Postcards from the boys

Right now we’re in a beautiful RV park right next to the sea. We enjoy going around the trailer, scooping dirt into sand castle buckets and making a sand castle. Before one of the security guards said, “please can we not use any more water?”. We used to spray them to death (the castles, I mean). It was pretty good getting my ear pierced but it only hurt as much as it probably hurt you. You can go out into the sea when it is not wavy out and out to a coral reef where there’s all kinds of beautiful fish with wonderful colors. Not like the beaches in California. these beaches are very warm and pleasant. Last time I emailed you we were probably a thousand miles back. Think of this.. right now we should be 25,000 miles away from home. It’s a pretty damn long ways. but it was worth it getting here. It’s also a paradise to ride bikes. We did have a friend named “Emily” here and she was like, 10. But her sister had to get married [I, personally, don’t think she “had” to] so they left so we don’t have any friends here but there’s lots of stuff to do. I hope you’re really having a good time. Oh, and um, you don’t have to wait for the Star Wars movie for us. We’re not sure we’ll make it there in time. Here we might build a palapa. It’s like a bunch of sticks, wide enough for an RV to fit in, then they put coconut branches over. But it takes a few months to actually build it. [2 weeks] All the other times I’ve emailed you, we have either been sitting in Papa and Tata’s trailer or at the place we emailed you last time but this time we’re sitting in our own trailer emailing you. It’s been kind of hard for me to write emails to you because I miss you so much. Hope you have a good time.
From Pikey.

PS I turned nine almost a week ago. And happy birthday!


Mom said it’s really hard for you to read our emails, but I have to tell you some stuff. And if you can please try and write back. Here in PaaMul, we’re in a beautiful trailer park with palm trees which have coconuts on them but it’s illegal to chop them off. [it is a protected turtle sanctuary] But once and a while one will fall and you can pick it off the ground and hammer a nail into it and pull it out and do it a few times and then put it holes-down on the top of a cup and wait. When the milk stops draining out of the coconut you chop it in half, with a machete if you have one, (which we don’t) so we hit it with a hammer. Once it’s cracked open we scoop out the insides. If you’ve ever had coconut, and if you like it, you’ll know that the coconut milk looks just like water but has a very good taste. And the insides are white when it’s not dry; very kind of glassy-white. If it’s dry, it’s kind of a rough white color - like plaster.

Even when it’s wavy out you can go out into the Caribbean Sea, though it is harder to make it out to the coral reef. The coral reef isn’t as I’d imagined it. The coral is at least as thick as your head (most of it is at least) but some of it’s about as thick as your arm.

I don’t know the exact feet, but it’s about 1/2 km out - a bucket on a very thick branch. It’s used to signal the deep channel where the boats can come in and where the coral reef is so the boats don’t hit it. Me, Dad and Pike usually go out to that. We went out with Mom about two times we went to the bucket too. It’s a good place to rest for a little bit. There’s lots of kinds of fishies. Pike just came in. He says he just found a HUGE coconut. [they are now discussing how heavy it is] Me and Pike just agreed (Mom decided for us) it’s about a kilo heavy. It’s two pounds and a half; that’s how heavy a kilo is.

Just a bit ago, Mom read us an email that Jeff sent to her; just the parts that concerned you and stuff and Dad’s feeling fine. Dad’s got this really cool computer program called Limewire. It’s file sharing - it looks for open computers and finds song files and a lot of stuff and takes them to our computer and it can burn CD’s for us that means we decide what songs it burns and copies them onto a disk. Right now Dad’s playing a disc that he made.

Have you seen “A Knight’s Tale”? It has a sport called “jousting” in it. Two contestants ride horses with armour on them; themselves and the horses, and they ride at each other with dull wooden stakes called “lances” and try to knock each other off the horses. One point for breaking a lance between the torso and the neck; thought they don’t usually die in it. Two points for breaking a lance on the head and three for knocking the opponent off his horse (or her).

And anyway, you don’t really have to wait to watch the Star Wars movie if you don’t want to. Cause we’re kinda toying with the idea of buying a palapa here for a few months. [We’d be here MUCH longer than a couple months if we bought a palapa] We’ll tell you when we’re decided.

Well, that’s about all I have to say.

love, from jesse.

The boys and Sissy have just finished up Chapter 4 of Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer”. We have read two of the “Little House” series of books; House in the Big Woods and House on the Prairie (those titles should be pretty close) but Mark Twain has a very distinct style of writing. There is a LOT of vocabulary they’ve never heard before and prose they’ve never encountered. They’re begging for more.  I'd hoped they’d like “classical” literature but was worried that after initial exposure to the Harry Potter series and the Funke series (Eragon, Dragon Rider, etc.) their tastes would have skewed their interest.

We are hoping to find someone interested in living here in PaaMul in a palapa we would be building. We’re not interested in living in the area (mountains are 2-3 days away) but think it would be an amazing investment. If nothing pans out in the next week, we’ll be leaving pretty shortly. I’m looking forward to being back in the “real” Mexico.