before i gloss over the past three or so weeks of my life, the things that have been on my mind most recently:

- i pass the port in the marina while taking the bus to school every morning, and lately i've noticed that there is at least one cruise ship docked there a day, and sometimes there are even three. locals tell me that this is actually quite uncommon, so tourism here must be increasing. (last week i even spotted the dawn princess ship at the port--i cruised on it last summer to alaska...it was a sentimental reunion.) now that hurricanes have or will be hitting so many other resort towns in mexico, i'm thinking tourism is gonna get even crazier/busier here than usual. i've got mixed feelings about this; obviously, an influx of vacationers will be good for the businesses here and the town will benefit, but i think day-to-day life will suffer a tad. it's going to get annoyingly crowded and traffic will be insane. prices will likely skyrocket in touristy areas and i'll likely have more mexican locals trying to take advantage of me by overcharging, assuming i'm just on vacation and clueless.
it's funny how us new teachers act like locals and pretend we have a right to look down on clueless tourists when we spot them, forgetting that we probably look exactly like them and evoke the same disdain when other locals see us.

- i can't seem to get used to the sweet and spicy combination of flavours that locals here are obsessed w/. one of my students loves to make me try all the candies that are covered w/ chili flakes and have gum or fruit-flavoured centres, and i don't know what to make of the stuff! it just tastes odd to me. another student of mine loves to pour chili flakes onto her apples. it's common to pour chili flakes and lime juice onto mango and coconut slices here. chili and lime. it's on everything.
sweet and sour? yes. salty and spicy? sure.
but sweet and spicy? i'm gonna have to work on it.

random tabloid fact (oxymoron alert!): paris hilton was spotted partying in various locales around town here in vallarta this past friday, surrounded by an entourage of limousines and fawning boys. my friends and i avoided the hoopla on the malecon (which was further amplified by the likely debauchery that was the 20th anniversary celebration of carlos o'brian's, the local tourist-trap/meat-market dance bar and high-school student magnet--my kids offered me free tkts left and right last week) and hung out at a fun bar in old town instead.

so, three weeks ago:

- had a slight bloodfest w/ my finger. won't go into all the minute details, but let's just say i bled so much my sling was dripping and my co-worker who took me back to the hospital came thisclose to fainting at the sight of the blood sliding down my arm as the doctor applied pressure to stop the bleeding. i'm okay now. really! i am slightly peeved by how all my clothes seem to be soiled w/ blood stains though.

- this incident directly led to my not joining in on a weekend getaway trip to an extremely private beach house ("private" meaning no doctors or hospitals or phonelines or other ppl, for that matter, in sight) by boca de tomatlan which is owned by our school's librarian and her wealthy husband, where alex and jen got severely food poisoned by some bad chicken they'd brought and bbq'd. they missed two days of school b/c of it.
kim, my housemate, also got severely beat up by the ocean (and had the battle scars to prove it), as the waves were really rough that weekend. needless to say, i was kinda glad i didn't go.

two weeks ago:

- as the pictures from my previous post indicate, we released baby turtles into the ocean at the beach by the westin hotel in the marina. there were literally hundreds of turtles, so all the ppl who'd gathered for the event got to release around three or four turtles each. they were endearingly cute, and although some of them were special ed turtles and took a little more time to make it to the water than others (one ended up burying itself in the sand, poor thing), we oohed and ahhed and fawned over them unconditionally. more than half the turtles won't survive (there were already seagulls flocking towards them as they headed further out into the pacific; the crowds of ppl on the shore kept them safe for a little while, at least), but the ones who do will return to that exact spot on the shore in seven or eight years to lay eggs of their own.

