Expo-Fresas 2010

Last week our city's fair started. It's called Expo-Fresas, fresas meaning strawberry. Lot's of the stuff cultivated here. Anyway, there is something called "Teatro del Pueblo". It's a concert area within the fairgrounds, and everyday there is a concert of some famous Mexican musical group, The music is popular, meaning especially BANDA. Banda is a type of music which uses acordeons and big "tambora" (drum). The costumes the members of the band use include a "Tejana" (Texas style hat).

This Wednesday, a group called K-Paz de la Sierra came to do their show. My friends and I like this group very much, so we went to see them. The concert area has no chairs, everybody is standing. The reason for this is that most of the artists who come, play music which is for dancing, sand almost everybody everybody loves to dance. The entrance fee to the concerts is included in the fair's entrance. How much? 15 pesos, about $1.20!! It is very cheap.

So here are a few photos and two short videos of their most famous songs.

At the other side of the fairgrounds there are
lots of games like roller coasters.

Micheladas-beer mixed with grapefruit soda,
lime juice, tabasco style sauce, and spices.

My friends and I want to go to the fair again to
get in these things.

Andrea says we will look like hamsters in
a plastic ball.

Rueda de la Fortuna (ferris wheel)....

First a local group played for half an hour.

Then the "good", group came out...

Andrea and her friend Fernanda.

Claudia and I.

Claudia knew ALL THE SONGS!

At the end of the concert...

If I get to go again, and get into that hamster thing, I will post about it.
Have a beautiful weekend....adios!

Vista desde mi escuela.

View from my school at 7:30 a.m.

Cerro Culiacán

This mountain is called Cerro Culiacán. It is near the city of Celaya, in our state, Guanajuato. About a 50 min. drive from here.

The days have been beautiful. Just the right temperature, not too cool, not too warm. Maybe a bit too windy for my taste, but still great.

Hope you had an excellent day.

Lots of warm wishes from me to you!

Nominada.

Pam from Gingerbread Snowflakes has just nominated me for the Creative Blogger Award, and I am so excited! Thanks so much, Pam, for thinking of me. This means a lot.
First thing I have to do is write 7 things fellow bloggers might not know about me.

So here goes...

1. I was born in New York to Puertorrican parents, lived in Puerto Rico from age 8 to 21, married a Mexican, and have lived in Mexico ever since.

2. I was a gymnast. That's how I met my husband, he was a coach in Puerto Rico (he sumersaulted into my life, hehehe).

3. My Mom is a famous Yoga teacher in Puerto Rico (Her name is Lollyana). I miss her so much...haven't seen her in 4 years (sniff sniff).

4. Although I love Puerto Rico very much, I feel Mexico is my first home at this moment. I love the people, the food, the country, everything. That's why I started this blog. I think in "Mexican" now.

5.I love to read. I can read both in Spanish and English, but in this aspect I prefer reading in English.

6. I also love crafts! I wish I could dedicate more time creating things...knitting, sewing, woodworking, anything!

7.When I was small, I dreamed of having a Pen Pal. For some reason, there was nothing of the sort in Puerto Rico. Now, so many years later, and with this bloggy thingy, I am getting to know so many people from so many places. I dare say I even have made "good friends" with a few fellow bloggers. I cherish friendship very much, and it is very important to me.
So now you know I much I appreciate having all of you read my blog. Thank you!


Now I have to nominate 7 bloggers. These are the blogs:

African Kelli : One of the most creative women I have met on the blogsphere. Her recipes are awesome, her crafts are inspiring, and her thoughts are touching.

Glenrosa Journeys: Arizona through the lens of Candace. Beautiful images of this incredible state.

Tobycat Creations: This crafty lady, Char, teaches her girls so many beautiful patchwork projects. And she posts how to make them.

Sew Chic and Unique: This lovely woman inspires other on making a new sewing creation every two weeks. Maybe you would like to join her.

Kitty Garden Makes: I have been following this blog for a very short time, but I LOVE all the projects it features!

Viva Luna: Through Luna's blog we can visit Germany. Her photographs are really beautiful!!

Sofia's Sketchbook: A very creative woman. She paints and sews (gotta love her owls). Her artwork is very original.

So there are the 7 nominees. Very difficult to choose with so many creative bloggers out there. Hope you go visit each one, and enjoy their uniqueness.

And now the nominees have to do the following (of course, if they want to):

1. Thank the person who nominated you for the award and link to their blog.
2. Copy the award to your blog.
3. List 7 things people don't know about you.
4. Nominate 7 bloggers, link to their site and leave a comment on their blog advising them of the nomination.

And if you want to take a beautiful trip though some of U.S.A's incredible national parks, visit Pam's entry. Makes me want to take my backpack, and follow her steps...thanks, Pam!

Wishing you all a lovely evening!!

¡Felíz Día del Amor y la Amistad! (San Valentín)

Hope you have a Happy Love and Friendship Day! Or St. Valentine's Day!

