Pictures...

...here are some.

Pictures from 06/26

Monday #2

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. I am so done. I don't remember what I learned in grammar class - I don't really like my new teacher. I guess it's a good thing we only have them for a week at a time. My conversational teacher was decent. She wants to see pictures of where we live tomorrow. Our situational spanish teacher had a disney book and all we did was write down different spanish words for objects. That was decent - mindless work, which was much needed after conjugating estar and the difference between esta/an y hay. ugh. I am toast.

I found out today that Rissy gets to go home for the weekend for the baby blessing and dental work. All I can say is I am extremely jealous. I am so sick of being here. I guess a lot of it is that I have to do what other people want me to do 24/7. It's not like at home where I'm off work and I can do whatever the crap I want. Whereas here, it's like, you HAVE to eat at 7:15, you HAVE to go to class at 8:00, you HAVE to go eat again at 3:30-freakin 5:30, you HAVE to go to bed cause you HAVE to get up in the morning. And speaking of mornings, I just cannot tolerate food that early. My body still hasn't adjusted to the time change - so it's like eating breakfast at 5am. I just can't stomach it. hahaha

We were invited to go see 21 Black Jack with our host parents tonight (or tomorrow Lydia was saying this morning since she was so tired) - I don't want to go. I told Drew I don't want to go, but he says he feels obligated to do so. B.friggin S. I thought that being assertive meant that I got to do what I want instead of the wishy washy, I guess crap. This is trash.

Oh, and I found out that the calling cards you can buy here don't work, and the one we bought doesn't work, so if you were waiting for a phone call - sorry - it's not going to happen. :(

I guess that's about it. blah blah blah

Graffiti and Guns

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to visit a religious building with dozens of 18 to 21 year old males walking around with automatic rifles? Wonder no longer and visit the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City!

Nothing is as uncomfortable as seeing a teenager with an assault rifle in his hands with his finger right above the trigger. He was ready to shoot at any second. We asked a person that worked there at the Basilica why it is necessary to have people with assault rifles on the Basilica grounds. He said that because there are a lot of people with cameras and money and the Federal Police are there to protect those people.

Now, I am not a big supporter of robbing someone or stealing their stuff, but I do not think that a theif should receive a clip of ammo in his back. I had images of a person stealing my camera and a Federalie mowing down that person with their rifle and calming picking up my camera from the dead person's hand and handing it back..."Via con Dios."

This is not uncommon here. The armored truck services here have people that walk around with shotguns in their hands. They are ready to blow your head off if you even think about taking their money. I have never seen so many weapons ready to use in my life. It is no wonder every country American's "visit" in the name of liberation hates our guts. We arm our young men with automatic rifles and tell them to be ready to use them at any time. I would be pissed off to see these people on my street corner.

I guess if your goal is intimidate people into not trying anything, they are doing a great job. I was afraid to sneeze around these guys. I have heard too many stories about how poorly the police are trained here. Just last week 12 people died in a police raid. The cause was trampling. The cops raided a club here because it was serving alcohol to minors. The cops show up and cause a stir and people flee killing other people. It was poorly handled to say the least.

As for graffiti...it is everywhere. I think spray paint is given away at the grocery store because it is hard to look anywhere in the city and not see some wall covered in what some idiot thought was a clever thing to do. Anyway, I hate it and I wanted to have a cool title for my blog, so there you go.

- Drew

Sunday #2

I’m not feeling too well. I had flan at the restaurant last night and I had milk this morning and I think one of them has done me in. I am sooo sick. I took some medicine, so I’m hoping that fixes the problem. :/

We went to church this morning. We met a guy from St. George there. He’s been there 2 months with his wife – visiting sister-in-law and mother-in-law. They leave on the 7^th. Dang. It was nice to talk to someone in English. Not that I didn’t do that all day Saturday, but it was nice to know someone else knew English. He thinks he knew grandma and grandpa, but he couldn’t put a name to face, so that was ok. I don’t remember his name.

After church, we came home, and I have been lying on the bed since- which has been almost 2 hours. I watched Alice in Wonderland (I started it a little before church), and got through about half of Charlie and the chocolate factory. I also renamed all the pictures from the camera (well most of them – some of them are self explanatory).

Drew is upstairs watching the football game – spain against germany maybe? I know it’s spain against someone. So go spain! J I feel bad for being down here, but I am exhausted. I have no energy and just don’t want to work hard enough to try to figure out Spanish words. I should probably go up soon, but I’m kind of wanting to just stay down here til dinner.

