Happy Birthday Mame!!!

Today is my mom's birthday!  How I wish I was there to spend some time with her on her day.  Give her a big hug, big kiss...My heart is totally with her, but the hug and kiss had to be given on Skype!  Much better than nothing, I am so thankful to be able to keep in touch with family through Skype.  What a gift when we're so far away.  Mathieu and Christian got to sing Happy Birthday, and that means so much to me.  Mame, we love you very much and look forward to seeing you in the new year!

Today was also Mathieu's last day of school.  The school year in Guatemala is very different than in North America.  Their school year begins at the start of the new year and ends, I believe, in September.  They have 3 months off and Mathieu was in the summer school program.  The school has now closed for the holidays.  It was a wonderful experience for Mathieu, he made many new friends, was involved in extracurricular activities: karate, soccer (futbol), pottery and had 2 Spanish classes with a tutor a week.  He has learned quite a bit of Spanish and really enjoys it.  He always asks for things in Spanish now: Quiero mas cereales por favor?  Quiero agua por favor?  It's very nice to see and surprising for me as I've repeated sentences in french for years that he never started to say on his own!  I'm sure that having his peers involved in the process makes all theh difference.  He always jokes around with his friends when he leaves and says : Adios amigas!  And they're all boys.  Funny dude!  I'm sure that his interest in french will also increase once he's around other kids who speak french.  For some reason, solo the mom influence just isn't as cool.  Funny how before I had kids, I was convinced they would always think I was cool!  I still can't believe they don't!  Oh well, they'll see it one day :)

                                                              Mathieu, Christian and Max

                                                               School's backyard potluck

                                                                   Play area/hut in backyard

Good ol' soccer game!

To celebrate the last day of school, we had our usual Friday night pizza/hot chocolate night, but tonight, it was followed by fireworks! It was great, volcanoes, roman candles and sparklers. Mathieu lit his first match today and lit a volcano :) Beautiful lights, colours and so fun for the kids!

Jay and I finished our school last week (ok, we dropped out !), so next week is wide open for us.  We're planning on exploring outside of Antigua on some day trips.  Visiting a coffee plantation is at the top of the list.  Oh yes, Starbucks who?????  The coffee here could make any cream and sugar drinker go black!  That and the chocolate could make a coffee and chocoholic move here! 

I'll say buenas noches for now and until next time...