Happy Birthday Courtney!!!!

-Sara Jacqueline

Happy 1st Birthday Ana Paola!!!!!

On Saturday, my sweet cousin Ana Paola turned 1 year old. Paola lives right next door to us, so she always comes over to play and every so often we try to have some english lessons too...haha. For her first Birthday, she was baptized in the catholic church early in the morning, and then spent her afternoon partying it up with over 150 family and friends. I was so excited to get to go to her party that was just as grand as some weddings I have been to.

Paola's cake was bigger than her, about the size of a park bench. It was tres leches cake, layered with pecans, and fruit and frosted with a sweet whipped cream. (I can't lie, tres leches is not really my favorite thing in the world, kinda soggy)

 She blew out her Dora candle, and then later on started eating it when we were playing...Sorry Dora, your waxy head just looks so edible to a 1 year old.

As tradition goes, even babies get their face pushed in their birthday cakes...just a little for fun.

Then she got to cut her cake with her Daddy, and then we all gobbled down more cake than necessary, along with some peach jello (yucky peach jello that Mexicans love for some reason..).

Here are my host sisters, Elly and Viviana, right before we got wild dancing with with Paola!

Thanks Paola for being so cute and entertaining so many mornings before I go to school! She is such a sweet little girl, and she did not cry once during her 8 hour party...what a trooper. I am trying to get Paola to pick up on some english before she starts to talk...but shes better at just giggling.

Happy Birthday and Baptism Day to you Pao Pao!






-Sara Jacqueline

Happy Fake Birthday Mandy!!

Welp, you guessed it. We made up another fake Birthday and celebrated tonight after school. Mandy wasn't really into celebrating her Birthday to much, and we are missing Ashley today cause she is a little sick from some tacos...but we still went to the centro to enjoy the people watching and some street food.

Some of us had cemitas (giant sandwiches) and some of us had tacos, and some of us..just had a cup of corn. haha. We trotted around the festival for a bit and Mandy managed to get herself a free balloon from this clown..

The International Festival of Tehuacán is still going on..if you remember, it is going to last for like two weeks-Mexicans really like to party- and so we went to see some folk dancers last night after class. We weren't sure what to expect, but it was actually pretty exciting. Me and Jen decided we saw three types of dancing, one that looked like Irish step dancing, square dancing, and another that looked like tap dance, but with wooden shoes. Pretty fun! Their costumes were also the COOOLEST.

Lastly, this morning I got MAIL!!!! I was SOO stinkin excited that I got the school secretary to do a dance with me..haha..she definitely thinks I am nuts. It's not that I am homesick or dying, but its really fun to get mail, especially sweet notes from your second grade best friend.

Thank you so much Corie! Everyone was jealous all day long, and your card had me crackin' up. I showed all my kids the picture of Justin Bieber, and then we sang his songs together. It was really quite hilarious. Mail just makes the whole day better cause you know someone is thinking about you :)

-Sara Jacqueline

Memelas with Mari Carmen!!

Today we had an awesome Saturday lunch. We were all invited to have lunch with our spanish teacher and her family under one condition. We had to speak spanish the entire time, no english allowed. Mari Carmen is super cool, probably because she is friends with Irma, our super cool culture class teacher. They both wear cheetah print pants and black tops all the time, and they rock it out like two hot moms. We love them, and have learned so so much from them.

Mari Carmen came to pick us up from the school and we drove over to her house. We met her entire family including her husband, and her two beautiful kids who we hear about a lot. Mari Jose is 8 years old, and Jose Miguel is 4...basically they are adorable and hilarious.

They graciously invited us in and fed us all of our favorite foods. First we had some delicious soup, which was a veggie broth with corn, zucchini and who knows what else. Very good!

Next we scarfed down numerous memelas, which is basically a tortilla with salsa and cheese on top. Now if you really need to know, I can explain the difference between memelas and other kinds of mexican food to you later. However, for blog purposes, you only need to kind of know what a memela really is, and the real difference is how the tortilla is prepared. We had memelas with salsa verde (green) or salsa rojo (red), both tasted great, I just prefer the salsa verde. If you aren't careful, you can wind up eating 3 of these, or even more like Courtney. haha. They are sooo good topped with pico de gallo too!

