking of Terry, we will be looking for a home together shortly after I return. We hope to find a nice place that is somewhere between Newberg and Hillsboro so neither of our commutes will be horrendous. We are excited about this. To re-emphasize, he and I will be celebrating a wedding with everyone to publicly dedicate our lives together on June 15, 2007, shortly after I graduate, god willing, with my bachelors degree in Psychology. I will start the PsyD. program in August or September next year. So, there is another amazing year ahead and it will be more amazing since I have a wonderful husband at my side. Isn't God great? YES!

I'm putting up some pictures, some may or may not be interesting to you. I have been reluctant to play the tourist and take pictures of my neighborhood, but I've been doing that this week. I also finally took a picture of my family! Geeze! Hope you enjoy them!

The first picture is of my brother Alfredo (Fredy) and his girlfriend. People here don't really have names at time, she is just "La novia de Fredy". Next is Billy Joel, he was just a scruff of a pup when I arrived, he's almost a real dog now, making his share of noise in the neighborhood racket. Next Jackie, He is a good watch dog, but sometimes he goes above and beyond! Terry can tell you about that. :)

Next is the street that I walk up to get to downtown Cuernavaca, Terry should recognize it. It doesn't look steep in the picture, but it kind of is. The next is a classic picture of bigger stores, yes, all in one tight space, cars, motorcycles, washers and dryers, and furniture. Not unusual, except, that it's all in one line of sight! The third is of a nativity scene in the Governors palace. Next is Stephanie and Hannah with Florencio (better known as Flor). He sells jewelry and assorted videos and books once or twice a week at school. He sold me a necklace and earings one time. I keep thinking of buying for others but they are soooo large that it's hard to know who would enjoy them. I'm not sure I'll wear what I bought outside of Mexico. :)

Next is the rest of my family. I took them out to dinner at the Italian Restaruant that Terry liked so much. From left to right is: My Mom Carmen, Me, The sister of Becky (another one without a name) My brother Eric, Becky holding Alan Alfredo (almost 5 months old) she is the wife of Leo who is next. :) Fredy couldn't come to dinner because he is a teacher of English and is working on a Christmas project for his kids.

This is probably my last post from Cueravaca, I am not positive. Tomorrow is a free day and then Saturday I am leaving here. Hopefully I will come back. I'll post a closer from Portland rounding things out. For now, please know that your love and support has meant the world to me. Your comments have helped to make me feel close to home even though I have been so very far away. I have the best friends and family I could ever want! Blessings to all!

Teaching English, all done. :(

I’m having a moment where I need to write my blog post before I can get to the internet. This is Thursday November 30, 2006. I’ve just returned from the last English class. It’s so hard to express my emotions. I love those kids. I love them so much; I don’t want to leave them behind. I’m a horrible teacher, but they loved me despite my inadequacy. We sang all the songs we’ve taught them in the last two months, we reviewed numbers and letters and colors, and objects and the verb “To Be”. We didn’t teach nearly as much as we wanted to teach them. But it turns out we’ve made a difference. I don’t know how, but at the end of class the congregation came down to us, we teach at the same time there is a service. The pastor’s wife, my last grammar teacher, spoke to us all and thanked us and told us how learning another language is much more than words. She reminded us that there are different languages because of the pride and arrogance at Babel. The division between us in language is a reminder to remain humble. But learning another language is a way to build bridges and that is what we have been doing these last three months. After she finished talking some of the parents came up and spoke about the difference we have made in their childrens lives. Two mothers said that their children had been struggling in their English classes at school and because of us, they are now doing well. They allowed us to speak, I didn’t have many words, and I thanked them for this opportunity. The other girls were much more eloquent than I. They gave us flowers, wild flowers and roses, they gave us necklaces and the children gave us notes and little pieces of special paper that they had. I’ve taken pictures of everything. One note says, thank you Pennie for giving us classes, I love you very much. Another says, Thank you very much for everything, and that it goes well with you in every way you go and that you take care. This one is a little sad because she wrote the word vaya, but spelled it balla, you kind of have to understand Spanish pronunciation to know why, but these two spellings sound very much alike. The Spanish b and v sound so much alike that when people spell they will often say b grande and v chica to differentiate between the two. But this leads me to some funny things we’ve heard in the class. I wish that I had kept a log throughout the classes, but here is what you get, and think about them:

The question: Where do I wash my hands? Answer: The Chicken! He meant the Kitchen. Thanks Jonathan!

