So one more blog before I come home to visit! I'm very excited to go back home for 2 weeks and visit everyone but at the same time glad I still get to come back to Mexico! :) I looked up the weather for my homecoming and wasn't at all pleased with snow showers and 40 degree weather. Things here have been going very well, we are beginning to prepare for Presentations which will take place the week after we return from Easter Vacation. The presentations are something that Culturalingua does for the parents of the students. Every class has to prepare something- a skit, songs, etc to show the parents what they have learned. My teenagers and young adults all tell me they never show up and don't want to do it but my younger students are excited about showing off all of their English!

One another note, this past weekend we went to Sahuayo which is about 2 1/2 hours away to celebrate Jay's birthday and 2 of the teachers there also had birthdays. Sahuayo is a much bigger city and was very different than Los Reyes. It is built into the side of the mountain and is still expanding but as you walk parallel to the mountain you can just look up the streets that go straight up the mountain. It was a very cool city. On Sunday we went to get some coffee before catching the bus back and the town was just bustling. Everybody was out and about selling things, walking around and shopping. It was fun just to sit and watch the crowd. There are two English schools there and the teachers there were a lot of fun to hang out with. I'm meeting more and more people who do this for extended periods of time and all of them have been very interesting and fun to hang out with. I think everyone who travels to foreign countries to live and teach English have similar personalities and I have met some awesome people doing this so far. My parents aren't going to like this, but I can see myself traveling the world doing this! Who really knows what the future holds though! Anyways, have to keep this one short, I have to go get ready to teach, I'll see most of you next week :)

So there has been a slight pause in my updating this blog business, but here is a new one. I have several new developments to write about now- just went through a little dry spell for a bit. Things have settled into a routine so there isn't much to write about sometimes. I pretty much do the same things all week- just go teach and then sometimes go hang out with some of the Mexican friends I have made. They like to just go hang out at one of their houses and play rock band or watch a movie, but I'm getting to practice my Spanish a lot! It's just too bad a lot of it is bad Spanish that I should not use in front of anyone!
The first change is that Angela decided to return home for good. She was not having a good time here anymore and wanted to go home back to her family. Since there was short notice we do not have a replacement for her so we are trying to juggle the classes around a little bit. I am going to be teaching one more class a day and they will pay me a little bit extra for it. It is basically a conversation class- the three girls are very good at English so it might be fun. Definitely a change from the grammar and little kids! I have also had 3 new students added to my classes, I now have eight students in my 4-6 year old class; it gets very hectic sometimes but man can I spit out Spanish commands on the spot now!
On a different note, we had a 3 day weekend this week and decided to head down to the beach. The closest and cheapest one was Zihuatenejo which was kind of fun seeing as Uncle Dic lived there awhile back! I'm sure it has changed immensely but it was a charming little city and we enjoyed ourselves muchisimo! We arrived on Saturday about noon and started walking around trying to find a cheap hotel. A man approached us after we had asked about 3 hotels about their prices and told us to come check out a room he had. It was a family that rented out a separate part of their house, it was kind of like a little efficiency unit upstairs. It had a kitchen and a nice bathroom and a king size bed alongside a twin bed. We paid probably the equivalent of $20 for both nights apiece (there were three of us). It was absolutely perfect- two blocks from the beach, on a quaint little street with flowers up and down the middle and restaurants on either side. Let me tell you about paradise: paradise is a quiet beach on the pacific with friendly people strolling around and drinks and seafood to be had anywhere you looked. Small bars where the bartenders sit down and chat with you and the waiters want to party with you at night. Paradise is the sunburn that I have as a memento to a fabulous weekend in the sun and perfect weather. We spent the afternoon on the beach Saturday and had a really chill evening since we were tired from traveling. Sunday was spent completely on the beach and swimming in the ocean. We were in a little bay off the ocean and the swimming was good.
Sunday night we went to Ixtapa with some friends from Leon (central Mexico)that we had met earlier. Ixtapa is probably a 15-20 minute ride from Zihuatenejo and is much more touristy and has better bars and clubs. It was a very fun night, lots of dancing. It was nice to see Ixtapa but I don't think I would ever stay there, it was exactly like the beaches in Florida and they cater to Americans and Europeans- it felt like I had left Mexico and I didn't enjoy that aspect of it.
All in all it was a top weekend and it was heaven to get to the beach and relax for 2 days! Back to the real world though, if this counts as the real world. Sometimes I have to pinch myself and remind myself I'm actually not dreaming this all up.