Quince

      Yup that's right, I got to have a Quinceanera on my birthday in Mexico.  I can say with confidence that it was one of the most meaningful days of my entire life.  

      What is a Quinceanera? It's a very special birthday celebration for girls when they turn 15. It celebrates becoming a women and entering a new stage of life.  Why the heck are you wearing that ridiculous dress?  Well my friend, wearing a BIG, fancy dress just like that one that I wore is Quince tradition!  It may look a little funny, but who doesn't like laughing at themselves and feeling a little strange looking for a day:)  Why are there other people all dressed the same?  For quinces, you have damas, which you can think of kinda like brides maids, and chambelans, which are kinda like groomsmen. If you're more curious about what a Quinceanera is I suggest you google it because it's very interesting.

      The first day of the year started out bright and early. I woke up, and after being beautifully sung to by my family there, and enjoying some of my favorite food; Ellen's tapioca pudding, we headed over to the church to get things set up.  With the help of my mom, Jennyi, and Luis we got the tables scrubbed, balloons tied into flowers, table clothes on with flowers in the middle, and everything looking beautiful. 

      I then went over to Jennyi's house to get my hair and makeup done.  That took around one million years!  Finally, after getting my dress on and collecting all my Damas and Chambelans we set out to take pictures.  Mama Ellen had the wonderful idea of taking the pictures at Chololos, which is a complex of soccer and baseball fields at the foot of the mountains. Everyone else thought that it was a crazy idea because it's a park, but I thought it was a wonderful idea because I spent a lot of time there, not to mention that it's really beautiful. Taking the pictures was a lot of fun because there was so much at Chololos to work with. We did pictures on these cool looking blue bleachers, in front of a low white wall, playing soccer, in the soccer goal, and many more different locations in the park. Another brilliant idea of my mom's was to have me wear my soccer cleats underneath my big, fancy, red dress. Also to take pictures where my Chambelan de honor(basically the person that wore a different color shirt and danced with me) as the goalie, my Damas as defense, and me scoring a penalty kick. She certainly is the good idea factory, that Ellen!  Both her and Jennyi did a very wonderful job of taking awesome pictures which you can see some of if you scroll down.

      Next up was going to the church to get the party started!  Though actually first came something else.  My dad, Kyle, presented me.  I didn't really know what it was before hand so it was a really great surprise.  Basically, he gave a very sweet speech about why we were here, what turning 15 meant for me, and he shared some memories.  This was 100% my favorite part.  I couldn't stop smiling the whole time he was talking because it was just so darn beautiful and touching for me. It was really neat too because I understood everything he said(It was in Spanish), with the exception of when he read some Bible verse.  Another surprise which I didn't know about at all was two videos. Turns out that all my friends there made this really cute video with pictures and a song and everything.  Jennyi and my mom(the one from the US) also teamed up and got my friends from here in Ann Arbor to make videos wishing me happy birthday and such. It also included some embarrassing pictures of when I was little and the sound track was my favorite song:)

      Then came the dances. I don't remember if I wrote about this in one of my other blog entries or not, but another thing which is traditional for quinces is to have these choreographed dances. We practiced all of December and then did a pretty good job of dancing them (I think).  

      Then last came dinner and dancing!  I'm so thankful for getting to experience the quince tradition and I couldn't have asked for a better birthday and start to the new year.

Ready to go! We all packed into the minivan; it was a tight squeeze

Trying to climb up onto the wall

The soccer cleats

Laughing cuz Ellen said something funny

Penalty kick

Framed by the goal

We laugh a lot

With my boys. From left to right Pelon, Luis, Lalito, and Javiercito.

The damas. Left to right Leslye, Irene, Jami,and Lupita. Missing: Marrifer.

Praying

With Jennyi

My second family

Blowing a kiss and laughing some more.

Dancing at the end with little Johan(definitly not how you actually spell that)

Painting Project.

Last week I spent a couple long afternoons painting.  At the church the walls in two of the classrooms and in the hallway don't have anything on the walls. So I wanted to do something to make it more fun.  The themes for this season of classes at the church were God is _____ (strong, faithful, love, forgiving, etc), a different God is____ each week.  There were eight different ones so I wanted to do four, one on each wall in the two classrooms that didn't have anything.  Also in the hall way I wanted to do a bible verse.  After digging the paint out of the big closet, we drew first in pencil everything that we were planing to paint/write.  We did in big letters the Dios es_____ in the class rooms and in the hall way Galatians 5:22 (The fruits of the spirit).  Then my friend Luis and I painted  all the Dios es_____ while Jennyi worked on writing the fruits of the spirit in pencil. We then all worked on painting the fruits of the spirit and also starting and owl which isn't finished yet. It was really fun and I'm really happy with how it looks. Plus now I have some paint on my painting shirt to remember Mexico with:)

*I'm missing a picture of one

I HATE SHOPPING

       Yesterday we went dress shopping for my quinceanera.  I already know what dress I'm going to wear but we needed to pick out dresses for the Damas and get the shirts for the Chambelans.  We left on the bus and got there about 10:20ish, all eleven of us.  We then were there until 4sih.  And no we didn't eat any lunch why we were there.  Jennyi, who is helping plan every thing, already had an idea of a dress that might work so we went to the store where that was at first.  All the Damas tried it on and we decided that, because they didn't have small enough sizes so it was big on everyone, we would look other places.  I could be wrong, but my understanding is that centro is the main place where clothing stores are and where shopping happens.  It's super huge and I, who am not bad at all with these kinds of things, can't even find my way around all the streets even though I've been there a bunch of times now.  Despite it's vastness we were able to spend all day basically getting nowhere.  For the girls it was really hard because all the dresses that we liked either were waaayyy to expensive or didn't go with the dress that I am going to wear.  For the boys it was really hard because NOWHERE sells button down shirts in the same color in different sizes.  Two of my Chambelans are a little smaller and younger than the other two so this proves to be a problem.  I of course thought when we started that it would be super easy for the boys.  I mean come on, it's just a red button down dress shirt.  Pretty simple right?  Wrong.
       I'm sure it's much worse, but now I kinda understand what it's like to pick out dresses for a wedding. Not fun.

