Trompo Magico Children's Museum

"Guadalajara" is one of those amazing words that when spoken correctly, sounds nothing like how an American would say it. In general, locals refer to it as "Guad" spoken with a lovely hacking G (think hacking a loogie, and you're close to the right sound)! I think perhaps I will never say it right...and therefore have settled with my Gringo "Gwad"

Anyways...we have made some wonderful friends in Guadalajara! Earlier this year we attended the temple that belongs to our church, and I met a Gringo senior missionary couple who had just started their mission, serving in the Guad temple. I got the wife's email address, and we became email buddies. On a whim, I asked her if perhaps she knew of any young couples that lived near the temple, who might be interested in babysitting for us, so we could more easily attend the temple regularly. She returned to me with an email address for Megan & Hugo, who are some of our new best friends!

Megan is from Washington, and her husband is from a small Portuguese speaking island off of the coast of Africa. They have three children, and our kids are all similar ages! We have officially probably spent 75% of our weekends with them for the past several months. We have been able to do a couple of temple swaps, where they watch our children as we attend the temple, and then we switch and watch their kids while they get to go to the temple.

While doing this switch last month, Jared and I exited the temple and I noticed a younger woman on the stairs with a kid, and my Gringo radar went off!

We started a conversation with her and suddenly found ourselves making friends with Liesel and David, who live in Puerto Vallerta. They own a Segway tour in Puerto Vallerta and I have seen their business reviews on Trip Advisor (5 Stars!). Everyone LOVES them! Anyone for a trip to PV?!

Back to the story...

They were in Guad for a youth temple trip, but had brought their own car and had some time to kill before heading back to the coast. They asked advice on what cool things they could do in Guadalajara, in which we really had nothing to offer (heck...all we do is shop in Costco!!). They told us about a Children's Museum in the area ("really?! Oh--cool!"), and we agreed to go with them and our 6 kids in tow (remember, we had Megan & Hugo's kids, too!).

Liesel and David (Liesel is from UT and David is from Mexico City) led us through Guad like they were experts (they put us "locals" to shame!), and we found the Trompo Magico Children's Museum without too much trouble.

It was an amaaaazing find! I think it puts the Salt Lake City Children's Museum to shame (although I'm not dissing on that...it is awesome, too!)...but it is less than half the price, and much larger! Admission for kids and adults is $35 pesos (approx $3), and you can pay a bit more to do some super cool activities, if you choose. We stuck with the basic price, and were not disappointed.

They have many many different rooms (so many that they actually give you a map), and even have activities/rooms for older children, in addition to the younger. We stuck to just one of the giant rooms, and the kids stayed entertained for several hours (we had to drag them away in the end). They did their grocery shopping, played nurse, cooked in a kitchen, went fishing, could read books, build with giant blocks, and the list went on...

Ella with her shopping list of produce...

Dr. Ella...

The fishing hole...

By far the coolest section was the BUBBLE place. It was soooooo cool! This is the ceiling...

A fairly short line waited to go into the giant bubble maker. The large metal ring is lowered into the bubble pool below, and raised to form a giant bubble around the person standing there. The kids liked to pop it by touching it, or watch it expand by gently blowing on it.

Also VERY cool was the crazy wire contraption that even kids were allowed to operate. It made a huge bubble that would then fly above your head until it popped.

And of course, many many other opportunities for making bubbles!

They close this bubble section every hour for 10 minutes to clean up, and start the mess again!

Anyways, it was such a great fun-filled day! Jared thinks we should start hanging out at the temple more often...because we tend to meet the coolest people there :-)

I agree!

Ballet Class...

Ella has been begging for ballet classes for approximately 2 years (since we last lived here). When I discovered 3 of her friends attend a local class, and that the cost is only $250 pesos/month (less than $25), I decided we should give it a try.

The first day of class she jumped into the class of 6-9 year olds, she proved she is a natural! She had good form, posture, and keeps her feet turned out like a pro! She is the smallest in her class (although another girl comes close), but she tries hard and really looks forward to class 2 times each week!

POP QUIZ: How do you say "ballet" in Spanish?

Everyone here seems to say it as: "Bah-lett"

I guess they didn't stick with the whole French thing...

Umm...okay!

Star Day

The last quarter of school, every child is highlighted on their very own "Star Day." On this special day, the parents of the Star child are invited to come to class and do an activity with the children. Some parents may choose to play a movie, make some crafts, play some sports, etc.

Since my girls love to make beaded jewelry, I died some pasta noodles (super easy and cheap--food coloring and rubbing alcohol!), purchased some stretchy necklace cord, and we made noodle jewelry in both girls' classes.

