Inspiration

No se celebra Memorial Day en México

I really don't feel like blogging right now. I just turned in a paper and gave a presentation yesterday, so all the words have been emptied out of me. But it's been a while since my last post. Here I go...

So now it's Wednesday the 8th and I've decided to finally finish this post because the other option would be writing and essay. In short here's what I did starting two weeks ago.

Tuesday: Ate Argentine ice cream. So good.

Wednesday: Ate panuchos, went to a Mayan chocolate shop. So so good.

Thursday: Don't remember

Friday: Don't remember

Saturday: Cuzumá- the land of the tres cenotes. Probably the coolest place we’ve been so far.

 So a cenote is like a cave filled with water. Actually, they're not always in caves. But anyway, it's an opening in the underground river system and also a very refreshing, natural swimming pool.

Me doing a flip off the platform into the cenote. They are really, really, really deep so we we're jumping of all sorts of stuff.

Sunday: Started working on the music for a musical number to be performed by our whole group the last sacrament meeting of our trip, Skyped the fam

Monday: FHE Birthday Party (oreo cheesecake :) for the birthdays of two family members), late night vigil writing my second exam/paper and preparing a presentation on prezi.

Tuesday: napped, went to Frappé for the first time. Delicious smoothies. I intend to go back.

Wednesday: No class! The one class that I normally have on Wednesdays got cancelled. Went running with Jessica then worked on the music with her and Todd. Went to a taqueria for dinner and had delicious tacos al pastor.

Thursday: Went to the temple. Then went to a baseball game. The teams were even worse than the Padres (if you can believe it), but it was super fun and there was lots of delicious food.

Friday: Went to Ek Balam, another Mayan ruin site. Then went to Valladolid, another city about 2 hours from Merida. It was really pretty and lots of fun. We rented bikes and went to a cenote. Then we looked in the convent, ate lunch, and went shopping.

Chilling on the stairs of the grand pyramid.

Amigos in the cenote

Saturday: Went to a hammock factory in Tixcocob. I bought two hammocks cause they were a really good deal for the quality. Went to Izamal, another little town. Visited some ruins, a large convent, took a horse and carriage ride around the city.

Sunday: Went to church. Went to some friends' house and ate their apple crisp.

Monday: Best FHE ever. I take some credit for this because I am our family's mother. We took two pictures of everyone's faces--one of the top half, one of the bottom. Printed them at Costco, bought delicious treats in the meantime. (Mexican Costcos have pina colada smoothies). Then at FHE we mixed and matched people's faces and it was quite hilarious.

Tuesday: Shopping day. I bought lots more stuff from the girls who come from Chiapas and sell their handmade shirts, purses, bracelets, etc.

Today is Wednesday: I went to school. Now I'm sitting in my hammock writing this.

Hace 4 días

So right after I write my last post, all these cool things happen. Someone is intent on forcing me to write more than I have ever wanted to in my life. Not that writing isn’t great. It’s just that I’m a math major. I’d rather do calculus.

Friday afternoon I went to the beach. Good stuff. Honestly, I’m getting a bit tired of it. The water there is especially salty. Perhaps I don’t feel the need to take advantage of the beach as much as other people in the program because I’m actually going to be closer to it when I get home than I am now. And it will be less salty. I’m finding that I may have had a spoiled childhood in that regard. But there’s this delicious ice cream, popsicle, smoothie kind of place near the beach called Michoacana. Actually, they have them everywhere, so I may or may not buy a popsicle every other day on the way home from school. But anyway, it’s delicious and I will be sure to take Papito and Julia when they are here.

On Saturday, we had our excursion to Chichén Itza. That was lovely and interesting. There are vendors everywhere trying to sucker silly tourists into buying “authentic Mayan” trinkets most of which were manufactured in China. But the wood and stone things are actually made in Mexico. I actually liked Uxmal better, maybe because the atmosphere was calmer due to the smaller number of tourists.

Then on the way home from Chichen, the police stopped our gigantic tourist bus and asked to see all our passports and immigration papers. Uh oh! No one had them, but luckily they didn't care too much. A policeman told us it was required by law to carry them on our person. But it's not. Perhaps they were just trying to look like they were doing something. Anyhow, it was exciting.

Right after getting off the bus from Chichén, Ally and I rushed home to change and leave again to go to a young adult fireside with Elder Cook. In the flesh! That was really cool. He didn’t really plan too many remarks but mostly just did a kind of “let’s have the mission president and the area authority and their wives answer questions that I gave them no notice about.” Elder Cook doesn’t speak Spanish though so he had an interpreter, and all us BYU kids got to hear the fireside twice.

On Sunday, I taught the Beehive class at church. In Spanish. That was one of the most intimidating experiences of my life. But I got through it, and I’m pretty sure they understood me. So that’s my accomplishment for the week.

And yesterday, I went to El Centro and bought lots of stuff! Yay souvenirs! Then I went to FHE and we swam and made arroz con leche. Nom nom.

This week...

Saturday was the excursion to Celestún. Celestún is like a nature-y place with lots of birds. And crocodiles. But mostly birds. We didn’t see any crocodiles unfortunately. But we did see these:

This ain’t no San Diego Zoo, kids. These are real, live, wild flamingos. No animatronics whatsoever.

