When in Chiapas: Beaches, Birthdays and Bingo: bringing 2011 to a close

November and December brought me increasing comfort in my daily life in Chiapas. It brought multiple chances to explore my surroundings outside of San Cristóbal. It brought many days filled with Skip-bo, nights full of salsa dancing, deeper connections, new friends and the passage of many holidays both familiar and unfamiliar. These months brought my first visitor, my 23rd birthday and most importantly, an increasing sense of peace in who and where I am in this world. But enough of my words, dear reader. I´ll let the images do the rest of the talking.

Magaly--Gabriel´s sister


A weekend at the beach: Boca del Cielo Photos courtesy of Lucie

Lathering on the sunscreen. Be proud, Dad, very proud.

I think I´m third from the left

Because what´s a weekend at the beach without seafood?
The shark empanadas were probably my favorite.

Though you can´t tell, this sunset gave way to one of the
starriest nights I´ve every experienced. It was magical.

This is the little girl I wrote about in my Thanksgiving post:
the one who wished we would all become stars one day.

Día de la Revolución parade
20 November

My 23rd birthday was one of, if not the best I´ve ever experienced.
After taking the traditional face-bite of my tres leches cake at INESIN,
I returned home to a lunch with my family and the Blocks. These are the
delicious lemon pound cakes Jaquie baked and the card written by Ezra.
The two candles along with another in the shape of a red apple that adorned
my room when I arrived became my advent wreath during the month of December.

Excessively excited to turn 23!!!!!

Eduardo attempting (though only partially successfully)
to avoid being captured in this momentous photo.


And the evening ended with a party with friends. Meet Nicolas and Luis! Photos again courtesty of Lucie.

And the happiest part of my wonderful day:
EEYORE PIÑATA!

Marie and Lucie--party-organizers extraordinaire

Saturday at Rancho Nuevo

Even a day-outing couldn´t keep Liliana and me
from our Skip-bo addiction.

Carne asada

Chiapas: my beautiful home

Chiflón: one of the many waterfalls in this water-filled state

A day at Lagos de Colón with INESIN


Young-adult Christmas celebration at the Presbyterian church I´ve been attending. During this evening I had the honor of being a judge for the American Idolesque caroling competition. Too bad I´ve never actually watched the show :)

In true Mexican form, I´m getting my fill of piñatas this year.

Amanda


Abi at the grill during INESIN´s Christmas party And yes, I ate the meat :)

This is Miriam, MCC Chiapas´ newest team member. She came
in late November and is renting an apartment on my street. The
week before Christmas we got together for a morning of cookie-baking.

Liliana and Eduardo stopped by to help

Peppernuts, sugar cut-outs and a few lime shortbread cookies.
The rest are featured in the center of the table as lime butter
brittle! oops :)

Elena, teaching me to embroider

And then came Christmas and Joe, my first visitor. On Christmas Eve
we ate cookies, drank hot chocolate, read the Christmas story and my
favorite copy of The Night Before Christmas, mailed by my wonderful mother.

Christmas fireworks. I won´t even venture a guess
at how many of these things exploded from the middle
of December until 6 January (Día de los Reyes Magos).

On the way to Palenque.

New Year´s Eve. We filled the evening with fireworks, LOTS of
meat (I even sampled raw beef) and bingo.

I thought the midnight toast would bring the evening´s festivities
to a close, but apparently changing the calendar only helped spice
the party up. Instead of scurrying off to bed, we spent the next two
hours dancing around the living room.

Joe and I did a lot over his almost two weeks here, though you
won´t see it reflected in these photos. Somehow his camera (which
we had used for visually recording our adventure) got lost. To
compensate, on the last two days I took an excessive number of
photos of our trip to the Lagos de Montebello.