Mari Carmen knows how much we love salsa, guacamole and chips, so she had tons of picco de gallo, guacamole and chips for us. Carne (meat) was also served, but I didn't eat any, just cause I wasn't in the mood, but I heard it was delicious as usual.

After our lunch, we couldn't forget Ashley's Birthday. Mari Carmen and her family had a cake delivered by motorcycle. Yummmmmmmy. They all sang to her, and lit up candles, and it was all so very sweet and fun. We really need to learn the mexican birthday song better. This time, it wasn't a Tres Leches cake, which made me pretty happy, because I wanted to try something different. The cake was more like home, it was a marble cake with frosting and a strawberry filling. So delicious! We all had seconds, and then licked the frosting off the plate.

We really enjoyed our afternoon with her whole family. We even got to see Mari Jose, her daughter perform for us. She has been taking belly dancing lessons, and is really quite adorable. We asked her how she liked her english class, and also discussed our future vacation plans. Mari Carmen and her family are just wonderful people, and I am so glad she is our teacher. We loved our memelas with Mari Carmen!!

-Sara Jacqueline

TGIF: Happy Fake Birthday Ashley!!

Yes, you read that right. We did it again. We faked another birthday so we could have an excuse to party and eat cake. You wish you were cool like this.

Today was quite a busy day. This morning we had our culture class with Irma, and she took us around the city and pointed out a few things that we might have over looked. We also tried sugar cane from the street, rice paper, and paletas de hielo. Paletas means sucker or lollipop, but paletas de hielo are popsicles. Homemade Tehuacán popsicles are too legit to quit. We rolled up to Lupita's Paleteria and all got popsicles for a late breakfast. Me and Bonnie were extra adventurous and got elote flavored popsicles...which means, they are made of corn..they don't actually taste like corn. They were actually very cinnamony and sweet, and we loved them up.

For my lunch my mom packed me crepas, or crepes. I thought crepes were always filled with something sweet like nutella, or fruit, so I was a little confused. These crepes were filled with chicken, peppers, corn and lots of cheese. They were stinkin' delicious!! They were actually more like cheese covered tacos..or in the U.S. we might call them chalupas, I'm not really sure. Most crepes here are actually like pancakes, and these just happened to be called crepes, even though they kinda weren't. Whatever you call them, they taste amazing.

My students were particularly naughty today, so sometimes I have to take a moment to do something silly to make them cool off and cut it out..So, I took their picture. They're cute right??

After class, we celebrated Ashley's fake birthday. However, our awesome plans had to be cancelled because (shocker) it rained!! It also was freezing cold, and we decided we would save our plans till next Friday, and just chill out a bit. We walked to a store to get some snackies and drinks, and then came back to eat the delicious tres leches cake. This time we bought a vanilla one with strawberries and whip cream. It was very very moist from ALL that milk. Tres leches cake has three milks, evaporated, sweetened condensed and regular. It is sure to make your stomach hurt, but it is pretty worth it. She loved her cake, and we were happy to celebrate with her. Happy Fake Birthday Ashley!!! We love you!

-Sara Jacqueline

TGIF: My Mexican (Un)Birthday..

Well, get ready to judge me, because after I tell you this big ol' secret, you will think us ILP teachers are all awful people. Are you ready? Sit down.

Today was my birthday. Actually, let me rephrase that. Today was my fake birthday that me and my friends all made up so that we could have a party and eat cake, for no reason at all.

Yes, thats right. We told everyone it was my birthday. We told everyone I turned 20, even though I already did back in July on my REAL birthday. We bought a cake. We invited all of our friends. We told all of our students it was my actual birthday. We are awful, and we know it, ok?

But besides the fact that we are all a bunch of frauds, we had a TON of fun. And its only going to get better, because we made up a fake birthday for everyone in our group, except Courtney, because it is actually her real birthday while we are here.

So my Mexican/Fake (Un)Birthday was fabulous!

