Lisa n Tom (n James n Joseph)

Christmas does that thing where it all blends together, so I'm just going to post some pictures and hope for the best here. Grandma arrives for a 10 day visit. We took her to choir practice and then caroling. The next day, we went to the Museo del Mundo Maya and saw a Navidad exhibit. I liked the Maya baby Jesus in his hamaca . Another day, we took her to the pyramids at Dzibilchaltun which are cool because you can touch and climb up anything and also cool because the Casa de las Muñecas is aligned with the equinoxes and solstices and less cool because there are chiggers that bite your pompis right through your clothes if you sit down anywhere. We saw a Mexican-Cube ballet troop perform The Nutcracker ( La Cascanuez ) and the boys were actually really into it. We went to the first and last night of the posadas , where they carol from house to house asking for room at the inn (and eventually end up in the church patio eating tamales and Coca Cola and punching a piñata). We took her...

I go to a Spanish language school with lots of other adults and it occurs to me often how different my experience here is from theirs due to the fact that I have kids. None of them spent days searching for places to rent a Christmas play custom or went on a family field trip to a chocolate museum this weekend, you know? Not better, no worse, just really different. (Maybe slightly better.) "New guayabara, who dis?"

 Today was the last game of the soccer season. I have no idea what Los Quetzales' final record for the season was or where they were in the stats, but they finished it off with a pizza party and a parents vs. kids game where the adults soundly beat them by like 6-1, but the kids felt triumphant because their one point was the final point of the game. (Cultural note: Mexicans never seems to care that the pizza is cold. I have opinions about that.) Zoom in

 One of the tricky things about being in another country is that there are all sorts of little traditions that the local people just know but you don't. I've appreciated some of these signs I've seen at the Spanish school to help explain what the heck is going on:

 Busy weekend. After school on Friday we walked through one of the Christmas villages (lighted installations) in the Ramate de Paseo Montejo. The length of the historic district is lit with holiday streetlights and there are horsedrawn carriages taking people on rides up and down the street. As we drove by, the clopping of the horses' hooves made the boys spontaneously break out in "Jingle Bells." After looking at the lights, they found a marquesita stand and ordered treats in Spanish all by themselves. (A first for James.) On Sunday, James had a soccer tournament and Joseph had a P.arkour tournament. (Note: We try to avoid sports on Sunday -- keep the Sabbath day holy, etc. -- but like a lot of things during this strange this phase of our lives, we're just rolling with the locals at the moment.) James had two back-to-back games and, sadly, his team lost both of them. But they were good sports about it. Joseph also didn't place in his "free style" event...