Carnaval

Zamantha

Zamantha is the daughter of the family that runs the boarding house (they also live here) and the kids have really grown to love her. She helps us with our Spanish because she refuses to let us speak English and won't give up until she finds out what she wants to know. We have told her that she is our best Spanish teacher and she looks at us like we are loco. She also looks at us that way when we tell her that we don't play the lottery or that I don't wear lipstick or when we accidently say the wrong word or our pronounciation is horribly off.

sports on the beach

We bought a cheap amateur bodyboard and Rus has been loving it. He even "rode" a wave properly. In the background of the picture is Mei playing in the water and a local playing soccer. There are often ballgames of various types on the beach, especially on Sundays. One game that they we have seen played here originated from the Aztecs and has evolved into something more like beach volleyball.

cats and dogs

Just like there was an unbelievable amount of stray dogs in Dublan, there are is an ubelievable amount of stray cats here. I'm sure that the fisherman feeding them discarded fish heads and tails keeps their population up.

The mystery of the lost pictures

I have unlocked the mystery of my digital camera. It turns out that there was something wrong with my memory card, maybe a piece broke off, and that is why I lost all those pictures. That part I can't get back, but I have found that if I take the memory card out, there is still memory available on my camera for about 100 VGA-quality pictures that are able to download (no pictures from the memory card would download). And then I found some presumably missing pictures. I am a genius.
Picture explanations: These are pictures that I thought were lost but it turns out that they somehow got onto the memory of the camera instead of the card. They are from our Christmas holidays in Mazatlan, if I remember correctly. The first two pictures are of a wagon carrying wild animals that we just happened across on the street. It was parked outside a pub and the driver or caretaker was no where in sight, and the cage did not look very securely bolted. It was tempting to pet the lazy-looking bear's paw or the equally lazy-looking tiger's head because they were RIGHT THERE within easy reach. I held back for the sake of setting a good example for the children.
The third picture is of the black iguana that I mentioned in a previous post.

the park and my hair

We spent some time at the park near our home today. Ila and Mei found some friends in some girls whose parents were here for Carnaval (more about Carnaval later). Notice the crazy angle on the teeter-totters.
And then we come to the last picture. I think Halli will appreciate this greasy mug. I got Liam to take a picture of me so I could show off my hair-do that Zamantha spent 3 hours on. All I can say about this picture is that it keeps my head from swelling any more. Which can happen here in Mexico if you are blonde and green or blue-eyed and get called pretty lady a lot.

rocking and swinging

1. A skeleton lady in a rocking chair. You can buy skeletons doing pretty much anything here; cooking, playing guitar, performing an operation, anything you can think of.
2. Mei on a swing at a park by the boat dock to stone island. Swinging is one of her favorite things to do in life.

little fish, little fish swimming in the water

Here is my one and only tropical fish picture. You can just barely see the little blue fish above the sea urchin. That's Rus in the reflection. I have been tempted to buy an underwater camera but I don't know enough about them to make a wise purchase. Maybe if I get into scuba diving some day it will be worth it.

Technology

Blogger and I are friends again but now I have run into some contention with my digital camera. Over 500 pictures went missing and I can't upload any to the computer anymore. I probably should have saved them onto a disk periodically. I'm glad that I have been keeping this blog because at least I have the pictures that I posted on the internet. I am not as upset about losing these pictures as one would think. Everything is pretty vivid in my memory still and pictures don't always capture the best memories. I think when one is experiencing everything for the first time, it remains in the memory and doesn't fade as quickly. The thing that has stuck with me the most clearly is the first time I floated in the water with a mask and snorkel and there were all kinds of fish swimming around me. The short videos of the kids are the ones I will miss though because none of them are on the internet and there were some cute ones. I had uploaded a few pictures to a certain computer at this internet place a few days ago that I haven't posted yet so I have come back to this same computer in hopes of finding them again and I have. I will post these last ones now and hopefully I can figure out what is wrong with my camera and I can be friends with it again.

the cemetery

This was a beautiful place and the burial plots varied widely. There were sites marked with everything from rustic wooden crosses to colorful tiles to elaborate statues and buildings. There were even some empty ones overgrown with trees(like the one in the fourth picture), which was a little scary. One gravesite had a big opening and we couldn´t even see the bottom. Yikes. We kept a close eye on our kids here! I think my favorites were the really old ones that were sinking and the ones that were cracking from tree trunks pushing their way through them.

the volkswagon

This is quite the country for volkswagons. Here is a van that has been converted into a truck.

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Rus thinks this is the way the banana should be marketed.

lavanderia

washing and drying clothes with "help" from Ila and Mei...

creatures

Liam holding Brittle Stars, Mei walking along the rocks during lowtide, another gecko visitor (this one was only about an inch long), and some sea creatures

Arts and Crafts

grrr.

Blogger is being frustrating lately so I think I am going to take a little break from it until it works better again. It has taken me quite a few internet sessions since friday just to post that last post. So it's break time. Just e-mail us if you are worried about whether we are alive or not.

the lighthouse

We trekked to the lighthouse on Liam's birthday. The walk to the bottom of the hill where the real hike started was long enough but along the way we saw some neat stuff like a man on his break from his construction job who had caught a Giant Hawkfish with his hands. He also gave Liam a Brittle Star, which is like a starfish, but it has longer skinnier arms and they are brittle. We took some stairs to the bottom of a cliff for some exploring. And just before the climb to the lighthouse we came across a swordfish that was caught that day. The view at the lighthouse was all worth it. We could see all of Mazatlan, its beaches, ports, islands, and the mountains to the west. This lighthouse claims to be the highest naturally elevated lighthouse in America and the highest in the world that is still in use.

Jicama

Samantha gave us a strange vegetable the other day that was really tasty, especially with lime juice so we looked for it in the supermarket and bought some to enjoy again, with lime juice of course. It is called jicama. It's a root vegetable and it looks a little like an onion. It's like a sweet version of a red radish.

Happy Birthday Liam!

Liam is seven years old today. We celebrated with cake, pizza, some Kinder surprises and a piñata on the roof of our building with just us and the landlord's daughter Samantha, who has become great friends with our kids. I think she is about 13 years old. Liam and I found some cool Mazatlan-related Lego while perusing the Lego site after reading some birthday e-mails. I guess only the underwater theme is related to Mazatlan...there aren't actually any giant squid attacking exploration centers here.