Happy belated 4th!!

Happy belated fourth to everyone!! Things have been pretty quiet here, Jay moved to Periban to teach the summer course there and Neal went to Cotija to teach at that location since there aren’t any students signed up here in Los Reyes for the summer. I guess summer courses aren’t very popular here because my course at the tech currently has four students and we need at least 8 to make the course worth it. I was supposed to start teaching on Monday the 6th but now I have this week off again. The coordinator wants to wait to see if more students will sign up. I was a little irritated with him because he had made it sound like the summer job was a sure thing so I left Culturlingua and now he’s telling me we may not have the students for me to teach. I’m a little restless with nothing to do all day and no money to really travel anywhere.
For the fourth we had planned to rent a cabaña on a lake about 2 hours from here. Jay and Neal flaked out so I was the only gringo with three of my Mexican friends celebrating Independence Day!! It was really fun, we had a big cabin close to the lake and brought food and of course other supplements. I made fruit pizza since Aunt Meg always makes it. It was a struggle and a half to make it though!! For starters I don’t have an oven at this place, so I took the dough to my friend Karla’s to try to cook it. They never use their oven, I guess cooking things in the oven isn’t popular here; most Mexicans use it for storage space. Her oven didn’t want to light (everything is gas here) so later that night we went to a bakery to see if they would let us cook it there. It was an old traditional place run by a small family and they still use the old school stone oven. It was really neat to see how it is done; it is kind of like a small cave with the bottom all stone and they light a fire inside of it and keep the coals going all day. They put two buckets of water in there as well to keep it humid so the bread doesn’t dry out. The man had fruit filled empanadas, (flaky crust with jelly filling in them- they sometimes put meat in them too), different rolls and loaves of bread. He gave us a lot of things to sample and wouldn’t take money from us for all his help. We bought some loaves of bread from him instead. It still takes me aback sometimes here to see all of the generosity and willingness to help complete strangers. Everyone here is considered a friend and they really would give you the shirt off their back if you needed it. They love to help people and I wish there was a little more of this culture at home. The fruit pizza turned out well, I had wanted to make the American flag to be festive but blueberries are impossible to find here right now, I used grapes and told everyone they had to imagine that it was blue for the stars.
It was really cold up in Zirauhen so we didn’t go swimming at all but it was nice to be up at a lake for the fourth. I’m always at the cottage and I know everyone else was there this weekend so it was a little sad to be here. I love celebrating the fourth at home and I was a little homesick but we bought fireworks, which are also very hard to find and very illegal here. Sinai found some little whistlers and fountains from a friend of his. Karla, Sinai and Jaime really made the weekend special. We hung out by the lake for Sunday morning too and then came back here.
I am hoping to come home for most of August as I don’t have to work so I will have about three weeks to spend at home. I was told that my class decided to do a five year reunion on the 22nd of August. I can’t believe it’s been five years since I graduated from Lourdes. Should be interesting to see where everyone’s at.
More to come later when I start classes and have something else to write about!