Greg's First Post

Okay, so I've been chided and called out by my family for failing to post anything to the blog since I set it up two weeks ago. A few things I really want to write about are the amazing impact this trip is having on my children; my complex love-hate relationship with the Spanish language (so beautiful! so many accursed verb endings!); ruminations on our neighborhood and the amazing children we've been getting to know; the role technology is playing in our communications and learning here; my experiences in the city; and our discovery of a small coffee farm where the man and woman who own the place took an hour to show us their coffee trees and teach us about the equipment they use to ferment, dry and roast the beans. But to get things started I'm going to offer a quick overview of what my days look like here, together with a few choice images that have captured my eye during my explorations of the city.

My days start with getting the boys involved in some form of home-schooly type activity (the other day Mahlon worked on fractions, Bax wrote in his journal, and both worked on building models of Mayan and Azetic temples). Once they're rolling, I spend about 2-3 hours online doing various work-related things.

Me, in our sitting area, so hard at work I'm blurry:

We live in the south-west of the city, in an area called Infonavit Las Vegas. "Infonavit" is an acronym that stands for "Instituto del Fondo Nacional para la Vivienda de los Trabajadores." Which means "Institute for the National Fund for Workers' Housing." It is basically what we in the states call a government-funded housing project.

The houses in this area are all built of concrete, are 1-2 stories tall, are set very close to each other, and are nearly all painted in stunning bright colors.



After breakfast at around 10am, the kids and I take a cab
to the north-east of the city to Mahlon, Baxter and Tula's nanny lives. After getting them settled, I walk towards the center of the city, taking a different route each day. Along the way, I encounter many things both beautiful and puzzling. Some examples follow:

- Zapateria Frank (="Frank's Zapateria"= "Frank's shoe store" where I can only hope the Mothers of Invention frontman bought his brown shoes footwear):

-A revolutionary rooster:
-Strolling musicians:

-Restaurants with Confucian virtues:

-Hopped up VWs:-Gorgeous posters:

-Many, many small stores--the most common of which, I've noticed, are devoted to selling one of the following types of thing: cell phones, eyeglasses, clothing, auto parts, tools, paper supplies or food:-Emblems celebrating the town:

Eventually, after 10 blocks or so, I end up at the Parque Miguel Hidalgo,
where I sit to have coffee, do some reading, then prep for my Spanish class, which runs from 1-2. I then walk back to the nanny's and either take a taxi with the kids to pick up Kristin and head home for a 3:00 lunch or stay in the center city and explore with the kids. I spend my evenings playing with the kids and the neighborhood kids (yesterday was a long game of soccer) and then, after a late dinner (around 8 or 9 here) I usually get on my laptop to catch up on some work, work on my Spanish a bit, then head off to bed around 11 or 12.

More soon...