Did you know that it’s difficult for Mexicans to differentiate between teen and ty. Thirteen and thirty sound very much the same to them. Here are some examples:

Question: What is 30 + 3? The answer 60! Why? Because 13 + 3 = 16. Think about it!
What is 16 + 4? 64! Why? 60 + 4 = 64.
50 + 5 = 20? Nope that’s 15 + 5, right?

Next time you are talking money or numbers with a foreigner, think about this, they aren’t stupid; they just are having trouble with the nuances of English.

We taught them a new song today: Head and shoulders, Knees and toes. Jonathan (of the chicken) Says, oh are you teaching us the song: Head and shoulders, knees and nose? Later we had a contest to see whether the 7 girls could make more noise than the 3 boys. One of the girls kept shouting out: Bed and shoulders, knees and toes! Maybe she was tired. Oddly enough, the boys won the contest, what's wrong with these girls?

Now this one, I think is just the excitement of anticipating a question before it was asked, at least I hope that’s what happened. Really, either way, I’m not sure I understand this response. Question: What is the third letter in Wednesday? The answer, Saturday! The only thing I can come up with is that Saturday is three days after Wednesday. What do you think?

Ok, this has been cathartic for me, thank you for giving me the opportunity to express myself. Today was an end to a wonderful chapter here in Cuernavaca. Only 9 days left. I so look forward to seeing all of my family and friends, I love you all dearly. But to day I know with certainty that there will always be a part of me in Cuernavaca. I hope never to forget this experience and more than anything, I want to come back. If I hadn’t met the love of my life in Oregon I would be thinking seriously about spending a year here. Even then I’m sure I wouldn’t learn everything there is to know about the language and the culture. That would take a lifetime. However, now that my fear of speaking Spanish has abated I hope to take advantage of speaking with Mexicans or other Latinos in the state of Oregon. I’m even thinking of working with someone to teach ESL to Spanish speaking adults (I’m just better with them!). It’s not my strong suit but it provides the challenge of explaining things with circumlocution in English and in Spanish. Some things just don’t translate directly, so it’s fun to try to figure out ways to explain things so that someone from a different culture can understand.

I thank God for forcing me into this wonderful opportunity. It’s been such a blessing in so many ways. It’s been a challenge, but incredibly worthwhile. Please pray for me as I am finishing up my classes and taking my finals on Tuesday and Thursday. This half has been very challenging so I need all the help I can get! Sorry this has been such a long post, and thanks for reading the whole thing!

Thanksgiving (a little late, woops)

I just reallized that I failed to post about Thanksgiving. Just so that you don't think that I've forgotten the holiday, I will share our Mexican Thanksgiving with you all. :) We had fun shopping in the Mega superstore which is kind of like a Fred Meyers. I got my Mom's apple pie recipe from my sister Elaine and I was prepared to make that, only one problem. I didn't have a pie crust recipe and they don't sell premade shells here. So, I decided to make an apple crisp instead, didn't have a recipe so I just winged it, but it worked out just fine. Turkeys aren't really sold in stores here until closer to Christmas so we bought a couple of pre-roasted chickens, yummy! We made greenbean casserole from scratch since they don't sell the green beans in the can, nor do they have the crunchy onions for the topping. We bought fresh green beans and boiled them, poured in some mushroom soup and some onions and crumbled some cornflakes on top. It worked out just fine. We made mashed potatoes and a few other things and had a feast. I ate soooooo much! We made everything in the school's kitchen, it was fun. We stayed at school the whole day. We didn't get out of having classes which is why we opted for the pre-roasted chickens instead of roasting them ourselves. I'm the only one that has any experience with that anyway, and that is fairly limited and with a gas oven, who knows what would have happened! We had a lot of fun. I've been really blessed with the group I've been here with. We invited other students to join us but they all had other plans. The only school employee that joined us was of course Javier.

My family always celebrates holidays off-holiday so that we can spend time with our other families on the holiday. So, I did call and talk to most of my family the Sunday before Thanksgiving. I talked to Terry on the internet on Thanksgiving and then live on Sunday for his Birthday. I called Mom and Dad Wilson on Thanksgiving and talked with them for a short while. I really am blessed with a wonderful family on all sides!

A belated Thanksgiving and I'll see many of you in two weeks when I come home! Please let me know if you have enjoyed my blog so that I know that it has been read by more than four or five people, OK? I love you all and I'll see you soon!

Music and Passion were always the fashion!

