A sad fact: It rains in Mexico too!!

Well hello! It´s ages since I´ve updated you all and for all those hanging on the edges of their seats I´m very sorry!

Since I last updated not a lot, and quite a lot has happened! Firstly and most importantly we went to Veracruz for the weekend. Friday started out well enough, with beautiful blue skies (well we are in Mexico!) and pink blamanche for breakfask, and what´s more COLD MILK!!!!!! It took me quite a few mouthfulls to realise why my coco pops tasted better than usual I can tell you! I even had a bit more milk just on its own in my bowl afterwards to savor the cold milk-ness. So after all that excitement we went and taught our 2 classes in Santa Domingo and made a quick get away to Mexico to get the bus to Veracruz. I´m quite ashamed to say that at the TAPO bus station I had a mini Dominos Pizza. I was interested to find that my taste buds have been deadened and it was just rubbish until I added the Mexican Chillie Sauce to it!

When we were on the bus (a 5 and a half hour ordeal) they very thoughtfully played James Bond and Cars in Spanish to keep us amused, but more interesting was the REAL mountain out of my window which even had SNOW ON THE TOP!!!!! I don´t think I´ve ever seen a mountain with snow on it before. We were heading in the direction of Puebla so I quite strongly suspect it was Popocatapetl (spelt wrong I´m sure!) There are in fact 2 mountains, one about 20km away, the other one Izcat-a-something, there is a fairy story about them but I can´t remember it properly at the minute, they were lovers but not allowed to marry, then I think Popo died and Iz... laid her body on the top of one mountain and went to die himself on top of the other. Sorry for the vagueness, I´ll do my research properly next time! The important thing is that as we were about 3 and a half hours into the journey a cloud appeared over the top of a mountain and didn´t go for 2 days. 2 days! In fact it only went on Sunday when we were about to leave. Rubbish!

Regardless of the cloud and drizzle making our trip to the Gulf of Mexico more like a trip to Cleethorpes we didn´t let it deter us and went on the beach regardless. There were about a million hawkers all desperate for our money selling fruit, nuts, pasties, juice, bracelets, horrible Mexican dresses and many other unnecessary items. We only succomed to about half. When the sun came out on Sunday everything looked much nicer and we wanted to stay, but sadly couldn´t, so made another mad dash to another beach for an hour or 2 before our buses left and we came back to the camp.

This week at the camp´s been really fun, because it´s the last week of term I think. On Monday a group of Americans from Kentucky came as part of their Spring Break to play with the Becarios and we had a bonfire! Becky, ever the racist (but seemingly only against white Mexicans, the Welsh, North Americans and English people from south of Birmingham) dubbed them the Kentucky Fried Chickens which I couldn´t quite believe! I don´t know how to react when she says things like that or declares to someone that everyone from Wales is rude and horrible...but in fact they were really nice, although it felt so strange to be speaking English with people I felt I ought to be speaking Spanish to! I was really pleased to have a campfire with the Becarios because sometimes I feel that it´s a bit unfair for them to see groups come to the camp for school trips and get to do all the fun stuff like water slides, bonfires and going on trips that they don´t get to do because they´re here all the time.

Yesterday we taught them the rules of cricket, I think the theory´s a bit complicated, and it does appear to be a stupid game, but we´re going to play it with them today and hopefully once they get the hang of it it´ll be really fun! We´ve also got another birthday party (for March already) tonight because of the holidays, when we come back it´ll be April, which should be fun!!!

So I´ll leave it there for now, we´re off to Guadalajara tomorrow for a couple of nights then travelling on to Puerta Vallerta for some Pacific Coast paddling and sun bathing so should update you in a few days!

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