Escuela esta empezando

Nataly's school in Mexico started this week. Actually all the schools in the whole country start on the same day. Her school is called "Jose Vasconcelos" who was an important writer, educator, and politician in Mexico. It's bilingual, with half the day with one spanish teacher and the other half with an english teacher.

Nataly was excited the first day to wear her new uniform to school. Everyone wears uniforms here and Nataly loves to check them all out. We spent the 3 hectic days prior to school starting getting the uniforms (regular and sports), two new pairs of shoes, brown for the regular uniform and "mostly white" tennies for the sports uniform, white knee high socks. Besides the uniform there was a long list of materials. Here you have to buy everything that is used in the classroom, the books, the pencils, the paper, the notebooks, simply everything. Ok, so we had to buy surprising things as well like a 4 Meg memory stick, a labcoat (actually can't be found in size 6), a geometry set including a compass.

The great news is that Nataly went off fairly happily the first day of school, looking cute and perky in her new clothes. We were able to meet her english teacher, Miss Estafania the Friday before school and she is warm and sweet and speaks her language. I think that helped Nataly feel more comfortable.  We met her spanish teacher, Miss Juanita in the morning before school began and she seemed nice enough.  By day 2 she was giving Nataly a squeeze and a kiss on her forehead.

The bad news is that on the second day I was taken aside and given a list of supplies that I had never seen before. What! Turns out that Nataly was erroneously put on the list for the first year of high school, so we bought all the wrong supplies (anybody need a geometry set?). I then spent the next 2 days buying all the right supplies. After buying all these very specific types of notebooks it turns out each item must be covered in a special paper (yellow for spanish, orange for english) and then covered in this special plastic over that. It was horrible! I think I spent probably 10 hours covering her materials.

My back is killing me, but the final notebook is covered!

Why, why you might ask, do they require this? I think there are 2 reasons. One is that this school (and I think most schools here) are obsessed (in my view) with making everyone exactly the same. God forbid one kid has a cooler cover on his notebook than someone else.  One is that labor is very, very cheap here and so there is little attempt to streamline or make things efficient. My mind immediately turns to thoughts like, "why don't they just buy the notebooks all in bulk, so they are identical, with identical covers. It would be cheaper and then no one would have to spend time covering them." But that isn't the mindset here.

School lines in the morning

Anyways, I survived. Nataly's surviving too, learning lots of spanish, and slowly figuring out who is who, and where to go when. She seems to have music, art, PE, and computer each two times a week. She misses her friends in Santa Cruz, but is adjusting, and relating her experience to that of other friends she has known who have had to be "the new kid". She can't wait until she officially knows more spanish than me, which I'm sure will be soon.

I loved what Nataly told me on the way to the 3rd day of school - "I'm glad I finally am getting to go to a bilingual school. I've been wanting to do that forever." (really?!)

Cumpleaños de Nataly

Today was my birthday and now I am 7. Yo tengo siete años.  We went to the pool and played for at least 4 hours. Then we came home and had birthday cake. It was tres leches cake. The cake was soaked in 3 different kinds of milks. It had white spirals and strawberry jam and had my name and how old I was. My friends Maya and Lily from circus camp came and Sophia my friend from Santa Cruz came too. Then we all got these rings that were made out of beads and they were really FANCY, though I love mine the most.

Friends visit us and we visit friends

We had a great visit with our friends from home Joann and Sophia.  Nataly and Sophia played non-stop, leaving the grown-ups with time to work on our spanish, talk, and drink Margaritas in relative peace.

We had a chance to visit the studio and grounds (and to peer through the windows of his house) of the man Anado McLaughlin who made many of the artworks in the house we're currently staying in. This first picture shows the most beautiful compostable baño in Mexico.

This was the ceiling view in the art gallery.

 Joann, Sophia, Nataly and I were checking out his collection of giant puppets.

We went on a great day trip to Guanajuato with Sophia and JoAnn. It's a very striking city with lots of lovely squares and multi-colored houses precariously arranged up and down steep hillsides. One fun thing to do is to take a funicular up the side of one of the hills to the giant El Pipila statue at the top. El Pipila was a miner who, at the beginning of the war of independence, stormed la Alhondiga building under a shower of bullets, using a massive stone as a shield. La Alhondiga was where all the wealthhy families of G were taking refuge. He is now a huge hero in Mexico and the storming is reenacted every year in September. Maybe we'll get to see it.

