La Manzanilla

Overall, my homestay experience has been amazing and has been a huge part of my learning experience. The family I am staying with are wonderful and try to encourage me every day and help me with my speaking. In addition, the mother Rosaura, is an incredible cook and I have been eating new and interesting things every day. Breakfast is served around 10am and the biggest meal of the day is lunch around 2:30 - 3:00pm. A lighter dinner is served around 9pm. One of the more adventurous things I have tried was menudo soup for breakfast. This is soup with tripe and some vegetables. For those of you unfamiliar with tripe, this is made from the stomach of a cow. The soup and tripe was very flavourful but the texture of the tripe might give some people some issues! We eat alot of fresh fish on a daily basis also including red snapper, mahi mahi, etc which I love. Some of my favorite dishes are her chicken enchiladas and her shrimp al diablo (devil). Her pozole is really amazing also.

The children are really adorable and I learn so much from them everyday. They absolutely love my dogs and asked if the dogs could stay with them last weekend when I went back to Manzanillo for the weekend. Last night, they asked if Jackson could sleep with them in their bed. He is not going to want to leave here - he is spoiled rotten!

Here are the three of them - Hugo Junior (14) holding Natalia (3) and Ketzali (9). Natalia and Ketzali had just returned from birthday party with face-painting.




Ketzali and her friend Alexis doing crafts


The house seems to be dog central and all the neighbors dogs seem to congregate here on a daily basis. Rosaura is very generous by nature and cannot help but feed them too!

Chato - the neighbor's boxer and his puppy Rocky





Oh, and here is my roommate. I have learned to accept him, albeit begrudgingly.


The critters here are very large! I feel as though I am back in Australia! Hugo Senior and one of the neighbors were clearing out a lot the other day and came across two huge rattlesnakes. They ended up killing them with their machete and brought back the skins for us to see. I kind of lost my appetite for dinner that night!

I like to walk on the beach in the morning with the dogs before I start my daily homework. The beach here is beautiful and a great walking and swimming beach. This is a very dog friendly town and I often see several dogs on my daily walks on the beach.