Category: Mexico

Spanish improving?

Yesterday I was talking to the mother of one of the young ladies who comes to our church. The mother was telling me a story about a French Dr. who is living in this area doing research. She had met him through a lecture that he was giving down town.

I asked her if he spoke Spanish or worked through a translator.

“Oh, he speaks Spanish, very well” she replied.

I then was digging for a compliment and set her up with one of my favorite comments. “Oh, so he speaks as well as I do?”

She very seriously looked at me and said, “Oh, no, he speaks good Spanish. Not like yours.”

Talk about deflating a fellow.

What happened?

I was on a roll. I had posted to the blog every day this year. Then BOOM! No post yesterday. And I did not even realize it until this morning. *sigh*

Now to pick up the pieces and move on with life I guess.

The last few days have been a bit of a blur. Our son has been away on a trip to the US and we are trying to get stuff shipped to him so that he can be our mule and bring stuff back down to us. So I have been ordering different items like a motherboard, microphones, etc. He will be back next week. When he gets here, we will be glad to see him again…and get our stuff. 🙂 It is the same with everyone that comes down to visit. We have them bring in the loot that we either can’t get here, or is too expensive to buy here.

I found an old college friend by searching on the ‘net tonight. Why his name popped into my head, I don’t know. I wonder how long it will take for him to show up here. I posted a comment to his most recent blog posting. I figure he will be by to visit soon.

Tomorrow is my wife’s birthday. Typical of me, I can’t put my hands on what I want for her. I finally figured out a few items. One I had to order which may be here tomorrow. Another one, the place was closed when I went to pick it up this evening. Another gift is something simple, but the store only had one when I was there and it was beat up. So, she won’t have any gifts in her hands when she wakes up in the morning. But, hopefully, I will be able to get something to her by the end of the day.

I guess that is what I get for putting off my shopping to the last minute. But that is just the way I am.

Photo scavenger hunt

Ever done one of those? When I was a teen it meant looking for Polaroid cameras to take with you as immediate proof that you took the pictures. In the day in which we live now, digital cameras help with these kinds of activities.

We took our Deaf church down town tonight on the main square. We had two teams and each had a list of items that they needed to photograph. But, of course, they were not things like “a flower” or “a bird.” It was more in line with “Take a photo of the group with a soldier.”Six way telephone call

Some of the more interesting:
Ask a policeman to sign the paper. My team got the signature of the Commandant of the Governor’s Palace Guard. Another item that we asked him for was to be able to take a picture of one of our people wearing one of their helmets. He was very gracious with the signature. He even wrote out a nice little note to the group. But when asked about the helmet, it was obvious that we had over stepped our limits. We left the palace quickly.

Trade shoes with a total stranger. We were running out of time by the time we got to that one. We tried convincing one young man to help us out. He was not to be persuaded. The next fellow we approached seemed a bit more willing. We spent 5 minutes with him trying to convince him to do it. We finally did.

Kiss a horse. My team did not get this one, but the other team did.

There were several items on the list that my team accomplished, but the other team did not. However, the other team looked for high point items. When it was all tallied in the end, we won by 200 points, though we took many more pictures than the other team, they purposefully sought out the more difficult tasks.

After we took the pictures we returned to the church where I gave a short devotional while my wife was putting the pictures from the cameras onto the computer. We then projected the pictures onto the wall while eating pizza. It was a great activity.

More sizing problems

I had written a few months back that we were in the US this summer to do a bit of shopping. I could not find the jeans that I wanted because Wal-Mart didn’t carry size 32, presumably because they were too small. Previous to that I never had problems in the US finding pants big enough, but had problems in México because they don’t have large size pants.

Well, I went shopping for jeans again today in México. Still looking for size 32. Sam’s carries the pants that I like. But the smallest size they have is 33. Still out of luck.