Easter in Ajijic

Faye and Wendy flew back to Toronto yesterday. A week sometimes goes very quickly. As mentioned last time, the four women went to Tlaquepaque on Tuesday and shopped for hours. It was very successful. Then in the evening, the four of us went to a concert by the Guadalajara Chorale. This is a group of 16 or so teenagers (aged about 12 to 16 or 17 years old), mostly girls with 2 boys. They were very good. They specialize in Mexican and Latin American music although they also did 2 well known American spirituals. Their choral mistress is a vivacious young woman, originally from Cuba; she really sets the rhythm and gets an outstanding performance from her singers. They have performed internationally as well as many places in Mexico. I bought a DVD of a previous concert with quite a few of the same songs they did at our concert.

Kate and Jack had all of us over for lunch on Thursday. Later, for the last night as a treat from Faye, we went to 4, a restaurant owned by 2 Torontonians. Barb & I had heard a lot of mostly good things about it, but had not gone to it before. The food was excellent and we were satisfied that it was a good place to go for the last night (I almost said the last supper as it was Thursday and the night that commemorates that event at Easter). Of course, on Friday, there was the big reenactment of the crucifixion. It takes most of the day and tries to follow exactly the events of the day. We didn’t go as we wanted to relax. There are big crowds and the temperatures get pretty hot unless one is able to find some shady spot to watch. ‘Semana santa’ (Holy Week) is when the Lake Chapala area has a huge influx of Mexican tourists; in fact it is the busiest week of the year. Traffic has been heavy all week.

I went to Spanish conversation class this morning. Because LCS was closed for the Easter weekend, we met at the casa of one of the couples taking the class. They have a beautiful, large house up the mountain on the west side of Ajijic. It has a beautiful view of the lake and has a pool. The ceilings of the upper story, where we were, are very similar to ours; high cathedral type of wooden beams as rafters. The LCS Spanish program does not operate in the summer, but all of us want to continue; I am starting to understand more of what is said and others in the class say the same. We don’t want to lose what we have gained and are almost certainly going to arrange it privately. Joel, our instructor, certainly wants and needs the money. He says that he would like to set up his own program, but needs to save up some money to get it going.

Tomorrow, we get the ‘tres niñas’ again. Some of the godparents organized and Easter egg hunt for this afternoon. We didn’t go. That is not a Mexican custom (there is nothing about Easter bunnies either), but probably the kids got a big kick out of it;. It is like Halloween. Trick or treating was not a Mexican custom, but Mexican kids have taken to it with great alacrity. We had dozens of kids here compared to the handfuls we used to get in Bedford.