- on the saturday, we held a canadian thanksgiving potluck dinner at alex's and jen's house, and it was a great time. we had a few honorary canadians (aka americans) at the event, and they learned just how awesome us canucks can be. unfortunately, there was no turkey, due to alex's and jen's recent bout of food poisoning and newfound disgust towards anything that resembles a chicken (that, and the fact that we have no idea where to find a turkey, dead or alive, here), but the hors d'oeuvres, salad & bread, veggie lasagnas, potatoes, stuffing, and apple and pecan pies more than made up for it. so did the wacky jenga games that took place afterwards. my missing fingertip has caused an imbalance in my jenga-playing abilities and i lost twice (or was it thrice? i can't remember--i blame the tequila) in a row before managing to pass along my loser crown for ensuing rounds.
on the actual thanksgiving monday, we made up for the turkey-less saturday dinner by splurging and treating ourselves to a 3-course thanksgiving meal (salad and turkey w/ stuffing and cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes w/ gravy and PUMPKIN PIE!!!) at steve's sports bar, where we dined w/ other expats while watching the canucks game on the bar's many tv's. i felt bloated for a week after that.

- it was an eventful week. at school, for some inexplicable reason, my grade nines decided to google my name and found some articles i'd written for the queen's journal as well as some pictures of me (no, not those kinds of pictures--one from exclaim! mag and another from the journal site) and i never (and still haven't) heard the end of it. now the news has spread up the grades and the whole high school has cyberstalked me. hooraay. i will look fwd to the week where no students come up to me in class and say, " i saw you on the internet, miss."

one week ago:

- it was columbus day on the wednesday, but the pv school authorities decided to shift the holiday to friday to make it a long weekend. kim and i took our first overnight trip to tepic, the capital of nayarit state, which is the state north of ours (jalisco). we got to practice our spanish a ton, since we were literally the only freakin' gringas in the whole damned town and were stared at like rare museum pieces the whole time we were there. we bought a lot of stuff from huichol artisans and just to make myself even more conspicuous, i got myself a hot pink cowboy hat and wore it for the rest of the trip.

- last weekend was the last in pv for amanda, since she'd found a better job back home in texas and had decided working on a ranch where they breed champion horses was her dream job while teaching english here in pv to rambuncious mexican children for peanuts was not. we went out on thursday and saturday night, and on both nights i could not help but run into my senior students (i also later learned that my grade elevens were on the lookout for me as well) wherever i went. i've got to admit that it's pretty odd hearing ppl calling me "miss c" in bars and lounges at two in the morning. regardless, we had a great time dancing w/ all of amanda's housemate's gay friends from guadalajara and mexico city, and i'm really gonna miss having her around. she's the first friend we made outside of our own school, and she was a cool one.

this past friday, dave (the art teacher), kim, lisa (another teacher at the school) and i went to an art opening at a gallery that belongs to the parents of students who go to the school, and the two siblings got a kick out of seeing me there. i almost bursted out laughing when one of them told me that half the school was out looking for me on the malecon (i truly hope he was joking). this almost directly led to the four of us hanging/hiding out in old town that night. i jest a lot about the students seeing me while we're all out drinking, but i really am sort of uncomfortable about it, since i'm the youngest teacher at the school and therefore have the smallest age gap amongst them.

yesterday, a group of us headed out to sayulita for the third time, and i just vegged on the beach and geeked it out by doing math problems while jen, alex and dave went surfing and kim swam. dave and i hung out at an older teacher's house afterwards to watch the world series (my brother, WHO GOT ENGAGED THIS WEEKEND, taught me to love baseball) on his tv on a balcony that overlooked the whole town, drinking beer and eating the greatest sandwiches we've ever had (courtesy of the owner of the coffee cup, who is a friend of the older teacher and also a former teacher at the school himself).
it was a great game (the chisox deserved to win) and i hope the rest of the series follows suit.

and now i think this blog has pretty much caught up w/ all that's happened here lately! hats off to you if you made it all the way down here!!

p.s. i finally saw my finger on friday. i hadn't seen it for a month before then. needless to say, it was disgusting. perhaps i will elaborate more later.