Noche de Los Canciones :)

Saturday night was the night of songs! It was amazing!! Our vecinos/neighbors invited us over for some spanish musica! Javier's parents Javier and Marite (there are three Javier's, grandfather, father (our neighbor) and son) were visiting for the weekend so the two older Javier's played and sang for us! They were so good! I have a video, but they take SO long to upload, I'll see what I can do. I hope the sound clip at the end works. They just kept playing song after song. Some I recognized, most I didn't, but it was great! These aren't the greatest pictures, but I hope it gives you an idea of what it was like. 

Javier on guitar, Craig on I don't remember the name of it. . . and Javier on bongos. They have the cutest house too!

Check it out! So fun!

La Bamba!

Misc. Pics of the Week

Allie and Nina. 

 I think the probably the best part of the week was riding in a the back of a pickup truck taxi! You just hold on and go for it! It was great! It's not often the mexicanos see three gringas and two natives in one of those so we got quite a few whistles. ha ha. It's always kind of creepy when the old guys are the ones whistling. . . ha ha. We just laughed and rolled our eyes. 

 Nina, Naye and Molly. 

Super Cass! ha ha

The great bat/murcielago distraction! ha ha. Cass and Craig own two rooms at Casa Suegras and there is an outdoor kitchen where an unwelcome bat comes and does his business on the floor every night. They haven't been too thrilled with that so we thought maybe a pinata with extra strings would be enough of a deterrent. Unfortunately it wasn't, but then they hooked up an old shop light to the pinata and kept it on all night and wah-la! No more bat and no more bat droppings to clean up every morning! :)

Meet Javi! He's our little neighbor boy and helped play the bongos for a somewhat impromptu concert we had the other night. It was Molly on the violin, Allie on he guitar and me singing along occasionally. They knew mostly only Taylor Swift songs, but who's complaining? :) Cass and Craig, Coke and Cindy, and the neighbors Javier, Marisol and their kids Javi and Mila made up our audience. 

Javier, me and Javi. Look at that concentration! ha ha. Javier is a vet, so right next door there are three dogs, a horse, two very loud chickens, two bunnies and maybe a cat. Oh and by the way, one of the dogs is about to have puppies any day. . . ha ha. It definitely makes life interesting. :) Oh and the chickens make sure you know exactly what time it is in the morning. ha ha. 

The very first shirt we've made! There have been a ton of t-shirts donated but most of them are way too big for any Mexican, so we're making them into skirts, dresses, pants, etc. for the little kids!

This is the tableful of shirts we have to work with! That navy blue shirt in the front is a 6XL! It was like a dress on me!

Jamaica is a very popular drink in Mexico. It's made from dried hibiscus flowers. We bought some at the store and throught we would give it a whirl. :)

It turned out ok, but it wasn't nearly as sweet as there's usually is. Guess we'll have to add more sugar. :)

Friday night we helped the Project Amigo cook Tina make dinner! We made tostadas and they were so yummy! I know it doesn't sound that hard, but it was actually a lot more complicated than I thought. We had fun though, I'll try to remember how to make them so I can do them at home. :)

Tina, me, Molly and Allison with our chicken and carne tostadas! So yummy!

Javier and Marisol celebrated their anniversary this week so we wandered around town and collected this bouquet of flowers for them! Can you see how beautiful that rose is? A guy that lives about a block away named Lorenzo grows beautiful roses and he let us buy one from him! It was only five pesos, which is equivalent to about 45 cents! Quite the steal if you ask me! We did give him more than five pesos though. :)

Our great Mexican adventure! Riding across Colima in the back of a pickup truck!! So fun!

Hitting the Town

Wednesday after teaching in Queseria we drove to downtown Colima with our friends, the visitors form California, Cass and Craig. We stopped in Comala for some lunch. We ate at Don Comalon's which is a botanas bar/restaurant thingy. Meaning you buy somewhat expensive drinks and they bring out all kinds of yummy appetizers. We ate deep fried bean tacos, small enchiladas, their version of small burritos, tostadas with ceviche or guacamole. It was all very yummy! And quite a good deal for what we got. We also paid for two songs from a group of mariachis. There were probably eight or nine of them. A trumpet, trombone, two fiddles/violins, a giant guitar, a base, a smaller guitar, and maybe a couple others. Most of them sang along too. They were quite loud but they were good! They sang Cielo Lindo and Guadalajara. Then we wandered around a couple shops before heading down the hill to Colima.

