Friday Nov 20 - Party Time in Ajijic

I got out early this morning for a run on pavement for a change. I have been doing this 5k route along the cobblestone streets and have been somewhat disappointed by my pace. I warmed up by walking quickly the 500 meters to the highway and then did a 2.5 out and back along the paved bike path. i was gasping at the end, but I did manage a 5:35 pace which, at the moment, I'm happy with.

Lynne has wanted to get a crown on a discolored tooth for a long time. Her dentist at home wanted about $850.00 for it and, to brighten a tooth color just never seemed worth the expense. We know a number of people who come to Mexico for dental work so, we had made an appointment with a guy beside the bagel shop that we found the other day.

$20.00 for a consultation including 2 x-rays and the verdict was, he would do it for about $650. That didn't seem like the kind of deal we`d heard about so, we dropped in at another dentist around the corner from our house. No charge for the consultation and x-ray and $250.00 for the crown! He took the impression on the spot. She gets the temp on Tuesday and the finished crown on Friday. What a country!

There is a festival starting today that apparently goes on for the next 11 days. We don`t know what it`s for. Everyone has warned us that there will be fireworks non stop for the next 11 days. We went to the opening day parade this morning. What a hoot. There were groups of kids of all ages parading down the street. The young kids were dressed up. Most kids had on their school uniforms. There were a couple of bands. There were a few pickup trucks, decorated with balloons with kids in the back waving to the folks along the edge of the street. I found those pickups the most fun. For every kid in the truck waving, there was a mother running along behind making sure their kid was OK!

For those of you at home who have ever been to the Aurora Santa Claus parade, this next part will thrill you too. There were no Fire trucks. No Mayor (Sorry tim - YOu were great), No bunch of town council folks, no businesses advertising, just tons sand tons of kids. Soccer teams, dance groups, kids and adults on horseback. I guess the schools don`t have a ton of money to use for musical instruments. Some groups clapped together as they marched. Some tapped out a beat with their feet as they marched. One group had small wooded pieces of wood, maybe 3" X 2" with straps stapled on that they use to clap out a beat with.

It was great to see so many people having so much fun, proud parents along the side lines cheering for their kids and their kids friends, all at almost no financial expense what so ever! The town square was totally packed with young and old after the parade was over.

We really have to find out what the event is! Also, It's almost 10:00 PM now and, so far, no fireworks!

We're going to look at a few open houses over the weekend. we're pretty sure we're not going to find anything nicer than the place we're in now, but we figure we need to look anyway.

We went to the movies tonight to see the Michael Jackson movie. We got the time wrong and God knows we could stay up and go to the 9:30 show, so we saw The Soloist" at 7:00. Great flick if you haven't seen it. We'll see St. Michael tomorrow. Oh, yea - I was wrong about the cost of going to the movies here. I told everyone it was $2.00, but I was wrong. Converted back to Canadian dollars it's . . . $2.96! I'm thinking we'll see a lot of movies here. It's very nice that the theatre is at the top of our street, just past the Bull Fight ring and the soccer fields!