Arrived in San Lucas Toliman village just before lunch @ the mission. Francisco drove us straight to our home (for the next month!) and boy were we ever surprised. Compared to last year, we are truly in the Hyatt or something like that. Pat and I have a master bdrm/bathroom set up, although the kids will use our bathroom too. The kids each have a DOUBLE BED, which Sean is thrilled about (sad story about his bed at home, so he´s happier with his bed in San Lucas Toliman!). We have a kitchen area, a large dining area, a living room area with a fireplace, and, of course, a gorgeous garden & flower area. The home owner is Rene (male) and from what I can understand (which isn´t much at all, which is why we´re here -- to learn Espanol!), Rene´s family owns the home. His ¨room¨is outside of our main home, and it is about as small as 1/2 of regular child´s bedroom back in the US!
Our fireplace and sunken living room
Beautiful Mackenzie sitting on HER OWN BED!
Marguerito (sp?) was at our home to greet us and get us all set up. It´s awesome he takes care of passports, exchanges money while you are here (which is great not traveling with a bunch of cash all the time -- you can write checks to the mission while you are here!) Marguerito is another example of a loving, peaceful, & hardworking man. So joyful while he´s working.. a great example to all of us. Once at the mission, we saw my dear Tono (sp?), who was a friend of Fr. Avram´s while Padre & Elijah lived here for about 9 months (which was about 9 years ago now!). Tono is so sweet, always smiling, and always there to help with anything we need!! Yes, I do love it that he speaks English pretty darn great, too! After lunch the boys headed out to the town center-park that has basketball courts...the girls? Of course we headed over to the internet cafe!!!
Afterwards we hit the NEW ICE CREAM PARLOR HERE ON THE MAIN STREET (yep, Padre Avram, it´s not gelato, but it´s wonderful ice cream right on our way to & from the parish!!).
YUMMY ICE CREAM!
Then we went and MOVED INTO OUR NEW HOME, unpacked & got comfortable. Rene gave me a tour of the place, and outside & around the back he showed me the washing tub that I can do our laundry in. Sound crazy??? Me washing clothes by hand???? Well, just so you know, I did do laundry once by hand on my recent pilgrimage, in Rome...but even then it was in a sink with ¨clean¨water. This is an outside tub with not the cleanest water, but I am actually looking forward to the experience that Mackenzie and I will have in learning to really wash clothes!! I know if Judith were here with us, she would be loving this too!!! I´ll try taking some pictures. I haven´t figured out yet, if I can add any pictures from my camera to the internet cafe computers or not. Hopefully! (guess I answered my own question, a few days later I realized the internet cafe will burn the photos to cd for basically 1.25 american!
Rene then took us to meet our Spanish teacher, Beto and his wife Rut (like Ruth without the th sound on the end). OH MY GOODNESS...THEY ARE THE SWEETEST PEOPLE. Padre, this is hilarious. They did look a little confused or surprised when Rene announced that he had Beto´s Spanish students from America there at the front gate. Beto came out, and once we said, ¨Padre Avram¨everything changed!!!! NOW THIS IS EVEN MORE HILARIOUS. Once inside, he introduces us to Rut. Gives us all chairs. Starts speaking to us - IN ESPANOL ONLY!! yikes.... oh me oh my oh...what have I gotten myself into?? HERE´S THE HILARIOUS PART. Their phone rings. Rut answers it. It´s one of their daughters. She hangs up and says ¨Padre Avram emailed my daughter to say you would be in San Lucas TODAY.¨ ISN´T THAT HILARIOUS!!! I remember that you emailed them the other night from our house so that they could contact the parish...God has an amazing sense of humor, heh??? Well, these two people could not be any nicer, seriously. What gracious, loving, giving people. They have 2 daughters and 1 son, that all live in the city (I think), so they´ve been empty nesters for about 9 years. You could tell that they just loved Padre Avram & Elijah. Looks like our Spanish load will be a little lighter than we expected, but we´ll just go with the flow! It´s obvious we didn´t prepare for the last year. However, Beto says that when we are done with our 4 weeks, we will be speaking pretty well. I´M SO EXCITED. I can´t wait to be able to speak with the villagers here...well, the villagers that speak Spanish in addition to their native language. Had a light dinner (typical for their lifestyle here, and something I´m really hoping to implement once we go home...we really don´t need that much ¨fuel¨just to get us to bedtime!!! smile) After dinner, Sean headed back off to the basketball courts with his new friends, Jordan, his younger brother, and their Dad, Doug. Mac & Mom hung out to play cards with Emily, our new friend that is staying in our same house with us...only for a couple days though. Quite a few games of Bicycle...then Sean returned & we had to play Golf, too. Padre, we´re all still arguing about the rules of Golf since we remembered it differently from San Lucas last year and how we´ve been playing it at home...so can you please post or email the real rules?? SMILE.Off to bed, and boy oh boy was our bed comfortable! I slept like a baby!!!Well the boys just got back to the cafe so I´d better email off this blogspot so that you can all check it daily or every other day while we are here. The emailing process is very slow and often jams when I try sending emails to a bunch of people at once...so I figured I´d be better off by creating a blog.
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