tacos and beans

Hola from Mexico hombres... Me and Kyle are communicating to you thru cyberspace before breakfast on a warm morning at Casa Hogar, an orphanage/half way house for kids between the ages of 5 and 22 in El Limon, Tamaulipas. I{d say after two weeks of the Mexican heat and food we{re finally settling in. This place is great, once you look past the piles of poo and smoldering trash, its easy to see that there{s a lot of love that trickles from the top down. By that I mean the Mamas and Papa who run this place care for the kids well and the kids seem to get it and care for each other well. I already have a favorite based purely on cuteness level. His name is Casear and he{s 6. I{m pretty sure he{s cute enough to get away with murder and the bad thing is he knows it.

One terrific thing we{ve run into is the unexpected benefits of the language barrier. We{d heard all about the difficulties of not understanding what{s being said around you but no one has mentioned the amazing plus side. One thing is that we have no idea what{s going on, ever. This is great because 1. we can{t be blamed for anything, we{re just goofy gringos and 2. everything is a surprise. One evening me and kyle were ready for bed, he was in the shower and i was doing laundry when someone asked if i was coming, i did like i always do and said "ci." Turns out we were going to spend the evening in Mante (the next biggest city over) at a birthday party, but we don{t figure things like this all out at once. We sit down at a large table in a strange house with loud music playing. People are dancing. A trdaitional mexican dish is brought out. water balloons are all thrown at one kid, pepe. things still aren{t clicking. A birthday cake is finally brought out and then we get it. Twas great fun, but even more fun because we just got in the van and had no idea where we were going and we laugh the whole time as we}re half trying to figure out whats going on and half enjpy the ignorant bliss. The last advantage of the language barrier is that you can look a kid in the face and say what ever you want and they have no idea what your saying. Kyle takes advantage of this more often than me, saying things like, oh, jaun, mr tough guy, i{m gonna roll you into a little butter ball, and if you know kyle you know the comments and little sayings gets more and more extravegant.
but I must go now, my time has run out, so Adios...