3 days in D.F. (Mexico city) 

We were so lucky to have friends (Raphael and Susana) to stay with and show us around the metropolis of Mexico City. (Unfortunately we were not so lucky in that many of the pictures we took didn't show up when transferred to computer, so pics are sparse). It's huge and sprawling. My first impressions - majority of buildings are 3-5 stories tall and rather scruffy looking. Lots of trash around. We're definitely not in charming San Miguel any more. It feels like it takes forever in the car to get places, though we must have had good karma and didn't get in any of the legendary traffic jams. Raphael said traffic is generally much better when the children are out of school. The air quality seemed much better here than in San Miguel because there are pollution control measures in place (though I guess its horrible at times in the winter).  Cool, regulation actually does work! The city had tons of chain stores common in the US, from Chiles to Walmart to Panda Express. 

The first day we drove out to the pyramids of Teotihuacan. These pyramids were found by the Mexica and used by them, but it's still a mystery what culture built them and for what purpose. There were 3 huge pyramids, of the sun, the moon, and Quetzacoatl, as well as around 15 smaller pyramids, and many grass covered mounds visible in the distance that are pyramids waiting excavation. We were fortunate to have a beautiful, clear, not hot day for climbing. We all took it slow because at 8000 ft it didn't take much to feel tired. The Mayan pyramids we've been to further south are in a tropical rainforest environment, which is what I had pictured, but these are set in the arid landscape of nopales and agave. We were able to see small areas of the pyramids that still had red and green paint, reminding us that these structures originally were brightly colored, rather than the austere stone we see today. Nataly did a great job climbing to the top, especially given that the stair risers were often nearly at hip level for her.  We took a break in the middle of exploring to eat lunch in a cave that Raphael knew about nearby. The caves were a cool relief after the brilliant sun of the day. It was a beautiful sight - the dark cave, artistically lit and the tables, chairs, and napkins were brightly colored in Mexican style. Michael was thrilled to finally get barbacoa (lamb) and luckily I liked the one thing on the menu without meat.

The second day we went to the Frida Kahlo "Blue house" museum, which is located in the house owned by her parents that she lived in off and on for her whole life. I'm a big fan of her work, so it was awesome to see many of her lesser known works and to learn about her early life. I learned that she and Diego were big fans of pre-hispanic art and the syncretic art of the religious. They collected a lot of art themselves and were inspired by the legends and practices of the ancient cultures. They even had a small replica of a pyramid built in their garden. The museum showed many exvotes - folk religious art depicting miracles that were painted on small pieces of tin, collected by Frieda, and demonstrated how several of her own artworks came out of this tradition as well. 

Later we walked around this neighborhood Coyoacan that used to be a small city outside of the Mexico city, but now has been swallowed up. There's a huge square with a famous sculpture of coyotes (from which the name Coyocan comes) and lots of trendy restaurants around. Later we went to ride the boats at Xochimilco. 

This small part of the city still contains the canals which the Aztecs constructed. It is a hugely popular leisure activity to rent the boats, which are punted about the canals by a driver. It was very calm and relaxing, The boats are brightly festooned, now with paint, originally with the flowers that were grown on this fertile land. I can understand that if you live in this  hectic busy city it would be especially appealing to spend your off time doing something very mellow and out in nature.

The third day we drove to the downtown area . We got to see the statue of Raphael's aunt in the square that celebrates the mariachi bands and famous singers of Mexico. His aunt, whose name I can't recall, sang for LBJ as well as many other heads of state in europe and was especially popular in Holland, of all places.

Raphael with his Tia's statue

The palace of bellas artes was especially striking as well as the post office. There we saw a cool mural made from canceled stamps.

 As well, we saw a display showing an early use of "mail" - relay runners whose job was to transport fish caught fresh from the coast to the aztec rulers hundreds of miles aways in the capital.

Michael, Nataly, and Raphael at art deco post office

Going to the huge National Museum of Anthropology was amazing. We got to see the famous "sun stone" that is now believed to have been a sacrificial altar, rather than a calendar as originally thought. It was found under the main Zocalo, during excavations.

Another great item was the recreation of a part of the Quetzacoatl pyramid with the full color that it would have originally had.

All in all a great trip to Mexico city. And we're happy to go back to San Miguel too.