Wednesday...huge, full day.

First thing to remember: What happens in Cabo, stays in Cabo! I can't say how many times I said that! Tamee was a smart cookie when she bought this tour for us. It cost 45 bucks each and it was an amazing full day tour plus lunch.

First we went to "Land's End" "El arco" really famous, on a glass bottom boat. We think it's where they filmed Pirates. Then we got to see the people train dolphins. You know I was dying and to make matters worse, we weren't allowed to take pictures. But it was sooooo cool! I am going to do that next time. I promised myself someday, I will swim with the dolphins.

This is called "Lover's Beach" Where 2 enter, but 3 come out. You just have to wait 9 months!

Then on the back side, sadly enough is divorce beach.

This is the Scooby Doo Rock...can you see it? It's the back of his head.

Then the famous Arch- el arco

This seal was so funny. He jumped up there and pushed off the bird that was chillin' there and then he was like king of the rock and stretched his head all tall and proud. It was great!

Hard Rock Cafe: Then we got to do a little shopping in Cabo San Lucas. We went to the hard rock cafe and other places like Burger King (didn't go there, just took pictures) and bought the most amazing coconut ice creams for a buck.



Then we went to the glass blowing factory. The oven is 1800 degrees. The guy made a turtle in front of us. It was really cool. And then when he was done, it was so hot that he touched a paper to it and it caught fire. It was amazing. Then they asked for volunteers and I got to blow the glass. It was really cool! It was like a huge balloon and then he just shattered it and they recycle it and start all over again. That's where I got OD his gimpy turtle and Amberly and Dane their vase he's supposed to put flowers in!

There was a coconut stand on the side of the road, where we pulled off to see the surfers and I bought a fresh coconut for 3 bucks. They hack it open, you drink what's in it and then hand it back and they hack it apart and put the "white meat" into a baggy for you to take with you. It was great!





Then we went to the taquila making factory. Really, we didn't get to see the intricate makings, but we did get have the opportunity to sample a few flavors. Since we don't drink, we said we didn't need a sample cup, but the other guy with us said, "Yes you do, then you can give me your samples." So that's what we did. We each got our sample and smelled it (culture, learning etc!) and then poured our samples into his cup to make his like 3 times stronger. He was a happy camper and was happy to be on tour with two mormons. We were the first Mormons they had ever met. They were from Chicago. Interesting, that is where my roommate Erin is from.

After that we went to Cabo San Jose (See there's two cabos, which means capes and they are divided by Highway 1 and in order to get anywhere you have travel that highway and pay a taxista 35 bucks...pricey. We paid it like 3 times, except for when we went home that day, we ran to the bus. More on that later.

In Cabo San Jose we had lunch and visited a mission and went shopping. That is where I bought my big bottle of Vanilla for 8 bucks and my little statues for Day of the Dead. Tamee thought I was crazy for buying them, but it's a culture thing I teach in class.

After lunch and San Jose we went back to Cabo San Lucas and went shopping, wheeling and dealing and very burnt and tired. We were on our way leaving and this guy had this huge iguana. He makes ends meet by sitting on the sidewalk having people pay him a dollar to take a picture with his iguana. Originally we were like, "Yeah, we'll take a picture just of you with it and he was like, "No, no, no" and put it on my shoulder. Then he walked over to Tamee and it crawled up her shoulders and head and she was screaming/laughing "No,no,no" as it crawled up her head. It was really funny!

So our day was done. We went to go catch the bus and sat at the bus stop (or so we thought, apparently it was a bus stop that was no longer in use.) So as I'm over buying another of my favorite coconut ice creams, Tamee is chillin' at the bus stop with all our treasures from the day (tons of bags) and this native comes up to her trying to tell her that the bus stop was more down the road and this one was no longer a stop. So we started walking to the new one as our bus breezes by us. We start booking it! Oh man, memories of the mission came flooding back! Always running somewhere holding way too much stuff! So I'm screaming in Spanish "Espera, Espera" and everyone is looking out the windows like "Stupid Americans". We made it huffing and puffing without exact exchange and jump on the bus. All sweaty, but happy to be on our way home! What a fun yet exhausting day! Off to the pool for us!

Tamee's treasures!

Tuesday...lots of burning, chilling and reading on the beach

Tuesday can be summed up in a few lines:

• A beautiful morning sunrise, with many to follow!
• A morning walk on the beach for Tamee, reading for me on the balcony.
• Made lunch to take with us on the beach.
• A sad dead blowfish.
• Swimming the ocean, even though Tamee was scared I would get pulled under. It was amazing though. I loved every second of it.
• More reading.
• More sunblock and burning!
• We moved up to the pool, because we were frying. Well when it was "Happy Hour" I decided to treat us to pina coladas! So while i was waiting for them to process my credit card, i drank my pina colada, so the guy refilled it I went over to Tamee and handed her, hers and took another sip of mine and ....oops! Not virgin this time. It tasted like rum, i think. I've never tasted rum before, but I have smelled it, so that was a clue. I went and told the bar tender...he felt so bad. He apologized over and over and over again and gave me a whole new one. He ended up being at the same place we went dancing on Thursday. It was fun.
• Reading on the beach until the sun set.
• Meeting Bryan at the Mexican Fiesta. Darlene told me that we were a cute couple. She originally thought we were together, then when she found out we didn't know each other, it just turned out that we happened to be standing next to each other, she insisted that we go out that night. We did end up dancing together at the fiesta, but nada mucho despues de eso.
• A guy painting really cool stuff with his fingers.
• A gorgeous sunset from our balcony, while I read Twilight.
• A great day, well spent
  
  
  
  
  
  

Monday night getting things going.