All of the kids in both classes really seemed to enjoy it (even the boys, which I was a bit worried about)!

Here is Ella and her best bud, Alex (the only other classmate who has 2 Gringo parents). Alex has been living in Mexico for nearly 3 years, and is now fluent in English and Spanish.

The view of Ella's classroom. The kids all wear uniforms--a school polo shirt and navy bottoms of choice (skirt, shorts, pants, or even a dress).

It was kind of funny to see how the different children managed their noodles/beads. This beautiful little girl (with a Barbie doll Mom, I might add...) separated hers by color and type. She was the only one!

In Maiya's class the children tried very hard to bead the noodles. "No puedo," they exclaimed ("I can't"), as the teachers and I assured them they could! With a bit of help, all of the kids managed to walk away with at least una bulsera o collar (a bracelet or necklace).

One of Maiya's best buds, Jimena:

Maiya's teacher helping some of the children glue noodles to a sun clip-art I printed out, just in case some of the kids wanted to do it, too!

A view of Maiya's classroom. This is the youngest group at the school, and some of these children are still in diapers!

Maiya's entire day is in Spanish. She is picking up a lot of the language, and her teachers tell us she seems to understand almost everything.

She has also mastered the Spanish roll of the tongue. It is ridiculous how she applies it, though. She rolls EVERYTHING, even when seemingly impossible.

These are some words she manages to roll (don't ask me how): could, would, hurt

You try it, see if you can pull it off!

When Maiya is playing pretend and talking to herself, she almost always talks in "Spanish." I must put it in quotes, because it is not true Spanish. Sure, I hear plenty of Spanish words, but she also sticks in Spanish-sounding gibberish, too. It is cute to hear her make up words, but have them sound Spanish instead of English.

Also, about 50 times a day Maiya gives us a Spanish translation for a word. If we are talking about a computer keyboard, for example, Maiya would say something like this:

"My teachers say ______" (insert a true Spanish, or made up Spanish-gibberish word).

I applaud her when she is correct, and when I know it is just Spanish-sounding gibberish, I just say, "Oh, Really?", to which she confidently says "Uh-huh!"

Overall, I am hearing both of the girls use much more Spanish, lately (even Ella)! They often respond with simple answers in Spanish...and I am discovering already that they are teaching me! I am so excited for them to be fully bilingual. What a huge blessing and benefit this will be to them in their lives!

Now if only I could manage to become bilingual this quickly, too! How jealous I am! Fortunately, I am understanding more and more, but I really lack the skills and knowledge to put the sentences together (I need to study more). The exciting part is that I now find myself thinking in Spanish...or at least challenging myself to figure out how to say a particular phrase in Spanish...which is a good first step!

Un Nuevo Techo...

A new roof, that is...

Sometimes I find it amazing that we can be friends with people that we can barely communicate with!
One of the new families in our church ward/congregation has 3 children who are all close in age to our children. The parents, Maria and Luis, parents do not speak English, and so I do my best to put together my truly terrible Spanish in return. They live up at the very top of the hill in Chapala, which means that they climb up and down that hill to catch the bus. We give them rides to and from church whenever we are able.

We noticed there are a lot of needs that we would like to address. One of those needs was their "kitchen" area, which had a roof made from a tarp and some junk scraps of odd sorts thrown on top. The kitchen is really just an extension of their house (built brick-by-brick by themselves), and the walls are made from junk scraps, such as pieces of old screens or doors that perhaps other people threw out. It is humble.

Anyways...regarding the roof...the wife told us that during the rainy season the roof leaks and she cannot cook on the stove. We volunteered to help replace their roof, and made plans to go pick out the materials with them.

We were happily surprised when the ward leaders addressed this need in a meeting the day before the scheduled date. They volunteered to pay for the project--even better!

A few other young adults volunteered to help with the project, and they all met up with Jared and the family to take care of the job. As it turns out, the company that sold the roofing closed before they were able to deliver the materials. Ugh.

So, the first day of the project they did some other tasks. Here is Luis making a new foundation for their small wash basin to be moved outdoors, closer to the hose spout.

Yes, closer to the HOSE spout.

They do not have running water in their home.

Things like this make me realize how spoiled I am. Seriously...have you considered that people live without running water in their homes?!!

They are pretty lucky that their source of water is a hose in the front yard...at least it is close!

But...if this was you...

How would you wash your dishes? Or your clothes? Or your children? Or your hair? Or mop your floor?

Well, as it turns out...they don't do much of these

:::sigh:::

But we had to start somewhere....

And so...the roof was their biggest priority...

