Of Moustaches and Men

Ow, that hurt like crap! Not 5 minutes ago I was sitting peacefully in my own personal space at dinner, trying to eat beans that were way to spicy for me through my shaggy moustache, sweat beading up on my forehead and my nose starting to run, when Angel, a 12 year old Mexican boy, leaned over, into MY bubble, and plucked one of my moustache hairs out with his fingers. As he held it triumphantly between his fingers and showed it to his peers around him as if it were a trophy, i couldn't help but let a tear gather in the lower corner of my eye. Mostly the tear was a result of my mouth being on fire and a piece of my upper lip missing. And through my single tear, i could see a small piece of skin still clinging to the lone hair Angel had heroically taken from me. They all laughed. I tried not to cry or explode. And as you can deduce by the fact that i am writing this now, i did not explode. But i am growing a moustache, and so is Kyle. Mines been going for a solid 3 months while he got a late start and is running on 2 months. The kids at Casa Hogar don't like our moustaches even though it seems that every Mexican man over the age of 30 has one. They are constantly telling us we should shave and we say no but i guess today Angel thought he would start the process early for me.

On that note, we are now in our 12th week at Casa Hogar, which is just crazy. It would seem at this point that we'd have a pretty good grip on the realities of Casa Hogar but we are still amazed daily by what we don't know because of our inefficiecies with Spanish. When we arrived here, we figured an orphanage in Mexico would mean we'd be roughin it a bit. I mean, we have electricity and ovens and 2 tvs but we still have to wash our clothes by hand and theres no air conditioning and the showers are freezing and there's goats and all that good stuff. So 4 or 5 weeks in when we discovered the multiple washers and dryers here at Casa Hogar that they use for sheets and blankets, we still figured ourselves to be living a bit below our normal standards. It was a surprise and of great help for my jeans to find a washing machine because when i am expected to wash clothes by hand it just doesn't happen that frequently. But I'd say the biggest surprise happened a week ago. The weather had been getting perpetually colder, especially at night. Don't get me wrong, its still hot as butt during the day, but at night it gets cold and the cold showers we'd been taking had been getting colder and colder. It was to the point that we would run and do push ups every night to work up some type of body heat before jumping under the slow drizzle of icy water to scrub down our grubby bodies in less than 60 seconds. Then on wednesday we were off-handedly complaining about the showers to Fernanda (16 year old daughter of Mamma nad Pappa). She informed us that they have hot water here at Casa Hogar. Our mouths hung open a bit. She says in the niños bathroom they take hot showers everyday. To quote her (translated to English of course) "I don't even take showers if there's no hot water." That was the kicker. Needless to say, that night we took 20 minute showers in steaming hot water. A hot shower is like the love of a woman. We then bought 4 packs of cookies and took 2 liters of milk from the kitchen, found the dvd of the lion king, put on our pjs and snuggled up all cozy like on the couch in the play room after eveyone else was asleep and had ourselves an evening to remember.

So yes, after nearly 3 months here, life is good and getting better. We've been able to travel around a bit and see other states. Last weekend was one long misadventure to the beach, but some stories are better left for around campfires than through cyberspace. Yesterday was Thanksgiving and it was really fun. For thanksgiving, Mexicans usually find the youngest goat or calf they have, sometimes only days old, and have their youngest child be the one to actually kill it. This usually takes place on a raised alter in the backyard made of animal bones dedicated to the patron saint of Santalajuaranina. The point is to celebrate renewal and vitality in the presence of youth. They also use the blood of the goat as gravy for the turkey. Its pretty good if it's not to coagulated. If anyone still believes me at this point, just know that Thanksgiving is a striclty American holiday and they do none of these things in Mexico. At Casa Hogar, they didn't really know what it was. So we went to the house of these Texans we had met a couple of months earlier. They live in the capital city of Tamaulipas, Victoria, and we had 24 hours of American thanksgiving paradise. Madden 2009 and football in the yard and deliscous food. The only bad part is that they were all Dallas fans and Dallas won and that was kind of annoying but i got over it after 6 pieces of pie. Literally 6 pieces. I didn't sleep well. But they were really kind to us and let us hang out with their family and all so i forgave them for liking TO.

Anyways, that's a brief update on our life. Everything that has happened inbetween the above events involves playing and working with the kids and its a lot of fun most of the time and it's gonna be really sad to leave here in a little more than a month but so it goes. In the meantime, we shall be trying to enjoy every last moment we get with them.