An 'open mic night' in the Pink Flamingo palapa

Tonight we were so happy to have our palapa (our big, covered pavillion) finally finished that we skipped the open mic night at Palapa Joe's in La Manzanilla to enjoy a quiet evening at our new home in Arroyo Seco.

It had been a long day.

We took Lucky Dog to his second visit with the vet, which is a whole 'nother story. It was almost 4 by the time we got home and hopped on the Honda 4WD quad for long ride down the beach towards Tenacatita to a freshwater lagoon for a late afternoon swim.

By early evening were back at the palapa with our 12 year old neighbor Brianda, who was attempting to give me some Spanish language lessons –– but she doesn't speak English. Since I can't speak Spanish, it was challenging and worth a few laughs. Finally Michael came out and rescued us --- his fluency is rapidly improving.

Somehow that morphed into my grabbing my violin and Michael's ukulele to play a tune or two for Brianda. Before we knew it, we had a gaggle of kids at our table pretty much vibrating with excitement about the music, the new gringos, finally sneaking into the palapa, who knows what else?

The 10 or so kids were generous with their applause –– they danced, asked millions of questions, tried strumming and fiddling and were so uniformly enthusiastic that it was enough to make me laugh aloud.

They want to learn to speak English, they want to learn to play rock n' roll, they want to know all about everything. And when it was time to go home, every single one came up to me to say buenas noches –– good night –– and shake my hand.

It was exactly the kind of evening I had imagined when Michael and I decided to build the palapa in the front of the property, before we had a plan for whatever else we might do here. We're still unsure of what the heck we're doing, but whatever it is, for tonight, it's more than enough.