In Mexico, this day is celebrated mostly the same as in the U.S. Lot's of hearts, pink and red decorations, balloons, etc. It is very commercial. Hershey's chocolates are sold everywhere. Same with heart lollipops. In our family we don't usually celebrate this day in a big way. But since my students at school bring me gifts, I made them some heart bookmarks I found at another blog (mmmcrafts). And I had the girls make some heart baskets with a tutorial from Pam's blog Gingerbread Snowflakes.

As always, the girls went crazy. I have them make a simple craft, and they add their own ideas. Here are the photos.

I used simple colored bond paper for the baskets.

I used a pattern I made, and marked the lines for the girls to cut.

I gave them two colors to combine in any way.

I kept the pattern simple with only two "legs" for weaving.
Here is one the the first finished hearts.

Another color combination.

Then all of a sudden out came the colored pencils
and markers.

And they started decorating the hearts.

Where do they get these ideas?

Imagine what they would do with
a bottle of glue and glitter!

These are my "plain" hearts.
They look sad compared with the girl's hearts.
This was a very easy and cheap craft.
The marking, cutting, and assembly can be done
in 10 minutes.

And these are the bookmarks I made for
the girls. I used colored stockboard
so they wouldn't get dirty so fast.

One of the girl's mom made these for the whole classroom.
Rice krispies with marshmellows.
I don't like marshmellows too much,
but these tasted pretty good.

All the girls brought something for each other.
Here's one girl's treasure.

And some of the gifts I recived from the students.
Do you see the celophane bag? Inside was a box of chocolates and....

.....a tiny mug that reads "With love, for my teacher".
I think it's really cute.

As I said before, we usually don't celebrate this day, but after seeing Pam's cake recipe on her blog, I've decided to make it tomorrow to celebrate one more day of living as a loving family. My kids will probably celebrate a "day of loving cake". So I guess everybody will be happy.

Hope you have a beautiful day tomorrow, whether you celebrate St. Valentines Day or not. And wish me luck with the cake, I'm not the world's greatest baker.....

P.S. As you can see, I found the cable for downloading photos from my camera. Where were they? Under my bed!!!!

Ayyyy!

Ouch! Two reasons for not blogging all this time:

a. Lot's of work at school 4th, 5th and 6th graders will be participating in an Itercollegiate Academic Tournament with the other schools that belong to the same system in the Mexican Republic. There are about 86 schools in Mexico.
I have been chosen to help the 6 students that will participate in Oratory. They have to talk for 3 to 4 minutes in English about the following topics: honesty, humility, and collaboration. Only two of the students are fluent enough to write their speech in english. I had the rest write it in spanish, and I translated them (four speeches!). Then I recorded the speeches in my voice so they can hear the pronunciation (they all speak understandable and fluent English, but their accent is not so good). And now we are practicing pitch, modulation, and body posture. We've been staying at school every day for an extra hour to practice. This is our third week! One more week and they're off to Mexico City!
It is HARD work, but I'm enjoying it very much. These kids are very dedicated. I really hope they don't get nervous over there. I really don't care if they win of not, I just want them to do their best and enjoy themselves ( I mean, multiply the 86 schools by two students per grade, and there will be about a zillion competitors).

b. The secon reason is that I can't find the cable for downloading photos from my camera to the computer!!! Arggg!
So today I posted three photos from last's year trip to Morelia. This is the acueduct at that city.

.



And to some of the winners of the giveaway, some packages were returned. Supposedly, the postage was incorrect. Why it took so long? Go figure.....these things happen over here. I opened the packages, and nothing was missing, so I put a extra gift to compensate you having to wait so long, and they're on their way again, whew! Hopefully you will get your package in 2 weeks (or so the girl at the counter assures me). Thank you for your patience.

Well, I've got to keep on looking for those cables. Hope I'll find them soon.
Wish you all a great week......

Dulcería San Luis

Before leaving for Mexico City to spend Christmas with my husband's family, I stopped over at "Dulcería San Luis" to buy typical candies for the celebrations. This "factory" is pretty well known in our town. It is a family tradition that has been functioning for almos 100 years. It is small, but produces a good variety of homemede sweets.

Most typical sweets have to do with fruits and other types of food. For example: figs, orange peel, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, chilacayote (a type of pumpkin), biznaga (the inside of the agave plant) will be boiled with sugar in copper pots for hours to caramelize them. They are very delicious. Afterwards the syrup that is left over from the boiling is used to make piloncillo, a sugar cone used for sweetening coffee and Christmas ponche among other things.

Other candies are merengue, milk candies, coconut candies, obleas, lollipops.

I went to the Dulcería with my friend Lolis and her sister Marcela. She was buying a lot of stuff to take to her hometown, Colima, for Christmas.

This is the outside of the factory.

Lolis and Marcela picking the pieces right off the drying/cooling racks.

Mmmm, just the sight of it makes my mouth water.
Here we see mostly pumpkin.

Here workers are using the mixing drums.
These are for making coconut candies.

Coconut boiling with sugar.

Here some candies are being strained from the excess liquid.

Chilacayote ready to be boiled.

