Week Three: ¡Encontré la casa de Jaws!

This week has been busy and very itchy! I am, no joke, COVERED in mosquito bites. I even have one on the bottom of my foot. WHY?! The mosquitos here just adore American blood, because the Mexicans here never EVER get bitten! I don't understand!

Okay, I’ll start with Thursday evening!

Thursday evening our group went to the temple. Oh my gosh, the temple here is so beautiful. It's small, but it's really gorgeous, inside and out! And the Spirit there is as strong as any other temple!

So since I’m in Mexico and all, all the ordinances were performed in Spanish. It was my first time hearing them in Spanish, and it was really amazing! I really loved it. Everything in the Church really is the same throughout the entire world, huh? :)

Afterward, we went out to eat dinner at a restaurant called Los Trompos. I shared a delicious, TO-DIE-FOR pizza pastorera! That’s basically tacos al pastor, but in pizza form! SO GOOD.

Just drool at it’s deliciousness:

NOM NOM NOM.

Friday morning our group went to the Mayan Museum that’s here in Merida. It was super cool! AND IT IS HUGE.

This guy right here was my favorite:

Hehehe :)

After lunch, my roommates and I went to Progreso for a couple hours. Yep, we've been to Progreso every week so far!

After we got back, we headed out to Centro to see a performance of the Mayan ball game (y’know, the one in the Road to El Dorado!). Unfortunately though, right when we arrived they announced the end of it. I was so bummed! We found out that they’ll be there every Friday night, though, so I REALLY wanna go and see it sometime this next month!

Saturday we went to a place called Celestun! It's a place on the coast where they take you out into the ocean on boats called “lanchas”. We saw a bunch of birds, including flamingos! We went down a river that leads to Campeche, when the water started turning red.

Yep, we found Jaws’ home.

We were fighting him off with the few weapons we had aboard our lanchas. We were spraying him with our insect repellent, shooting him with harpoons... We would not be taken down by the nautical monster!

Just kiiiidding :)

The color leeches from the bark of the trees that grow in the water, so the water is a dark red like blood. It was cool!

We stopped at something called an “ojo de agua”… And I don’t exactly know what it is. I think it’s a spring of water that connects into the ocean or something. Anyway, some of us swam in it, but it smelled gross and I got some of the water in my mouth. It tasted absolutely disgusting! 

Typical me, oblivious to the picture being taken! 

As we arrived back on the beach, a huge thunderstorm started! It was POURING, there was rumbling thunder and big cracks of lightning… IT WAS AWESOME! 

After it let up a little bit, a few of us decided to go swim in the ocean… Yeah, not a bright idea, but there was only one strike of lightning off in the horizon at that point. Then we noticed that some of our hair was sticking up from static electricity. But the water was so warm and we were having fun...

Yeah, not so smart looking back on it.

Sunday was a nice day of relaxation, as usual :) Well... for the most part hahaha.

I Skyped my family for a half hour before some of the boys came over to make Oreo truffles with us and to play some card games. It was so much fun! 

Normally I’m really bad at card games, but when we played spoons, I WAS BEAST! The second round we played I WON! The problem is I get super worked up about intense games like that, so I was still shaking a good five minutes afterward...

There were two different reactions after seeing my manic behavior. Pascal and Flynn:

Today for our Conversation class we got to go out to breakfast for class!! Do they ever do that in Spanish classes for the United States? I THINK NOT! It was so awesome. We had a traditional breakfast food here in Yucatan called “lechón.” It’s a type of meat. We had it as a sandwich and it was so YUMMY! I loved it!

Kelsey and our teacher Lilia :)

After eating, we walked around a mercado (market) and learned a bunch of names of different foods and fruits. Our teacher bought us huaya, a type of fruit that only grows here in the Peninsula! It tastes really good, but it’s nearly impossible to eat because… Well, it’s really hard to describe. It’s squishy and doesn’t like to come off of the seed… Anyway, it’s a little dangerous to eat because it has a big seed that a lot of people choke on, so we made sure to be careful!

OKAY OKAY OKAY!

Gosh I love Mondays so much. It means I get to talk about Elder Gibby!!!!!!

He is doing SUPERB! This weekend he got two baptisms! They were his first ones that he got to do so far on his mission. He was getting down because he hadn’t gotten a baptism yet, so I’m really glad he got two after all his hard work!

After the baptism he went to the hospital because he was sick. Pobrecito!! :(

But other than that (and having an experience of eating cow blood), things seem to be going well for Elder Gibby! I’m so so happy for him! It’s always great when things start to look up :)

763 Days Left! :)