I started my day out with a long run, and then Zumba class. Afterwards I had a little morning break and then we met up for our weekly culture class, with one of our BFF's Irma. She is an amazing lady, with beautiful kids, and a super nice home. Irma, is always stylish, tons of fun and energy and she speaks really great spanish, so we can understand her.

For our adventure with Irma today, we went to el mercado, or the market, to shop for some groceries, try lots of new things, and stare at all the choices of fresh, raw and handmade food. There were whole dead animals just hanging in the market...it was pretty nasty to walk past, let alone eat next to. The food was also verrry cheap, which was awesome, and there were SOO many fruits and veggies, we loved it!!

After the market, we headed over to Irma's house, our culture teacher. She is amazing and way cool. She always has the cutest outfits, and frequently wears leopard pants with her boots. She has two little kids and loves to cook she said.

First we sliced up some jicama and cucumbers and sprinkled them with chile and lime. Lime makes everything taste awesome, and the chile was super yummy here. We will have to get ourselves some at the store soon, so we can put in on everything like natives.

Basically we took over her kitchen, and we all had our own little job to help make our lunch for today. We had no idea how much food we were actually making...it was WAY more than expected.

This was actually really interesting. We grilled the poblano peppers on the stove until nice and crispy hot, then out them in a plastic bag, sealed tight, and let them sweat, so we could get the skin of easily. We used the poblano peppers for the soup. Yum!!

Jamaica, a flower, is popular as a drink. We took dried petals and boiled them in water to make jamaica water, which is very common. It was SUPER delicious, and I would totally make it again. It was a really good summer drink, not to much flavor, but not boring like water. Its also known to help cure stomach problems, and is the color of cranberry juice.

This wasn't even the half of the ingredients that went into our lunch. But you can see the jamaica in the bag up top, the corn for the soup, the mandarins for dessert, the tortillas for our chalupas, the jimaca and cucumbers, and lastly, those purple/blue oval tortillas? They are calles azul tortillas, which are thick like pitas, and have black beans between the tortilla layers...these are extra yummy!

Once we completed our big cooking adventure, we got to eat it all too! First we had some soup, which was a chicken broth with zucchini, corn, poblano peppers and chayote, another kind of squash. We made sure to write that recipe down, because I will be making it for everyone I know at home. It was my favorite.! After the soup, we enjoyed these chalupas, both with cheese, one with beans, the other with pork and salsa verde, which we also learned to make. We boiled down several ingredients, including tomatoes, peppers, garlic, etc, and then put them in a blender for instant green salsa. Soo Good!!

Clearly we enjoyed ALL of our food, and we even made grilled nopal. Its big flat cactus leaves and we put lime and salt on them. They are a little slimy, but good and way low in calories.

Also, since today was my "birthday", Irma taught us how to make a so simple mexican cheesecake. We blended lechera, cream cheese and two eggs together, put it in a graham cracker crust, baked it for twenty minutes, and spread mora (berries) on top. Success!! That was one awesome birthday cake. Did I mention that Lechera goes good on and in everything?!?!

It was even cuter because Irma sang to me all by herself, the typical Mexican Birthday song. She is really a sweet sweet lady.

Anyways, we barely made it back in time for school, and when I got there, I found this! Ohh my my,..now everyone knows its my birthday. Shoot. Our friends at the school are so cute though..isn't this so nice?? Carol was really proud of her bulletin board creation. haha.
After four long hours of school, I really wanted a nap, but instead we had a party!!!! We were too stuffed from lunch to go out to eat, so we just skipped it, and went to my house for cake and games and dancing. We invited some of our school friends, and church friends.

They all sang to me in spanish, and this was no typical birthday song. It was much longer and I am pretty sure they harmonized.

The cake was SUPER fantastic. Ashley snuck out during teaching to go buy a tres leches cake, because we have been dying for one, and obviously Birthdays are perfect occasions. It was tres leches with chocolate and nuez. This means, it had three milks, regular, evaporated and sweetened condensed milk, with chocolate and pecan. Yum!!! This picture doesn't even do it justice. The cakes here look way awesome. We ate the whole entire cake between us all. We played some silly games, and practiced our salsa dancing and just laughed like crazy. Thank goodness for Mexican UnBirthdays and Cake.!

-Sara Jacqueline