Wednesday: La piscina

A few things I keep forgetting to write:
I saw my first iguana!
I rode the bus without messing up for the first time!
I had a fresh mango for the first time! (I think I prefer American ones... weird)
We had Choco Krispis (the Mexican version of Cocoa Krispies) for breakfast with milk from a box!  Jill didn't love the milk, but I thought it tasted good.

Lots of firsts!

Today there were two classes again and I stayed awake the whole time!  Class was fun, too - towards the end when we were getting a little bored of talking about the same thing for two hours, the people on either side of me, Cassy and Nate, and I found a lot of funny things about what we were learning and it made it more awesome.  Like, for example, that there are cities in Beliz called Laughing Bird Cave, Monkey River, and Melvin's Bank.  Awesome.  And I learned from Nate that they speak English in Belize and from Cassy that she can translate "There's a Yellow Rose in Texas" into Spanish while being in class. We're a fun table group :)  Cassy is suuuuuper funny.  I want to go to their house sometime, partly because it's right by Walmart and partly because I just want to figure out the buses to people's houses, but partly because she and Emma Jo are really fun.

So at the school there's a pool and Jill, Adrienne, and I decided before school that we wanted to see where it was, but there was a creepy dog over by it, so we left.  Then Nate and I wanted to see it after school, but most people wanted to go home.  Quizás tomorrow.  I think it'd be really fun to all of us go swimming sometime after school together!

After school, when we were stopped at the Plaza Fiesta, we decided it would be fun to look around La Plaza Fiesta and see what all is there... and then we decided to eat at Burger King :)  It was awesome to eat food we knew!  And there were some really cool places inside the Plaza!  A bunch of stores, restaurants, and panaderías (bakeries), which I love.  It's like a small one-story mall attached to a grocery store.  When we got home, we decided to go swimming in our little pool, but then Ariana got home from school and for whatever reason, was really good friends with us today!  So we decided to take some pictures together on our computers, and it was so fun :) I loved how much she loved it!  Here are some examples... (P.S. We're in our swimsuits because it was right before we went swimming, so forgive the no sleeves:)

And because I'm writing the rest of this on Sunday, the rest of what happened today will be in less detail... :)

Yesterday, our bus dropped us off right on time to run for the other bus! We had to run across the mall parking lot to get there in time, and I was thankful for the bus driver who waited for us gringas :)

Arianna LOVED taking those pictures. Holy cow. She wanted to do them allllllll day. It was cute, though.  It's fun that she's warming up to us!

We went swimming today in our backyard pool with Ariana, and that girl is hilarious!  She screamed pretty much the entire time we were out there, and when we weren't screaming (pretending to be chased the water-gun-carrying shark) we were laughing our heads off.  Funny story of the day: Ariana told us she had to go to the bathroom, so we were expecting her to go inside.... nope.  Instead she got this little bucket from inside the pool, filled it up with water, got outside of the pool, and peed on the patio while pouring the bucket of water on herself.  "so I don't have to go inside!"  Oh, man.  I can't even tell you how hard I laughed.

When she got back in and Jill got out, she decided to let me use her water gun. But as soon as I did and started playing with her with it, she got her bucket out and poured it on me, making fun of me for having a small water gun than hers :D  "Mi pistola es más grande que la tuya" is what she was singing.

We have a dog named Jessica. She is CREEPY.  One eye is bigger than the other, she walks funny, and she's just all-around a creepy dog.  No one ever talks about her, plays with her, nothing. We didn't even know she lived here until after we'd been here for a couple of days.  Ariana just told us today when we asked what her name was.

Ha, so after swimming, we decided to lay out a little to get tan... It was so hot outside, though, I barely laid out at all. Plus I didn't want to totally get burned up into a raisin.  Carmita teases me everyday when we get home from school for being flushed from the sun. It's really funny :) Also, Carmita wouldn't let Ariana be out in the sun with us because she didn't want her to turn into a "negrita" - little black girl.

So, Ariana is reaaallly warming up to us. So much so that we were going to take a siesta today and only could for about half an hour because we couldn't get her to leave our room :)

Lars, Nate, Jill, the close house of girls, and I all went to the Centro together to meet everyone else there! Almost everyone from the program went! It was super fun, but I can't say I spent much time with everyone else. I got distracted by the really awesome vendors in the park in the middle of the Centro! I really wanted to buy a shirt, but I didn't really like the ladies very much so they turned me off from wanting to buy from them.  I did buy a really cool necklace, though. I only bartered a little, though, because it was handmade and I thought it was worth what they asked for it.

me with the necklace I bought. it's pretty :) but it's a surprise because it's a present.

Jill's really good at bartering!  She bought a few things for just a little cheaper (it's suuuuper easy to get them to take it down 10-15 pesos - you just have to ask if that's the cheapest they're willing to sell it for and they say, well, this would be the cheapest...), but one thing she got for way cheaper! Silver earrings that have a part of the Maya calendar on them - originally the guy wanted $700 (the $ means pesos) which is $US70, and she got him to take it down to $300/$US30!  It was so awesome.

So, because we just stayed mostly in the middle of the Centro, we were alone when it was time to go home.  It was late enough that our bus was only going to come every half an hour, and we didn't know exactly where it would be, so rather than wait around and not know if we were even in the right place, we decided to take a bus that would take us to the Plaza Fiesta because we knew where that was.  (That's where our first bus drops off for school.)  It just felt like a more sure thing that we would get home.  (Btw, this was the first time I haven't had my phone with me in case I needed to call Carmita! Rats.)  So we got there and were talking to another person waiting for the bus and then found out that the bus we needed didn't come so late at night. So there we were, at the Plaza Fiesta, with no way to get home but walk.  Well, there were taxis, but neither one of us felt good about getting in one for some reason.  And there were pay phones where we could've called Carmita, but there was a man loitering around them and I didn't want him knowing we were stuck without a way home.  So instead, we went over to the Super where it was well-lit, got out our map (thank goodness!) and figured out how to get ourselves home.  We walked along a pretty main road to get there, but I still wouldn't ever want to do that again. It was such a relief to be in our room safe when we got home!  Moral of the story: I need to figure out where to go to get on the right bus from El Centro! :)