Pumpkin and chilacayote.

Workers have to stir constantly with big wooden spoons.

Here the pumpkin is ready, and is going to be
put on the racks.
Again wooden spoons are used.

Onto the racks.

Here they cool and dry.
The liquid is then used for the piloncillo.

This is where the coconut candy is mixed.
It goes round and round like a clothers drier.

Coconut ready to be shaped.

The coconut mixture is put onto a press
which gives it is shape, and squeezes out the excess liquid. The
liquid is used again. Nothing is gone to waste.

,After the press is removed the coconut is cut ito bars.
This is one of my favorite candies. It is called alfajor.

Dulce de leche-milk candy. Milk is boiled with sugar
until a paste is formed.

The paste is formed into balls, and a pecan is
pressed onto its side.

These are also very good...

Here are the counters where other finished products are exhibited.
The yellow candies are also coconut, but these are cooked in a different way.
The pink ones at the far right are the finished alfajor.

Big lollipops....

More lollipos....in the back, jars of dulce de leche.
This is in a liquid, caramel form. Many put it on bread..

At the checkout counter.
The flowers are obleas. The are made of flour. It doesn't
have much of a taste, but kids put caramel or
chilii sauce on them.

The rolls are made of guava fruit.
And some more coconut candy.

This is only a small sample of Mexican candies. They vary from one region to another, and the fruits used are endless. Hope you enjoyed this tour.
Enjoy your weekend....

Haiti

I had been in Mexico for two years, when the 1985 earthquake struck. I will be truthful, the place where we were living in Mexico City was very strong, and nothing happend. My husband and I just looked out our third floor window deciding it we should go outside. Before we knew it, the quake had stopped. At the time we were working in the afternoon, so we went back to sleep. This was at 7:00 a.m.

At about 10.00 a.m., we got up to no telephone, no electricity, and obviously no water (the cistern pump works with electricity). My husband said it had been probably a little bit stronger that he thought, se we dicided to go to my mother-in-laws house to take a shower there, and go to work.

The 20 min. drive was confussing, thousands of people were walking on the streets and avenues. These were people who had been in the subway. Since there was no elecricity, the subway wasn't working, and they had to get out. Some were literally kilometers from there place of work or their home, so everybody was walking to their destination (the Mexican subway system transports an approx. 3.9 million people a day, you can imagine!). As we were driving we saw a few walls about to collapse, but nothing alarming. As we drove into my mother-in-laws neighborhood, things were a bit worse, outside walls collpased, broken windows, cracks in walls. Her house had broken windows, a cracked wall and a collapsing outer wall, and we were like wow, this was strong. When she saw us, she started crying, so happy we were OK. We thought she was exagerating. For some reason this neighborhood had electricity, and everyone was silent and still as they were watching the news. I still cry today at the images I saw. Downtown was destroyed, hotels, shops, office buildings, condominiums, schools totally collapsed, places I had been in, eaten at, shopped at.......thousands of people trapped or dead. We could not stop crying......

The Mexican country, while being a Third World country, is not as poor a Haiti. In less then 4 hours housewives, whose houses had not suffered damage, were in the streets making sandwiches, lemonade, stews, and handing them out to the people who had lost their homes and were on the street looking for their families. By 7.00 p.m. neighborhoods got together to collect blankets, sweaters, socks, and so many things we knew all these people were going to need to spend the night. Many people in Mexico had the means to give things away for the needy, ..... I really don't think Haiti has this capacity, besides being the poorest country in America, the devastation was so general, it would be difficult to help themselves...

I did not know I was going to write all this. I have just let it come out. What I knew I was going to write was the following, because I could not just ignore the facts, and say nothing:

Although Mexico is not poor as Haiti, it still needed a lot of International help especially during the rescue missions, and for those who had lost everything. The Mexican people are so grateful to EVERY PERSON IN EVERY COUNTRY who donated for this cause. Unfortunately, it is payback time for Mexico (this is a debt I'm sure nobody would like to pay back). But the country has gotten together to help our Haitian brothers and sisters. Every supermarket, church, school, has become a place to take canned foods, medicine, diapers, antibacterial gel, and the list goes on and on and on... Everybody is giving and giving....You see, we KNOW how it feels to be helpless, not to know what will happen tommorrow, to loose complete families (we lost SO MANY friends during the '85 earthquake). Yes, unfortunately, we KNOW, and we really hope NOBODY would ever have to feel this. But we also know about the generosity of so many countries, how it feels to have a warm blanket, a sweater, a cup of fresh water, food, medical care and supplies.

So what do I ask? I ask all who read this, not only to donate with money, goods or drives (I know my blogger friends have done this already), but to get others involved, to let them know this is not something that will pass as some other sensational news shows up on TV, not to say "Geesh, I'm glad I live here and not there" and do nothing about it, not talk about it because "It is soooo depressing, ugggg". I ask for everybody to get involved, and help our brothers and sisters in need.......and I thank you SO much, because your help today, was help for us yesterday, and it will be my help to WHOEVER will need it tomorrow.

God Bless....