A week in which we go half a block from heaven.

                    Highlights from the past week:

---          On Monday, we went out to buy ingredients for our international food that we were going to prepare for Wednesday. This was the day we were going to have a presentation for the parents, showing our work for Geography. We each had to choose a recipe from the country we were researching on and then the whole class would help prepare them. My country was Mexico (one of the kids from 7th grade had to do it and since I am coming here to learn about Mexico, why not me?) so I chose a delicious soup (called pozole) with chicken, pork, garlic, onion, a sort of chile and radish.

               We went to a little market and with the money that we had gotten from the first food sale, we bought all the ingredients with that and then went back to school to prepare for a while. I cut onions with Evodio and he kept saying to me as my eyes watered, "Don't cry" -- but jokingly of course. Then we both tried to make ourselves cry and our eyes got extremely watered up. It was actually pretty fun!

---        On Wednesday we had the big presentation. We cooked like crazy practically all day to make up for the missed days of cooking. We were running around and talking as we cooked for the majority of the day. You know when you have been cooking a lot when the little kids actually come and sit next to you and watch you cook just to get to talk to you!! The younger kids did their presentations first but then after a while, we were
all called to go to the little kids of pre-school who had dressed up in the traditional costumes of each country. No kid dressed up for Mexico but one of them held the flag anyway. We are getting positioned in line but none of us could figure out what the heck we were supposed to be doing. We asked Eloina multiple times but finally sorta-kinda figured out what we were going to say. We started walking around the parents but before we had even
gotten half way around, the little boy holding the Mexican flag, started crying and ran over to hug his brother. To get the little kid to keep moving, and asked the older brother to walk with him. Before all the other represented countries came out, I had to explain the dish I made. I was kind of at a loss for words so Eloina fed me the names of the ingredients inside the soup.

              Everyone else explained their dishes and then we filed out with the little kids. Then it was show time for the real presentations. Of course, Eloina had to start with me. I don't like to go first in general but since I had no choice, I grabbed my papers and poster and just tried to get it over with. Xochitl held my poster for me as I read my speech. I was really nervous but someone later asked me if I was nervous at all because apparently, I looked very composed.

               After everyone presented, we scrambled to get our international food ready for the parents. At the beginning, I ran from the kitchen to the serving area over and over again to get some things that we were missing. Later, I settled down to serve free coffee. After everyone ate, I stole some sushi before we left.

                We cleaned most of the afternoon before we went to pick up our grandparents from the airport in Tuxtla. We arrived in the surprisingly warm climate just fifteen minutes or so before they arrived. We bought some drinks and two bags of microwave popcorn as they went through customs. They confiscated some beef jerky that my grandparents tried to bring us but otherwise, everything went smoothly. We had big hugs for them and we had an entertaining ride home in the dark.

Our paper mache map of Mexico 

Lore and I making papusas (or something along those lines)

Our paper mache map of the world

Presenting my food

The girl and boy representing Spain

Kid dressed up in winter clothes to be an "eskimo" for Maya and Favio's state: Alaska

Kids dressed up in the traditional clothing of the country Kenya

In the traditional clothing for Brazil

The boy is saying the traditional greeting in whatever language they speak in Brazil

Kids in the traditional costume of Spain

The girl on the left is named Kenya, how fitting

Little kids filing out

Working the cash register

Waiting for Oscars volcano to explode

My presentation

---                On Thursday, I woke up later than my grandparents who had long plane rides the day before! By the time I woke up, Papa Tom and JoJo (along with my dad) were already walking downtown to pick up pastries for breakfast. Oscar and I watched some TV before we went out to show them a little about San Cristobal. We didn't stay out to long because we had to get in the car for our road trip to a coffee route. We drove on surprisingly straight roads for roughly five hours and just when it was starting to get dark, we came across a long line of cars all stopped up. It was a bloqueo (a blockade.)

