Is it a Magician, is it a Gnome, is it a Divination?

Uxmal, a great Mayan city, where some of its majestic buildings still stand in the middle of the Yucatan territory.

This pyramid among other ruins in the Uxmal complex, is a beautiful and attractive building of 117 feet tall, some papers call it the Magician pyramid, but in Mexico this is named after "the one the practices divinations" (La piramide del Adivino). The Legend says that when a certain gong was sounded, the town of Uxmal would fall to a boy "not born of woman". One day, a dwarf boy, who had been raised from an egg by a witch, sounded the gong and struck fear into the ruler, who ordered him to be executed. The ruler promised that the boy’s life would be saved if he could perform three impossible tasks, one of which was to build a giant pyramid in a single night. The boy achieved all the tasks, and became the new ruler.

Uxmal is located along the Puuc route. Since puuc is a mayan word for hills, we can imagine this area of the Maya world as the most "hilly" among a bast territory of flatness that the Yucatan peninsula represents.

Along the Puuc route we do not just find Uxmal, but another cities as well, Kabah, Labna and Sayil. The Puuc cities represent a great deal of Mayan architecture, the buildings festooned with religious icon, reliefs and carvings.

Climbing this pyramid and exploring the other ruins in this archaeological site, would empower our curiosity as the past explorers and archaeologists did, when they did find for first time this footprint from the ancient. A big respect and admiration for those civilizations.

Cenote Ik Kil

I wouldn't come to you with definitions of what is a Cenote, since you can have a better one following the link. But this appealing natural pool is some of the wonders of the Yucatán peninsula.
Yucatan along with part of Central America was home of one of the greatest civilization, the Maya, the Mayan considered this water reservoirs sacred places as the only resource of water they had.
Today many cenotes are open to the public for a refreshing swimming or snorkeling, this particular cenote is called ik kil and is located close to the great city of Chichen Itza.
We hope we can be enjoying its clear waters this summer, on our "Ruins and beaches" trip to Yucatán.

El dia del amor.

Valentine's day, is an special celebration where people wish to each other LOVE, that is fine with me, even my Snape's inner spirit allows that. When my girl started pre-school I remember not knowing anything about Valentine's cards, until I asked Lauren what was that, and then I understood the big deal that this celebration means for kids, I bet is for the candy treats, because they pay little attention to the written cards.
I like to look at my children bags of Valentines when they come back from school, I think they reflects lots of the giver personalities, even if the parents buy them for them, I'm sure they look for something that goes with he/her thoughts. Some ones make them at home (like A&B, last year, but that was an art-craft for a non-school day).
Anyways, I got and email from some body I don't know, but I suspect Eduardo does, because my address is part of a large list where he appears. Talking about San Valentine's alternative day for guys, I replayed with all the sarcasm I usually use when talking with El Pollo because I thought I was writing to him, but noticed that I sent the e-mail to this guy I don't know, if he speaks spanish, then he would think I come from planet Vinager, (see how important is having sense of humor or knowledge of reallity?).
Oh well, I've been busy these days reading and planning a Yucatán trip-project.

Eres un amigo de Obama?

Chico!!! Action, now the new Amigos de Obama, (BUTt, they need to put caption in Spanish of his speeches) let's see if that works for him, in the race for Voto Latino!

The hispanic wall and Obama

The Newspaper El Pais from Spain says something like this, Obama faced a wall not anticipated, the hispanic wall, here something from an article I just read, I know is in Spanish, but you can use a translator to have an idea, try to read the whole thing too. I have to add that Obama didn't get close to the Latino community, I didn't hear in any news how Obama talks to Latinos, just that he sang "Mexico Lindo" in some radio-talk show, and something else, Obama and his speeches resembles a lot to old and all times Latin-american politicians, lots of promises and hopes and at the end (for our countries), nothing to be true or worst. We don't know if that is the case with Obama, but Latinos fear for a not happy ending.
But for all of you Obama followers, "El Pais" is making a poll, Obama or Clinton.

"El rechazo electoral a un candidato negro es un asunto que preocupa mucho a los portavoces de la comunidad hispana y cuya explicación exige un análisis muy profundo. En las últimas semanas, este periódico ha buscado en dos Estados de gran presencia latina, Nevada y California, algunas de las razones de este nuevo fenómeno y ha encontrado respuestas sensatas y creíbles: la competencia de negros e hispanos por los mismos puestos de trabajo, la guerra que las pandillas de las dos comunidades libran desde hace años en los barrios de las grandes ciudades, el trato despreciativo que algunos negros han tenido hacia los hispanos durante mucho tiempo, las enormes diferencias culturales entre las dos etnias... Los expertos y los líderes políticos hispanos se niegan a hablar de racismo. Aseguran que se trata de desconocimiento, de prevención o de venganza, pero no de racismo".

A very happy Snape

Today I dragged the entire family to watch U2 3D, it was awesome, awesome!!!!!. Bidane was happy to be my company at the first place, but she was the first to protest after the first song, but decided to make it easy and fall asleep. For Aitana was a little bit noisy, but I'm sure she enjoyed it and will remember it when she grows up. She denies knowing all the songs from the concert, but I'm pretty positive she has heard all of them, many times.

