Week 4.5: Me encanta la comida. Un montón.

So after writing this, I realized a lot of this post is about food and things I ate... Which made me realize that I kind of love food. A lot. Especially the food here. How am I going to live back in the United States??!

Okay, my fun-ness so far this week!

Monday night for FHE we went on a Turibus! It’s a double-decker bus that took us around Mérida and told us all about the historic sites. I wasn’t really paying much attention to the history part, but the old buildings looked SO cool! And we were busy ducking and weaving to avoid tree branches and wires as we were driving haha.

Afterward we went to Colón and got helado! YUM YUM YUM. This time I got chocolate! It was weird though, because it tasted kind of like it had a hint of cinnamon/ginger… But it was still super good!

Unfortunately, from Colón we couldn’t find our way home. So our director had us take a taxi home! It was a little more expensive than a bus (60 pesos, making it 15 pesos each), but it was so much better! The driver was super nice and really fun to talk to! Plus we got home in like 15 minutes, rather than a half hour plus 10 minutes of walking.

Tuesday we got to go out for breakfast for one of our classes!! This time we went to a waffle shop. OH MY GOSH IT WAS SO DELICIOUS. Call me a fatty for eating ice cream for breakfast, but it was so delicious, I don’t even care!

That afternoon it rained SO hard! While I was minding my own business, doing homework in my room, all the sudden there was this GIGANTIC crack of lightning! I almost had a heart attack! It was super close to our house, and then the thunder grumbled grumbled grumbled. I really like thunderstorms though! I think they’re so cool!

After the rain let up a little bit, Kate and I went with our friend Daniel to a park in Southern Mérida. It had a humongous lake in the center. It was awesome! There were ducks, SO many fish, and TURTLES!

Daniel bought some food of some sort (I still don’t know what it was…) to feed the fish and turtles with. When we threw pieces of the food into the water, the fish went crazy!!!
Check it out! (You can even hear me using one of my favorite words, fó!):

We walked around for maybe about an hour. It was so pretty! There was a ton of green, and it reminded me a little bit of my beloved Oregon :)

After the sun was beginning to set, we decided to go out for dinner! Daniel said he knew this awesome pizza place, and they even had vegetarian options for Kate! He told me that I HAD to try this pizza with turkey on it. Turkey on a pizza sounds pretty bizarre though, right? It’s actually really good! Especially with this sauce they had there. We still don’t know what the sauce was…

Right before we ate we heard meowing. We looked for the source of the noise, and Daniel found two kittens behind a bush! OH MY GRACIOUS THEY WERE SO CUTE! But they didn’t have a mommy! It was so sad :’( Some of the boys who worked at the restaurant are going to take care of them though, I think :)

Wednesday our group went to the movie theater to watch the Lone Ranger! Oh my goodness, that movie is SO funny!! I love Johnny Depp!

After the movie, Daniel took the four of us to el parque de las Americas, because Kelsey and Gabi wanted to try something called a “marquecitas". It’s basically a crepe with cheese in it. Sounds pretty good, right? Except apparently a popular choice here in cheese with nutella.

CHEESE.
WITH NUTELLA.

Of course, even though I really didn’t want to, I tried it. And it was icky. I don’t like mixing my salty with my sweet. I don’t like salted caramel or salt on my chocolate. Nope. Can’t do it!

So I just decided to get one with Nutella, with no cheese. Which I was told is actually pretty strange. Oh well, it was super yummy! :)

After we finished eating, we explored the park. There was a shell there, like the ones used for choirs and performances.

Daniel stood on one side of the shell, while Kate and I stood on the other. He whispered something, and we could hear him like he was right next to us, talking normally! IT WAS SO COOL!

That's Gabi, Kelsey, and Daniel on the other side :)

During our exploring, Daniel pointed out a replica of a famous statue that is on a pyramid… Somewhere. It’s of a Mayan man who sacrificed people and offered their hearts to the supreme Mayan god on the plate in his lap.

That position just looks uncomfortable...

Next we ate dinner. TACOS ARABES!!!!!! Yessss, mi amor!

