Art Exhibits At The Festival de las Calacas

I mentioned in the last post that some of the artwork from the students or former students of the Casa de la Cultura had been displayed at the Festival de las Calacas.
The first one is done on black paper and is either chalk or chalk pastels, I am not certain which.  I love how the artist got the veil to look so transparent.
The second one definitely has a sly look about her and you can imagine her sneaking around during the Revolution, or maybe I have too active an imagination.
Talented artists in my opinion.
The third one is of the interior of the building where the paintings were displayed.  Part of this building now houses a Spa and another part has the sidewalk cafe where we had our cokes the day before.  It must have been quite the home to live in at one time and is still a lovely building.

Festival de las Calacas

Today we went uptown to view the Festival de las Calacas that they hold each year for the Dia de los Muertos celebrations. The people at the Casa de la Cultura put a lot of work into this festival along with many other people.  The calacas (skeletons) and decorations are made by the people at the Casa de la Cultura and paintings from the classes held there are on display also.  Many of the schools and also private people set up altars to honour people that were important to them in some way, either family members or famous people.  The altars hold things that were important to the people that are being honoured, foods, photos, clothing, some of their possessions, etc..  The altars set up by the schools will be judged later on this evening I believe.
There is also music, food and dancing during the festival.
We wandered around, viewed the altars and art exhibits and then sat down at a street side cafe. We relaxed with a cold coke and people watched for awhile.  We had a great time, very relaxing and enjoyable.
I took lots of pictures and decided to put them into a slideshow rather than posting them all separately.
After we wandered over to the water and walked along the malecon before heading home.  There is something new on the malecon that I will show you in a day or two.
 A great outing with my favorite person.

First Project Completed

Last evening at drawing class we completed our first project.  Our teacher endeavored to teach us how to draw a face.  I have to say that I have never really had much interest in drawing people or faces so at first I was not too interested in the project.  As the class went on though the techniques began to intrigue me and I enjoyed it.  I will never be good at this as I have lots of trouble making 2 objects the same size even when using the measurements given for the standard face.  We were not allowed to use a ruler at any time during the process and had to make all the measurement lines freehand, this is a problem for me as I cannot draw a straight line, yikes.
I am still not really happy with the face as I think the dark shading on the left side of the mouth makes it appear as if the mouth is pulled over to that side, kind of like a stroke victim. I had had less shading on that area but the teacher made me add more, so I suppose he knows best.
Anyway it is finished.
Next week we begin to work with pastels, a medium I have never tried before either.  I have used oils, acrylics, water colour and water colour pencils; but never pastels, so should be fun.  We are supposed to bring a photo of a still life with vases, jars, and a variety of fruits in it so that we can work on lots of textures, shading, etc..  Sounds like lots of work and fun to come.

My first attempt at a face.

The Casa de la Cultura is getting ready to have the Festival de las Calacas this weekend for the Day of the Dead.  The building was abuzz with activity last night and it should be a fun weekend.  Music, calacas, food, altars, etc. will all be set up in the Plaza de la Pistola and adjoining streets.

El Presidente En Tu Colonia (the mayor in your neighbourhood)

Here in Guaymas, the mayor has a program called, "El Presidente en tu Colonia" or translated more or less, the mayor in your neighbourhood.  He and his cabinet come to an area in your colonia and they have a "cultural fair" along with a sort of speech, question/answer session.  I don't know if this is done in cities all over the state and or country or if it is just a Guaymas thing.  I did a quick search and could only find entries for Guaymas so perhaps it is a local thing.
Anyway, last night was our turn.  Our colonia is a very large one so perhaps he is doing this in other parts of it also, I don't know.  I do know that this one was only about 2 blocks away from us so we decided to go and see what was happening.
When we arrived the Cultural Fair part was going strong.  Some of the ladies from the Casa de la Cultura had tables set up and there were lots of children working hard at making bracelets, pictures and hand puppets.  They were a very busy bunch.  One of the ladies joked with us that maybe Roy wanted to make a bracelet.  He politely declined.  We know these ladies from taking classes there and the mother of one of the ladies in the office only lives a couple of blocks from us.
There was a small stage set up in front and the dancers from the Casa de la Cultura were doing their part to make the evening enjoyable, their dancing was interspersed with an older gentleman singing.  We have heard him sing at events before and he has a very nice singing voice.  He stated he was going to sing some beautiful old romantic songs and he did.  One of the songs he sang was about the beautiful October moon and very obligingly the moon came out from behind some sketchy clouds as he was singing.  He made sure to point this out during his song.  He also did one about the seaside of course and another for a  young girl whose 15 th birthday happened to be yesterday.  I forget what the song was; but it wasn't the usual "happy birthday" song.
The mayor did a meet and greet with the people there, shaking hands and chatting with most people.
After awhile he and his group went on stage and were introduced and the speeches began.  It was nice because they were all fairly short; although not always sweet.  A lady welcomed him to our community and thanked him and the group for coming  and then began to relate what the area would like to see happen with drainage, water, road repairs and paving, street lighting and security.
The mayor took his turn and outlined what had been done during his term so far and at what cost, what money has been allocated for paving, etc..  Then, of course, he went into the typical politician sweet talk, of everything that can be done, if everyone works together, etc., etc., etc..
Despues, he opened it up for people in the audience to ask questions, and several had things to say.  He directed them to the correct person and basically told them to get together to hash it out.
Fairly pleasant, not many raised voices.
Tomorrow, Saturday he will be at one of the schools here and according to my landlady this is when he will be going around and looking at the streets, etc. The flyer for tomorrow states, "asiste y participa", (attend and participate).  I think that might be something that we will not attend, not being nationals and not having any right to participate in local things of this nature.
Anyway, it was a nice evening last night and I enjoyed listening to some of the concerns in our part of the community.

