Alright friends and family I have created a new blog with the help of a fellow volunteer. The address is http://crystal.nphdojang.com and it's still in the design phase, but I have updated it. I'll be putting all of you on automatic e-mail updates once again so you won't have to worry about checking it yourselves. I also have a new online photo album that I put some pictures up on. You'll find the link to that in the new blog. Ignore the first post...it was a test post that I haven't been able to delete yet. Enjoy and just a reminder- I'll be home in 2.5 weeks. I'm sure you aren't quite as excited as I am.... ... read more

Well, well, well I could throw out a million excuses and reasons for not updating this. Let’s just say it was a combo of many things. Things have been really busy and exciting around here. I’ve been doing some traveling and diving into the culture. This past weekend we had Halloween and Dia de Los Muertos and Dia de los Santos. Obviously Mexicans don’t celebrate Halloween but it’s volunteer tradition to organize activities on Halloween. It was so much fun. I took charge of the Haunted House. I ended up making a Haunted Walk in a really dark scary field where they keep the buses for the school. Pretty much every kid under the age of 12 left crying and a few even had to be carried out. The big accomplishment was successfully scaring the middle ... read more

So today/yesterday is/was the big celebreation of Mexican Independence Day. I'm not going to give you a history lesson, but basically Mexico gained independence from Spain and Hidalgo yelled at midnight the morning of Sept 16 "Viva Mexico!" So last night we started a program at 8pm where all of the sections prepared a dance or sketch and then there was a big dance that went till 2am or so. At midnight we had the Grito, which is where the act of Hidalgo yelling is redone and all of the Mexican people reply "Viva." It was all pretty cool. My kids did a dance and we dressed then up like stereotypical Mexican men and women complete with makeup and eyeliner beards (that I drew myself...I have a million pictures but I still can't upload anything- I ... read more

So school has now been in session for about a week. We are settling into a routine and I think I really like it. I'm going to start teaching English to the Preschool 1 and 2 classes tomorrow and I'll be doing that 2 days a week and a week from Friday I'm going to start teaching english to a group of year of service kids (kids who have graduated from the high school and are now working here so that they can go to the university) and I'll be doing that once a week. I'm also going to start helping out with the Edge program here (the middle school version of LifeTeen) when that starts up in a couple weeks. So things are starting to get busy and I'm getting opportunities to leave my little ... read more

Alright well I sound like a broken record but the internet in Miacatlan has been a pain but right now I’m in Cuernavaca for my descanso (weekend break) and it’s all the internet I could possibly want so I plan on calling people this weekend and putting up more pictures. Moving along from the constant internet issue, today was a sad day for NPH as our fearless leader and resident “Papa”, Chris Hoyt left after being here for three years. We had about 5 different parties in the house throughout the week (including one I threw in kinder) and it was a ton of fun but it’s definitely sad to see him go. I know when I leave I’ll be a wreck, but he was pretty strong. These kids just love us so much. I think ... read more