If I could marry tacos arabes with garlic cream sauce, you bet I would. So delicious.

Okie, update time for my favorite missionary!

He and his companion dropped all their investigators because they weren't progressing, which is pretty tough. I can't imagine working with someone, teaching them for a while, and because they won't make the changes they need to, needing to drop them. That's got to be so hard.

However, they still do have some investigators! :) They have one kid who might get baptized in a couple weeks, and there's a woman who only needs to get married, then they should be set.

Alright, I gotta go, so until Monday! :)

753 Days Left! :)

Week 4: Comida + Diversión - Ejercicio = Gordita

Guys, something terrible has happened. Among enjoying all this delicious food and having fun, I haven't been working out for the past month. Do you know what that means?

WEIGHT GAIN.

Nooooo! I knew it would come to this though. I noticed it starting last week, but I was in denial... So today I started exercising so that I'm not Jabba the Hutt when I return home!

Ew.

So I've dabbled a little bit in running throughout my life. I was in soccer Kindergarten through fifth grade, then did it one more year my freshman year in high school. That requires quite a bit of running, right? Well, except that I was defense... So much for that haha.

So to jumpstart my exercising, this morning, bright and early at 6 am, I went for a run throughout the neighborhood, and this is basically what I looked like:

Even at 6 in the morning it is HOT and humid here! I was basically a human fountain of sweat. Not to mention the roads here are in really bad shape, so I felt like I was going to roll my ankle or something. Well, and to be completely honest, I kind of suck at running.

I've been working on trying to get better at running though. The past couple years I've gone out for runs with my sister, and while I was away at BYU I went for runs about... er, maybe 15 times? Oh boy. That number seemed bigger in my head. Also, before I came here to Mexico I went for a few runs during the month and a half or so that I was home.

So why would I choose to run for exercise if it's not something I particularly enjoy doing and not something I'm any good at?
Well, I'd like to get my endurance up, and have you ever noticed that avid runners are always super in-shape?

Okay, I know that obviously doesn't seem like a good enough reason to do something I suck at so bad at.

...Fine! I'll tell you!
A teensy part of it might be that Adam is incredible at running.
Only a TEENSY WEENSY part though, okay!?

But yeah, that's probably why I started running more during my second semester at college, because that's when I found out he was this super star at running. It's just, if he ever sees me run, I don't wanna look like a rotting tomato that's about to explode. Very unsavory.

Well now that you have that image in your head, it's pretty clear I'm not cut out to be much of a runner.

An example of my terrible-ness at running:
You know when your spit gets all thick and you can't swallow it? Well runners just spit it out, and go on their merry way.

Uh, yeah. No joke, I tried doing that on a run right before coming to Mexico, trying to be all cool, and it ended up like this:

I'm being completely serious. Luckily nobody saw, but some of it ended up on my shirt... Er, embarrassing.

But you know what? For what I lack in running skills, I make up in other areas! Like my smiling skills. Those are probably 20x better than the average person's! So take that, people who are awesome at running! Hahaha just kidding. I really admire runners! You guys are super awesome, and props to you for being stellar!!

Okay, now for my events of this weekend!

Thursday was SO much fun! My roommates and I all headed out to the beach Thursday afternoon with one of our friends, Daniel. He took us to a beach that’s west of Progreso, and it’s seriously beautiful! Everything was so clean, the sand was really soft, the water was a pretty green, and the sun was out!

We got in the water for a little bit, but we were supposed to be meeting up with some of our group at Progreso, so we decided to head over there after about 20 minutes or so. It was pretty windy in Progreso when we arrived, but by the time we got in the water it started raining a bit and it was SUPER windy, so the waves were all choppy.

We got out of the water and were chatting for a bit when the two boys that were there decided to leave. As they were walking off the beach, a girl stopped them and asked to take a picture. Nathan started to put his arm around her, but then she said, "sin camisa", meaning without his shirt on!!! And so I took a picture to remember this funny moment:

We decided to do something else, since the beach isn’t all that fun when it’s really windy. Gabi and Kelsey wanted to go with some of the girls in our group to explore Progreso, so Kate and I stayed with Daniel and we continued our beach hopping adventures!