Oh, yeah, we stayed at the Copacabana in Acapulco! It was a really nice weekend. Usually when we go away we have a bunch of places to see which is a lot of fun, but this time, they called it our reward for almost completing a full semester here and we had no real homework and only a few optional places to go. We were going to see some cliff divers but unfortunately there was some sort of rally going on in the center of the city and all the roads were closed. Weird. But there was live music at the hotel so we had a great time anyway. We got bracelets to wear and at the all inclusive snack bar and bar, we could have as much to drink or eat as we wanted to without worrying about the tip or anything. Being Americans we tipped anyway but that's ok.We made some friends at the pool, they didn't speak more than a few words of English so we really got to practice our Spanish, it was great.

Stephanie and I had no desires to do anything but tan and so we stayed near the pool because after one time swimming in the ocean I decided it was too dirty to enjoy. But the pool was fun, we played water vollyball and got pretty tan. Steph was in charge of my back so that I wouldn't burn it again but she missed a spot and so i have a small burn, not bad though. Saturday night we went on a cruise around the bay, there was music and dancing. There was a pirate that you could get your picture taken with. I've taken a picture of the picture to show you. It's a bit strange this way, but it works. lol. All in all, it was a weekend without doing much. It's been a long time since I've had one of those, so I really enjoyed it! Hope you enjoy the few pictures I took.

Las Grutas, no bull!

Well, the bullfight was a wash, seriously. We cancelled because of the rain, again. I guess a hurricane came inland. It brought with it cold air and nice gentle rain that reminded me of Oregon. I was so homesick! Still we had a great weekend. On Saturday we were invited to the birthday party of the grandmother of Javier. It was very traditional and had mariachis and everything, what a blast. Later at night there were just a few of us left and the cousins of Javier taught us some new dance moves. I enjoyed it so much Javier gave me a copy of the CD we were listening to. lol.

Monday was a holiday here and we didn't have classes. We went to this cave called Las Grutas which really just means "The Caverns". Well, and I guess they really are more caverns than caves. I went expecting the Ape Caves, but instead it was these huge caverns full of lights and sidewalks and we had a guide. It took about 2 hours to go through. There were a couple of women there that were wearing high heals if you can believe it! Very diferent.

We are preparing to make a Thanksgiving dinner here at school, after classes because we have classes on Thursday, boo hoo. ;) Anyway, I've got homework! So this one is short. Hope you enjoy it anyway.

El Rollo y Mexico

Sorry I've been so lax at getting messages up. I didn't change grammar teachers after all and on top of that I've been sick with a minor infection, but have had very strong medicine to kill it that has been wiping me out. But life goes on. :)

Last weekend was an incredible weekend. Stephanie Kendall and I went to El Rollo which is an aquatic park about an hour outside of Cuernavaca. We started our adventure by meeting at Puente 2000 where we usually meet. We walked to the Lasser bus station and caught a bus for a town we've never been too. When we got there, we had no idea where we were going, we asked the bus driver and another passenger was getting off at the same stop and took us to a ruta (in town bus) that was supposed to take us to the park. Well.....it took us to the street the park is on, but we had no idea where the entrance was. We asked directions at a small tienda and started walking down the road. I kid you not, about a kilometer later we found the entrance. One of the pictures I am posting is on the road when we stopped and really wondered if we were heading in the right direction. We got there and since this is the off season half of the stuff was closed, oh but we managed to spend 6 hours there anyway!

We are convinced that a few of the "rides" we went on would not be legal in the U.S. But I've never been to a water park in the States so I don't know for sure. Probably the scariest was the pendelum, I took a few pictures and videos of it, because it's simple but amazing. It's roughly in the shape of a U and you start on one end in a raft, you go up the otherside, back up the first side a little and back and forth until you stop. I probably screamed a scream that I've never heard pass my lips before, I was almost hyperventilating at the end, it was so bad I struggle to tell the girls where I kept my inhaler in case I really needed it. I didn't, but wow!

The next one we did, is the green and blue one (if I can get the pictures posted), you shoot down the slide and go around and around the big open part. When I went I started to come out the opening in the bottom head first. I struggled to get myself turned around and was only partially successful and came out sideways, yep, that hurt! A sideways bellyflop! The pink one next to the green and blue one, it's called the back lash, you get in a raft, only two at a time, you head down this ramp and then there is a turn around point, only when Steph and I did it, we didn't turn around and went down the next half backwards! What fun. Hopefully the series of pictures help you imagine this.

There was another one that was a completely dark tube that seemed to take forever to get through and you emerged through the mouth of a snake at the end. Fun!

