Happy Christmas! ¡Feliz Navidad!

We've finished the teaching semester and are about to start traveling! It's been a busy month and we've been trying to do as much as possible before we leave...The good thing about this teaching job is that we've had the chance to meet loads of cool students, who've invited us out for drinks and food at bars or at their houses, and they've shown us the Mexican party lifestyle - as you can see from our photos!

We finally got out to Lake Chapala, a lakeside town about an hour south of Guadalajara. It's quite a touristy destination, and there are lots of retired Americans living there. It was very pretty, and we hiked to the top of a really steep hill to get the best views of the lake - which Sarah really enjoyed doing in flip-flops!

We had our last night out with Richard, Sar's friend from England and our only English friend! Although I imagine we might bump into him on our travels in the future!

We also finally went to the zoo, which is huge and beautiful. And it's on top of the canyon that runs through a large part of Guadalajara so the views were awesome. Apparently a gorilla died on the same day that we went so we hope we weren't anything to do with that! And we saw lion sex, which was nice!

Since the last update there's been the final of the Mexican football league, which our team the Chivas didn't make it into. I only chose Chivas to support because I wanted to be a glory hunter so I'm pretty upset! The final was a really good display of defensive discipline and ended up being like 8-6 after two legs! So that also meant I got to hear the commentators shout "goooooooooooool!" for pretty much the whole match!

Another thing we'd been planning to do for a while, and managed to do, was the Sunday bike ride. Every Sunday the City closes loads of the main roads for people to use for running, cycling, and roller-blading - and you can rent bikes for free. It's really awesome, and really popular considering Mexico I think has the world's most obese population!, (the tacos are totally worth it though!) So we got to cycle past all the sights and there are people on the side of the road doing other things like aerobics, and there was even an orchestra playing! We rode for about 5 hours and were pretty sore afterwards. Even though you can rent bikes for free everyone has their own bike, which is definitely worth it as ours were pretty uncomfortable and didn't even have breaks!

Our last few weeks of teaching have been really fun, and we've enjoyed the whole semester . Some days have been harder than others, especially with the teenage classes when they just don't want to do anything and are, well just being teenagers basically! Or my kids class who, it just seemed impossible for them to sit down for more than one minute before they needed to get up ad run around. But overall we've massively enjoyed it, it's been a great experience, and we've met some great people - and if the opportunity comes up again to teach I think we'd definitely go for it. Some days I really didn't think I'd say that, especially when I had to wake up for my 8am class, knowing that my final class for the day finishes at 9pm! Or Sar, while she was being physically abused by a four year old brat!

It was a really good time of year to finish the semester as we got to do a lot of Christmas lessons and on Friday the school had a Christmas party (Posada) for all of the students. And we got to (try to) smash our first piñata! Sar succeeded, but I went before her so I'm pretty sure I loosened it and did most of the work! I felt a bit embarrassed because I was telling everyone before "es fácil, es fácil" (it's easy, it's easy) but, it really isn't! I didn't realise that before you do it you are blind-folded and then spun round as many times as your age. So after 25 spins and a few beers in me I really didn't feel so good! We have a video of me http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSJx8OlNviY&feature=autofb. I also forgot that teachers get gifts from their students at Christmas so we got lots of presents that we need to send home. My best presents were lots of Chivas merchandise, and a big bottle of tequila!, and my worst present was one of Sar's students who works in a jewellers and literally made her an actual engagement ring!

Today we have to pack up our stuff and then tomorrow we get on a bus to a town called Patzcuaro... we are both very excited to start traveling!!!

Please send us some messages!!!

Davy & Sar
xxx