Then on Monday we went to a bullfight! Not even kidding. It was way cool. There were six matadors and they were kind of all really young except one and I was scared for them cause they were just chicos! But aside from that, it was really awesome. I was told they were supposed to kill the first bull and not the rest, but they actually didn’t kill any of them which I appreciated. I’m not a huge fan of gushing blood. Later, the guide told us that they didn’t kill any of the bulls (which were actually baby bulls) because the little pueblo couldn’t really afford the “luxury” of killing them because they are pretty poor and the bulls are donated. Interesting.

Tuesday, I worked on an essay until 4:30 in the morning then woke up at 6:30 to go to school. Wednesday, I recovered from my late night vigil. Thursday was yesterday, huh? Oh yeah, I went swimming at a friend’s house then we watched Hot Rod. Today is Friday. The pregnant Chihuahua gave birth this morning to 3 living pups and 2 still births. But hey, that’s a positive record. And I’m going to the beach in like ten minutes.

Last week...

So I noticed that I didn't really write about what I did last week. Sorry. Life here in Mexico is busy!

On Monday for FHE, we went to the Vaquería (also called La Jarana I think?) which was like a presentation of different traditional dances from Yucatán. The coolest one that everyone always talks about was the one where the dancers balanced trays of beer and water on their heads then danced and spun and did things that people don’t usually do with large amounts of beverage precariously placed upon their heads. Needless to say, I was very impressed.

On Tuesday, we went to El Palacio del Gobierno which is pretty much the state capitol. They have lots of artwork there relating to the history of Mexico and Yucatán. After, we went to institute at the stake center. The young adults here have been super nice and welcoming so we’ve gone to their activities a lot. And it was Mother’s Day so Ally and I gave our Mexican mommy a rose and a nice card written on lined paper because we forgot to prepare for holiday celebration while packing.

On Wednesday, we went to an institute party. And let’s just say Mexicans know how to party. We had a water balloon fight proceeded by water balloon games which were a much better twist on the ol’ water balloon games we play in the US. And all the native kids thought it was way funny to make us spin around for like a minute and then have to run towards the water balloon container. So there were a lot of confused, running gringos, and it was all great fun. On Thursday, I went to the temple with the ward again which was lovely. 

Their temple is small but it’s very nice and calm too (especially compared to Provo). And some 15-year-old girl told me I look younger than I am which will be nice in 20 years but I wasn’t too psyched about that now because people already call me niña for being one of the youngest people in the program. Right after that, I found out that me and my friend in the program have the same birthday! He’s just four years older…

On Friday, our hermanita received her First Communion and Ally and I got to go to the mass. For those who don’t know, the First Communion is one of those big Catholic rites of passage, like one step below a Quinceañera. The mass was really interesting and we for sure experienced lots of Mexican culture that day. Afterwards, there was a party in our house (=delicious food) and we just chatted with all the relatives and stuff. Their grandma loves us a lot now. And these are our hermanitas (Ximena, 10 and Elisa, 8). They are so presh!

Dzibilchaltun, Progreso, and Uxmal

aka (zee-bill-chal-TOON), (pro-GRE-so), and (OOSH-mall)

We went on our first two planned excursions out of Merida on Friday and Saturday. On Friday, we went to Dzibilchaltun, the site of Mayan ruins about 15 minutes from Merida. It was awesomely interesting. Luckily for us, Mexico is not as good about preserving their ancient artifacts as some other countries, so we got to climb onto some of the pyramids.

Apparently I have the fancy-schmanciest camera, so I'm actually not in this one because I was taking it.

But I'm in this one! The whole fam :)

Then we swam in this cenote (se-NOTE-ay), which is like an opening in the underground river systems. There are literally thousands of these in Yucatan. Not many are safe to swim in because of the underground river currents, but this one was! If you want to know more, I suggest you watch the "Caves" episode of Planet Earth.

After seeing the ruins and swimming in the cenote, we went to Progreso (a city on the coast about 40 min from Merida) to eat lunch at the beach house of one of the host families. Yes, a lot of the host families have beach houses. We kind of live in the ritzy part of town.

Here's the beach in Progreso. The beach house would be to the right of the edge of the photo and across the street.

I took some artsy photos. Those are my roommate's legs if you wanted to know. The beach was great fun. I went bodysurfing even though the waves there are tiny. I suppose the Gulf of Mexico is not so much an ocean but rather more like the world's biggest pool party.

On Saturday, we went to Uxmal, another site of Mayan ruins less than an hour from Merida. Uxmal means "three times" or something like that. I can't actually remember exactly. It's a pyramid that was constructed then remodeled (for lack of a better term) three times. And here it is.

And again...

There are also a lot more buildings and such at Uxmal, but this post is getting too long to include pictures of all of them. All in all, it was an extremely fun, busy weekend, which perhaps explains why it's taken me until Tuesday to write about it. Mexico is still great. This is the most awesome experience ever. If you think of the biggest number you can possibly fathom, that is how much fun I am having. And don't worry, I'm learning a lot too! About as much as the second biggest number you can possibly fathom.

Vamos a la playa

So I went to the beach today for the first time since arriving (in fact, the first time since December). The city is where the beach is located is called Progreso, and a lot of the more wealthy people in Merida have beach houses there. It's a half an hour bus ride from Merida to Progreso and it costs 16 pesos. Pretty good deal, I'd say. The beach and the boardwalk kind of remind me of Newport beach but with more Spanish. And less Newport. We bought some coconuts from some guy in the street selling them from his van. They were nice and cold too.

The girl trying to bite my coconut is my roommate, Ally. She's from San Bernadino. We make a nice pair.