A-E-I-O-U

First day of first grade for Lyle was Tuesday. We arrived back in La Manzanilla about 3 weeks into the school year so Lyle is having to catch up just a little.

His teacher Adele handed me a sheet of paper with the vowels both capital and lower case and in various groupings of two… A-E-I-O-U Ae-Ei-aU you get the idea.

Each child must stand at her desk, while the other children look on, and respond appropriately when she points of one of the vowels. Talk about pressure.

I watched as several children took there turn, some laughed and giggled when it was their turn. Some needed to be reassured and have their back’s rubbed by maestra Adele before they could speak. Today as class is ending Lyle will have to take his turn. He’s great at the kitchen table but I’m not sure how he will be at the front of the class. Here’s wishing him success!

Guadalajara 4, June and Rick ZERO!

We’ve just arrived back home in La Manzanilla. This time we drove down through Texas. The roads are fantastic! You bypass, every city along the route (except one)roads are in excellent shape, lots of Pemex stations along the route and fast driving.

We made great time, arriving in Tonala in the evening of our first night in Mexico. We’ve been through Guadalajara 3 previous times and we’ve gotten lost every time. We thought this time would be different; we’d leave Tonala, stay to the right and get that dang airport exit to the south perifico so we could bypass the heart of the city.

Traffic was a nightmare as we edged onto the highway. We saw the sign for Chapala and knew that was the same exit for the airport. We headed for the exit, a motorcycle went down in front of us, no one would let us over and there were 4 lanes of traffic where there are only 3 lanes. We missed the turn.

We decide to try it again so we took another exit and circled back around, got on the highway again and slowly edged for the exit. As we approached the correct exit, traffic got more fierce, a bus came so close to us it scraped along the side of our truck and nearly took our mirror off. By then we were both sweating and trying to remain calm, we were about 25 ft from the exit when we saw the sign for the airport, the small airplane indicating airport was almost completely covered by graffiti and we had 3 lanes of traffic to cross. I could see it in my husband’s eyes, he was going for it. I started yelling, “we can’t make it, go straight, we can’t make it!”

At the last minute he came to his senses and we stayed on the main road and went through the heart of the city, no perifico for us.

Guadalajara 4, June and Rick ZERO!