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- [View Full Entry]

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Monday was yet another reason for Mexcians not to go to work. It was Revolution Day. Actually Thursday was the real holiday, but everyone celebrates on Monday. Basically it’s a big sports day, similar to the US field day and no one works or goes to school. Don’t ask me why because I have no idea. Basically what we did was split the whole house into 12 different teams that each had a mixture of kids from Kinder all the way up to 8th graders. We them competed in various competitions. Some made sense and some were just amusing. One competition [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Sooo, the great Ryan Hyland rolled into town on Wednesday as he will about 6 times a year. Just to explain, you can all blame him for me being here. He was a CORE member in my LifeTeen program and then came down here to volunteer. He was here for about 4 years and he is such a Mexican (only in his heart as he is such a gringo on the outside) that he's lived in Mexico ever since. He was the one who invited my church down here to visit and then of course, I fell in love with this [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Preface to this blog- there is something wrong with the photo uploading mechanism of this blog so I'm having issues. I was only able to 18 up and I have probably 50 more. I'll get them up when I can. Well, I'm alive and by some kind of miracle the internet company actually came out here and fixed everything so we have permanent internet...so they say. So far so good. Lots of things have been happening as we gear up here for Mexican Independence Day. It's on Monday and we've been preparing all week. Learning dances, making decorations and decorating, and [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Well yesterday school started and my schedule is all sorts of different. The school year is going to be more work for sure, but at the same time a little less time with the kids. Here’s what it looks like: 7:00 Arrive in the Section/Milpias Kids arrive 8:00 Kids Eat First Breakfast (this is when I eat) 8:15 Take the kids to school 8:30-10:30 Hacer Aseos (Do Chores)- this pretty much consists of wetting all of the floors in kinder and the patio outside upstairs and downstairs and then squeeging all of the water outside. Let me tell you this is [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Hola todos! I'm just now catching up on some entries! Last weekend was the Anniversary of NPH. The first orphanage of the organization was here in Mexico and it was started by Father Wassen (who was from Arizona!) 54 years ago. It all started with one poor orphan boy who stole from the collection money at the church in Cuernavaca where Fr. Wassen served as priest. Father pulled him out of jail and took him into his home to take care of him. 54 years later, the home here in Mexico houses 800 orphans and now NPH is taking care of [View Full Entry]

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