Monday: FHE at the Laraways'!

School, school, school. Why do you start at 7:00?  


This morning we found our own breakfast - Carmita's father-in-law died last night (he was 96) so she and her husband have been in Motul taking care of things since last night - and had some delicious yogurt and granola. That's one of my favorite things for breakfast here because it tastes light but also fills me up.


After school we went to the bank and then headed home.  Because Carmita was going to be out of town, we didn't want her to have to worry about lunch for us, so we told her we'd just find somewhere to eat out. Instead of taking the second bus home, we walked that street so we could see our options... but forgot that this is Mexico, not the U.S., and that everything was closed.  Today we really wanted to go to a Mexican restaurant, not just a fast food Mexican place, but unfortunately all those places were closed. It was kind of funny because it seemed like the longer we walked, the later places opened. At the beginning, when it was 9:30, they opened at 10.  But as we walked, the restaurants we found opened at 11, 12, 1:00.  We even found a place that doesn't open until 7:00pm!  So that was kind of silly. We got home, dropped off our backpacks, and headed over to Montejo (a pretty main street) to look for someplace. We found a place that looked realllllly good, but it was closed still, but the man setting up tables recommended we go over to Charlie's, across the street.  We looked across the street and saw.... Carl's Jr.  :) I don't know why they call it Charlie's!  It was funny, though.  By that point, we were deliriously hungry, so we went to Charlie's since it was nearby and open :)


Oh, Charlie's. You were a great taste of home today. We were starving and ordered too much food, but included in the deliciousness were French toast sticks (best French toast of my life!), a barbecue chicken tortilla thing, French fries, and real dairy-based chocolate ice cream!  It was all so delicious!  There was also air conditioning, a nice worker who brought us our food and picked up our trash, and DDR (although we didn't play... today) :)  It was so nice. It was funny because I went to the bathroom at the end and when I was walking back to the table, I noticed that I wasn't wet (with sweat) and that was the first time we noticed there was air conditioning. Heavenly.


After Charlie's, we came home. I napped, then relaxed in the pool for a while, laid out for like, ten minutes, and worked on updating my journal. I also read a little bit of my journal from when Joel and I got engaged, which was fun :) I got to chat with Brooke and video chat with Mom for a few minutes, too.  Then at 6:50ish, we headed out for FHE.  


Every week, the Laraways' (our coordinator and his family) have a different family over for FHE and tonight was our night. We went over for a lesson, pizza and pop, and swimming! It was really fun :) Plus they have this "rule" that his house is like the embassy, so we're allowed to speak English while we're there. It really helps people build relationships, I think, when they are able to relax and actually talk to each other sometimes. We played Name That Tune: Underwater, had front- and backflip contests, and just generally hung out. I loved it! His family is so nice. Sometimes I feel like Profe shouldn't be cool because he's the teacher and he must be older because he has gray hair... but that's not the way it is at all! He's really cool, I don't think he's actually old, and his whole family is very fun.  He reminds me of someone I would be friends with if we were the same age (or knew each other outside of the teacher-student relationship).  His wife is also great and their children are hilarious! It was a great night.


When we got home, I got ready for bed and chatted with Joel for a while, and now I'm writing this!  I'm going to go to bed, though, because it's still decently early and now I'll have a chance to be awake for my classes tomorrow :) Maybe to the beach tomorrow with the Profe's family! Buenas noches!