My exhausting week has come to an end

I am so grateful that this week is over. I only had two days of teaching but I'm still totally wiped out. I have been ill for the last couple of days which has made the fact that I am way behind in sleep even worse. I am going to get a lot of sleep this weekend as well as finish my lesson plans. Adri and Ashley and I went our for dinner at Teo's Tacos on Thursday night because Ash and I wanted a gringa... delicious as always and this time I took a picture so that you guys could appreciate how good they look. While we were eating Adri made an observation that my eyes are the same color as my favorite drink down here... Manzana Lift! So delicious... not quite as good as chocolate milk but very close. By the way Ashley found me some cold chocolate milk at a corner store the other day and bought it for me, she is the best roommate ever! It was delicious and I have been missing it! Adri and Ashley enjoyed their Horchata and then we came home and hung out for the night.

Friday we had a fun class and it ended with the kids taking fun pictures while we were playing Upset the Fruit Basket. I love my kids at discovery... I was really not feeling well that day so the only reason I'm posting these pictures is because the kids are so darn cute!

This is a picture of a beautiful flower I saw in a shop the other... if someone know what this flower is will you please post a comment so that I know. I love it so much and I have no idea what it is even called. Thanks!!

Thats basically it, Saturday I spent the entire day cleaning the apartment and then spent the evening trying to watch the Flames game. Thanks to Tom's help I was able to keep updated... that is one thing that totally sucks, I have to miss half the season. However I was able to watch some of the game on Saturday thanks to the brilliance of screen sharing on Skype. Ashley also made me popcorn just to make the night even better. I was able to catch up on the first hilarious episode of Season 6 of the Office. Can't wait for this week! :-)

Hope you all have a great week!

Viva Mexico!

My favorite picture so far

After we got back from Puerto Esconditio around 1:00 we quickly went home and unpacked. Ashley took a short nap and then we just enjoyed a few minutes rest before we had to head off to another party. There was an Independence Day party at the church which was so much fun. There were so many cute kids there and so many people dancing and eating. The food was delicious and the dancing was so much fun. Ashley and I got to dance for a long time and I was sweating up a storm by the time we were finished with all the Salsa dances. I was dancing with a young man who is in our ward and he spoke alright English. He was very sweet and tried hard to make conversation with me which I appreciated. At one point he was trying to explain to me that he hadn't spoken much to the other ILP teachers in the past but he didn't explain it that way. He says "Other ILP teachers, they give me no... no.... no pleasure. But you, give me much pleasure to dance with." He was so sweet trying to tell me he was enjoying dancing with me but he used a word that I would have used in a different context. I love how people here when they know you speak English or you are teaching English they always want your help. They always look for your approval and I think its interesting because they don't want you to just nod your head if you understand what they are saying. They want you to correct them. In this situation I chose not to correct him because I was pretty sure if I opened my mouth I would burst out laughing. It was funny.

The food at the church was so good. We had 'pazole' and 'horchata' and 'elote' which is corn on the cob with mayonnaise and cheese and chile (so delicious as long as there is not too much chile on it) and then some delicious tortillas with beans. It was all so delicious. The pazole was so spicy it was nuts. Rachel told us a story that the pazole (which is a soup with meat and some vegetables in it) is actually an ancient Aztec recipe that they used to use. The meat in the soup used to be the meat of the humans they would sacrifice and the reason the soup is red is to represent the blood of the humans. It was an interesting story.

My elote was delicious! A little bit too much chile but still good!

Kelsey and I

We danced the night away and had a blast and then Teo did the Viva Mexico chant (there is a video of it at the bottom of the post) It was a super fun party.

After we were done at the church we went to Juan Pablo's for another fun Independence Day party. We ate more pazole and then I asked them if the story about it being an Aztec soup was true. They said they didn't think so but that they really didn't know the history of it so they couldn't say for sure. I'm not sure what to believe but I do think the story is pretty awesome. We ate all night it seemed like, Kelsey kept joking that she was getting fat but I was totally in my element. I just kept eating and eating and eating and the food was delicious.

Juan Pablos and his girlfriend

After that there was a pinata which was so much fun and halarious because they made it pretty much impossible to hit it. It was super fun. Then we danced the night away. Juan Pablo's father is halarious and dances like a total maniac hopefully the video does it justice. We had confetti and lots of music and laughter. It was a great night. We didn't get home until 3:00 in the morning though so to say the least I was a little bit overtired the whole weekend. It was a lot of fun though and it was nice to be able to crawl into bed after the evening's festivities ended (for us at least). It was a great time.

Me, Kami, Savannah, Chelsea, Irlanda, Kelsey, Brooke and Ashley

Ashley and Gracia

Our pinata candy!

How embarrassing...

Juan Pablo and his sister

Viva Mexico!

