Semana Santa thus far

Hello everyone
Here is a quick update of what we have been doing so far on our vacation. I feel like the majority of it has been spent in a little bus with everyone in our group sleeping, reading, getting carsick and watching movies. OK the carsickness has not really affected me, but others have been a bit sick.
Anyways we set off the first day at 6am from Merida and arrived in Villa Hermosa a mere seven hours later. We spent some time in a park and zoo and then went back to the seminary in which we were staying for dinner and relaxation, we just spent the night talking and laughing which was a nice break.
The next day we had a small worship service at the Seminary and set out for Vera Cruz, more time spent in the bus, but all was well. We arrived in Vera Cruz and proceeded to ride the TuriBus, which was interesting, a little frustrating because we could not hear any of the information and we were all extremely tired, however, it was fun to see Vera Cruz at night. There was a show going on in one of the plazas so we watched some dancing for a while, one of the dances consisted of girls dancing with firesticks, a bit scary!

The next day we once again set off for Mexico City, on our way we stopped at a beautiful little place int he mountains to take pictures and also had a great time watching Dirty Dancing, poor grant is getting stuck with all of our girly movies! We arrived in Mexico city, but we stayed ina church in Coyocan, an amazing little part of Mexico city taht reminds me a ton of east town, it is really calm with lots of book stores, a mercado, coffee shops, really good ice cream and much more. It was amazing, I probably could stay there a week and just relax. Anyways, in Mexico city we first went to the Basilica, which is pretty much the center of Catholism in Latin America, it was beautiful and very ornate, tehre were tons of people there because it is Semana Santa (Holy week). We then headed to some Aztec ruins and climbed a ginormous pyramid! I thought i was going to die once I reached the top! But it was awesome. The next day we headed to center of Mexico City, and saw the Cathedral, which is the second largest Cathedral in all of Latin America, we also climbed up into the bell towers, first time I have ever been on the top of a Cathedral before! (we also have some great pictures of grant as Quasi Modo). We also saw ruins of Tenochtilan and went to a Mexican Ballet, the ballet was amazing! Much mroe happened in Mexico city, we made some friends at the church who were our guides for the three days there, Mauricio and Uri!

Now we have just arrived in Ouaxaco (wa-ha-ka) and are getting settled into our hostel, my first experience in a hostel, we are going to eat soon and have the night to relax. Tomorrow we are off to ride horses and who knows what else. So far teh trip has been wonderful and relaxing, and we are not even half way through!

However we have reached teh halfway point of the semester this week, well it is on friday, and we are pretty excited we have survived so far! ONce again thanks for all the prayers and since I won´t be able to update till after easter

He is Risen, He is Risen Indeed
Happy Easter!

Spring Break 08, finally!

Well Saturday morning, nice and early we are off to travel around the lovely country of Mexico. I personally am very thankful for this break as this week was rather frustrating for me with the amount of homework, my capacity to do it, but I made it through and now we have a full 2 weeks to relax. Here is a list of the places we are going, now I am not completely sure where all of these places are, but it should be fantastic. We are going to be seeing everything from the Mountains to the beach, so our suitcases are going to have a strange mix of clothing in them!
So here is the plan for vacation.
Villa Hermosa
VeraCruz
Mexico DF (Mexico City)-3 days
Oaxaca- 2 days--including riding horses in the mountains!
Puerto Angel- the beach!
Tehuantepec- apparently there is a cool mercado here!
San Cristobal-- we are going to take a boat through a very beautiful canyon--2 days in San Cristobal
Ocosingo
Palenque-2 days
Merida

We are going to be doing a variety of things, taking tour busses, seeing more ruins, cathedrals, snorkling, riding horses, see traditional folk dance, hopefully a lot of sleeping, mercados, boat rides, did I mention sleeping?

We have successfully made it half way through classes and almost halfway through the whole semester, with many challenges, frustrations, joys and successes, but we have survived and we will continue to survive and thank God for his guidance, protection and blessings that have followed us throughout our whole trip so far, and will not end!

I would like to say, thank you all for your prayers and encouragement, it really helps having that in a semester away from friends and families in a different country. I hope everything is going well in the United States, but am really enjoying myself here, especially the warmth!

Lets Try Again, some photos

This was the view at night from our hotel in Celestun, when we took a weekend at the beach. Incredibly beautiful!
Celestun also gave us the opportunity to see flamingos! Apparently the place is known for flamingos we could not miss out on seeing them! So we paid for a boat ride to see them. There were literally hundreds of them. If we got too close they would fly away, but these flamingos are very calm. The first time I have seen flamingos in the wild!
Chichen Itza, one of the seven wonders of the world. This was their main temple. We wanted to climb it but it is not allowed anymore because apparently it is rather dangerous!
The cenote we swam in after Chichen Itza, we felt like we were in a movie of some sort it was so beautiful!
One more sunset picture, Sara and I in Celestun at night.
Things continue to go well here in Mexico, one more week of class and we are off to travel around Mexico for Spring Break!

A few happenings

Not too much has been happening here in Mexico. I survived my first round of tests last week. I had one test and a five page essay taking the place of a test. I was completely stressed out over this because our professor gave us the assignment 2 days before it was due, one class period before it was due and it was more or less and research paper, not a problem for me in English, but it took a lot of my time in Spanish, However it is done and over with and hopefully is ok. My mom and professor leder helped me with it, since my writing in Spanish is not always up to par. It was a difficult week of homework, but it led into a wonderful weekend.

First, Friday night we went dancing for the first time. One of our "teachers" came with us. She is actually our teacher, but is only 26 and teaches our class which is outside of the university. Anyways we went to Mambo Cafe for some salsa, kind of humorous since I for one have no idea how to dance! There was a live band it was incredibly fun! The thing about the clubs here in Merida is that none of them open until 11, so we were out quite late! Thank goodness for the weekend! So we danced the night away until 3:00 am and had a great time, not caring what we looked like at all!

Sunday, we made our way to Chichen Itza, one of the seven wonders of the world. It is an old mayan civilization with many old structures and a cenote. This cenote you cannot swim in because it is rather gross and it is believed that this cenote was where the mayans sacrificed the young virgens. So i am not sure who would want to swim in this cenote. After Chichen we went to Ik Kil, which is a gorgeous cenote, almost out of a movie and swam for a while. All in all a good weekend, where i got little to nothing done for homework and it was fantastic!

This week is again full of homework, i have another paper due and a test next week in one of the hardest classes we have, but next week friday begins our two weeks of spring break, we can barely handle our excitement!

Sorry, the photos are not working again, how annoying!