January 25, 2009

This morning started out probably not as early as it should have. I set my alarm for 6:45 (which wasn’t as early as it should have been set for) and then didn’t get out of the bed until 5 til 7. Oooh well. I also ended up with a cold shower, not due to a running late problem, but due to a, when the lady cleans my room on Saturday, she leaves the cold water on, and I didn’t realize this til I tried to turn off the water and it was still running when I had turned the hot all the way off. So I’ll need to try to remember that from now on. I may have said that last week. But hopefully from now on I’ll actually remember.

Moving on though, all that talk about making sure I had breakfast and I ended up eating on my way out the door. My host mom was really sweet though, she picked up a packet of Guanabana flavoring for my water bottle since I had mentioned liking guanabana at some point really early on in being here. So that was really cool.

I actually ate a ridiculous ton of breakfast (Will would be proud). But I had these two pieces of bread (toasted kinda) with beans and cheese. Moilletes? I can’t actually remember what they’re called. And then while we were waiting for the bus I decided to walk into the OXXO and get a banana muffin. Yeah, well at least I wasn’t starving like everyone else come lunch time hehe. OXXO (pronounced ox-oh), by the way, if I haven’t mentioned it yet already, is like the Mexico version of Wawa only on an even greater infestation level. Like one every two blocks. Which is, as I recall, kind of how we felt about Wawa when we first came to Maryland but there are definitely more OXXOs here than Wawas.

The bus ride was about an hour and a half to Uxmal. This was actually pretty nice because I just read my book the entire time. I finished it on the way to Mani. It was pretty good, I certainly enjoyed reading it. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It’s kind of a kids book, and I don’t remember when the last time I read a book with illustrations every so many pages was, but that’s okay. Sometimes you just have to do that. I liked it. In the end it actually really had me going it scared me so bad at one point hahaha it was like making you jump in a movie theater. Haha I scared Chelsea I jumped so bad. The book really wasn’t scary, I think I was just really caught off guard somehow by that part. (Looking back on it I’m not really sure why that was I totally should have seen that coming before that one line but seriously…).

Uxmal was pretty neat. The weather was absolutely perfect for this sort of thing. I took a bunch of pictures which hopefully I will soon be putting on facebook for your viewing pleasure. We went with my Mayan History/Civilization professor (who happens to be an architect…or maybe I should say that the other way around, he happens to be my professor). We spent about 2 ½ hours there. I actually went up to the top of this temple there twice. The first time to have my picture taken at the top, and then the second time because I wanted to have my camera at the top. Looking back on that there was probably a more effective means of doing that, as my muscles in my legs were quivering after I got to the top the second time, but that’s okay. Probably just means I reaaaaallly need to work out haha.

After Uxmal, we hopped back on the bus to go to Mani. We went to a pretty nice restaurant and I had Relleno Nego (which was in fact, quite black). We had a scare there for a moment, Nadini fainted on us. She hadn’t been feeling too well earlier in the day, and the doctor said she ended up really dehydrated. It was pretty scary though.

After we ate, we walked over to the Convent, and just took a couple pictures. Everyone was pretty tired by this time so we were back on the bus pretty quickly and headed home.

Today is actually my abuelita’s birthday, and I expected to see a fiesta going on when I got home. Chelsea came with me as we had been invited to have cake when we got back. But everyone was gone, and I think my abuelita was asleep. We did have a little bit of tres leches cake though and it was quite good.

I feel like I should probably have a lot more to say than just this, but pictures are worth a thousand words and I have a bunch of them including video so I’ll let them speak for themselves. Hopefully I’ll be able to upload these videos to youtube, and give the links. I’ll link you to them.
Cheers! <3 Kate