Mezcala, Mazatlan(beach), Thanksgiving and Brian's 47th Birthday

Time flies when your having fun.  I truly had planned on being much more prolific this past 6 months and try and update the Blog every week, but it’s just not happening.   It’s actually time to celebrate our 6 Month Anniversary of being in Mexico.  I can’t believe that we arrived here back on June 5^th and it is now December 5^th.   The time has just flown by and we are still really enjoying ourselves here.   To be honest though, the honeymoon phase appears to be complete and we are now really trying to settle in and establish our lives here.    We feel a lot more grounded and have a much better sense of how things work down here and sometimes don’t work for that matter.  Mexico is a land of mystery, enchantment, passion, fun and frustration.   Since October, we have been to Mezcala Island to visit the old fort and prison, Mazatlan to enjoy the beach and back to Central California for the Thanksgiving Holiday.

Mezcala was really cool.  The fort is where the Mexican Army held off the Spanish Invasion for almost 3 years.  Then after they surrendered, the Spanish turned it into a prison and locked up all the Mexicans that resisted. 

We had a wonderful time in Mazatlan.  We stayed for the hotel was fantastic and we just laid around and sunned ourselves all day.  The boys splashed in the pools and their favorite part was the swim up bar at 3:00pm for “Happy Hour”.  The special was Smoothies were 2 x 1 and yes they both drank two each per day.  Chocolate was Andrew and Tracy’s favorite and Zach and I liked the Mango/Strawberry flavor best.  We drove from Mazatlan, back to Guadalajara (6.5 hours) on the Tuesday before Turkey Day and flew out on the 9:30pm flight, arriving at Fresno/Yosemite National Airport at the wee hours of the morning (midnight).

Then it was off to Coarsegold, California located just outside Yosemite National Park.  We went to Tracy’s Dad’s house for the Thanksgiving Holiday.  Tracy and I had a really great time, hanging out, sleeping in, watching TV (s0mething we never get to do at home), eating a ton of food and just relaxing.  The boys on the other hand were go, go, go, up at the crack of dawn and asleep around 11:00pm.  They had such a great time hanging out with Grandpa Phil and Nana Elaine.  It was also an incredibly nice trip in that I got to celebrate my 47th Birthday in style and was taken out to a wonderful dinner to celebrate.  Thank you so much Phil and Elaine for everything.  It was a wonderful time for all of us.

We left there on the red eye on Sunday morning (1:00am) and the flight takes around 3.5 hours.  We arrived in Guad at 6:00am Sunday morning and were all exhausted.  The best part of the entire trip was the freaking 3 hours it took to get through customs, it was unbelievable!  I think every plane that was arriving into Guadalajara that day came in between 5:55am and 6:30am.  The baggage claim area had 4 carousels with at least 3 flights on each marquee.  I am guessing that there were at least 2,000 people coming in at the same time.  I guess lots of people do leave Mexico for Thanksgiving, who knew??  Exhausted and grumpy as hell, we all finally got to our car at long term parking and started home.  On the way, we were all so hungry that we stopped at a 24Hour Burrito place that tons of people stop at on the way back to Lakeside.  We went in ordered some food and then after a few minutes we were told that they were all out of chicken, beans and flour tortillas.  Still hungry and now really grumpy, we got back in the car and drove another 30 minutes.  Things all started to get a bit better once we started down the hill and could see the lake in front of us.  We stopped at a local breakfast joint and had the most amazing meal.  Tracy had eggs Benedict, I had an omelet and the boys split cottage cheese pancakes.  We were all much happier.  We arrived to our home only to find out that there had been a massive windstorm that tore through the village that night before into the morning.  The power was out in the house and the air was full of dust.  We crawled into the house and straight for the bed and napped for a few wonderful hours until the boys woke us up fighting about something.  The rest of the day, Andrew was in tears at the slightest mention of his grandpa, California or any family.  He was feeling incredibly homesick for family and just wanted to go back to the States.  Now it’s been a week and things have progressively settled back to normal.  The tears have stopped and life has begun to settle back into our nice relaxed routine.

Oh, one more exciting thing.  We think we will be moving Andrew to a new school in January.  We finally found the Waldorf School and toured it this past Thursday.  It was wonderful and Andrew was in heaven.  He actually got to stay on Thursday and Friday for the entire day and couldn’t stop talking about it all weekend.  It’s super inexpensive and the director (Veronica) is just the coolest.

So, that’s the latest from Mexico.  I hope you are all well and enjoying life and had a great holiday.  Hope to hear from many of you soon.

Adios for now!

Pan Americna games 2011, Zach's Birthday, New Office, Halloween and Dia del Los Muertos

Finally got a new camera and I am feeling ready to start adding to our Blog once again.  So much has happened over the past 5 weeks, so here I go…

We have celebrated the 2011 Pan American Games here in Guadalajara.  The kid’s school had a wonderful celebration that consisted of the Flag March for all countries competing, lighting of the torch and a number of cool sports competitions between the kids in each class.  We were so blown away when we saw our Andrew carrying the Mexican flag and lighting the torch.  Just so happens that we were totally unaware that these two honors go to the best athlete in the grade.  What a fun time we all had and the kids really got into the whole thing.  It is so incredible to see an entire huge city really show pride in what they accomplished by putting on the games.  Below are lots of photos and the remainder of my update.  I hope you enjoy and thanks for reading.

