You can take the girl out of Wisconsin, but you can't take Wisconsin out of the girl :)

Hello blogosphere! (That is a new and seriously obnoxious word that I will never use again, but had to try just in case I liked it. I did not)

How is everybody this fine Sunday morning? I am slightly worse for wear because today Pako's friend Hilson's birthday (his real first name is Americo, but nobody wants to walk around answering to Americo) and so he called us at 9:30 last night and convinced us to help him celebrate. Not that it took a lot of convincing - we were sitting on the couch, Pako playing video games and me reading and our conversation went like this -- oh, it's Hilson's bday... should we go out with him? He wants us to go to Frogs... ok, do you want to go... I don't know, yeah, sorta... ok... ok -- see? It wasn't exactly hard work to get us on board for a night out. Anywho, long story short, we saw about 7,000 people that Pako knows (as per usual - the kid knows everybody) and I spent a long night screaming to be heard over the music and dancing in close quarters with a lot of sweaty people that I don't know. Good fun!

My pitiable state this morning is mostly due to lack of sleep (we got home around 4:30am), but also partly due to my seriously sad state of light-weightedness. I had 3 beers over the course of as many hours and I was decidedly wobbly.... what? I went to Madison, for pete's sake, how can 3 beers really have that much of an effect? Well, it appears that once you take the girl out of Madison, her drinking tolerance plummets ridiculously. Not that it is necessarily a bad thing to have a low tolerance, but it's just such a contrast to my college years! Ahaha, I'm sure my parents are enjoying this paragraph thoroughly. To be clear, I'm still a Wisconsin girl at heart (even though I'm technically a MN girl) - I still love Packer and Badger football, I could live on cheese, I even like some beers now (but don't tell my roommates, I spent 4 years in undergrad running away from their Miller Lites), but man, I can not party like I did in Madison!

Luckily, there is a Packer game to watch and a dad who's willing to Skype with me for its duration! Now if only I didn't have that pesky lesson planning, I could laze away the day... bummer.

This past week was pretty relaxed, all in all. The two best parts were when I booked Christy Tyler to be my wedding photographer and when Pako and I had dinner with Chandra and Angel.

Christy is my friend Chelsea's cousin and also a super, fantastic photographer. Honestly, she's my dream photographer so getting her to agree to fly to Mexico to shoot my wedding for an affordable price was a HUGE score! Here's the link to her blog - you can check out her photos from a bunch of different genre's there. If you live in the midwest and want some family/engagement/wedding photos - she's your girl! Best bit of wedding planning accomplished so far, hands down! =D

Chandra, my friend from Oakland who was living here in Zihua last year and who has a scarily parallel life to mine, was here for a mini-vacation. She left Zihua for Oakland early this past August to start teaching high school English in Oakland and Angel, her surfer hubby, moved back to Papanoa (a small town about 1.5 hours outside of Zihua) to await his visa, so it was great to see them both! It was great to chat with them and hear about their lives. Pako and Angel discussed waves and surfboards and the like while Chandra and I talked about life in Zihua and teaching here and in the states. She really misses the food here, more than she thought she ever would - makes me wonder what I'll miss...? I know Pako will miss the ocean and all of his friends and family plus a good number of other things, but apart from Pako's family and Bambi.. what will I miss?

Anywho, the Packers are calling as is a home cooked meal from Aunt Pachita :) I hope you all have fabulous weeks! I set up a private tutoring classes on Tuesday and Thursday, so I'll be busy this week. My 11th graders have been talking about weather and extreme weather phenomena in class and so we're going to watch Twister in class, no complaints here. I had about 10 kids out any given day last week due to dengue fever (lots of rain = lots of mosquitoes) and a wicked cold that is circulating, so I'm hoping they're all back, germ-free!

Talk to you soon! XOXO!

Leyah