El Ranchito

It has been a tough past few days.

I've felt a liiiiiiitle emotionally and physically drained. Which is never fun.

But let me tell you friends- there is a cure.

Camping!!!

What?

You don't agree? Well, I happen to love camping. I love being outside, and having a campfire, and sleeping in a tent, and getting away from the city.

So on friday night the 5 of us teachers, plus our other teacher friend Kristin and a bunch of our host families headed out to a family ranch about 20 minutes outside of the city.


I was really excited to just get away for a while and enjoy the un-cluttered lifestyle.

I won't lie though, camping has its downfalls.

Like:

• Being greeted by about 100 daddy-long-leg-spiders in the shed
• Freezing my toesies off at night cause I didn't bring enough blankies
• The teeth-brushed face-washed clean feeling doesn't really exist
• Sometimes, no matter where you sit, the campfire smoke always finds you

The food we ate was pretty interesting though.

Mexicans like hot dogs. They call them 'salchichas' here, and its kind of their replacement meat. They use it on sandwiches and put it in their eggs, and do all sorts of other things with them. They ALSO use them while camping. Kind of chalky tasting, but it helped keep the camping spirit alive.

My awesome ingenuity at work.

Branch with 10 pokey things on it makes for excellent quick-time hot dog roasting.

Then I held a chicken

And rode a horse.

Jordan on his horse.

Carly, Abraham and me.

This kid is so funny.

He is constantly turning to me and saying "Cool, huh?" in a cute Spanish accent.

Then we took a nice drive to a nearby park to have our picnic. We ate rabbit. Kid you not, the stuff tastes like turkey. Sorry Thumper!