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Ma Noweyiteko Mitstiochiwa

Huastec monolithI have returned! From the wilds of Mexico, from the high mountains of San Luis Potosรญ, I have brought tidings of the people, language, landscape, and culture of the Huasteca.

My trip to the Potosian Huasteca went very well; I made some new friends and I was able to talk to lots of people there and improve my Spanish. Although I had previously visited the states of Coahuila and Tamaulipas, I had never before journeyed so far south (if you’re not sure where San Luis Potosรญ is, take a look at a map). I discovered a totally different side of Mexico on this trip!

As I experienced first-hand the culture of that region, I couldn’t help but think, this is the real Mexico! This is a place where everyone knows their native tongue as well as Spanish, a place where they make such bizarre dishes as a giant tamale. This was no Tex-Mex!

There is so much to tell about my trip, and so many pictures to show, that I am going to dedicate a good number of my subsequent blog posts to sharing these things with you. As you may remember, I did the same thing on BenjaBlog when I got back from North Carolina, but this trip was much more interesting than that one.

I hope you’ll come back regularly! This blog is dedicated to providing you, the reader, with interesting things to read and look at, and I hope I am achieving this goal.

About the title: I considered using Spanish for the title, but I decided to instead use Nahuatl (pronounced NAH-wahtl), the language of the Aztecs. The phrase means God bless you, and I would like to thank Luis Alberto of Coxcatlรกn for his help in providing me with some words from the language (stay tuned for more information about the indigenous tongues of Mexico).

ยกHasta luego!

Tomorrow, muy de maรฑana, I am going on a week-long trip to the state of San Luis Potosรญ in Mexico. This explains why I am blogging on thursday today, and I will be back in time to blog next friday.

Of all the foreign countries I’ve visited, Mexico is my favourite (although I’ve never been outside North America), and I’m really looking forward to travelling farther south than I’ve ever been. Not only will I be able to improve my Spanish, Lord willing, but I also hope to meet some people down there who still speak the old Indian languages (talk about Precolumbian!)

I plan to take plenty of pictures, and hopefully I’ll get some blogging material as well. ยกAdiรณs!

Mountain Lion

Silently boundingโ€”
A great cat in the forest;
The puma passes.

This is the one and only haiku I have ever written. It’s not my favourite type of poetry, but I must admit it’s better than free verse. In my humble opinion, haiku is more suited to the Japanese language than to English.

Ain't got a homepage

…at least not until now! Although I’ve made quite a few websites for myself and for others, and even though I’ve had the domain name benjaminbruce.us for quite a while, I have just recently gotten around to making a central website to be a hub for all my other ones.

So, if you’d like to, please check it out! It was lots of work making the design for this website, but I finally got it looking like I wanted it to. It’s even trilingual, so hopefully more people will find it that way.

An update:ย  I recently purchased the domain name benjaminbruce.com (whoever had it before finally let it go), so I am in the process of switching everything to this domain.ย  BenjaminBruce.us will still work, but I’ll be phasing it out, so go ahead and change your bookmark if necessary.

Proceed With Caution

An essay on the proposed merger between Hudson Oaks and the Annettas

Things are changing rapidly in east Parker County. Of these changes, growth is probably the most significant, as it has triggered many other changes. Growth is inevitable, and as our area continues to grow in population, special care must be taken that good decisions are made, and when various issues arise they must be handled properly and in a way that would be of most benefit to the people.

The Annetta Community was first settled in the late nineteenth century, and through the industry and perseverance of its people, it has endured to the present time. Long before the community was incorporated, it had a school, a general store, a post office, a cemetery, and three church buildings. Although in past decades the population of the community declined, it was incorporated as the three Annettas in 1979, and soon thereafter, if not before, the population of not only Annetta but also the surrounding area began experiencing rapid growth, which we are still witnessing.

The city of Hudson Oaks, to the north of the Annettas, was incorporated in the late 1970โ€™s, and has also experienced tremendous growth in recent years. Probably due to its location along Fort Worth Highway and Interstate 20, many more businesses are located in Hudson Oaks than in the Annettas, and consequently it has much more of a โ€œbig cityโ€ atmosphere about it.
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