The second day Jared got the supplies delivered successfully, and they put the new metal roofing up. Luis ended up doing most of the manual labor to secure it to the roof.

The front yard (and home) consists of piles of what we would consider junk, but Jared said that Luis kept pulling supplies out of it, like a magic hat (although not nearly as cool-looking)!
The final result was a HUGE improvement!! Here is Jared with the family (on the right), and a young adult who helped (on the left).

Again, it is hard to know where to begin when addressing some of the basic needs that many of us take for granted.

1. Running water in our homes (needed for baths, sinks, toilets, etc)

2. A front yard that is not just dirt (which tracks into the house and makes it difficult to keep things clean)

3. Clean drinking water (many of these impoverished people buy sodas instead of filtered water!)

I have such a great desire to go into these homes, clean them to the bones, and help teach them how to keep things clean and organized. But in reality, where do you begin?

The Abastos...

I didn't take any photos that do this justice...

But the place to shop for groceries in Guadalajara is at the Abastos. It is not easy to navigate, as it is block after block after block of specialty vendors. For example, you will pass a whole block or two that specializes in fresh spices (yay!), or fresh produce (a watermelon vendor, a mango vendor, etc). They have many many different things, but I admit we only made it a block or two in the hour that we had to spare one Saturday.

These vendors prefer to sell in bulk to smaller vendors who then resell the items throughout the area. Truck after truck would pull in to pick up some goods (perhaps even headed to the US? I wouldn't doubt it!).

We were overwhelming by the size of the place, and ended up giving Ella the camera so she would catch some photos (like the one above). Again, this photo doesn't do it justice. This is just one of the little streets that makes up a massive massive amount of blocks with soooo many vendors.

I love some of the photos Ella took....

One of my favorites in the batch is actually one I took of the girls standing in front of the GIANT basket of chilis!

The girls are show-stoppers. Everyone stops to take a look at such fair children (and fair parents)!

One our trip to the coast last month, we were getting out of the car to go into a restaurant, and Maiya said, out of nowhere, "I think they will say I'm beautiful!"

She is so used to people stopping to talk to her and "oooh" and "ahhh," and call her a little doll (in Spanish) that she is actually coming to expect it! It made me giggle...!!!

Church surprises...

So, some of you may not know some of the latest turn of events in my life...so here goes. This is really more for journal purposes for me...so I won't blame you if you just browse through the highlights!

Some of the biggest challenges we have been given here have been church-related.

I was asked to be the Primary President in our small ward/congretation of only 15 or so active children. Our church meetings last 3 hours. The first hour is in a combined Sacrament Meeting, and the next two hours we have two different classes (1 hour each) for the children. I am in charge of organizing and managing these two hours of classes.

May I remind you that this is a Spanish-speaking ward? And these children speak SPANISH? Yeah...it IS Mexico, after all.

The only problem?

I do NOT speak Spanish very well (yet...sigh...).

Thankfully, I have two wonderful counselors whom I adore! One if fully bilingual, and the other can communicate with me pretty well, but we don't catch it all (in either English or Spanish)! They help me in everything, and I am very grateful for them!

I have discovered a few big challenges...

1. The previous Primary President was president for about 15 years, which means that things have been done one way for a very long time.

2. The children don't know any songs. And I mean any. (Not to mention the adults don't know the Primary songs, either!)

3. The children have major reverence issues. They have not been taught to stay in their chairs (they leave to go to the bathroom at any given moment both during classes and Sacrament meeting).

So, I have made some changes:

1. Music is a major part of class--we are teaching the best that we can!

2. We switched to having divided classes first and Sharing Time second (this has solved a problem regarding a lack of classrooms, and it has also thrown the kids off guard--which is good, considering they don't fall into all of their old habits)!

3. We switched the setup of the room so they can't exit as quickly--and we guard those doors like nobody's business!

4. We started a Nursery, which has been a total flop so far. We can't get the young children to leave the Mother's alone in class, which makes for a very noisy Sunday School and Relief Society. We called 2 Nursery leaders, who only do 1 hour each. One hasn't been to church (with her nursery age son) in probably 2 months. The other just got called, but one child has been gone for several weeks, and the other kids won't go to Nursery.

My Sunday responsibilites are:

1. I give the Sharing Time lesson once every 3 weeks (switching off with my counselors who also teach the 2 different Primary classes we have--older and younger class).

2. I also give the nursery lesson, when there are actually children. This forces me to try to teach some very basic gospel principles in Spanish. Thank goodness I can access the English and Spanish manuals online, so I can compare the manuals and know exactly what is going on!