Andrew Carrying the Flag

Andrew and Zach's Futbol Team

Andrew lighting the torch

Cool Store front in the village

Before

Shoppingggggg

Meow

What should I buy?

The Beatles

After

Pan AM Flag Parade

Our favorite Taco place.  1 Visit a week at least

Birthday Parties in Mexico.  Bouncy houses included!

Nuevo Posada Restaurant

Drumming Circle

Pan American Games 2011

Super Cool Hat

Tracy and Carrie

Our friend Berno in the white T-Shirt did the English Announcements at Field Hockey

and the crowd goes wild

USA, USA, USA Women's Field Hockey Team takes the Gold

Oh say can you see by the dawns early light...

USA Women's Team.  They are so cool!

Ben and Carrie hung out with us, so fun!

Archery Stadium

The fancy new RIU Hotel in Guadalajara

Awesome bridge downtown Guad.

Driving home from Guad

Add caption

Cheeeeeeeese

Happy Halloween

Zach's Birthday Pinata

Z's Birthday Party at school

Scarrrrry!

One of many alters for "Dia De Los Muertos"

New Futbol stadium in Guadalajara, built for the Pan American Games

Chilling with Ben at the Pan American Games

Good friend Mark won the Gold in Men's Road Race this day

USA beats Mexico and advances to qualifiers for the Olympics

Cranky and hungry boy!

Zack throwing the Shot-Put at the schools Pan AM Games

We were fortunate enough that our good friend Ben Maruquin from Ventura/Santa Barbara just so happens to be on the coaching staff for the USA Men’s Field Hockey Team.  He was also an Olympic Team member on the USA Men’s Field Hockey team when the Olympics were in Sydney, Australia.  Ben was was able to hook us up with tickets to the Women’s Bronze medal game and the Gold/Silver Medal Game along with the USA Men’s game vs. Mexico.  We were so spoiled and given the VIP treatment.  It all started with the most wonderful women's team member Carrie Lingo.  She found us at the front gate and escorted us in and then proceeded to hang out with us and fill us in on all the rules and details of our now favorite team sport.  We all had the greatest time ever and just fell in love with all the players.  What a high…

Then came Zach’s Birthday celebration.  Most of you are aware that his big day is actually on Halloween back in the USA.  Well, Mexico does celebrate Halloween a bit, but there are some obvious differences.  The first is that the kids say “queremos Halloween” in a chant instead of Trick or Treat.  They also tend to have to walk really far in order to garner any candy as only one in about 20 houses participates.  For “Z’s” big day we had a Day of the Dead / Dia de Los Muertos bread with candles on top, he opened his gifts from the family and he was thrilled.  While trick or  treating, he asked me why there were so few houses that had candy to pass out, I explained that in Mexico they are just in the past few years beginning to embrace this north of the border celebration.  He looked at me and said, “so why don’t they want to all celebrate my birthday”?  That’s my boy!  Tracy decorated the front of our house along with 9 other homes in our little neighborhood and it was such a fun night.  There had to be over 200 kids wandering around the neighborhood.  The kids actually rode in the back of the car with Tracy and we had the hatch up so that they could get out when we got to a home that was passing out candy.  They had such great luck and got so much candy, it was awesome. 

On November 2^nd the Mexican’s celebrate “Dia de Los Muertos” or day of the dead and is is simply awesome.  The cemeteries get decorated; the burial plots all get cleaned up, flowers, food, drink, and memorabilia from the buried ones life surround the altar.  Every gravesite is like a small shrine to the deceased and the beautiful thing is that the family members set up a small party at the site to celebrate the life of the loved one lost.  In the evening after dark, we headed to Chapala down the road and hit 5 de Mayo street, where they actually block off 2/3 of the street and build these amazing altars to the lost loved ones.  Everyone from family members to Bob Marley is remembered.  Entire yards, carports and corner sidewalk/street areas are set up.  It was one of the most touching and beautiful things I have ever witnessed.  The really cool thing is that this celebration has been around in Mexico for over 2,500 years and still going strong.

One last thing, is that we just got Andrew's first term grades from his school and he has score an average of 9.9 out of a best of 10.  It’s a good sign indicating that he is finally feeling settled and happy with where and what he is doing.   We are all feeling really good, everyone is healthy and we have made some of the best friends you could ask for.  There is absolutely nothing scary down here for us, other than Spanish class because it is so challenging.  This place is so wonderfully beautiful, fun and the people are just plain ole awesome!  The beauty, culture and climate make for a perfect vacation or even better a perfect life.  If you think this place is unsafe, just watch your local news or pick up a paper in the USA.  It is far more violent there than it is here.   Please, come and visit us or at least take a trip to a beach town down here in Mexico.  You will not be disappointed.

Adios for now