(click over the image)

Maybe my husband doesn't remember but I think the first movie we watched together as a couple, even he got my ticket, was Rattle and Hum with U2. This time I was very moved, I cried with the song Beautiful Day. Another moment was when Bono sings Miss Sarajevo and makes the opera part of Pavarotti. -So beautiful.- LOVE, LOVE, LOVE THEM. I won't put words talking about Pepe's experience with this movie, or which was his favorite part, but as me, he enjoyed.

A lot of episodes of my life are linked to their music, from the beginning of my relation-ship with Pepe, my pregnancy with Aitana. Bidane as a toddler saying to people that her dad was in Vertigo, instead of telling that he was working some place in the world (I don't remember where), just to talk about few things.

Even better than the real thing.

La pequeña hortaliza.

En la escuela de las niñas de nombre SDCCS, tenemos un proyecto de hortalizas y jardinería, que ha resultado muy interesante. El viernes pasado los estudiantes tuvieron la primer oportunidad de cosechar lechugas y rábanos del cajón de 4to grado, al cual pertenece Aitana. Para el interesado en ver lo hermosos de las lechugas, los brócilis y el perejil, etre otros, click aquí, al blog de Lydia.

Mama Snape

Have you seen Harry Potter movies or have read the books? I bet you have... if not, well this is Severus Snape, the potion Master at Howgarts. I have said to my girls that I feel sympathy for this character, he is almost my favorite one, even though, he "seems"not to be a good guy, I like his style.

Well, recently I went to have a hair cut, the stylists girl, insisted on me to dye my hair back into my "natural color", because I had "redish" resembles from last January. I said - o.k dye my hair girl- so she did. The kids immediately noticed that, insisting I really look like Snape, as if that was my intention, looking Snapy some other member of my family of four said...You can figure it out who HE is.

Confession

I never, ever give up to books, specially if I borrow them from the library, the due date helps me to focus. 0nce I put myself to read, I finish, even if I don't like what I'm reading; but this time, I'm sorry to tell you, and if Isabel Allende happens to read my blog (ha-ha), probably she will feel uncomfortable knowing that somebody just put away what she created with lots of care (I think), and on top of things criticizes. That is the reason I read from beginning to end most of the books in my hands, - for respect to the author-.

But this time...this time I just couldn't, the book was in Spanish no reason to get tired in the English comprehension, the worst is that I left like 50 pages untouched, I almost got it, but the due renewed date came, I didn't have the mood to go to the library and have a chat with the librarian to change from one card to another, besides it was overdue, I was deep in my effort to finish it, that I never noticed it was overdue. Feeling angry and frustrated I thought,- come on, you are not going to finish it-, night after night I found my self fallen asleep, waking up later to turn the light off probably after 1:00, I don't think my husband with jet lag from his long trip from Australia would feel happy with that.

Every reader is different, and the circumstance of the reading time is not the same for each of us, probably you would enjoy it, as many people did. But I found the narrative rather boring, it talks about the way El Zorro, became El Zorro, his adventures to do so are non-sense, he joins a secret society of justice, a group of gypsies and is inspired by a pirate to get his out-fit. I came to the conclusion that Isabel Allende got the character and his abilities, as good athlete, good with the sword, and then thought about an spectacular almost from the circus way to get his "heroic powers". I'm o.k that she choose the period of Diego de la Vega to become El Zorro, it is just the way: too big ears, he needed to cover them with the mask... Is this a joke or what.

Linda y hermosa niña cumple 10.

My little girls is 10 years old, she is the most sweet and beautiful pumpkin pie over the face of this world.

She was born in the middle of a cold Canadian winter, I remember a terrible storm covered from Montreal to New Brunswick (the province where we were living at that time), but luckily for us it skipped the little city of Fredericton. Many families were out of electricity for days, and I was just very scared that we had to face that, mostly because we "Mexicans" knew very little about the cold-snowy-winter of far north.

When the doctor placed her little body over my tummy, I was surprised of how warm she was, a crying baby with lots of hair. I wish I had known better to enjoy her more, but I had no experience, and worried a lot for many things, but I was lucky with her, because she was gentle and nice with her mama, as she was aware that I needed help.

La más bonita de las niñas cumple 10 años. Estoy féliz y orgullosa de la persona en que mi hermosa "goyita" se está convirtiendo.



For her 10th birthday our family took her to the beach to have a great time around her aunts, uncle, grand parents and her beloved cousins, Gene y Jorge.


Para festejar sus 10 años nos fuimos a la playa y nos divertimos mucho!

Solo Huerta

Panoramica de los Huerta.

Huerta is my last name. My sisters complain I don't post anything from my family when I come back from visiting them.

Papá y yo.

Eblyn, Ruth y Jorge (sisters and one of my brothers)

Mamá y Aitana.

The power of the kings.

