October activities - fiestas, parties, children's art show

Here we are sitting on a bench in the jardin waiting for a parade with our friend Agnes (left) and a new friend. The jardin is always a place to rest and surely find someone passing by to hang out with. We both stop there to sit and study our spanish when time allows.

Richard at painting class with our teacher Liliana Zuppini. At the end of this month we are having an art show - all the students of Liliana and we will each have several of our pieces to show. I shall write about this in the next post.

We had an incredible art show of all the kids in the Ojala program that we both volunteer with. We sold hundreds of pieces of art of all these kids and they all received the proceeds of the sales. Here I am with some of the students who had just returned from the parade, dressed in their indigenous costumes - the people of San Miguel Viejo where this program is come from the Otomi Indians.

Here we are at another party - was a 50's dance party as a fundraiser for the Biblioteca our bilingual library. We sat this dance out, but otherwise had fun dancing. We need to take Salsa lessons sometime during our stay here in Mexico!

Below is a piece of art that is large and was created by many of the kids together in the Ojala program. It is a mural and is three dimensional. These kids are so talented. Here is a link to my newest movie. It is a compilation of some movies that I took and some photos - all of the "Fiesta de San Miguel" which is the birthday celebration of our patron saint. This is one of the biggest holidays in San Miguel.

http://picasaweb.google.com/sneulist/OctoberFiestaDeSanMiguel#

Now we are looking forward to the arrival of our friends Carolyn, Bob and Marion who are coming next week and will celebrate "Dia de los Muertos" (Day of the Dead) with us.

Fiestas de Bicentennario and other September fun

This erie picture was taken at the Full Moon ceremony in the botanical garden. It was a combination of full moon and the autumn solstice on the same day - of course a good reason to celebrate. Hello from our bird "Tika" who has kept us entertained this month as we have house sat for him and a cat named "Misha". Tika was funny as he has quite a repetoire of words..."Good morning" (every day, first thing), "Give me a taco", "I'm a pretty bird", and many other sentences that are hard to understand. He went crazy saying everything when I turned on the hairdryer in the morning. We will miss them as we move on this coming Friday to another house - new home redone by our friend Kathie.

Here's the Sunday morning gang that meets every week for breakfast. Carolyn (standing next to Richard) has just left us for Portland, OR. It is a great tradition and we enjoy catching up every week.
The Parrochia (main church in town) is lit up for the Bicentennial - a special light show every night and this was special with the full moon. It is lights set to music. Those who are coming to visit will get to see it as it will stay until early 2011.

Here I am boogieing with Jose Roque - our friend and Richard's spanish teacher and english student. This was at a party for Barbara's birthday.

The Bicentennial celebration went for several days including many parades, fireworks, native dancers and religious events. Many of you have already seen my short you tube movie of some of the events and if you have not seen it -
here is the link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUj5MN1yr8o

There were such colorful photos to be taken and I had a hard time deciding what to include here. Since the independence began in this state, and much of the story started here in San Miguel so the celebrations have even more meaning here.

I went to Ojala - the afterschool program that I work with on Independence day and this is a picture of the kids with the masks that they made that day - these are the younger kids and I am working with the older group - making minature grocery stores "Abarrotes" with tiny objects to fill the shelves of the stores.