"I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues"

I feel very fortunate to have what has affectionately been named The Whimsical Tree residing directly outside my bedroom window. This amazing tree is like no other tree I have ever seen. The most spectacular thing about it is that, although now it is full of pink sprouts of what resemble something close to fiber-optic wires, come May or June the flowers will fall off and be replaced with these insane, white cotton-balls that like to shed all over the place. (I will be sure to post a picture of the cotton balls whenever they arrive this year...)

View of the Whimsical Tree from my room

If you have ever paid particular attention to Dr. Seuss' illustrations, and seen the crazy trees I have seen since moving here, you might come to the same conclusion as I have--that Dr. Seuss must have visited Mexico!
"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." Dr. Seuss The Lorax

New Address--Take Two.

Ok. Really. I'm usually patient with all these unorganized things that seem to happen all the time here. However, I am just a little bit over this.

It turns out that the second mailing address I received was, in fact, also wrong. Just by a little bit.

Check out the sidebar again for the <> real address.

New Address.

Please make note of the new Texas address on the sidebar. If I already informed you of the new address, you will notice that this one is a little different. That's how things roll here... they give you a new address and then later, after you tell everyone and change your magazines, etc, they let you know that the first was wrong.
Viva Mexico.

Seriously?

They're so crazy.

I would just like to note that today I received the "my dog ate my homework" excuse for probably the third time since I began teaching here in Mexico.
And they are completely serious.
Here it must not be the most ridiculous and clichéd explanation of all time.

Operation Christmas Child

If you belong to a church, or maybe even if you don't, you may have participated in a Christmastime charity through the company "Samaritan's Purse". It involves filling a shoebox with toys and necessary items for children from different age brackets.
My family and I have done this for years and, although we were told that these boxes would go to needy children all over the world, I admit that I didn't really think about them once the box left my hands.
That is forever changed now after I was able to participate in an event that distributed these very boxes to street children and orphans of Guadalajara!
I didn't know it when I agreed to come help. All I knew is that I was going to wake up at 7:00 to take a long bus ride to a park to help (on my last Saturday before returning back to work after Christmas, mind you...). Charla and I got to the park very quickly, which meant that we were there at 8:15--the time we were told the helpers should arrive. Now, some of you may know that, in Mexico, when you are told to arrive at 8:15, that means nothing will start until 9:00, if you're lucky, and that you would have been better off coming late. Well, we still can seem to shake our American punctuality, and we got there super early.
I'm not complaining, though, because it was a great surprise to see huge trucks pull up and unload the Samaritan's Purse boxes. It was fun to help set up the carnival games, and to say hello to most of the Christian community we've met since moving to Guadalajara.


Charla and I were posted at the "Pulseras" (bracelets) booth with some Lincoln School staff members, Ruben and Sylvia. We helped teach kids a bible verse "El Señor te guardará de todo mal. El guardará mi alma." Psalm 121. And they made the bracelets with the different colored beads that represent different steps in the story of salvation.













I will admit that I felt some pangs of guilt, telling these children that God will protect them from all bad things. The truth is that, as a Christian, God doesn't promise to take all the bad away. But he does promise that he's always with us through it... we just have to know where to look. I hope these kids can come to learn that, as their lives are surely full of more struggles ahead.















Above: Sylvia telling the children the meaning of the beads.

Left: The speaker giving a message to the children.