                 We all groaned knowing how long these things could last and knowing that we were only roughly seven kilometers from Tapachula (the place we were going to stay the night). We got out of the car to go talk to someone to get the basic information. Apparently, there was a road block because some people were upset about not getting paid. The guys we talked to said he thought it could go on for many hours. We relayed the information back to the people in the car. We discussed our options and watched some people back up and go the same direction but in the wrong lane. We told the guy who told us about it what we planned to do and in response, he said follow me. So we both flipped around and, going against traffic, we saw the long line of people who were unable to back up. We felt very bad for those people and thinking that we would be able to get to Tapachula, we already mentally high-fived each other at our cleverness. The problem was, they weren't letting people through the other way either so we were stuck at the front of an unmoving line.

    We thanked the guy for getting us this far and we discussed our options,

1. we could wait there until they let us through (it didn't look like that would happen extremely soon)

2. we could spend the night in the car if the blockade lasted overnight

3. we could go to Huixtla (a near town), spend the night there and then start afresh the next morning

In the end we chose option 3 though we considered spending the night (most grandparents wouldn't even consider it but since our grandparents are so cool, they did!!)

               We went back to Huixtla and checked out some hotels and we were scared by all the hotels with psychedelic-fun house colors (to which I said from the back seat "these fun house colors are tripping me up" I was very tired!!). Instead of staying another hour trying to find a hotel, we turned back around to go to Tapachula. We were surprised to see that there was no sign of the road block. Once I was sure that we weren't going to get stopped again, I laid my head down on JoJo's lap and I was out...out until we got to the hotel, that is. The hotel was decent and the only misgivings I had about it were when it smelled suspiciously like armpit. That smell passed though after some minutes of watching Storage Wars on TV!

---           The next morning, we woke up and after getting dressed speedily, we ate some breakfast before we jumped in the car to do the last leg of the trip before we got to the coffee route. The roads leading directly up to the coffee plantation, were awful (to put it nicely) but the whole drive was worth it be there!

              We arrived at "half a block from heaven" and practically immediately I am raving about how beautiful it is up there which I hardly ever do! It was jaw-dropping, stop and stare, awe-inspiringly gorgeous. You looked out mountains and hills covered in pine trees. The scenery was blanketed by a veil of poetic fog. It smelled of fragrant flowers and had a perfect temperature. The manager of the restaurant comes out and greats us like we were something special! A guy came out and fixed our tire right there (which we ruined on the drive there). As my dad said "that's what I call service!" We ate first thing and we were surprised to find that is was still more or less breakfast time!

           The rest of the weekend we:

   - Read on the porch of our bungalow
   - Took baths in the first bath tub we have seen in months
   - Took naps
   - Watched a lightning display light up the sky in beautiful patterns from the safety of the porch
   - We took a tour of the coffee plantation and learned about the INCREDIBLY extensive process the coffee bean goes through before  it becomes the coffee that we drink. I translated the whole tour for my grandparents and by the end I was happily exhausted. Every worker in the coffee process works incredibly hard and we resolved to never ever waste a drop  of coffee.
   - Were treated extremely nicely by the staff and especially by the manager
   - Drank coffee in the morning on our porch (the staff brought it to us daily)
   - Learned that we won't get insomnia and WILL get all the health benefits of coffee if we drink it before six minutes (apparently all the health benefits leak out of the coffee by the steam so that's why you want to drink it fast)
   - We went on a zip line that once you stepped off the cement block, you had no fears on the way down
   - We made our own world with our own countries on it. We each made maps, my country was called Reu (pronouced Rue).
   - We played card games also


Pictures from our trip to the coffee plantation:

Since they put flower arrangements on our food, I got into the habit of putting them in my hair!

I have such a florid mouth!

The little coffee plantation village

Oscar and I, German style

Wowee!

Machinery for coffee

Unprocessed-newly picked coffee beans

coffee beans on its plant

What a view

YUM

In the back-round you can see a bungalow

A manicured round about

Our front lawn and then a big drop

the porch of our bungalow

a pruned hedge...but of what?

Oscar in his German-Mexico heaven

A funny looking girl and a feminine looking boy!

Ta-dah!!