Friends in Mexico

We're off to the wedding of our friend Jose, who grew up in a small city in the centre of Mexico. San Juan del Rio is off the tourist path, although it's close to a number of well-known colonial towns like Queretero and San Miguel de Allende.  This photo shows the main street of San Juan del Rio with some of its colonial architecture.

Our family has a connection with Jose's family because both Harry and I taught English to Jose about ten years ago. Jose was a fantastic student who came into Harry's class straight out of high school.  He studied at an ESL school here in Victoria for a couple of years and mastered English well enough to be accepted at Simon Fraser University, where he graduated with a degree in Psychology. He's now working as a social worker on Vancouver's Downtown East Side.

We met Jose's parents while he was studying in Victoria and they invited our son Jamie for a visit in in San Juan del Rio when he graduated from high school.  It was Jamie's first time away from home in a foreign country. Harry and I visited the Reyes family in 2008 when we were traveling to Mexico in Mohita.  And we've kept in touch since. This is a photo of Chata, Jose's mom, and Natalia, his sister, taken on that trip.

 

The flowers are from the wall in front of their house.



Jose is marrying a young woman from San Juan del Rio and they plan to live in Vancouver. Tania has a degree in communications and hopes to find a job there.  We are so excited to be able to share this special time with them.  This will be a true Mexican wedding and we've even managed to pry Jamie away from school for a few days so he can come along too.  We're flying into Mexico City on Thursday afternoon and then we'll take a bus to San Juan del Rio.

 The wedding takes place on Saturday, perhaps even at this church.  I'll keep you posted.