We celebrated The Three Wise Kings in my parents house, as the traditions says, the Kings or "Los Reyes" brought some presents to the girls, who put their shoes to be filled out. But this time (in our case), the kids get any thing the Kings want to give them, no petitions allowed.
This year the children got something special, a letter from the "orient" where the kings come from. Through this letter the "Wise Men" make some behavior recommendations, like be good and don't be too wimpy (Bidane), because really, one as a parent need some help from the big guys to support our every day sayings as, clean your room, pick up your toys, you don't need to cry for this, and so on.

By evening we had pieces of bread (called rosca de reyes) with hot chocolate, we were very happy to share this moment with my parents, sisters, my cousin Licho and my beloved aunt Luisa, who is big sister to my dad.
Tia Luisa is a great inspiration, she just have a great way to see things, you never have heard somebody describing sunsets as her. I have so many wonderful memories from her house, with banana, mango and avocado trees and she planting mint o talking with her birds, sewing or putting sugar in her coffee with delicate movements, trying not to hit the walls of her cup.

Bidane para la tia Eblyn y Papá

Para Eblyn, que lo pidió y para Pepe que se perdió la diversión en la playa. Bidane decidió cantar y bailar para sus primos y tias, durante nuestra estancia en la playa, y para tal efecto, nada mejor que una canción de Julieta Venegas.

Bidane perfomes in the middle of the beach fun for cousins and aunts a song from Julieta Venegas!
By the way, I was right when I decided to introduce the girls to Julieta Venegas, now they are big fans, I love it.

Para empezar.

We are back! As you know the girls and I traveled south after Christmas to visit my family, we had a great time. To open mouth about telling you our trip, I can open with a curiosity.

My guess is that "this somebody" (see the tag on the leftt, Lauren?) missed the Iowa caucus....
Instead of snow, they decided to spend January 3 on a beach town.

Stay tunned for more about Bucerias (the beach town)our traveling and my home state in Mexico.

Al fin.... relaxing Christmas day.

I just want to say that we had so much fun on Christmas Eve party-dinner last night. All of our work from previous weeks worthed it.

Thanks to the Host, here with her new toy.

We represented a "pastorela", where every guest had to play a role, here you have the Angel and the Angel's helper.
The Little Demon said: it supposes we don't like each other, Butterfly.


After our funny pastorela, we had Christmas lights ( I don't know how to call them in english and I'm too lazy to investigate right now). Anyways, the children had the chance to hit the traditional piñata of the season and sing "posadas".

Christmas morning, my girls wearing the night-gowns I made for them.

Finally a little nice breakfast and that is it... I finished my Christmas work!

Bufandas para el frio.

Teachers in my girl's classes are going to have home-made scarves as a Holiday gift, this year.
For this one I used two cotton fabrics for one side and flannel with strawberries pattern for the "inside" as a snuggle cozy feeling.

The multi-age class is called Love-cats, so I decided that our male teacher, can use this pattern of cats with a brown fabric as well in one side, and a flannel with doggies for the inside. I'm not expecting him to use it on his Christmas dinner, but maybe at school, where this kind of patterns are well accepted for a cool teacher.
I think it looks good though, even for a trip to the mountains.

On this scarf, I put together 3 different cotton fabrics for the look side, and flannel with little squirrels for the warm side.
I choose green fabric because her student at my home says, her favorite color is green.
I'm happy I finished these projects in less time expected (uffff).
Please, let me know your comments, some people in my house think different that I do, concerning to combination of fabrics.

Guess the song

Mexican Alejandro Fernández, sings something you might recognize.



Of course this is not Mexico, but a city in Europe.

What a week!!! It is Christmas time...

Usually by this time of the year I'm busy preparing our annual trip to Mexico, to visit family at three different locations in the country (we do the same in summer now, but with much more time, less people at the airport, less luggage, etc.)
I have to say, however, that I'm still soooooooooo busy, I can't believe how many things to do. At least we have our decorations.


Pepe complained in this picture, because it was more about the tree than him, well, actually that was my purpose, because I don't know when the chance would come again to have a Christmas Tree and Pepe dressed up.

Another thing we had at our home, was the visit of friends. "Los Arredondos, -little pollos- came and helped Aitana and Bidane to make cookies.

Decorating the cookies wasn't the most fun, eating them (27 cookies) had a great ranking.


Nutcracker at the Spreckels Theater , the girls had fun.


It was a nice combination, we went to watch the performance of a good friend, with the great company of a little cute and mama.

Mecano, Un Año Más

We make our balance of the good and the bad...
Un Año más (One more year) from Mecano, a Spaniard "trio", that was a hit during the 80's, when Rock sung in Spanish was very popular among the young "spanish-speakers" of that time. I could say "chicos fresas", but is a very difficult term to translate, maybe the Mexicans around can help me, hopefully they do not come with insults, thinking they are not "fresas" (you know who I mean).

2008 is almost over and our road had its difficulties, I'm just thankful I'm almost there.

Paz y Amor U2

You know I LOVE U2, my favorite Band, and for this Season of Peace and Love, I can't leave them out. Or better to say, after my opening with "Band Aid", I want to share with you Christmas music along this month, -for me- is a necessity turn the first page with U2, later I'll post Christmas carols and "villancicos".