Another First For Me In Guaymas

The other day I decided to give WalMart another try here.  I have been to their new store a couple of times and wasn't at all impressed, the prices are a lot higher than in the other grocery stores.  I had gotten a personal item there though and wanted to get another one while they were still around, so off I went.
When I got on a bus for Guaymas Norte my first impression was, wow, nice new bus.  Once I sat down I realized that all the windows were closed and cold air was blowing on me!!!!!  This nice new bus has air conditioning that works.  Wow!!!!  This was a first for me, not sure how long this bus has been around; but am thinking not long, as the driver was discussing it with one fellow and showing off the stereo, he was also driving very carefully.  Considering that careful driving is not really a city bus thing I am assuming he hadn't had this bus for long.  I am thinking that after he fills up with fuel a few times the air conditioning may be shut down.  Who knows.  Anyway it was a nice ride to the store, no squeaks, no squealing brakes, no grinding transmission, etc..  Luxury apparently comes with a price though as by the time I got off the bus I had an earache from the cold wind blowing on me, too funny.  On the way home I had my usual decrepit old school bus with all its attendant squeaks, squeals, rattles, etc. so felt more at home.  What a surprise that was.

In other news the landlords have another new grandchild born on Friday, mom and baby in good health and at home.  Other sons wife is expecting another baby also, so more to come.

We went and had a nice dinner out last night to celebrate our special day.  The weather was cooler and we enjoyed eating outside without the humidity.

I threw some cherry tomato seeds into a pot the other night, the seeds are old so not sure if they will germinate or not.  Will see.

Time to head out to do some shopping and go to art class.

October 10, 2005

October 10, 2005.

An important date in my mind and one that I will probably always remember.  That is the day we crossed the border into Mexico and saw our new home for the first time.  The joy and excitement of seeing the things in reality that we had been looking at pictures of, for a very long 10 months or a year of research was amazing.  I will never forget that feeling of recognizing views and buildings that we had only seen in pictures before.

At that time there were not the blogs about living in Mexico that there are today.  I remember finding Billys blog and Johns blog and not too many more.  Their information helped; but a lot of it differed from our area.  I think the people thinking of heading south now are very fortunate to have all the information that is available now from the many, many well written blogs about Mexico.  It was difficult to find much information about Guaymas as it is not your average tourist destination, San Carlos yes; Guaymas not so much.  We wanted to have a more down to earth experience for our 6 month winter in Mexico.  Yes, I said 6 months.  We had only intended to be down here for the winter, we were not retired we just wanted to escape 1 cold winter which we both hated.  When the beginning of January came around we both realized that we didn't ever want to live through another winter in Canada.  We sat down and spent a lot of time crunching numbers and thinking hard about trying to stay for an extended amount of time.  After many hours of this we decided to give it a try, after all, as someone very close to me used to say, "the Lord hates a coward".
The end of March came and we headed back to Canada, we rushed around frantically and sold everything that wouldn't fit in our small car and on July 1, 2006 we re-entered Mexico for the foreseeable future.  I don't say forever as you never know what life will throw into your path in the future.
I have to say that 99.99% of the last 5 years has been great and that we have no regrets about what we did back then.  We are both happy and content, perhaps too content as we intended to see more of the country than we have so far.  It seems when we think about travelling we now just seem to be too lazy to do it.  I guess we have adopted the mañana attitude.

So today we celebrate our 5 th anniversary of living in Mexico and Guaymas.  Hope everyone has as great a day as we will.

This is also Thanksgiving weekend in Canada so we want to wish everyone there a wonderful weekend.  We all have much to be thankful for today and everyday.