Holiday Happenings
Mexico is a Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious country with a town called San Miguel de Allende. It's just like London during 1837! There are horse drawn wagons, cathedrals, cobblestone roads, building built out of white walls painted colors with call, with wooden crossbeams and tile roofs, dark alleys, parks, palaces, taverns, etc. The head of all the cathedrals is the Paroquia. All the churches have a statue with Jesus and the Christians. San Miguel has four parks. For my outings, I go to the the largest park of the village: Parque Juarez (a Spanish term for "the Park of Juarez). Beside it is a hotel called Rosewood with a wide green lawn and a couple swimming pool for the Summer. They even have a jacuzzi there as well. On summer vacations, we go to plenty of pools. Dad once took me to Rosewood, and I had fun, but not as much as in Xote, for they have a full blown water park with slides. There's also the Balnarios in Escondido, a series of pools that we used to visit. In the center of the city, beside the Paroquia, is a smaller park. It has a gazebo that is decorated with Jesus and his parents in Bethlehem for the annual Christmas Holidays. Next the mercado (market) is another park with a large statue of a soldier riding on a horse. The soldier is San Miguel himself, for it is old town with crumbling buildings. Pigeons and sparrows come and go, but they are especially attracted to bird seeds. In the town square, they put up an enormous Christmas Tree. There are men selling balloons of all shapes, sizes and colors. They are made the kind of rubber that parade balloons are made of, not latex. Some of them are on stroller weals. Marching through the town are the majestic mojigangas. Perhaps you don't know what mojigangas are. Mojigangas are tall, large costumes with masks where people hide inside, walking around inside the huge costume. There have been many mojigangas of all sorts of characters, including La Muerte. They usually pass a shop where people hand carved wooden action and pain them all colors of the rainbow. Their are lots of restaurants in San Miguel, including Rincon de Don Tomas, La Faldera, La Posadita, Vista Real, Posada Corazon, Mi Casa at Instituto de Allende (The Institute of Allende). The ones in color are my top three favorite restaurants. There's also a Warner Bros. restaurant called La Fragua that has an ice cream shop with a swing called Gelato. It's the best spot to get ice cream! At me casa, Gil Gutierez, a famous guitar musician like my dad. Plus, he's also my uncle. He has a small house at his ranch where we are invited to parties. I am absolutely tempted to build a campfire at his ranch.
For Christmas, I received about 20 presents. Here's the list
- A harp and harmonica (from Grandma Pillo)
- Animal erasers (from Grandma Pillo)
- A ladybug notebook (from Grandma Pillo)
- Rainbow pens (from Grandma Pillo)
- A Baymax action figure from Big Hero 6 (in San Diego)
- 2 identical penguins of Madagascar (inside a McDonalds Happy Meal from a mall called La Luciernaga (The Firefly), a place that I sometimes go for my outings. It has video games and a movie theater. I like movies and I like playing billiards at the games.)
- 3 Lucha Libre cards to stick on my refrigerator door (from Gil Gutierrez)
- A purple octopus puppet (from Santa Claus)
- A green sponge with a green, purple tailed fish (from Grandma Pillo)
- A suit of armor that I named Sir Justice the Noble (from Santa Claus)
- A sword and shield that I bought at a toy shop on one of my outings with my latest sitter, Brenda.
- Four action figures of the dragons (including Toothless) from How to Train Your Dragon (from Santa Claus)
- A How to Train Your Dragon coloring book (from Santa Claus)
- A Spider Man notepad (from Santa)
- Spider Man headphones (from Santa)
- Pirate weapons (at the mercado with my cousins and their mom, Adriana)
- A How to Train Your Dragon pencil bag (from another mercado)
- A How to Train Your Dragon 2 book (from the book fair, along with the Book of Life)
- A glittering cutout of Santa and another sparkling cutout of church bells (from the other mercado)
- A devil's trident and devil's mask that kind of made me look like Darth Maul, my favorite character from Star Wars (also from the other market
- Three wooden toys of 3 Disney characters: Pinocchio, Geppeto and Dusty from Planes and Planes: Fire and Rescue, my favorite movie (from Santa Claus)
- Disney themed bags where my presents go (from Santa, but one of them was from a third mercado)
- A novel of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (from Santa Claus)
- Cutout models of Big Ben and the Empire State Building (from Santa Claus)
- A lego set of Cars 2, featuring Finn McMissile, Professor Zundapp and a military ship that went perfectly with the Big Ben model (from a store that sold toys and movies called Blockbuster)
- A Disney-Pixar activity book (also from Blockbuster)
- A puzzle of Santa Claus from himself
- A world map puzzle (from Santa Claus)
- A book of making shadow puppets using your hands in French (from Grandma Pillo)
- A book of magic in Spanish (from Grandma Pillo)
- A Harry Potter kit with a wand that came with funky glasses, based on Harry's glasses, though they kind of looked like Luna Lovegood's weird glasses (from Santa Claus)
Those are all my presents, while dad got a book of Tarzan from Pillo and she got cooking supplies from Santa.