3. My first counselor and I also do Music Time for 20 minutes each week. It has been tough to teach the kids each and every song from scratch. Even "I am a Child of God" (or "Soy un Hijo de Dios") has been a big feat! They don't know the Birthday Song, the "Hello" song, or anything!!!!!!!!!!!! I play a cheapo keyboard that I bought at a garage sale for $10 years ago (they've only used CD's in the past) I got at a garage sale for $10 3 years ago). My counselor teaches them in Spanish, and I find it very difficult to memorize words in a different language! THANK GOODNESS for great counselors!

Another challenge came up immediately upon receiving the calling: The Stake Primary Presidency informed us that they were having a special event (in Guadalajara, where every other ward is located), and they wanted us to prepare a dance for the event. Each ward was asked to select a country (US was taken) and present a dance in a few months' time.

So, we set out to teach them a dance from Spain. And we quickly realized the task was impossible. Our 15 active primary children were never there at the same time (sometimes only 7 showed, or 10, or the dance teacher didn't show). That, and with our major reverence issues we have, they simply would not listen to the teacher.

We gave up, and decided we wouldn't go.

But then a new Stake Primary Presidency was called, and they came to visit us the week before the event. They were not happy that we were missing the event, and they insisted we prepare something.

So, we told them we could sing the Easter songs we had just done in Sacrament meeting just a few weeks earlier. They said, "It would be nice if you could sing a Mother's Day song, since it is also to celebrate Mother's Day". Haha. Yeah. As if we could teach them a new song THAT DAY, to sing THAT WEEKEND. Yeah--this--when our children don't know ANY songs (heck, they didn't even know those Easter songs, but luckily some of our children are old enough to read and can follow our flipcharts!).

So...go, we did. We stuffed all of the families we could into various cars (the majority of our ward membership doesn't have cars) and made the 1 hour drive to Guadalajara for the special event.

We got up to sing our Easter songs, and discovered that they keyboard they had next to the stage didn't work. "You will need to sing without music". HA!! AS IF these children could sing WITH the music?! HA!! But...the kids did the best they could (speak-singing), and they were proud of themselves, and we were proud of them for sticking it out.

And then we watched the other wards perform their elaborately choreographed numbers, and we oozed with jealously that their children were capable of listening to an adult long enough to learn how turn in a circle or rock their hips.

The other wards had full, sometimes elaborate, costumes, and at one point I turned to our Bishopric Counselor and commented, "I think our budget would allow us to buy one of those shirts in a couple of months"... haha!

Only 4 of the (perhaps) 7 wards in the Stake performed their dance number (so hey--we couldn't have been the only ones to skip out), and of course the music was BLASTED (Mexican-style). I was deaf by the time we left.

There were also some young adults helping that served all of the mothers a snack.

Cantelope with vanilla ice cream and a chocolate stick. Would would 'uv thunk? Not a bad treat!

I admit that every Saturday evening is a night for a mental breakdown as I prepare lessons and music, and wonder what the heck I am doing in this calling.

On the other hand...I look forward to the day when I will look back at these moments and laugh, and think "You remember when they called me to Primary President in a Spanish-Speaking ward, and I couldn't even speak Spanish?! Not to mention understand it all?! Hahaha!"

Ha. HA.

Right.

And so...the story of our survival continues...

More photos...

Ella and Maiya enjoy having play dates as often as possible. One day when their friend, Alex, was over...we discovered them in the front gate "selling" beaded jewelry they had made. We thought it was cute, and didn't stop them. We live on a dead-end street with very little traffic. We were surprised when they actually managed to sell a few of their very unique creations! Business owners in training...

The house down the street from us has been under construction for at least 3 or 4 months, now. They've had to close down the street a few times to bring in the big concrete truck that dumps the concrete on the top of the house. Luckily, we've managed to see their cardboard signs announcing the closure, and we've parked on the other side of the construction and have walked to our house. We haven't been locked in (like some others in the neighborhood)!

The missionaries are a big part of our life here. We do a lot with/for them, and they do a lot with/for us (translations, etc)! We feed them usually once a week, and we've made very good friends with them. It is always sad when a missionary is transferred...but we've always liked the "new" ones, too!

Ella likes to take photos, when she is given the rare opportunity to control the camera. She caught this one of Jared, and it deserves to be shared! Sorry, Love!

The other night I went into the kids' room to shut the garden doors. I decided to steal a peak at the cute kids, and was in giggling hysterics when I realized Ella looked like this:

That is a toy that she got from a school pinata (it's one of the those perfume poof/rings things that I've never understood)! She was totally OUT!! And I had to take a photo!