It was a big change

I thought I'd post these photos of the house being painted. It was quite a change!

If I'm going to link to it, perhaps I had better post to it. . .

I'm headed down to San Miguel on Wednesday - I can't wait. I don't usually get the treat of being in Mexico in March, and it is an absolutely lovely time of the year.
I arrive in the evening on Wednesday, and Thursday will be busy with renovations - to my body and spirit. Haircut, hair color and a massage. After which I will be ready to face the world! I am meeting friends for cocktails on a rooftop bar - La Azotea. We go there so often we call it The Club. It's a fabulous place to watch the sunset, just of the Jardin.
I will be there only a few days (better than no days!) and I'll see how much I can squeeze in. I want to catch up with friends, follow up with an electrician and hopefully get to a hot spring.
Last summer we repainted Casa Colina. I say "we" because each of us had a job. Norma found the painter and supervised the job. Jose painted his heart out. And I chose the colors and paid. I think that everybody was okay with this division of labor.

Photos from Day of the Dead

Some more photos: I think the real problem is that I just have a lot of stuff running on this computer.

I love the top photo because you can see that this is a current activity shared by the whole family - even the muchacho with the sunglasses!

The bottom picture is a shot of the altar at Sarah Murillo's Centro Bilingue. Chris and Mary Alice helped to build and decorate this altar in 2006. Some people will build their altars in a front window of their homes.

Day of the Dead is a spectacular event. I'll be here every year if I have the opportunity.

Day of the Dead

Very tardily I wanted to write a little about the Day of the Dead. I went first a few years ago, and I am totally done with Halloween now. What a marvelous celebration! It is an Aztec ceremony with a very thin veneer of Christianity applied to the top. If you would like to read more about the ceremony itself, you can click here or here.

I took the photos I have attached at the main cemetary in San Miguel. It was completely packed with families who had come out to clean and decorate the graves of their relatives. They bring a picnic along and spend the day. It was quite a scene!

The whole town has an intoxicating smell of marigolds and incense. The marigolds are a traditional flower for the Day of the Dead, and incense is burned on the altars that dot the town.

Families make altars to their dead. The altars range from simple to extremely extravagant. Most are in homes, but some are in the Jardin and in other public spots around town. The Spanish School my children have attended, the Centro Bilingue, turned its entire courtyard into the most elaborate altar I have ever seen. They invited my kids to help in its construction. The folks at Centro Bilingue are a great group.

I am trying to put on a few more photos but I'm having no luck. I'll cut this post short and post more photos on another post.

I am so thrilled people are reading my blog! Plus dancing!

I have gotten a few comments on the blog from people I didn't know were reading it. This is such great news to me! I am always a little taken aback when I realize how my reactions to praise are still really the same as they were at 10 years old.

Anyway, I have a few Experiences from this summer I hadn't written about, so here is one.

Holly (you have read about her) took me (and all of our kids) to this great Mexican dance spot called Bovedas. For the uninitiated, a boveda is a type of arched brick ceiling where the ceiling supports itself. I have quite a few bovedas at my house (CasaColina), and there were quite a few at this dance spot.

However, the dance spot is not about the ceiling! We went there after a lovely party at the fabulous home (seriously, fabulous) of our friend CeCe Hetherington. Read that as we were looking very cute.

You probably know that Latino men are wonderful dancers. I would like to reference my friend Miguel Cortez from Colombia as proof of this. At any rate, we got quite a lot of dancing action at Bovedas. You won't see me, as I was taking the pictures. I would like you to take a moment to see how many different ages are represented in the photos. I love cross-generational parties!

The other thing that I feel compelled to mention is that I danced with the best lead of my entire life. Sorry, Miguel - you have been usurped. This man was a fabulous dancer, and really let me knew what we were going to do next. We were quite the pair!

Another very, very fun part of San Miguel. Where gringo and Mexican life overlap and coexist peacefully, and we can each experience the other culture. Which is pretty special.

Zumba!

My friend Holly and I have been exercising every morning with a method called Zumba. I have included a few pictures, which really don't do the whole thing justice. Zumba is a dance exercise based on Latin dancing - mostly salsa. Click here to see an example of the class.

If you want a dose in humility, take a Zumba class! Especially a Zumba class in Mexico. Holly and I are two of the maybe five gringas in the room (out of about 80 women). We have noticed that the average Latina in the class seems to have a pivot in her body that Holly and I don't have. We can move our torsos and hips separately, but the women in the class can move their legs completely independently of their hips, also! Plus, they can do some fancy shoulder and arm movements.

Our instructor, Cesar, is a lithe and talented dancer. He is, shall we say, fit and handsome and uses a lot of hair gel. He puts lots of flourishes into the steps. These flourishes are completely beyond Holly and me, so we have to look to someone in the class to figure out the steps. Here's a tip. That stout older woman in front of you is NOT going to be the one to watch. She will be able to wiggle her body like a 19 year old senorita. We have found our best bet is to find someone currently injured - we look for an ace bandage around the knee. That woman will be eliminating the extra foot twists and little hops that everyone else is doing. Once we get the basic steps down we can watch (and admire) the rhythm and style of the able-bodied women.

One of the other challenges I find is that some of the suggestive wiggles, bumps and grinds are gestures I was not permitted to make during my youth. I have been trying to get into the swing of them. Take a moment and imagine how ridiculous a middle-aged gringa looks trying to figure out how to do a whole series of rapid pelvic thrusts to music!

Oh, and one other thing. This workout costs us 20 pesos - about $1.50! By the end of the hour class, everyone is literally dripping sweat. It is a lot of fun, and we feel quite virtuous.

Haircuts

As we have spent more time in Mexico, we have begun to take care of more and more everyday things here. For example, I now get my dogs' annual exam by their vet here. I get my shoes repaired, have furniture made and car repaired.

Last week, Mary Alice got a haircut and had highlights put in her hair at our local Estetica. The husband and wife who own the shop are very nice. One of the things I absolutely love is that she got her hair cut and highlit for 160 pesos - that's $12 at today's exchange rate. The boys get very nice haircuts for 45 pesos, or $3.50. I think I'm even going to get a trim this week, before we head back to Colorado.