School is half over. Yay!

Today I finished my second week of school. I started teaching parts the very structured class hours each day, this week, and each day I add more time to my teaching experience. I have four classes that I'm in, three in the morning and one in the afternoon. I have a few hours off in the middle of the day and Northie and I go to the beach or downtown to the tourist zones, or even stay home once in a while.

The kids are great and all try so hard to do well with a very difficult subject - English. There's also a few adults in each class. Not one word of Spanish is spoken in class but the system works and they all learn. I was nervous at first but finished the week feeling a lot more comfortable, but still a lot to learn about this.

The weather here is wonderfully predictable - sunny and 80 degrees every day. No wind. A little humid. And passing clouds once in a while. Just to the east are the jungle mountains. They get overcast every once in a while, but it doesn't usually work its way down to the beach.

Tomorrow we will take to public bus to Sayulita for the day - a return to that surfer town we spent 2 days at earlier. Then, we'll come back to Puerto Vallarta for a Valentine dinner in an Italian restaurant in the Romantic Zone.

Whale photos (sort of)

Happy Full Moon! These 2 beautiful humpback whales were cavorting while we had our picnic lunch today. Note to self: don't go in the water at high tide on a full moon day or you'll have to walk home with 5 pounds of sand and shells in yer trunks! click on photos!!

Assorted Images

For no particular reason other than than they are cool photos from the trip.

Yelapa!

Today is two months since we left New Mexico and we've seen some pretty wild things. And today, we got to add to the list. We took a water taxi this morning from Puerto Vallarta that brought us to this amazing village called Yelapa. It is south of Puerto Vallarta. This is where the jungle goes all the way down to the ocean. We followed the little road by the river for quite a bit and saw beautiful, lush plants, a pig, a donkey, goats, kids, an elder washing her laundry in the river.... So many wonderful things. We had lunch in a restaurant right on the beach where the ceiling was thatch and the floor was sand. Yowza.

The Running of the Bull in Puerto Vallarta

Parrish Party, part deux

We returned to the fiesta and were blown away by how many more people there were. Upward of a thousand, we're guessing.

The food booths were gone and they had a dj set up with loud music. And they set off the "castillo" (visualize a guy running over and lighting the fuse and running like hell to avoid disaster). Pretty awsome. Reminiscent of Zozobra in Santa Fe, actually. After the last piece of pyrotechnics launched itself down the packed main street and landed on a roof, it was time for....(drum roll)...TORITO!!!! (the little bull) Now, visualize every kid in the neighborhood running down the street chasing the flaming bull. Now, visualize the flaming bull turning on the kids and chasing them all over the neighborhood. Lots of screaming. Lots of running. Lots of fire. It was great.

Street Fiesta

So, for the last couple of nights, we've been hearing fireworks and drumming and all sorts of carrying on. Last night we tracked down the source and found out that it is a week-long fiesta honoring the little parish around the corner from where we live and that TONIGHT was the big finale. So, we went for dinner (the best food - all home made by little Mexican women - all over the age of 100. The dancers were amazing. All under the age of 25. Very limber. Anyways, tonight at 10:30, they're going to start burning stuff, so we came home to rest up and should have some great photos later on. I hope they don't burn us.

School begins

A couple of our new friends from Mazatlan came down and we spent the weekend with them, including watching the Super Bowl. It was a bit of a challenge to find the game in English but we did and had a good time with them and a rowdy bunch of Americans in the bar.

Next day it was time to start school. Here's a picture of the entrance. The other picture is of Chris, the director and my teacher, and Ariana the secretary.