Puerto Escondito

Okay probably one of the highlights of my trip was being able to sleep on a bed on Sunday night. It was amazing!! But even better than that was Puerto Escondito... I think this is the coolest place I have been to in Mexico thus far. It was beautiful and it is one of the most famous surf towns in the world apparently. After all of us got sick on the bus drive to Puerto Escondito we sat around in the bust station for a little while until our stomachs settled. It was such a windy road, the bus was too hot and it smelled awful so it was not a nice drive. The view was beautiful though which made up for it.

When we finally got there we had to give our stomachs a break and so we just sat in the bus station for a little while and ate crackers. When the majority of us felt well enough to start the day we went for lunch at another little hole in the wall. Ashley actually got an extra treat this time when she found a huge bug on her pants, it was gross. The food was good though and it helped us all feel better.

After that we took a nice walk down to the beach and took a ton of pictures and just laid on the sun and enjoyed watching how huge the waves got. Seriously it was a beautiful beach. The sand was not good but the water was so beautiful and neat it made up for the lack of white sand. As you walk down to the beach there are beautiful walk ways that were fun to walk along. We took pictures of the waves and of each other and of the view. It is so beautiful there.

Our sweet tattoos after we washed them

Brooke, Ashley, Adri, Me and Kami

I look tall in this picture compared to everyone else but I don't think I'm the tallest at all. Dusty and Ashley are both taller than I am I think.

This is one of my favorites of Ashley and I

My legs got super tanned (well relatively speaking) from sitting here.

A cute little bridge we crossed over on the way to the beach

The view from my seat

While we enjoyed the sunshine a woman came up to Ashley, Adri and I and told us that she gave massages and reflexology treatments on the beach. My back was killing me so bad from trying to sleep on the bus I told her that I wanted one right away. Well cool story as she was giving me a massage she noticed that Adri was reading the Book of Mormon. She told us that she had read a little bit on the internet and that she was fascinated with what Mormons had to say about Mexican history. Our conversation went so long she finished my massage and was giving Adri a massage and we were still talking about things that she knew about Mexican history and stuff. It was really neat. She started telling us that she was reading the New Testament and really enjoying it and so I started telling her about what the Book of Mormon was. I told her that it was a record of several different groups of people who travelled over to the Americas. Some of her comments really blew me away, she said "There must be a record of the people somewhere and I believe that it is the Book of Mormon." She had to go to the bathroom for a moment and while she was gone Adri and I were saying that we should give her a Book of Mormon. I had left my backpack at the bus station which has in it a Book of Mormon specifically to give away. Adri only had her one copy with her but I told her I would give her mine (which was identical to hers) if she wanted to give hers away. The lady came back and when she did Ashley and I were in the middle of a conversation about something in the Bible. She asked me if I had a copy of the Old Testament. Of course I had one at home but not with me. She said she was having a hard time finding one. I was trying to think of a place where she could get one so I told her that the Mormon Missionaries would likely be able to order her an English copy of it and if she gave me her information I would look into that for her. Then she said "Actually I would really like to talk to some Mormon missionaries so if you could send them to talk to me I would really like that." Of course I told her I would look into when I got back to Tehuacan and pass on her information right away. Then Adri offered her a Book of Mormon and she was so excited to receive it. I showed her the footnotes and how she could use it to study with the Bible. I talked to her for a moment about the Chapter Headings and how in 2 Nephi it talks a lot about Isaiah. It was so neat. She immediately sat down and started reading the Title Page and seemed excited to read it. Then she said that she has always been amazed at how the Mormon website had always been a step ahead of her in her questions about Mexican history and how she had found many of her answers on that website. It was definitely a highlight for Adri and I because we could see how excited she was about it all. Now I just hope that the missionaries find her and are able to follow up with her and answer the questions she has.

By the way the massage was totally awesome, she gave me a foot massage as well as a back massage and it was wonderful. We enjoyed the sun some more and I got a lot of my new book read. It was great!

This lady, originally from New Zealand did not have dark hair. She was wearing the weirdest wig I've ever seen but she was good as what she did and I enjoyed the reflexology treatment.

After our masseuse left we took some fun pictures in the sand and had a good laugh. It was a race against the waves and we had to fix the writing several times but it was a lot of fun. Ashley wrote the 'h' backwards because she was writing it from above and then I just about died laughing. It was so funny we decided to leave it so that we remembered it. What a great day!

Love you all!!

I had no one in particular in mind for this picture ;-)

After that we had to go and catch our night bus home. It was an exhausting day and its pretty evident in the last pictures of the trip that we were all pretty tired and it looks like we haven't showered in days, which most of us haven't. It was a fun and exhausting trip. The best part of the night bus home was that I got to finish my second book which was so good and then got a few minutes sleep. When we arrived in Oaxaca at 7:30 am (after catching a bus from Puerto Escondito at 8:45 pm) we had to wait around a few hours until our bus to Tehuacan left at 10:00. We finally got home and then got straight to work unpacking because we had Independence Day celebrations to look forward to. What a weekend!