This is one of the many large churches/cathedrals in Colima. It was very pretty, but not as intricate compared to the one in the main square. I love checking out old churches. 

This is the main square where the really cool cathedral is. There's a large garden/jardin to the left of this picture. Surrounding the square is government buildings. So we met up with our friends Nina and Naye, went shopping for a couple hours and then met back up with Cass and Craig for dinner. We found some cute shoes! There are a million little stores in downtown Colima. Anyway, so that night we  decided we wanted to eat downtown and we found an Italian restaurant! It was on the second floor balcony of the buildings surrounding the main square. Molly and Allie had told me how they didn't really love the Mexican pizza, so I wasn't prepared for how good that place would be! It was so yummy! We had Mediterranean and Italian/Hawaiian pizzas. :) It was delicious. And one of the best parts was the atmosphere and entertainment! We had the restaurant to ourselves at like 6:30 because Mexicans don't eat dinner till about 8:00 at night. There was an elementary school band playing for a while and they were great! Then even had quite a few recognizable songs. My Heart Will Go On, Just Around the River Bend, Pirates of the Caribbean. Then after a "real" band come out and they were so fun to listen to! I'll try to post a video at the end! We were dancing and having a great time!

The second band.

Our view from the restaurant. :)

After dinner we got filled churros! Holy cow were they yummy! Just imagine a eight inch churro filled with delicious melty-ness! I got the chocolate one, uh-mazingly unhealthily deliciousness. Cajeta is like a caramel syrup stuff that they eat on pancakes, and such. (I had a peanut butter cajeta sandwich for lunch today. shhh!)

Allison, NIna, Naye, Molly and I with our churro rellanos. :)

Aren't those the cutest little corn husk dolls?? I almost bought one. . . I was afraid my suitcase would squish it. .  . 

Parque Regional

The other day we went to Parque Regional in Colima. It's kind of like a little zoo, but it doesn't cost anything to get in. It's a beautiful park! Watch for the strange looking dogs. They're called Colima Dogs and there are clay versions of this dog all around town. There are also a million in the yard. Colima is the name of the state I'm in right now, but it's also the name of the largest city. These dogs are native to the region and are mostly hairless, though some of them have hair on their face and tails. They weren't quite what I was expecting based on the statue, but they were interesting. :) Also, I don't think I've ever been quite so close to a lion without any glass between us. Here they just have fences. 

 A cute little racoon. :)

 I can't remember the name of this little guy, but he was fun to watch. 

 Can you spot the iguana?

 This was our lunch, shhhhh!! Don't tell me mom. :) It was amazing!

 Now on to the snakes!

 We saw boas, pythons, king snakes, vipers, etc. Pretty awesome! I just hope that's the only time I encounter them. 

 "When I was a young warthog. . ."

 The Colima Dogs!

 Pretty different looking, eh? This one actually has some hair on her tail.

Conked out from the heat. :)

 Mis zapatos con leos muy grandes! (Shout out to Kathryn for decorating the shoes!) :)

 I wanted to climb the dino, but I decided it probably wouldn't be a very good idea. . . :)

We found a cool museum at the park about a lady who had a big impact on this area. 

 Isn't that dress amazing! The fabric nerd in me was freaking out. ha ha. Loved it. 

Dang, I think I uploaded the wrong video. Oh well, this is a good one too. This was when we were exploring the back yard and trying to not freak out about the giant spider. Good times. Watch for Allie's interpretation of the spider-be-gone dance. :)

Is this OUR backyard?!?

We've been trying to listen to more spanish music and this is one of Allie's favorite songs. It's so cute! Hope you like it! I'm still trying to catch up on the last couple of days posts so just bear with me. :)

So we discovered that Molly and Allie have the coolest backyard EVER! Just check it out!

This is the start of our adventure! They have about an acre and a half. 

 After going down a big old hill we discovered a giant bamboo grove. We also learned that you have to do a hand waving dance to rid yourself of spider webs. ha ha. 

 I live with models. 

 There was a bamboo frond (??) at a diagonal and I was trying to hang on it. 

 Whoops. . . it wasn't quite as strong as we thought. ha ha. 

 :(

 That's a pretty sweet spider web right? I'm just glad we didn't see the spider that had made it. Though we did see our fair share of spiders. :) 

So we found bamboo, a small stream, fruit, bugs, and lots more. Quite the adventure. :)