I had a dream last night that I got to go home, and I was so extremely excited and happy, and once I got to the airport and they asked for my passport, I had forgotten it at the house, so they wouldn’t let me out of the country. I bawled and bawled and bawled. It bothered me so badly that I hard a hard time bringing it up to Drew in the morning. I’m an emotional wreck. I sure hope it gets easier. I kept thinking in church today – just 6 more times. I can do this. Just 6 more times. I can do this. Ugh. One point of interest that is happy is that instead of being in the 50’s for my countdown to come home, I am now in the 40’s. Today it will be 48 days til I come home. But part of me doesn’t like to count the actual day, so in pretend land, it’s like 47!

I miss being able to drink water from a faucet.

I miss being able to wash my hands without hitting the back of the sink every time.

I miss being able to use a toilet the way it’s supposed to be used – oh speaking of this – all the toilets on our adventure yesterday didn’t have toilet lids – just a basin!

I miss being able to sanitize/clean my retainer with warm water – it doesn’t dissolve in the warm temperature water here, so I have to brush it with toothpaste

I miss my bed

I miss my blankets

I miss my washer and dryer

I miss my kitty

I miss my family

I miss being able to wear a jacket every morning

I miss the cooler, less humid weather

I miss being able to go anywhere and speak English.

Saturday #2 - Drew's Birthday

First and foremost, today was Drew’s birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY HUNNY!!!!!!!!! For his birthday, we had an extremely long day! We started bright and early and got to the school at 8:00am. We then took off with 12 other people + driver to the Basilica in Mexico City. This place had 2 cathedrals, one for 2 different people, as well as other churches on the grounds. We took a TON of pictures, and I will post the link when I get them all up. Seriously, like in the hundreds today! So we went inside the churches and it was pretty cool. I’ve never been in a Catholic church before, let alone while they are doing what I suppose was mass? There were also a TON of baptisms and whatever people do when their kids are ~2-4 years old. I took some pictures of one of the cathedrals that got severely damaged in the Earthquake in the 1980’s? – They are still restoring it – it’s tilted, and actually kind of cool that way.

We then headed further north (I believe) to the Teotihuacan pyramids. They were pretty cool – once again, something I’ve never been to. We walked around and took oodles of pictures here as well. There were two main temples, El Sol, and the other was La Luna (sun and moon). The sun pyramid from what I remember reading was 63 meters high. I don’t know how high the moon one was – but we weren’t allowed to go to the top of it anyway. The steps up were a good foot+ apart so it was like serious climbing. There was one part on the Sun temple that the steps were so narrow, they had put in a handrail so people wouldn’t fall to their morbid deaths. The sun pyramid was also so high and steep that they had a medic van at the bottom – although if someone toppled off the side, there really isn’t a lot they could have done about it! HAH! So yeah, tons of pictures to follow.

After the pyramids, we went out to eat at some restaurant near the pyramids. They had a sign that said Sorry, we’re open. Hahahaha Awesome! It was entertaining – they had people dressed up in authentic (what I’m guessing was) Teotihuacan costumes performing some dances – it was pretty entertaining.

We drove a good 2 hours home and here we are. I have some observations for the day though:

1. lane lines are just a suggestion. If you’d like to drive in 2 lanes at the same time, it’s ok.

2. Street lights are just a suggestion. If you have the urge to go, just do it!

3. Merging is a form of death. These people would drive by watching their rear view mirrors than what was ahead of them. I thought surely we would die at least 50 times. The van didn’t get scratched. Hahaha – all I can say is: AMAZING!

Since it was Drew’s birthday, along with 2 other people that had a birthday this week, they got sung to and I’m going to try and post the video of what they did when they blew out the candles. It’s quite humorous.

I also wanted to mention that on Friday, we went to the zocalo, which is the market in Cuernavaca. Drew bought himself a sombrero and some pretty awesome and cheap marble bookends that are Aztec or Mayan gods of some sort. They’re pretty cool. He’s thinking they were Mayan. We also went to the Mega – which was very similar to Fred Meyer/Target. We grabbed some stuff, and I think I’m going to stock up on some random Mexican candy before we leave. They didn’t have tide pens, and no Aveeno, so I made Drew buy some man soap for the shower since I didn’t calculate how much he’d use and only brought one bottle of body wash. Dangit!

So yeah, that’s about it. It’s time to go to bed though, so I’ll write more tomorrow.