Tuesday: La playa otra vez!

School.

Home + nap

After we napped, we went to the playa!  It was really fun - we got there and just meandered our way down the street, stopping in some shops and looking at stuff.  We found this really neat shop called Bolom Balam that, supposedly, is a non-profit, all proceeds go to Maya children, store.  It was weird, though, because when we got there there was a Mexican boy who wanted to tell us about the items and asked us if we spoke Spanish.  We said yes.  A couple minutes, this big white man came out and asked, "Where are y'all from?"  That's right - a huge Southern accent.  The owner was from Pensacola, Florida!  He told us that he's been living here for 23 (28?) years helping the Maya and finally decided to start this store.  I didn't really believe a lot of what he said because people here always tell you what they think you want to hear, but he did have newspaper articles with his picture in them hanging up all over, so I'm not quite sure what to believe. His store had some neat stuff, though! I got a bracelet and I found a purse (finally!) that I LOVE!  It's probably machine-made, but I really love the bright colors and the style of it.  I also got a couple of "headbands" (the kind that are cloth and have some elastic in them)! One is yellow and the other is multicolored in bright, pretty colors.

After we finished at the store, we went looking for a restaurant to eat lunch.  Because Carmita's father-in-law died on Saturday night, she's been gone a lot, so we took care of our own lunch yesterday and decided we would today, too.  We found this cool place right facing the shore called Las Henequenes and it was so tasty!  I ordered salmon with a balsamic sauce and it was delicious.  The salmon was so dense - it was like eating a steak instead of a piece of fish! My food also came with some vegetables and rice.  I took a picture, but it makes it look pretty nasty.  When I get it from Jill I'll post it up. :)


While we were eating at the restaurant, Brittany Ralph came over and decided to sit with us and talk while we ate b/c she was a little tired of the beach.  A bunch of people came up to us with sob stories trying to sell us stuff....

*the "schizophrenic" man without medicine who needed to sell us paper airplanes
*the man selling pirated copies of DVD's, including the fourth Pirates movie, which, by the way, JUST came out in theaters :)
*the man who was starving, didn't have anything to eat, and needed to sell us something else weird.

Haha, with that last guy, Jill was like, "Do you want some food?" "No, I don't want to take your food" Me: "Well, if you're hungry, then it's food you need, right? Not food." "No, I need money" Jill: "Do you want some of my rice?" Then we gave him a bunch of tortillas that we weren't going to eat and a little bit of food to put inside them.  And then he stole the restaurant's plate.

Brittany told us about some cool and cheap stores, so after we finished eating, we walked up the street with her to find them.  They have these stores called "Everything for..." and then, depending on what city and what part of the city you're in, it has a different price in the blank. Some are $3.50, some are $5.90, some are $4.something... This one was a $3.50, which translates to about 30 cents USD.  A lot of what they had there was weird, but they did have some cool bracelets! I got three of them and will probably go back to get some more for people at home.


When we finally got to the beach, we only had about an hour before we needed to leave for home, so I decided just to relax in the sand. The wind was blowing pretty consistently, so I got some sand in the face, but overall it was very relaxing and nice :)

We left the beach at 6:30 because at 8:00, our friend Thommy from the ward was going to open his mission call.  We came home and changed into real clothes and then ran over to the church.  We got there a couple of minutes late, but we needn't have rushed.  Oh, Mexicans and their time :)  Just kidding, we actually have hardly run into any incidents like that, but it was still funny.  We started at probably... 8:30 or so, and it was really interesting.  At home when someone opens their call, a group of people comes, they open it, everyone records it and cheers when they hear where they're going.  Then people mill around for a while and leave.  Here, it happened in the chapel.   We had an opening prayer, song and spiritual thought.  Then Thommy asked (on the spot) about eight people who had served missions come up and tell about a missionary experience.  Thommy bore his testimony, opened his call, no one cheered, and then he gave his "reaction" - bearing his testimony and talking about being excited.  Then we had a closing prayer and ate cake.  Interesting, no? Btw :) He's going to Guadalajara :)

After that, a group of us went to a place to buy Argentinian ice cream!  It's a dairy-based gelato-type ice cream that is really tasty!  I went over with Laurel and Beto, but a lot of other people were there.  I got a kind of ice cream called "Sky" or something like that, and it was super good. I couldn't figure out what it tasted like. A lot of people who'd tried it said it was frosting-flavored, but I don't think I like the taste of frosting well enough to eat a cup of it, yknow?  Anyway.  So after ice cream, Jill, Tony and Markz were going to go get food.  I had a headache, but the group was starting to dissipate and i wasn't sure how I would get home if I didn't go with them, so I went.  We ended up not getting anything but just driving around looking for someplace, eventually stopping at Oxxo and going home.  It was a fun night :)