La Fiesta

Price and Nanne's birthday party morning dawned clear and warm, after several days of rain. What a relief! With help from Jim and Mike, we headed down to the Nepo to set up. We'd experienced plenty of Mexican parties by now so the kids were clear on what they wanted. And I knew that we needed to be sure that everyone could eat and hang out for a loooong time! We were expecting over 80 people to arrive at some point after 2pm.

So we set up tables with colors of the US and Mexican flags with individual pots of cactuses in the middle for folks to take home. We had tents to protect us from the sun which was deliciously hot. The food came from Our Favorite Place, the gordita joint right up the street. They did not disappoint with amazing food and lots of it.

All of our friends from school came as did many of the other people we met during our time in Guanajuato. We used the excuse of the birthday to invite everyone we knew. We found really cool pinatas to hang, and got the brinkoline (spelling? bouncy castle to me) of the twins' dreams. Then there was just the wonderfulness of being in an old hacienda with an amazing pool!

Andrea, our wonderful babysitter, set up a face-painting station and did some great work. We got a band that played jarocho music that got lots of folks dancing. They were so cool. You can check them out if you want: La Viejo Son at www.myspace.com/lalocvallejo

I made a brief toast in Spanish to thank everyone for all they had done for us over the year. Price writhed on the ground in mortification and luckily both were captured on film.

And then there were the cakes and the morditas mentioned in an earlier post but worth a few more pics. And with all those accoutrements, we settled in for a wonderful 8 hour party that just eased into night.

Lucy (oh, and her dads too)

Nanne was especially delighted by the arrival of her dear friend, Lucy. Lucy and Mike and Jim arrived on a school day and came with me to pick up the kids. Lucy was immediately surrounded by all of Nanne's new Mexican friends who had heard so much about her. Many people were struck by how much alike they look -- I had never really realized that before! After hearing that, the girls worked the look-alike thing hard!

Like many before them, the Messineo-Witts experienced the rainier side of Guanajuato, but threw themselves into the visit with gusto. One of the markers of their trip was the World Cup, which was in full swing when they arrived. Jos and I watched the first Mexico game at an outdoor restaurant up the street with a gaggle of friends. It was exciting and tons of fun. The kids watched it at school -- no work was more important than this.

For the next game, I took the MW's to town where we watched it in the Jardin surrounded by lots of ardent fans. We got Lucy a shirt first thing so she could fit in!

We had fun doing some pinata shopping and discovered some real works of art! In addition, both Mike and Jim were incredibly helpful in setting up for the twins' birthday party (a story for another post).

Sadly, Jim's mother passed away during their visit and they had to leave early. We decided to spend a night in San Miguel before they left, which was lovely as usual.

I am realizing that I don't have one picture of Mike from the visit, except this one, taken by him like all the others:

Thanks for much for visiting us, guys!

Nanne and Price Turn 10!

Yesterday was the cumpleanos of Price and Nanne, although the real celebration happened on Saturday. More to come, but for now, just a sight of the "mordita" a great tradition of pushing the kids face into the cake!
The great black and white pictures are by friend and photographer, Katie Clancy!

Fiestas of All Sorts

We have been in Mexico for 10 months now. Price, Nanne and I have never left Mexican soil (we have been working for 5 months to get our immigration status figured out, sigh). Something about the weather makes it feel like one long summer vacation. For me at least, Nanne and Price would probably not agree. But I think we all agree that this is a country that enjoys a good fiesta! In the last few months we have attended a huge variety of parties: lots of first communions, birthday parties, parties for mom, for parents, for kids, for students, for teachers, for tennis, for baseball. . . the list goes on!

Jos and I have also hosted many friends for some of Mexico's best bebidas!

Here's Jos and a Michelada:

And here's a monument to our love of tequila:

Family Day at the kids' school was cause for a festival. Here's Price as the father in an aristocratic family from the time of Mexico's Revolution (1910), and Nanne as a modern day mom.

