Dressing up the Gringa

I love it here! It is very peaceful. Lots of walks which is great exercise since it is so hilly around here. We walk down into the village and then we have to walk up to get home. I have even taken a few walks by myself. The people here are really nice and it is very common to greet others on the street with "Buenas". They more often drop off the tardes or the dias than include it. They have been really patient with my Spanish luckily. When I have gone on a few walks by myself, I have run into a few of the neighbors or kids from the classes. So I have had chances to just stop and say hello for a bit.

I have enjoyed the English classes with the kids. In the afternoon class, we played a Secret Friend where we made things and bought small treats for them. We got a lot of mileage out that game with very little planning :-) After Friday's class, while Marcela was helping one of the girls' with their English homework, I again played another outdoor game that I really like. It is similar to Freeze Tag except the only way to release the frozen one is to crawl under their legs or other body part depending on how they got frozen when they got tagged. For instance, a girl was crawling under another girl's legs when she also got tagged. She then went into a downward dog position so somebody else had to crawl under both of them. Is is a fun game but much easier if you are small or maybe if I played with big people it wouldn't be so hard. But crawling or shall I say slithering to get under a 9 year old legs is not the easiest thing in the world. To start it off or choose a person who is "it", they did something similar to Eeny Meeny Miney Mo. After I heard them do it several times, I showed them Eeny Meeny Miney Mo and they loved it. What a great way to practice English. We did it at least 4 times.

The neighbors came over for a barbeque on Sat night. They are super nice, welcoming and really supportive. We ate, drank, laughed, told jokes and just had a good time over all. They really like the liquor Aguardiente (which they even have some without sugar) which they think is similar to tequila but with an anise flavoring. Shots galor! They sure like the stuff :-) They even dressed up the gringa and were quite surprised I knew what a poncho was and was even more impressed when I knew how to put one on. People are so funny! Chistoso :-)