Just finished reading my sister in law's blog about the beginning of her (4) kids' school year. I enjoyed reading about what is going on in their lives and found a lot of comfort in knowing about their day to day. It made me wonder if I would have found that same comfort if I weren't in Mexico. Maybe not. But I think maybe I would. The truth is that even if you live close by to someone, many someones, it's hard to keep a running dialogue. It's hard to share your day to day AND listen to everyone else's day to day on any sort of regular basis. I could name many examples of people who live in the same city, like each other, but only catch up once in a while. I hate to be a technology pusher, but how wonderful to have the option to remain an active part of each others' lives, regardless of where you are.

So, I decided I had better "pay it forward" at put a little something into our blog:

Enid is at school. Each day they send her home with a little paper "bracelet". Untaped and unfolded, it is a little report of her day. A simple checklist for the teacher to complete with space to write in what they had for refrigerio (snack - provided by the school). It says things like today I was happy, sad, mad, sick. I worked, played with friends, played alone, had fun, was distracted, felt tired, etc. I went used the toilet, didn't use the toilet. Ate my snack, Ate some snack, Didn't eat snack.

Enid is very amused by this bracelet. For fun, when she took it off, I said, why don't you read it to me today. So she looked down at it and sounded out the word "triste" (sad). I was a bit surprised, though I more or less knew that she knows her letters and what sounds they make. Of course, then she was confused why it said triste if she wasn't triste. So I explained the check marks. I asked if she wanted to read the one with the check mark and she made out the word "feliz". Who knew?

Maybe I'll balance this report later with a story of one of her amazingly unclever activities.

As for physical ability, goofball would be the best way to describe Enid. Aside from preschool (Mon-Fri, 9am-1pm), she goes to dance class twice a week from 3pm-4pm. She was showing a lot of interest in dance and there is a stuio around the corner, so we signed up. It's called pre-ballet / pre-jazz. She loves it. They have a lot of fun and I've been impressed at how they incorporate classical things like posture, balance, grace into interesting activities for the kids. But it is so funny to watch how Enid traslates watching a physical movement into doing a physical movement. It's just plain goofy. Something as simple as putting hands on hips: Thumbs go around back, fingers in front, hands more or less parallel with the floor, right? Not for Enid. Entire hand goes in front, with heel of palm resting on hip and with fingers pointed down. She has some sort of quirky interpretation for many of the things they do. I've noticed though that even just in the first week, she's made some improvement. For example, she now hops like a frog with both feet together - would not (could not?) do it before.

Almost time to pick up Enid from school.

As for me, I get depressed when Enid goes to school and all I have to look at is unpacking boxes whose contents don't really have a good place to go. I'm alternately enthused for getting it all done and organized and unmotivated to do it and find that the apartment is still ugly and not organized the way I'd do it if we were going to be here a while. Translation, I really don't want to spend money on things like bookshelves, etc when I know we're going to ditch them a year from now. At some point, I will get motivated to find creative solutions and probably will spend a little money too. But not today.

As for money. Here is what some things cost (for your curiosity and because when we were planning this trip we had a very hard time knowing what our cost of living would be because we really didn't know what things would cost (prices are in pesos. current exchange is about 10.8:1, easier to assume 10:1 if you want to translate):
Monthly rent for our apartment: $8,000
Haven't had to pay utilities yet
fill the 10 gal tank on our car: $270
8oz of organic jack cheese: $45
1 can black beans: $6.90
3 sm/meg avocados: $13
1 box HEB brand cornflakes: $14.60
20 whole wheat tortillas: $9.70
16oz bag organic brocolli: $21.50
1 jar natural (the kind that separates - hard to find!) peanut butter: $25.60
1 large roll paper towels: $19.30

OK, gotta go...