One of my favorite type of events has been going to First Communions. This is the age for this rite of passage, and we've experienced quite a few. The mass is usually fairly brief, but the parties last for hours! This past Saturday we went to one at 10am and didn't get home until 5pm. It is a truly delicious pace of life.

San Juan Nepomuceno

Okay, here's the promised blog about our Club de Campo: San Juan Nepomuceno. Known to us as the Nipple, to other socios as the Nepo, and to everyone else as el Cluuuuub.
It is literally 300 yards from our house and the kids can walk to and fro on their own. Here are Nanne and Ilse making the trek.

The club was built in the ruins of an old hacienda (400+ years old) used to clean the minerals taken from the mountain mines that were once a huge part of Guanajuato's economy and existence. It sits across from a river that we call the Po-Po River because of, well, all the po-po. I guess that it was once beautiful and abundant and a lifeblood of the community.

The socios or members of this place are all Mexicans, middle-class and up. There are many racquet sports, one of the main draws is the Fron-ten, an interesting game which seems to combine raquet ball, squash, tennis and who knows what else.

The kids are all over the pools. And I just wish we had a reason to use the amazing basketball court -- I always imagine Obama playing there.

Once the weather started warming up, we began to spend a lot of time swimming and playing at the cluuub. Now, don't worry, I still feel uncomfortable with the whole membership idea and this won't change anything back in the States. I can't rationalize it except to say that it is a part of this Mexican immersion we are having as the only gringo socios to date.

The kids take friends there many times a week. We will have their birthday party there. Most weekend afternoons stretch into evenings as the kids swim with their friends and Jos and I just take it all in with a michelada.

Hermione, Micheladas and Good Friends

Semana Santa, or Easter Week, was a delightful time here in Guanajuato. Not in small part because the Kieffer-Conleys arrived just before Easter. We spent a few days checking out Guanajuato, during which Tony got us to try the ubiquitous michelada, now our go-to drink -- its a funny combination of tomato juice, hot sauce and other stuff and beer. We hunted Easter eggs in our garden and then headed to the beach.

Once again, we relied on Jos the Travel Planner to find us a great spot and he did! We went to a small hotel, really just a cluster of six houses, that is set on 3000 preserved acres. So we were in a true paradise. The beach is part of Costa Allegre, a wilder, less-traveled "happy coast" and sits between Manzanillo and Puerta Vallarta.

On the first day Nanne, being the only girl there, started staring at a pair of teenage girls who were there. After 20 minutes of being stared at, they headed off to their house and I apologized to one of them because "my daughter loves to stare at teenagers." She smiled and said no problem. Then Nanne turned to me and said, insistently, "That's Hermione." Huh? I didn't know who she was talking about but she took off at a run to ask the poor girl. "Oh no, I'm not," she said in a British accent, "but I get that a lot." Well, it didn't take long for Nanne and the rest of us to figure out the truth: she really was Hermione! The kids gave her a code name of Zak. Because there was no one else staying there, we got some quality time with H (or E) and she is truly lovely. Alas, on our last day when I asked if I could take a picture of her and her friend with the kids, they said no. So you'll just have to believe us that she was there!

But that was only a small part of our fun: swimming, tennis, walking the beach, eating amazing food, and just relaxing. Heaven.

We celebrated KK's birthday in Mexican style (although Nanne and Thorne got to do the mordita) and the kids even got to have a meal alone in the restaurant. They seemed to relish each others company which was such fun for all of us.

We said goodbye at the airport in Puerta Vallarta and the four of us headed off on a long drive back home. We decided to take the mountain route and were blown away by the beauty of this part of Mexico. We think of the beautiful beaches here, but the mountains are just as spectacular. We spent a night at a surreal "spa" set in the mountains. We took a horseback ride there and had some amazing food -- we were definitely the only gringos to be found. Not exactly rustic, more like a manicured acre in the middle of nowhere (most people arrived by helicopter), but quite an experience.
When we arrived home both Nanne and Price said, "Its so great to be home!" This was so different than our return from the beach in November when Nanne cried and said that she wanted to go HOME, and home is Boston. So we've come a long way settling in here.