In total, we visited 5 beaches that day! The second to last one we went to had a pier, and there we tons of people fishing off of it. I even saw a real swordfish! I’ve never seen one of those in real life before!

It was pretty dark about 7:30 since it was so cloudy out, but Daniel said he wanted to take us back to Progreso since it’s really fun there at night. We’d never seen Progreso at night, so when we saw that it was a CARNIVAL we were in awe! 

Every night at 9 there is a huge party in Progreso. There’s a huge tent with a DJ in it, carnival rides, TONS of food, and lots of lights! IT’S CRAZY! 

We weren’t sure whether to be happy to find this out, or sad that we missed it the first half of our trip! We didn’t stay until 9 since we had to wake up really early on Friday, so we didn’t get to stay for the dance party :( Unfortunately we can’t go this coming week either since we have too much going on, but hopefully the next week we can go party in Progreso!!

Friday we went to the temple in the morning, and it was fantastic!!!! We relaxed during the day, and I even took my first siesta during my trip here! Those 45 minutes were DIVINE :)

That night we there was a party for the mamá of two of the boys. It was so much fun! There was karaoke, dancing, food…

But I’m pretty sure you already know the dancing part was a disaster. I pretty much dance like this:

Yep it was a blast!

Saturday we woke up bright and early to go to Chichén Itzá (aka Chicken Pizza), which is one of the 7 wonders of the world! It was a two and a half hour drive, but luckily we had a movie to watch during the ride!

Chichén was a lot different than the other ruins we’ve been to because there were SO MANY GRINGOS. It was a weird feeling, being surrounded by white people speaking English! I haven’t had that for a whole month! 

Here I am with my friend Emilio!

There were so many little shops too! The venders were so funny. If they heard us speaking in Spanish they told us that we’d automatically get a lower price. For the most part they spoke in Spanish. Their English consisted of, “cheap prices”, “one dolla”, and “Something for your boyfriend?”

Funny story! My roommate Gabi got a lower price on a ring she bought by giving the vender a kiss on the cheek. Well, it was the air right next to his cheek. How brave! She also sold her $12 pink Wal-Mart watch for a knife. What the? Hahaha.

A lot of the younger venders would ask as I walked by if I wanted a Mayan boyfriend. I talked to one guy in particular for about half a minute, and he mentioned his friend sitting next to him was looking for a girlfriend. Sorry boys, I already have someone, and you can't even come close to comparing to him! :)

After we finished up at the ruins we headed to our first real cenote, Ik Kil! Ahhhh! 

IT WAS AWESOME! I even confronted my fear of heights and jumped off a cliff 5 meters (about 16 feet) high into the water! THREE TIMES!

We got home at about 7, so we still had a decent amount of time til we needed to go to bed. Kate and I decided that we aren’t going to waste our nights anymore and stay at our house. We want to get out and have fun, even if we are exhausted from a long day!

Emilio picked us up to go to one of the boys’ house to play cards. Some of the other girls came too, so we played Monopoly Deal in partners. The second round, Kate and I dominated! Whenever we’ve played as partners in Monopoly Deal, we’ve won! Kate + Chanel = Dream Team. It was a fun night! I was super tired though, and ended up lying down in the street before we got in the car because I was so tired! Oh boy.

I was like this the whole way home:

Sunday was the first time we ever took the wrong bus! After church we were waiting at the bus stop, and after a good 10 minutes, FINALLY the bus we were waiting for, Linea Norte 52, rolled on up. 

We piled on, and were going down our usual route when all the sudden it turned into a neighborhood off of the main road. I figured he was probably just making a side stop, because bus drivers here do that sometimes. But then we kept getting further and further from where our stop was supposed to be! 

One of my roommates pointed out that the sign on the bus hadn’t said “Villa Haciendas”, which is the bus we were supposed to take. Luckily at that point we knew where we were, so we got off the bus and started walking. It was a decent walk, so our usual 20-minute bus ride ended up taking us an hour. Drenched in sweat, we came home just in time for lunch!

