New Years and King's Day

 First, here're some better pictures of our decorations for you :)

On a hike, J found this cactus fruit which we ate:

Here is the beginnings of some yummy soup we had for dinner:

For New Year's Eve people gathered in the church square for fireworks, champagne and grape eating. When the clock starts to strike 12, you eat a grape for each strike, giving you good luck for every month for every grape you've successfully eaten! Then fireworks are thrown by the kids. There was also some "graffiti" written by the kids on the walls with some spray stuff that evaporates and leaves no trace behind. It was very interesting. The fireworks were WAY too loud for me. Every time I tried to get a picture, the camera was too slow, so that's why there aren't any pics of that.

I bet you thought no one lived here since no one is ever in our pictures of this town! Well, here are some of the locals :D

Here are some of the holiday decorations put up by the city:

Remember these balconies for the end of the post!

Later on, on Jan 5th, there is a parade where candy, treats and goodies are thrown to the crowd!  On the way to the parade:

We passed by my favorite pastry shop calle La Gloria. They always have amazing things and everything, regardless of size, is 1dollar! We definitely got some goodies.

My favorite so far!

Here start the parade pictures!

Most brought bags to put their candy into after they picked it up from the ground. These kids brought umbrellas to catch the candy!!

Goofin' around waiting for the parade, which now, is within earshot.

First set of candy throwers. Very nice lady closest to us with glasses on.

First band to pass by. The little one on the lower right is helping himself to some candy!

All floats were pulled by these :)

This lady got a toy sword thrown her way!

Every float was surrounded like this. Candy was thrown really hard to try to reach the people waaay off to the right and left of the streets. This caused me to duck or shield myself plenty of times because the candy hurt when thrown like that!

Handing out some stuff. For one second we didn't have to duck from hurtling candy!

Some soccer balls were thrown these kids' way.

Even adults and the elderly want some candy!

Second band, the high schoolers.

Candy being thrown.

Giant bags for candy holding!

To give you an idea of what it was like! Any time candy was thrown, it got worse! Haha

After the parade, we went home and ate some candy :) Before that though, we gave lots of our candy to the elderly who were out on their balconies(remember the picture earlier?) who were stuck there because of a wheelchair or crutches or casts. As you can see, the parade was no place for them to be. They were thrilled to be getting candy!

Christmas Fun!

Christmas & Christmas Eve aren't spent the same way as they are back home. Families have been coming in from the city and boy has it gotten a bit noisy! It's still nothing compared to the noise back home. We've just gotten so used to the peace and quiet here. Our next door neighbor is a sweet old lady. Across from us the houses are vacant, one due to a fire or roof collapse. The rest of our neighbors are elderly or quiet families :) When relatives come in, the majority of noise comes from the cars and motorcycles driving by loudly and very fast! There are about 4 times as many kids playing out in the streets during holidays as well. I don't believe I've ever told you how "big" it is here, but there are only about 9,000 people living here I think. We can walk from one side of town to the other in 30 minutes. Driving, that'd be like 5-10 minutes right? :D

Anyway, getting back to how they celebrate here. It's my understanding that one present is opened by the children on Christmas Eve. The rest are opened on a later date. On Christmas Day, there's a large meal with the family. The food is very different and can include seafood. They do have turkey though!

We spent Christmas Eve & Christmas Day walking around town, saying hi to neighbors and meandering around the various parks :)

As you can see, the exterior decor is pretty simple:

The Three Kings are said to bring the children presents so you see them climbing up into many of the decorated houses here. The three santas are a variation on the Three Kings theme :)

Lights are used on the interior of the house on Christmas trees ;)

We found a new park that was recently built while we were away. It's for kids but since it had rock climbing, J had to try it out!

I know I've showed you guys this view before but it was looking especially dazzling so I snapped another picture :)

I heard some locals talking about their friends having a hard time this year. This made me really sad because the cost of living is incredibly low here. So, in the spirit of giving, I decided to give away food and clothes to as many neighbors as I could. J and I went to the store and bought cookies, candy, baking goods, vegetables and soup bases. Each bag was different. On Christmas morning, secret santa style, we put a bag of goodies on the doorsteps of our neighbors in all directions. I left little notes inside saying Happy Holidays :) I would say that all of the gifts were well received because no one left them outside. (Leaving items outside your door, on the wall of your house, is similar to us putting things we don't want on the curb.)

Later on in the day, we decided to make our own decorations. Here are the results(Everything is made from paper except the lights.):

Shiny glove :)

The gifts aren't real but I liked making them :) They add good ambience! The orange circles were a pain to cut out!

One metallic x-mas tree on the left. White xmas tree to the right of it.

 We also made a dessert:

Afterwards, we continued our tour of the parks.  This park is nice because it has the kiddie park just above it(the colored fence). The park where I'm standing is for adults to workout at. You can see some of the white workout machines.

Very picturesque, in my opinion!

After our morning workout, we returned to the yellow brick road park where J was unusually greeted by a cute canine friend! All of the dogs here with the exception of this one and another have all been stand offish or scared of us. As you can see, this pup wasn't shy!

Here are some steps at a part of the park that's under development still. I think the rest of the park will be done pretty soon here.

And last but not least!! Some goofing around before we headed home:

I'll try to post tomorrow but as you can tell from the content of this post, it could be delayed. The internet has been down quite a bit lately!

Back to Spain

We rode the same train as before. Here is the only picture that semi came out. As you can see, it's a very spacious train.  The seats recline at the back and feet!

Once we got back, we rested for a bit and decided to walk around town. Of course, we stopped by my favorite bakery! They have new stuff every day and each thing is a buck! No matter how big or small. Everything has been tasty except for one thing so far!

We passed a park I'd never seen before. The park has a yellow road winding through it and around it which reminds me of the yellow brick road from The Wizard of Oz!

Next we walked around the developing part of town. There's alot of wide open area here and it's pretty quiet. Not many people live here. Most of the houses and properties seem to be under slow development still. These houses can be connected to each other(as they are at the center of town) or separate on their own piece of land. This area is where the horse in one of my first posts was hanging out.

This is a more modern house as you can see by the clean lines of the balcony railing, window guard, doorway entrance and exterior paint.

Even the front door is modern. I haven't seen another one like this around.

I like this  house because of it's colored glass blocks in the window! They are gorgeous in the sunlight! Their sparkling caught my eye as I was walking by :) I also really like the front patio. It's very inviting! I love it!

After our walk we went home and J made some salmon for dinner. I had veggie pasta :)

After all of our traveling around, it was nice to be back to the routine of the serenity that is Olvera. :) It feels good to be back!