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Hey everyone, how are you all? We are still doing pretty good. We had another crazy weekend. It was their independence weekend, so all the people in the town were in the plaza all weekend. There were parades, concerts, bands, dancing, shows, fireworks, and a program where the mayor spoke. (The mayor waved at me in the parade and I felt so cool!) It was so much fun. There were food stands everywhere- like at the state fair- only Mexican style. We took tons of pics- I forgot the camera at home, but I'll post them later this week. The fireworks were kind of scary for me. They were huge and beautiful, but they were so low. Like, huge peices of fire were falling onto the streets- Adam of course thought it was awesome. He's crazy. Another tradition that they have (which I again thought was super dangerous) was on Friday night at 11:00 they rang this bell (I guess this happens in every town in Mexico on Sept. 15 at 11 pm-it's like to re-inact when this priest dude did it 200 years ago to start the revolution against spain) and everyone started shouting viva mexico¨. Ok, that's not the dangerous part. After that, people start shooting guns into the air. I guess a lot of people have died and gotten majorly injured in the past (cuz the bullet goes up and then has to come back down and land somewhere- like on people's heads!). We knew about that in advance ( thanks again to our friend carla) so we quickly walked out of the plaza area to safety. Overall, it was a very cool experience. I guess they have an even more crazy and important holiday Nov. 20th where there will be more parades with like live human pyramids and lots of festivities. It was just cool because they take so much pride in their country. EVERYONE in the whole town comes to the plaza (this center square of town) and participates the whole weekend. It's very cool. It's sort of hard sometimes being ¨different¨from everyone else though. Seriously, Adam and I and the 2 other teachers are the only ¨gringos¨(that's there slang word for americans) in the whole town. We get stared at everywhere we go. I mean, the people are nice and everything, but it still feels wierd. I try to have a positive attitude and just smile at everyone, but because of the language barrier and the fact that we look so different, I'm kind of self conscious a lot. Adam doesn't seem as bothered by it as I am. He's always had that à don't care what other people thing of me¨attitude anyway. I know it's a learning experience and I have to think of it as a positive thing- maybe so that when we come home I'll have more compassion for people in our country who are different from me. Sometimes I just feel like one of those geeky ¨foreign exchange students¨from highschool. Oh well, I totally need to get over it and just enjoy this time. It will also help when we learn more spanish. Ok, we gotta go run some errands. Have a great week everybody!!!! luv, sarah
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