Leaving on the 10:00 bus for Buen Pastor for a day of administering massage to women who need it.
Archive for June, 2009
A late start
Posted in Buen Pastor, massage on June 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
GTO VW Club ’09
Posted in Buen Pastor, GTO on June 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
It was tough to choose, but I found a new favorite at this year’s Volkswagen extravaganza. Last year, there were around twenty participants, less than a quarter of the line of beetle beauties that stretched from one end to the other of Guanajuato’s downtown strip last Saturday. This year, the centro was packed with people admiring and cell snapping the VWs. The place was booming as stereos blasted from back seats, showcasing little cars with enormous attitude.
I’ll post more photos of this event later on in the week.
In other news, F and I attended the concert put on by the Buen Pastor girls for their mothers. It was wonderful. The girls sang their hearts out. Madre Lourdes stood alongside and sang with them. They were so animated and the selections were very sweet tributes to their mothers and to El Señor. The singing teachers are a lovely young couple who volunteer with the girls four hours a week. Madre Lourdes highly regards their work and is looking for a way to recognize them financially in the form of a small weekly payment. She believes the singing helps the girls therapeutically while giving them a creative outlet. As evidenced by yesterday’s performance, the girls love the singing and their teachers.
I love this car.
Enduro Rally
Posted in SMA on June 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
There’s lots of excitement in the air as the sound of motorbikes fill the jardin. This weekend, the Enduro Rally welcomes more than 350 bikers from Mexico, USA, Italy and France to race and to party for three days. There are young women are all over wearing “STAFF” tshirts tied in a knot at the belly paired with short-shorts and hooker heels.
F and I won’t be around to cheer the riders and check out the shorts n’ shoes. We’re headed for Guanajuato in a couple of hours for the Fiesta of San Juan and the Presa de la Olla. I go every year and am consistently amazed how close some of the rides come to hitting people in the head. Tomorrow, we’ll hear the girls sing to their mothers and others at Buen Pastor.
Frenchie
Posted in Buen Pastor on June 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Aurelio is spending a few weeks this summer volunteering at Buen Pastor in order to complete his social service requirements for University. He’s from France, speaks Spanish and some English, and is making himself wildly popular at the convent. He teaches French at the school three times a week, helps Maestro Chuy on the roof and tending the lawns, and has been teaching the women in the shelter the art of pâtisserie française. Everyday, he Skypes his mother for new pastry recipes.
Quite possibly for his own protection, Madre Lourde has sagaciously assigned him El Cuarto del Padre as his bedroom and personal space. The Father’s Room is located inside the convent and across the street from lovely, hormone-driven señoritas who are safely developing agonizing schoolgirl crushes on Aurelio from afar.
Hero
Posted in Buen Pastor, GTO on June 25, 2009 | 2 Comments »
I nominated Madre Lourdes as a CNN Hero this morning.
Yesterday, I added almost all the girls to the Girls’ Foster Care page. It was a full day of cropping photos, adjusting for light, and condensing interviews, and then working with the Weebly software which has a mind of its own. I also made a PDF document of the girls: each girl has her own page with a large photo at the top.
Sunday, F and I hope to make it to Buen Pastor for the Girls’ Music Concert. The girls will be singing to their mothers and Madre Lourdes has asked that we come. It will give me an opportunity to work on the People page, taking photos and recording bios earlier in the day.
The Twins
Posted in Buen Pastor, GTO on June 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Whenever I visit Buen Pastor, I most look forward to seeing Madre Lourdes and Madre Elvira. Lately, I’ve added Lourdes and Teodora to my looking forward to list. These two are absolutely precious and I love hearing about how they are progressing in school. They started school for the first time this year at age ten. They surpassed everyone’s expectations by catching up with their classmates. I always see them with their heads buried in a book or pouring over their math homework. Both want to be nuns when they grow up.
The silver lining circling my return to LCC in the Fall means that I will have the resources to sponsor the twins next school year. There’s a group of us working to find sponsors for each girl at Buen Pastor. Education is the key out of poverty. It certainly was for me.
Birds
Posted in Buen Pastor, GTO on June 23, 2009 | 1 Comment »
After the gym last night, F and I stopped to watch basketball. The guys were very good and the two teams were equally matched. The sun had set and the birds were so loud, they sounded like a soundtrack that had been dubbed to supercede all the other sounds: the bouce of the ball, the grunts, shouts, shoe skids, pats, and cuss words. I’ve named one guy puta madre as he frequently employs this phrase.
I leave for Guanajuato this morning. Buen Pastor might have to shut down the school due to lack of resources. But in good news, there’s a group raising money for a solar system. After a fund-raiser pizza party on July 4th, they’re hoping to install a small, homegrown system at a fraction of the regular cost.
Check
Posted in Pozos, SMA on June 22, 2009 | 2 Comments »
This week’s checklist:
- Print out Happiness and Dancing, the photos that Glennon took.
- Go to Buen Pastor and finish photographing the girls and update their page.
- Figure out what kind of accreditation Censolar has so F can enroll if it’s a good idea.
- Begin the arduous process of complying with immigration rules and regs in order to marry a Mexican. Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork.
- Buy vitamins and apple pie.
Palabrotas wall
Posted in Pozos on June 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Palabrotas
Posted in Pozos on June 20, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Dueling Cameras of Pozos
Posted in Pozos on June 19, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Glennon and I had a lot of fun with our cameras in Pozos. Someday, we would like to take the twins so we can shoot them instead of one another.
Green Spaces
Posted in Pozos on June 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
My friends are selling pieces of property outside of Guanajuato in hopes of building an ecological, sustainable community. They intend to promote ecological awareness by including water conservation practices, planting native flora to prevent erosion, and sharing a communal off grid solar/wind power plant. This is their brochure.
Openings
Posted in Pozos on June 17, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Hi Jesus
Posted in SMA on June 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
More ruins
Posted in Pozos on June 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Ruin
Posted in Pozos on June 12, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Hay Pulque
Posted in SMA on June 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Toone time
Posted in SMA on June 10, 2009 | 1 Comment »
I love it when the Toones come to town. I’m not sure where we’re going tomorrow, but we’re going.
Veggies
Posted in SMA on June 9, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Dress in Lomo
Posted in SMA on June 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
