Newcomers Group

So last Friday, Susan picked Claire and I up at 8:15 to head to the newcomers meeting that was at 9:30. Even though it is not "far" in miles, with traffic, this trip can take over an hour. It was interesting to see a new part of Mexico that I hadn't seen yet (past the grocery stores) and it was even nicer that Susan was driving her automatic, instead of Dave in our manual!

We arrived to the meeting and it was not exactly what I expected. I signed in and paid my dues for the year and took a look around. It is held in a church common room and there are tables set up all around the room. Some people are selling stuff, some are helping out a cause, and some are handing out information. There weren't a ton of tables filled, but the ones that I checked out were the animal rescue group (of course), the girl scout table (which was selling some sort of "treats", but they were not the true girl scout cookies), and a woman who was selling French children boutique clothing. There was also a table set up for the oatmeal that I brought in per the group's request for a local hospital.

The center of the room was set up with smaller circular tables for you to sit at. Susan, Claire and I chose a table and grabbed a snack. Susan introduced me to some of the woman that she knew and some that she just met. There definitely seemed to be cliques, but I didn't expect anything less than that. There are always going to be people who tend to gravitate to certain people.

The meeting started after about a half hour of mingling. Again, not the meeting that I am used to sitting through! They started with announcements, then a woman from a local charity spoke. This charity helps children who are in abusive homes. They give them a place to stay, go to school, and get some counseling. They have a teacher on staff and she talked about how a nutritionist is now coming to help them balance the meals for the children. All of their food is donated so for a while, if they received sausage, that is what they would have for days. Now they are trying to get a variety of foods donated. Of course, in the middle of this woman's presentation, Claire had to go to the bathroom so we left (the front of the room), found the bathrooms and then headed back. By the time we returned, they were going to play Bingo for charity. Susan and I opted to skip out of this and instead headed to the English used bookstore that they have on the premises.

Susan found some books for her girls and, of course, Claire couldn't leave without a few, even though the children's selection wasn't the greatest. We left with a Zoo Book on otters, The Lion King, and a Duck Tales book!

After the meeting, we started heading back and stopped at a mall to have some lunch. This mall is much better than the other one that is close to us. Mostly because of the variety of stores that they have and the unbelievable view! It sits up high on this mountain and you can see really far (as long as the smog isn't too bad!). This is has a Sam's Club, Wal-Mart, pet store, kid's play store (think Jungle Java meets Creative Arts Studio all on a smaller scale), Idea (an IKEA rip-off), and a fabric store. It also has a ton of restaurants like California Pizza Kitchen, Chili's, Shakey's, an Argentine, Mexican, and Italian restaurant, which is where we chose to eat.

The restaurant (Italianna's) wasn't very busy and in true Italian restaurant fashion, gives you bread to snack on while you are looking over the menu and waiting for your meal. What's awesome about the bread though is they give you oil and balsamic vinegar to dip it in, which is the way we eat it at home! Yum! We both ordered four cheese pizzas and chatted more about the differences between the States and Mexico. By the time we left, Claire was just a second away from meltdown. Time to get home! She fell asleep on the short ride home and never got a longer nap because when we got home, Dave was there and so was our shipment!