mucho shopping!

Buenos dias families! we spent a wonderful day yesterday exploring the town of Taxco (silvertown) after lessons in the morning to master our haggling vocabulary and skills. We learned the interesting hisotry of the town from the discovery of a silver mine there to the rebirth of the town thanks to an American (William Spratling) who helped the town find fine through its artisan crafters. After a two hour busride there (in which the girls watched the classic Beatles movie, Yellow Submarine" en Espanol--and now understand my references to being the "Big Blue Meanie") we arrived in the hill top city of Taxco. First we were taken to Zanfield Silver Factory to see silver being smithed and crafted into fine jewelry --although they offered us a 50% discount, the quality and price of the items here was perhaps more than most of our girls wished to spend. But they seemed to enjoy the tour of the actual factory and learned about the process of making silver jewelry.

Oh, about the picture of the armed policia...our girls did nothing wrong--he was the armed guard at the factory and seemed quite tickled when we asked if we could take our picture with him!

From the factory we bused into town, and climbed our way to the main Cathedral dedicated to the Lady of the Storms. After a brief tour there, we were released to do something our girls excel at--shop! Taxco is filled with hundreds and hundreds of stalls of jewelry (at remarkably reasonable prices) and crafts. If you were willing to do all the walking up and down (and dodging cars in narrow streets) then the pay off was well worth it, judging by the amount of things purchased! So after walking and shopping for nearly 3 hours, both your daughters and your wallets were thinner!

We returned to the bus for what we had hoped would be a tired, quiet ride home...little did I know that the girls instead were fired up to sing! We were serenaded with songs from N'sync to camp songs--but not all necessarily on key exactly (and this is coming from ME!). Just when we thought we couldn't take any more I had the brilliant idea to insist that if they wished to continue to sing, it had to be "en Espanol"--HA! Now I had them--I would get the quiet ride we were longing for...NOT. They burst into "La Bamba" followed by every song Daniel had taught them for two years (and Daniel, that traitor, even joined in!). So much for our quiet ride...

When we arrived back home we departed to our host families for late supper and bed, and to review our purchases! A great day by all accounts.

Today we are in classes in the morning them headed to "secondaria", a middle school, to meet some students, take snack with them, and they have a dance to show us. Our girls have also asked if they can show them some of our dances...like "crank that..."; I'm thinking, no. We will return to our families for La Comida, then back to school for our Salsa lessons!

Everyone has gotten healthy and seem to be having fun (shopping will have that effect I hear). I will attach some pictures and write more soon--marja