Host Family Pictures and Stories

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	This is the family we stayed with in summer of 2000. All of them are bilingual, and John is actually originally from Canada.
Fani was the cook and housekeeper for the family. Together with Martha, she prepared delicious and healthy food for us. Comida, literally "food" is the name of the main meal, served around 2:30 in the afternoon. It started with (generally vegetable or cream of a vegetable) soup and some sort of blended fruit juice, followed by the main dish which was often meat but sometimes something like chiles relleñοs, or tamales. Mario, her son, (also pictured here) often ate with us. He's accomplished at taekwando, which I was surprised to learn is very popular in Mexico. He was a lot of fun.
	The yellow house on the left is the house we stayed in. (Most of the houses in Cuernavaca have iron gates these days - this wasn't a bad neighborhood.)
This angel orchestra looks down at the family's dining table. To read about where the angels come from, see Tlayacapan or click on them to see how they fit into the room.
	Martha hand makes many wonderful items including candles and hand-painted bars of soap. The pictures represent traditional costumes from different parts of Mexico. Eleanor and I brought a number of these back home with us for our families.
Eleanor's and my fifth anniversary was one day before John and Martha's wedding anniversary so we celebrated together. Afterwards, John, Eleanor, and I sang Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus and the "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's Messiah. Music certainly crosses language barriers.