Meet Mexican Santa. And this is no joke, but a real figurine for sale at Feliz Navidad, a Sedona, Arizona Christmas specialty store.
Ok, I’ll forgive them, not only because of the holidays and all that stuff, but because the company is located in the heart of the Tlaquepaque Village, apparently a very popular area around Sedona.
MI BLOG ES TU BLOG 
Hi, Laura,
Because of your blog I gave more thought to my sentence about Mexican parents taking siestas, and decided to retract it. In Cancún, where I lived from 1975 to 1988, the siesta was pretty universal, especially in the hot months. You’re right, though; it’s much less common in the US.
During those 13 years the school I founded, Escuela Xicalango, taught English to thousands of people. Meanwhile my students taught me about La Lotería, among other things. I realized that this icon of Mexican culture is a great teaching material, and over the years I developed one game after another, teaching language skills in entertaining ways, in the context of Lotería vocabulary.
After moving back to the US, I taught 10 years in West Contra Costa, CA, in the secondary schools that serve the newest immigrants. Again I found that teaching with La Lotería was popular and effective.
The game is designed to suit the needs of beginning English language learners. The only reason why bilingual people might buy one is to teach others with it. At present the game has been bought mostly by teachers.
It is called ¡BINGLéS! because it’s a combination of Bingo and inglés. It’s printed in México by Pasatiempos el Gallo, and we pay them rights to use their artwork for our adaptation of the game.
A family can buy a game and teach each other all the personal pronouns, the possessive pronouns, the question forms with the modal auxiliaries (Do you have the nopal cactus? Yes, I do/ Does he have the drum? No he doesn’t) and more. The games teach the interrogatives who, what, where, when, how. Once learners have these words and structures under their belts, they’re much better equipped to continue learning from their daily experiences with the English language.
I don’t see another English learning tool on the market that allows people to teach each other, by playing together. The basic game we’ve produced can serve up to 11 players. If they play all 12 of the games included, the game is the equivalent of a 6-month course. It includes an audio CD which models pronunciation for each game and each word. The complete package sells for $19.99. Our newest product is a Workbook-on-CD with 40 pages of additional activities to reinforce the learning from the games; it’s $14.99.
We’re providing a different kind of language learning resourse, at an accessible price, and we’re proud of our products.
I thought about what you wrote; I hope you’ll do the same for me.
Muchos saludos,
Deborah Frisch, M.A.TESL
Director, Xicalango Press
http://www.xicalangopress.com