La Vida as we know it

Time passes slowly here in Cacalote.  Thus, formulating a blog post takes more time.  Our last update was almost three weeks ago, therefore we have a lot to cover.

We have friends!  Grace (not the one we live with), Keisha, Jake, and John are all in Level One with Ashley.  Roger (Rogelio) and Joyce are Emily’s companeros in Level Two.  And in Level 4 we have Milo and Otis (Antonio Banderas).  We meet every Friday night at one of the local taco stands, which we recently discovered is tragically only open on the weekends.  Our favorites are barbacoa and bistek, at a whopping 6 pesos (or 50 cents) each.  You may begin to notice that food will be a recurring theme for our blog and our lives. We encourage you to donate to our food fund.  However, we cannot accept postal donations due to the corruption of the Mexican postal service.  A Paypal account may appear soon.

Milo, in particular, is our food addiction enabler; he can make food appear out of nowhere.  Every time we see him, he has a different snack to offer us.  Whenever we are deciding what to order, he says “all of it.”  Antonio lives in the house behind ours and we enjoy creeping on him and conversing with him while hanging our laundry on the line.  Grace calls our fair city of Cacalote, “Cocolatte,” which sounds much better than “a lot of poop.”  Keisha, not to be confused with Ke$ha, is a recent graduate of K State and lives in a house here with a bucket shower.  She is definitely not in Kansas anymore.  Jake serenades between classes with his guitar, sometimes joined by our teachers or anyone else who happens to walk in.  Rogelio also plays the guitar, and rides a blue Italika moped around town and practically refuses to speak English to us English-speakers.  John and Joyce, a couple from Missouri, used to be missionaries in India and are now studying Spanish.

Back to the important things in life: Last weekend we cooked spicy spaghetti for our dear family, who we now refer to as our parents, sisters, and little brother.  This week we made Snickerdoodles for them.  Oddly enough, the word Snickerdoodle does not translate.  Betti called them “bolitos de carnel,” or cinnamon treats.  She said that Dieguito never likes the baked goods that she makes, but he liked our cookies, because “the muchachas” made them.

We have succeeded in our goal of being best friends with Dieguito!  In his adorable two year old Spanish, he calls us “mis muchachas,” which means “my girls.”  Last week, he came to our room and uttered an unintelligible phrase intending to invite us on a walk to the beach with the fam. As we made our way to beach, it began raining so hard we had to return home.

This week, we made a successful trek to the beach with our fam including our dog Balu. Which leads us to the epiphany Ashley had last week: all animals in Mexico speak and understand Spanish.  This realization has certainly enhanced our ability to communicate not only with Balu, but with all the cows and sheep that we pass on our daily walk to school.

Decision Time:

Ashley needs help deciding whether or not she should break her one-year soda fast in order to enjoy the wonderful soda assortment in Mexico. Please vote yes or no.

We leave you with a Mexican Proverb:

Riding a bicycle with a machete in hand is equivalent to driving a pick-up with a shotgun in the window.