I think from now on, we're gonna pay more attention on the destinations of the buses though :)

Okay, since this post is already super long, I'm gonna save the news about Elder Gibby for my post on Thursday. Stay tuned!

756 Days Left! :)

Week 3.5: Los Mejores Tacos del Mundo. Punto.

The rest of my Monday was pretty relaxed. FHE, went home, watched 10 Things I Hate About You, and went to bed. :)

Oh! Also on Monday, our mamá hired a maid. It seems really weird to me to have a maid… I feel bad making her clean all our dishes and clean up our rooms and whatnot. The cool thing is that she lives with us though! Her name is Elisa and she’s 17 years old. She’s so tiny and really sweet! I’m excited to get to know her better! And now we can practice even more Spanish with another native! Yaaay! :)

Tuesday was a fun day! After getting home and finishing homework, Emilio and Eric came by to go out for some fun. Emilio had asked us a couple times if we wanted to get some Arab tacos, but every time he asked we had already eaten dinner.

The taco place isn’t open til around 8 o’clock, so we decided to kill some time at the mall before heading out for dinner. We went to the same place that has the pet store with the puppies!! Oh gosh, I was so happy again! :) We mostly just window shopped, but it was still fun!

At 8 o’clock we headed over to the taco place. And, GOOD GRACIOUS, those tacos we delicious!

They were so good I even had 2 ghosts behind me trying to steal a bite! Hehehe just kidding, the picture just took weird :)

It had this delicious garlic sauce on it, so yummy… I’m drooling right now, just thinking about it…

After eating, we decided we wanted to get ice cream! So you know that place I told you about in Centro that has the yummy mango ice cream? It’s called Colón. There’s a couple of them, so we went to one that was closer. This time I got coconut! It was soooo good!

While we were there, we started have staring contests. I would say I was okay at that! But since I have contacts, my eyes starting drying out and my vision went all blurry… And then I couldn’t help but blink!

Next we had a contest of not smiling. Oh my goodness, I was the worst at that. Especially when people started making funny noises or moving their eyebrows all weird. NOT FAIR! 

I'd start out strong, but after about 5 seconds I end up like this:

And then two seconds after that, I'd start laughing, but trying to contain myself:

And of course shortly after I'd break and just burst out laughing.

I guess my face wasn’t made to go without a smile for an extended amount of time! Hahaha.

Wednesday once we got to school, Kelsey and I found out our first class of the day had been cancelled since our teacher wasn’t feeling very well :( Normally that would be great, but we still had another class that day, so we couldn’t go home, and we didn’t have really anything to do... So I watched Step Up on Netflix! Hahaha. I seriously love that movie. The music and dancing... It's all so great! And let's not forget Channing Tatum ;)

Later that day, we went to go see Despicable Me 2! Or also known as “Mi Villano Favorito 2.”

Gosh that movie is hilarious! And I just adore Agnes!! She and I would get along really well! We both love unicorns, we both love sweets, and we both love fiestas! :)

After that, we went to go clean the church building that we go to church in. Afterward our group practiced singing a hymn because the Bishop here asked us to sing something in Sacrament Meeting this Sunday. We got home about 10, ate dinner, did homework, then went to bed!

As of yesterday, I only have 4 weeks left here until I leave :( It’s hard to believe I’ve been here just over 3 weeks already! It feels like I’ve been here forever, but also like I just got here two days ago… I'm just going to enjoy it while I can!

760 Days Left! :)

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! :)

Week 2.5: Quiero todos los perros...

It’s July 11^th! Which means free Slurpees at 7-11! I’m not sure if they do that here in Mexico though… And Slurpees are called Frozts. Weird, right?

So this last few days have been fun!

Monday night for FHE two people, a brother and a sister, came to perform some traditional Yucatecan dances for us! It was so cool!

Look! SHE HAD A WHOLE TRAY ON HER HEAD. WHILE SHE’S DANCING. So crazy!

 But then of course they had some people from our group come up and attempt to do the dance without any instruction. It was hilarious!!

Except unfortunately then it was time to switch partners. The brother asked me to dance... So I was making a fool out of myself in front of a pro… Oh well, it happens!