marimbas and waterfalls- not a bad few weeks

Times seems to be rolling by pretty fast these days. I'm counting down the weeks until our Spring Break trip to Belize and then after that I will have less than three months left in this wonderful country. It's pretty hard to believe!

Everything at school is great. We just did a unit on family and geneology and had a big family celebration today where parents were invited to come see the student's present their family tree projects. We even had a little concert where we sang a song called "Family" (super original, right?) from the classic film remake of James and the Giant peach and the "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" song by Jack Johnson that we just learned during our unit on conservation. All in all it went great and the parents seemed to be pretty pleased. I heard a lot of "muy precioso!" as everyone was exiting, so I;m pretty sure that's a good thing.

Last weekend I went with a few friends to the park in the middle of our city. It is named Marimba Park and every night there are men that gather in the gazebo to play Marimbas while couples dance around the gazebo. We went on a Saturday so the park was bustling and there were tons of couples- young and old, getting their dance on to the bewitching sounds of the Marimba. We first acted as spectators but couldn't ignore the call to dance and quickly embraced our ever familiar role as the crazy Americans who just don't seem to quite fit in.


We also took advantage of having Monday off of school (special thanks to Benito Juarez for being born) by taking a little day trip to a nearby waterfall called Choreadero. Its about 30 minutes away from us in Chiapa de Corzo and it consists of on huge waterfall, about 10 smaller pools, and some pretty sweet caves at the top of the waterfall.














I think I have taken for granted the fact that all my life I have lived within 10 minutes of a large body of water because I am definitely realizing now what a luxury that was. When I am walking home from school in 98 degree weather with the hot Mexican sun beating down on me, all I can think about is diving in to a freezing cold lake. Soooooo it felt pretty amazing to finally have some water to dive in to in order to escape the heat. We also may have performed a little synchronizing swimming act which allowed us to fulfill the afore mentioned role that we just can't seem to escape...that's right, crazy Americans.


I also had the opportunity to try a new type of Mango which is a second cousin to the pineapple (clearly I have my mind on geneology and am taking some creative liberties here). I think it's called mango pina and you basically just cut a hole on one end and suck the deliciously refreshing juice out, incredible!

Last week was one of my roomates, Nikki's Birthday so we had some friends over for a little celebration. Nikki said she wanted homemade pizza so I of course consulted with my newest baking, cooking, and blogging idol- Pioneer Woman for a mouth watering pizza recipe. She did not dissapoint and inspired me to create these two gems.

One barbecue chicken pizza and one pesto margarita pizza. They turned out amazing and there was definitely not an empty belly at the party.

Well that's all for now. I checked the weather this morning and it looks like we'll be lingering around 100 for the next week so everyone say a little prayer that I don't melt down here on the equator.