Pictures of Indepenence Day

September 15 here is independence day (although there are festivities throughout the month of September.) The following pictures are of the parade through Ozatlan--the capital of my municipality. All of the schools within the municipality were invited to participate in the parade. The picture I took were all of the school in my community.






The little kids in the above pictures were banging on the drums in the below picture...pretty cute I thought

A few pictures of my house and a story

I played in my first official soccer game with my town team this past weekend. It was an away game, which means about 30 of us pile into two small pick-up trucks to drive about half an hour up the volcano to a town called California. The whole way, the guys were making catcalls and pretty crude comments to any female that was unfortunate enough to be walking on the road at the time. I know, sounds like these guys are assholes, but it's really a cultural thing and the girls are used to it, so who are we to judge. Actually, the guys are all really cool.

We lost the game 5-4 and I only played the first half (pretty poorly at that) and my ankle is still not quite right. But all of that is unimportant. The important part is the pre-game rituals. We went through a pretty intense warm-up and then were checked-in by the ref. After check-ins, we ran onto the field in a single file line led by the keeper. Everyone, including myself, reached down to touch the field and then cross themself upon entering the field. The keeper then ran into the center circle, and we split of forming a circle around him, where he then punted the ball into the air and we all clapped. After that, we walked to the corner, all took a knee, and prayed. They were all mumbling some prayer I wouldn't have known in Spanish or English, so I started mumbling the only prayer I knew (thanks to Dayspring Preschool):

Thank you god, for the stars and moon
for the rain and sunny weather.
Thank you god, for this our food
and that we are together.
Amen.

It's a pretty short prayer, so I had to repeat it a few times, but it got the job done. Then, when the whistle blew, we all crossed ourselves one more time and began playing. After being an Evangelical Christian during training, I think it's now safe to say I'm a full-blooded Catholic. God Bless you all.




My house...


My pila and shower in the back



My latrine (which so far is still cockroach free)


My weight made of steel, cement, and milk cans (yeah, i know, I'm a badass)

And most importantly, my hammock

Pictures

At Swearing in with my host Mom and her son (she gave me that tie, so I had to wear it...i wanted to go sleazy and have the shirt unbuttoned some and a gold chain glistening amidst my chest hair.) And they are both around 6 feet tall as you can tell...I sprouted to about 6'4''

Life is good

Not much new to report here...but I'm working on getting some photos of my house and community put up, so look for those later this week along with, hopefully, an interesting post. Love to all.