Tortilleria

As I've mentioned before, there are millions of Tortillerias in Mexico.

There are a couple in each neighborhood and this is what they look like. They are open from really early in the morning until they've sold all the tortillas for that day.  This one is three houses down from us and my favorite thing ever is eating tortillas when they're hot off the machine.  The machine has a big bowl where the dough goes. Then it plops the perfect amount down where it's pressed into a thin uncooked tortilla.  There are hundreds that move over an oven on a conveyor belt which cooks them.  They then flip off onto a cooling belt which carries them to where they're stalked into piles manually.  Here's the link to a video that I took of the machine at work.  http://youtu.be/62W7evfODkQ    They are sold fifteen pesos for a kilo.  You just walk up to the window and they ask you how many pesos. Then they weigh the amount for however many pesos you want to buy and wrap them in a piece of paper. They are delicious!

Advent

I love Advent. I love the candles and watching one more be lit every week. I love the devotions. I love the Christmas songs.  I love everyone has their lights up.  I love being excited for Christmas.  And new this year I love Advent calendars!  There are a lot of calendars going on in this house right now.
       The first one is one of the pop up ones that you open a new window everyday.  Each window has a picture or a couple words and from that picture or those words you know where to look in a little book to read a little prayer and story.
       The second one is shaped like a Christmas tree and has a little box for each day. We all know what that means, CANDY!  Because there are six of us and you can't fit six pieces of candy in one little box, instead there is a little piece of paper in each box.  Ellen made a bunch of different kinds of candy right before Advent started.  I made a bunch of caramels and she made lots of different kinds of chocolate which include: dark caramel, dark peanut, dark, and my favorite dark coffee!  She made slightly different ones for the kiddos but I don't know what they each are.
       The third Advent calendar is one that I brought.  I didn't know before I came if the Benefields did Christmas gifts so to be safe my main gift which I brought for them was a different book for each day of Advent.  My mum wrapped them too which makes it very excited for the kids.  "Santa Claus" has been stealing the book each day and hiding it after leaving a note with a hint which the kids also love.
       The fourth and final Advent calendar was sent by my mum.  She got a bunch of people to write me notes on the back of a picture.  Everyday there's a new picture/note and they're all hung on a line in my room.  I am a BIG fan of this Advent calendar.  It's so nice to read a note everyday from someone letting you know that they're praying for you, and love you, talking about some  memories that they enjoyed sharing with you, etc, everyday. Plus it's so fun to see all the pictures.  Good job Mama:)

Centro

On Friday my friends Luis, Jennyi and I went to centro.  http://youtu.be/uOY1PvmH3Yk  Here's a video that Jennyi took.  As you can see if you watch the video, centro is pretty cool.  It's basically a full block of little stores that all share the same roof. Kind of like a farmers market only not just with food.  There are a lot of stores with clothes, stores with trinkets, stores with candy, and stores that sell food.  One of the food places were selling full pig heads.  My favorite two things about centro is that everything is in bright colors and the millions of soccer jerseys!

AGUA

Here it Mexico, you can't just drink the tap water.  Instead you have to buy water in these big jugs for drinking and cooking.  I think that it makes a lot of sense.  Why pay to have your shower, toilet, and hose water be clean enough to drink?  As a result the water bill is less because you're not paying for filtered hose, shower and toilet water.  But it does mean that you have to make some effort to get water.  What my family here does is have two water jugs.  That way if one is empty it's not urgent to fill it up because we have the other one.  When a jug is empty you have two options; you can walk with the super heavy, big, awkward jug over to a water place and get it filled up, or you can flag down a water truck which costs a little more.  The water trucks are just pickups with the flat back filled with jugs of water.  They have speakers out the windows and you can hear them all the time "Agua! Agua! Deiz pesos! Agua!".  The problem is that they drive pretty fast down the streets.  You'll hear them and think 'Yes yay I need agua!' but when you run out the door onto the street you get there just in time for them to fly by.  So when one of the jugs is empty you're always on your toes with ears wide open, listening for a distant cry of 'Agua! Agua!'. And then when you do hear it you run like a crazy person onto the street screaming 'AGUA AGUA!'.  Hoping that either they haven't driven all the way past yet or that they'll hear your frantic cries.  If things go how you want them to they park in front of your house real quick and you hand them ten pesos and an empty jug in exchange for a filled jug of water.  One thing which makes it a little complicated is that there are good water trucks and bad water trucks.  Each water truck is just a different guy who has one of the big fancy water filters and has made a life of agua.  This means that some trucks are better than others because some people are more careful with their agua business than others. Ellen said they used to get agua from this one truck that's red,but there would sometimes be stuff in the water which is bad.  Getting water is definitely more of an adventure when you live in Mexico!