San Miguel de Allende

Still in san miguel. We decided to do one extra week of class. Our teacher is great and we are learning slowly. Last night we went to free salsa lessons at a bar in town. It was great taking turns dancing with 50 year old women, because there were about 10 guys and 4 or 5 girls. I was pretty terrible but hopefully will get better. There is another class tonight we will probably go to. Also tonight we are teaching english to local 8-10 year old mexican kids at the public library. Should be a good time.

Our stay with our family here has been the best part of San Miguel. Their home is beautiful and the family is so kind and generous. Kenny and I share a room for $18 a day each. But we also get three meals a day of the most amazing food ever known to man. We leave each meal satisfied, full, and completely amazed at how lucky we are. I will post some pictures of our house later.

Last weekend we went with the family to their rancho. They own two. One with pigs, cows and bulls and the other is sort of a beginning of a small resort. We went to the resort one. It was outside of the city about 10 km and was very beautiful. They have 2 big swimming pools and 2 smaller kiddie pools that fill up with natural agua caliente. It comes right out of the ground and they pump it into the pools. Then they drain the water each week so that it is always fresh and clean. No chemicals used. The amazing part is that they grow vegetables down the hill from the pools so that the pool water is redirected to the crops when the pools are drained. Amazing! The main house, where the daughter and her husband just moved in, is beautiful as well. The ceilings are high and arched but are made of bricks. A very tricky thing to build they say. There is also a small courtyard where there is a gigantic palm tree growing. The leaves act as sort of a roof for the open aired courtyard. The whole place is just incredible. They also have 3 small apartments (one or two bedrooms with kitchen and bathroom) that they rent out to whoever for about 300 dollars a month. There is also a very small little church, alar type building which could be used for weddings or praying or quinseneros (15 year old girl huge birthday celebrations that are as big of a deal as weddings) or whatever else. There goal is to start organic farming there and have a little store where they can sell the produce. They also charge a small fee to use the pools. Which are always packed full of kids. They want kenny and I to tell them about our experiences on the organic farms we are going to. And possibly help them set up there land to grow organic stuff as well. Last weekend when we were there we ate lunch and then helped the son of the family scrub and clean one of the drained pools for about 4 hours. It was hard work but fun none the less. The whole family works very hard. Probably about 12 -15 hours a day.

Got to run.
Adios
Mike and Kenny