Hi!  This month is going waaaayyy too fast!  This kind of excitement keeps up, I'm going to have to make this a weekly report instead of monthly!  We started the month out celebrating our first Carnaval de Mazatlán with our good friends, Miguel & Fanny Aguilar.  Carnaval is Mazatlán's equivalent of Mardi Gras, and has been a yearly tradition since 1898.  There are parades, pageants, arts and humanities awards, fireworks, and more people than  you can imagine will ever fit in one city by the ocean!  We began our celebrations by meeting Miguel & Fanny and two of their close friends to go to the late Saturday night fireworks show over the ocean.  We got as close as we could, which was about two blocks inland, and had a perfect view of the sky and the old Freeman Hotel,  which was lit up by the most spectacular display of fireworks we've ever seen!  Afterwards, we mingled with the crowds, and I do mean mingled!  There were six in our party, and we had to hang on tightly to each other so that no one would get lost or separated from the group.  In this fashion, we snaked our way through the crowd to one of the restaurant booths, where we sat outside eating our favorite, tacos al pastor, at 1:00am!  One memorable site we got was a police pickup truck, filled with drunken revelers on their way to the pokey, guarded by gun-toting policemen, dancing and singing in the bed of the truck, oblivious to their predicament!   Wonder if they felt as rough around the edges as I did the next day, after having nothing strong to drink, but staying up waaayy too late!  The one big event of Carnaval is the Sunday evening parade.  We appointed Fanny tour director for the day, and she did a fine job!  First, she fed us ceviche,  then piled us all in the car (this time, eight of us, including their two little girls!), and helped us maneuver our way through the traffic to a street she knew would be good for parking so we could walk to the parade route easily.  We had two short blocks to walk, got perfect front-row spots and spent an enjoyable two hours visiting and watching the crowd grow in size all around us.  The parade started right on time, ran smoothly, with bands good 'n loud, huge spectacular floats, and a most impressive fireworks display right over our heads immediately following the parade.  Wow!  Our primera Carnaval de Mazatlán…. What an experience!

Is the suspense just bugging you?  Ok, no more: YES, we found our home in Mazatlán!  None of the ones we'd looked at up 'til last posting.  It's  a new home in an entirely new neighborhood housing development.  We will have mostly (maybe all) Mexican neighbors, as it's not in the tourist zone, and we're getting quite excited to see it finished!  It's a one-story mission style home, small, but well laid out with living room, dining in the kitchen, three bedrooms, an atrium, one bath, and a service breezeway leading to the patio, which is surrounded by a high privacy wall.  We found it in the unfinished stage, so we were able to pick our own floor tiles (white ceramic with just a bit of marbling),  our inside wall finish (plastered smooth on all walls but the entry way, which is textured to set off an alcove),  our ceiling finish (all light/fan fixtures, and -- on the ceiling -- a decorative surround and all edges trimmed in decorative cove molding),  and our patio design and floor (floors all in concrete with inlaid tile and a medallion in the center of each tile pattern).  We're also taking the house with nothing in the kitchen so we can finish it to suit ourselves….  We want tile covered base cabinets, tiles on the walls,  and I need the upper cabinets low enough for me to reach,  so that means a big project to look forward to when we come back next winter!   Everything  is supposed to be finished and ready for us on April 14th… but I'm not holding my breath!  It seems like there's too much to do to hold them to that date, and I won't be surprised if it takes twice that time to get it all done.  We'll stay until it is finished, though, then lock it up and go north again for the summer.  Plans are to return to Mazatlán and start furnishing our new home about the first of November, spend six months here and then back to the states.  This is a dream come true, and we're just about as excited as kids in a candy shop!

We've completed our ten weeks of  Spanish lessons, and have our certificates to prove to the kids we didn't just hang out around the beaches and bars all winter long.   The classes were well worth our time and the little bit of money, about $35.00 each, and we're looking forward to increasing our language skills each year.  Most of us in the class have asked for an extended program this coming fall and winter, maybe 5 or 6 full months rather than ten weeks.  Living in an all-Mexican neighborhood is going to help us along, too.  Kind of like sink or swim, we imagine!

As you know from following our logs for a few months, things can change in our lives without a moment's notice.  For that reason, we're giving no departure date for this spring… not until we see how the house project goes!  We may be headed north by the end of April, but it's more likely to be sometime in May.  We'll keep you posted, though, right here.  If you would like to see our most recent pictures, I will be happy to issue you an invitation to my web community, A View Of My World.  All you need to do is e-mail me at:  skping@hotmail.com   and ask for an invitation!  I am still having trouble making the thumbnail program I tried last month work properly, and I have all of the same pictures posted in this format, anyhow, so that's the plan for now.  I know, not as convenient… buy, hey, this way I get to hear from you!  And, you don't have to wait until next month to see the most recent additions to the pictures… I add more every two or three days in that format.  Once you are an invited member, you can visit any old time you choose and even leave messages for me or for other members… like, what if you've visited a place I have a picture of… you might want to comment on it!  On second thought, maybe this is the wave of the future, just maybe?  Well, at least it gives you a chance to view the pictures and me a chance to share them with you!  Now, please  scroll down the page to find my links to other months and other subjects!