Wednesday. 12.22.10 Car to Mechanic & Posada at Tia Maxi’s

Today we finally caught up with our mechanic friend, and we made a list of all the little things we’ve been noticing and a few other things we’d like to add to the car. He says he has a friend going to Toluca later today and can pick up the parts we need. So we should be able to clean out the carburator real good and seal it up better. We took the carberator out ourselves, because we’re wanting to be as hands on as possible. Since the carberator is out, we’re leaving our car here until our parts come in. We are to meet up with him tomorrow! We are both looking forward to working this out!
Tonight we went to the posada at Tia Maxi’s house. When it was getting close to time, we took the short cut behind the house and through the “campo” (the soccer field). We got there a little bit early, so we got to watch the kids playing with “cuetes” (fireworks) - the “brujitas” which are smaller, and don’t go up in the air, but the kids have mastered a technique on how to flick them up in the air just before they go off, so for small, seemingly mild fireworks, they still found a way to make them much more interesting.
Once the group got to her house, we stayed behind the curtain to sing “go away”’ and then joined the group from there, to go to the next house, which was the welcome house. Again since we had an “in” - we got to sneak in to the host house with them. When the group got there, we followed the leaders into the back patio where they had their nativity scene set up, to do the rosary with them. Half way through the rosary, Josue turned around to notice that people were already drinking ponche & eating tamales! They cheated this time! We were kind of laughing because don’t you know, this was the only time we were that close to the rosary part of the tradition. So when they finished with the rosary, we all went out to the yard to join the rest. The tamales were pretty good tonight, they had both green ones and red ones! Mmmmmmmm. I still haven’t quite quenched my craving for tamales. It’s funny I thought we’d have a lot more of them down here, but really only at the posadas so far, and so far only at two of them, the others served bread.
When the food was done, it was time to break in to the piñatas. Again they had a handful of piñatas ready to go. And as always, it’s so entertaining… it never seems to let you down.
All in all it was a good night.

              Since the devil is "fallen angel" - it's common to see him below the nativity scenes here.

                      Little reminders of home everywhere!  Do you see what's on her sweater mom?