I have been traveling for my winter vacation for about 2 weeks and it has been really great and has reminded me again that there is just not enough time to see all i want to see in mex!  Before I left there was more money drama with my bosses at the school, I really got upset about it and had decided to quit if they didn{t come through on it which they finally did but i hope that i don{t have to deal with any more problems with them, it is so frustrating to feel like i am pinching every penny out of them, it makes me feel like such a money grubber but if i did{t i would get really screwed.  Dave was with me in my classroom for a few days, It was so nice and fun because he could do things likie clean up for the next activity whi ch i usually have to do while trying to keep their attention or make them sing or something adn it was also so fun to have someone else see all the hilar cute things my kids do.  He also got to see the adorable Christmas Pagent in which all the kids in my class had to dress up as litle 'pastorellas' which i thought would mean shepherds adn maybe it duid but they all had old-timey mexican costumes on, one little fat fellow had a mustachio painted on and a little sombrero!  And the girls all had colorful dresses and ribbons in their hair.  I only had a green blanket on me because as I said, i thought it was shepherds and another teacher had brought me some mexiclothes but the Virgin Maria came without her costume so I had to give those to her.  It was really really cute.  For the Vacations we went first to Puebla for a few days which is a typical mexican city and in one of the museums i saw the death head cast of victor hugo.  It was strange but interesting and why it was in that museum is anybody's guess.  Puebla is also famous for Mole which is very delish.  then we went to Oaxaca city where roasted crickets and chocolate are the specialty.  let me tell you, anywhere you go in mexico everyone will say, Oh did you try the (insert regional food here)? I guess that might come from a time not too long ago when those foods weren't shipped all over mexico and available to any gringo who might want them, even celaya's pride and joy, cajeta (caramel) is available way down here in the South.  Anyway i ate some bug tacos and lots of hot chocolate and we went to Monte Alban, a ruin of a Mayan city that was really awesome.  One artifact we saw was a skill that had been covered in pieces of blue jade, mosiac style.  Also we were there for Xmas and on Xmas eve there was a catholic-mayan parade with mayan costumed dancers and a delightful living nativity in the back of a truck, except  for the baby jesus who was a plaster baby with real eyelashes that is very popular here, then we saw someone carrying another baby jesus into the main cathedral and his little plaster body was dressed in a light-blue crocheted outfit just like old grannies always make for new babies.  Since then i have seen my share of baby jesus' dressed in little outfits obviously made by hand and then on the bus a few days ago Dave was sitting next to a trio of little ladies who were transporting one of those baby jesus' with the real eyelashes and they were holding him just like a real baby and would stroke his little outstretched hands.  it was sweet in such a mexican catholic way.  Anyway, after Oaxaca we went south to a town called Tehuantepec as a stop on the way and it was so much warmer with very humid air and as soon as we got to our hotel room a little lizard ran out from behind the curtains, much more palatable than the cucurachas in celaya.  From there we went to Tuxtla Guttierez, but we ended up going the long way because apperently there was no bus station where we wanted to go, Tapanatepec, so they just stopped at a gas station and we didn{t know it was the town, and as you can tell the names pretty much sound all the same so even when i tried to ask about we got some confusing answers so long story short we missed the stop but it was quite a winding jungle-mountain ride.  From Tuxtla we saw the AWESOME cañon sumidero which has towering peaks on both sides that were up to 800 meters tall.  That was SO Cool but I will never be able to show how great it was in the pictures.  Dave and I were in San Cristobal for new years where there was a dirty hippy convention, we had a nice dinner in a restaurant but then went out to watch the drumming and dredlock flapping for a little while.  These towns are in Chiapas where there is a high military presence because of the 1994 Zapatista revolution but my feeling is that the whole thing has been totally neutralized by turism.  We went to some indiginous villages where mayan religion is still very strong and in the 'catholic' church they do all of the old rituals which was awesom to see.  some of the highlights are drinking coke and beer in the church to burp out evil spirits, lighting hundreds of candles placed in descending order to represent the light and dark aspects of the church building and the saints statues that lined the wall were labeled by a scratchy hand script on their window casings and many of them had their hands cut off as punishment because the old church burned down and the saints didn{t do anything about it, so they are punished.  It ws new years day so in both the villages we went to everyone was wearing the traditional tunic of htat town, in the first one all the men had white furry ones and in the second everyone had deep purple and green ones with silver flowers embroidered all over them.  we saw the backstrap loom they use in one of the textile places and it looks like a pretty time consuming process, instead of shuttles they had sticks that they lifted and used their fingers to separate the weaves.  Then it was on to Palanque which is an excellently preserved mayan ruin which they built without the use of metal tools or the wheel, as I have said before when you{re mayan, who needs wheels when you have slaves?  It was over 15 square km of jungle and it was totally rain forrest style, very wet and green and beautiful.  Now we are trying to make the looooong bus trip back more manageable by stopping for a day at a real beach but we have been traveling for more than 24 hours now and still have a ways to go.  the problem is that everyone is traveling now for the Reyes Magos holiday which is more important than Xmas I have heard (the three kings bring kids presents on jan 6) so we have to wait so long in between buses to get the next available seat.  I can't wait for that white sand beach though!  I am allready feeling not ready to go back to school and the long days of nothing but me and 21 4 year olds but I have a new years resolution to become fluent in spanish so i will have to be studying every spare second so the time should pass quickly.