Flip Thump Flip Thump, That´s the Flipper Welly Race

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I feel like I have a lot of time to catch up on since I last wrote although in fact nothing MUCH has happened. After I went to Oaxaca city I got a night bus to travel the 8 hours to the coast to a wee place called Zipolite. It was so beautiful and so perfect it was as though Disney made it! Although if Disney had made it, it would have been deadly expensive and there would definately have been hot water in my hotel. Still for $80 who´s complaining! The sea was blue, the sand was white, the beach was lined by round huts with thatched rooves selling yummy food and drinks and did I mention it was a nudist beach? Hahaha, it was hilarious! The first day I was there I wandered along the beach to find breakfast and happened upon a French guy in a restaurant who had been on the same tour as me to Monte Alban. I smiled and waved and went over to exclaim the coincidence and he mentioned he was with an Australian guy he´d got the bus with. The same Australian guy I´d got the bus with from Mexico and had bumped into at Monte Alban and hung out with in the zocalo in Oaxaca when we met in the Italian Coffee Company window. How funny!

So there we were tucking into a hearty breakfast of chilaquiles and huevos mexicano when there appeared to be a person with no clothes on in the sea. Appearances weren´t deceptive. It turns out that men on a nudist beach have a special "I´m a man, I´m naked, on a beach, nothing wrong with that!" walk, with their head thrown back and their chest out which is really extremely amusing! The next day I watched one of the nakeds walk along the same stretch of sand 3 times doing "the walk" which made me laugh more every time.

Apart from the naked people, there were normal bikini and swimming short clad people so I joined them for a bit then decided to venture to the next couple of bays to see the turtle museum (there is another word but all I can think of is factory and that´s DEFINATELY not right!) and the co-operative where they make natural cosmetics in the style of the Body Shop. I loved the turtles, I could have stayed watching them for hours. They´re so beautiful and graceful in the water. Out of the water it´s a different story! One was thumping it´s way along the dry bit of it´s pool and it looked like someone was playing a horrible joke on it with it´s flippers working 19 to the dozen and not actually getting anywhere fast! I arrived at the cooperative place at the same time as a tour bus of rich fat white people which wasn´t pleasant so I make me escape and returned to the beach.

Here a terrible terrible thing happened. I walked around a jutty out piece of rock and was so taken witht he view of the beautiful beautiful beach ad blue blue water I put down my flip flops, whipped out my camera and was standing poised to shoot when a BIG wave came. I managed to grab my flip flops to safety but the big rock impeeded the escape of my body so I got soaked upto the waist and my camera came off a bit damp. I set it on a rock to dry, along with my clothes, but it never recovered expept to make a terrible terrible wheezy sound until I took the batteries out. Hence the lack of photos. Gutted. Luckily mis padres have volunteered to bring me a new one...yey! So not too much of a sad story!

The next day I trekked back to Mexico, oh it was a long hot, squished bus ride but I didn´t feel so good so I literally slept all the way back, all 19 hours! Then I arrived and checked into a hostel right on the zocalo and slept the rest of the day too! When I finally woke up the next morning and looked out of the window there were 18 policias within about 100 feet of me which I did think was rather obsessive! Especially since all of them were doing absolutely nothing but wandering in small groups.

When I got back to the camp and the kids came back from their long weekend Mother´s Day preperations were in full swing. I cut out about a million foamie flowers last Wednesday, ably aided by a willing army of Becarios, then cut around them again properly on Thursday (I feel very close to these flowers!). The children were practicing their dances every hour of the day and night, the Raton-Vacero (mouse cowboy) being my personal favorite, and the play rehersals were squeezed in whenever the necessary people werén´t dancing. Tuesday came round, the mothers arrived and the dances were performed. The play went rather well actually! Although it was a bit of a shock when we were thurst on about 15 minutes before we were expected by Jorge and then quite embarassing at the end when they made Becky and I take a bow in front of the mothers! (Of which there seemed to be a disproportionate amount, surely 60 children can´t have about 150 mothers between them!)

Yesterday was Sports Day, in the English Primary School style, none of this rubbish nancy proper race business. Oh there were no javelin, shot put, 100 meters or relay races. Instead we had the sack race, the bean bag race, the egg and spoon race (which they did with the spoons in their mouths!), a 3 legged race, a slow bike race and the piece de resistance, the getting dressed race.

The getting dressed race was originally planned for just the youngest children, with us planning to put out wellies, a hat and a t-shirt for each person. T-shirts-DONE, Sombreros-DONE, Wellies....dam we only had 3 pairs for a race of upto 6 people. So we decided to give them just one each and were about to start when I spied some flippers in Urbano´s bodega....soooooooo we gave them first a sombrero, then a flipper, then a welly, and then a t-shirt, then they had to run back to the start line. Oh it was HILARIOUS! I nearly wet myself laughing! Just you set up some unsuspecting children to run in one welly and one diving flipper and imagiene the flip-thunk-flip-thunk run that results....then them try to work out putting on a t-shirt over a sombrero whilst flipping-thunking back to the finish line! Due to it´s success and amusement factor we made ALL the becarios do it. Oh the eldest boys weren´t impressed! Adrian told them if they weren´t more enthusiastic they would have to paint trees, or he´d get Miguel (one of the youngest boys, and normally quite dribbly) to give them a kiss. I think I´d definately chose painting trees. But anyway they were a bit more enthusiastic after that.

I think I have become accustomed to the heat. Today in fact I am wearing jeans. I´ve come to the conclusion that whining about being hot all the time just makes you hotter and so I don´t think about it. Now I know how people in hot countries don´t just hibernate and come out in the dark.

Today is Dia de los Maestros, there´s no school so the Becarios went home bien early this morning and we´re freeeeeee!! We came into town to use the internet and get frappes - that´s quite embarassing actually, a while ago, just after we´d discovered the wonder that is Mister Frappe, we came into town just to get one, but it wasn´t open because it was quite early so we skulked about for a couple of hours and when we went back and it WAS open were thoroughly excited and did a bit of a dance in the street and squealed a bit...only to hear Luisa calling us from the other side who´d witnessed the whole embarassing incident. We tried to act cool and explained we were just excited about the oreo smoothies, so when we left today and she mentioned the frappe place we felt like we´d been caught in the act! We did try to act cool again and pretend we weren´t in fact going into town more or less specifically for them! To be fair we did restrain ourselves and didn´t head straight to Mister Frappe but instead for tlacoyos and sopes in the market, yummy yummy! (I´ll blame them next time someone remarks I´m getting fat! Apparently all the Gap girls get fat, the cooks take a strange delight in it!)

Yesterday, a man from the GUAY (who didn´t see me when I first arrived and therefore is one of the few GUAY people who don´t greet me with a kiss and a wow you´ve piled on the pounds type comment!) came to the camp as a sort of fully fledged councillor for a group they had from Kraft. We were talking about England and then somehow moved onto Ireland, I told him that Dublin is my favorite city and he said "Oh well I´ve never been to Ireland but my parents from the US, they come from Ireland, the Sheldons." I was like the WHATS! That´s my name!!! How very strange!

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