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.