The one we probably spent the most time on was called the wave river. This is the one we think probably wouldn't be legal in the U.S. I took videos of it and series of pictures to try to give you an idea. It was a blast. There is a part that is for surfing, the current is so strong people can surf on it. The next part over there is a ramp to enter the river. If you're brave, which we were, you wait for the big wave and you get washed down the ramp into the river. Before you enter the river you get sucked under the water for several feet, it's an amazing experience. To those of you who wonder, yes, I did lose my top of few times on this one, but was able to recover before coming back out of the water! As you go around circular river every couple of minutes another series of waves come up behind you and wash you down a little further. There are a couple of entrances where you don't get washed down the ramp, but why bother with those? Yes, I got scraped up a little, but not too bad, Stephanie got a few bruises too. Kendall is just fine.

There was also the normal wave pool and a fun tube slide that we went on too. We were able to sun bath, it was so cold we were the only ones doing it! After it started to get dark we decided to take our pictures and then make our way back to Cuernavaca. Did I mention that on the bus we took, the hour outside Ceurnavaca took 2 hours? Oh well, it was really cheap so we didn't mind! We were so tired Stephanie and Kendall slept most of the way home.

The next day we went to Mexico City, my third time as a tourist, my sixth time in total. we went back to the casa Azul of Frida Kahlo and walked through the zocolo there Carlos told us that even though this is in the center of the bustling metropolis of Mexico City it is still very much like the old Mexico pueblos and still has a small town charm. It was in fact very much like some of the smaller towns we've been to. It was nice.

Afterwards we were on our way to see a bullfight when it started raining. It's a little spendy to go and Carlos explained that the bulls don't do well in the rain and it's really not much to see so since we had just parted ways with Javier (see picture) so he could go to a futbol game we decided to call him and ask him if he could buy our tickets and we would join him. He happily agreed to do so and so we saw the last futbol game before the finals, it was a lot of fun, but we were so high up that I was almost more interested in watching the people than the game! It really is an experience to go to a futbol game here in Mexico! Of interest, the venders here sell cup of soup, dominos pizza and fried chicken meals, not to mention beer, oh yeah, and beer and some soda pop too. lol. There is a picture here too of a bunch of fans on their way to the game, I have a short video clip too that captures a bit of their singing and excitement.

This Sunday after we teach English we are heading back to Mexico for the bullfights, we are hoping for good weather!

Oh, did I mention, the turkeys are because I heard there may be a shortage in the US, there are plenty here so I thought I would share!

Michoacan and more Day of the Dead

We celebrated more of the Day of the Dead Thursday night. We went to the Garden Borda and there was a free celebration. Completely wild. There were people in costumes and on stilts, live music and more. I got charged by one of the guys on stilts, I'm hopefully posting that picture. I got some good and some bad video. For the first time on my trip I ran out of memory on my camera, all in one night. Wild, no? The next day we left for the state of Michoacan, to the west of Morelos where Cuernavaca is located. We stayed in the City of Morelia and visited other pueblos as well. We visited a city on an island in the middle of the state and I climbed up the arm of a ginormous statue of Morelos. Kind of fun. I got a picture of our director, Ramiro, sticking his head out of the sleeve. I might post that, but I'm not sure how well it will show up. On the top of the island there were these dancers, they are youth dressed up as old people. They are called Vejitos. They do this incredible dance that I never got to see the end of. I got some video, but for the second time in mexico, I ran out of memory on the camera, bummer! It was only the first part of the second day!!!!!! WaaaaH. :) It was a lot of fun. Then we went to this one town whose name I have no idea what it was. We ate lunch and shopped and saw two more groups of Vejitos. What fun! After that we went to Santa Clara de Cobre and all there was to do was shop and I found a wonderful bracelet of lady bugs that made me think of my friend Elizabeth who died last year. I couldn't help but buy it in memory of her. We got back to the hotel and couldn't find a place to park the van so Ramiro parked it a few blocks away. He and Stephanie and I ate dinner while the others went for this fruit dish. There was live music in the Zocolo, Jazz, lots of fun. We went to this Churro and Chocolate place, but the crowd was imense so we decided to visit it the next day. It had been a long day and oh, yeah, I got a sunburn on the island, or in the launch (probably the launch). Luckily this was on my chest and not on my back again so my old sunburn still has time to recover.
The next day we visited some museums, finally ate our churros and came home to Cuernavaca.

OK I've been so busy this week that it has taken me days just to post this, now I don't remember a whole lot! lol. I hope you enjoyed it!