So after playing with the sea creatures and the sand and the lack of sunblock, we went in and showered and got ready to go to dinner. This was our really funny moment of studpid gringas. I should have known, but it completely went over my head. So we went to go to the hotel restaurant, Mama Mia. We heard it was great. So on our way we went. We sat down and looked at the menus and everything was like 150 dollars or more. We looked at the menu and Tamee said, "We can't eat here." and right when she said that, our waiter came over to ask us what we'd like to drink. We just looked at each other and I said in Spanish, "We're not hungry. We don't even know why came here, cause we're not even hungry (even though, on the contrary, we were starving. We had only eaten breakfast that day. And of course drunk a lot of water!). We're going to go to el centro and come back later when we're more hungry." I think the waiter heard us say we couldn't eat there. We felt so stupid. So we decided to go to the store and get the things we needed. So we took a taxi with some people we had met on our bus to the hotel the day before and we asked them if they had eaten at that restaurant. They said, "Yeah, it's great!" We were like, "Um, how did you afford it?" and they laughed outloud..."It's all in pesos!" Tamee and I burst out laughing. Oh, we felt so stupid. So we went to the store and bought all the things we would need for the week. None of the nasty fish you see further, but the pan (bread) of course! Then, starving, we went back to the hotel restaurant where we ate another time and I had one of many pina coladas! I love those things.

That's really only $44.85. Not four hundred dollars! Back to the hotel restaurant we go!

Our Condo

This is our condo. The iguana on the wall immediately when you enter freaked me out a little bit, so i asked Tamee if we could take it down. She said, "No, but we should name it." So we named it Aaron after one of our students. So we would just walk by and say, "Hi Aaron." and he was a lot friendlier from then on!

This is where i sleep. I slept so well on vacation. Went to bed whenever and woke up whenever! It was great. It was weird though, cause no matter how late I went to bed, I would always wake up naturally for the sunrise, take some pictures and enjoy it, read and then, sometimes I would go back to sleep.
The view from our room/balcony. We were pretty spoiled! It was fun and amazing.
We got massages in that cabana right by the pool. Good, relaxing times had by all!

Monday afternoon, before check-in

We pulled up to our Hotel Coral Baja and wow! You gotta love the cute cut out bushes, all the way to the Eiffel Tower! So it was time to hit the beach! We couldn't check in until 4pm so we got our suits on and went to the beach with our books! It was great!

Tamee treasure hunting! She found some fun little critters and decided that they were dead so she would take them home with us to our hotel room...well, little did she know, they were really alive and she murdered them in her shoe (bad choice of locations to leave the smelly little critters!) By Tuesday afternoon, we were wondering what the heck smell was happening in our condo and then we realized it was her friends, so she put them in the bathroom garbage, which just moved the smell...so eventually they had to say Adios and go bye-bye to the big trash haven outside!

Tamee got this really amazing burn on Monday. She was so excited to get on the beach that she barely put sun block on and it was all splotchy and then to make matters worse, she fell asleep with her hand on her arm and had a perfect outline of her fingers. It was really pretty funny!

Day two: Monday, April 14th, 2008 off to los cabos

Tamee and I woke up and took a walk around the gated community we stayed the night in. I wanted to take a picture with a stop sign, because this one only really means "Yeild" and the one that means "STOP!" says, "Alto total" like a complete stop. I thought that would be fun for my kids to see the difference.

I was really suprised at the amount of people that had cars and were not as poor as I rememered in my mission. But i recognize that Los Cabos are really expensive, high functioning areas that are based solely on tourism. Apparently the industry isn't as good this year as it was last year, because of the "recession" that the U.S. is having, so it's hurting them.

As we were walking we saw a school and decided to go visit it. We were going to ask permission to go to a classroom, but there was a class that didn't have a teacher. The teacher just kind of up and disappeared and the kids didn't know where she went. They kindly and willingly invited us in. I love it! I was speaking Spanish and was like their teacher and they all quieted down and listened to me! It was so cool. I could see myself here, teaching them. My heart loved them! It made me realize how small we are in this vast world and there are sooooo many amazing and good people out there. I told them that i was a Spanish teacher (they got all excited about that!) and i recorded them saying "Hola, Buenos dias de los cabos. Adios" to my class! They loved it and i did too! Tamee and I talked about maybe coming to Mexico and teaching for a few years! Why not? It would serioulsy be so fun! We were shocked cause they even had a SMART board in their class room! They loved it! And when we asked them how they felt about uniforms, they were like "What do you mean?", because it is something that isn't even a question in their lives. Every single public school wears them, so it's not like it's something they can rebel against, they just do it, because it's expected. I told my students that. They were pretty dumbfounded that people could be okay with uniforms!!! I guess i'm glad if i have to fight a battle, it's a small one!
Coco cola! Really important!

Hotel Regina at the Westin: it only costs 3,000 a night!!! No biggie! But with 8 pools with different temperatures...how do you go wrong? Yikes...and we met some people who actually stayed there for 10 days and got married right there on the beach.

Monday was check in, but before we could check in, we went to a time share presentation where we got a free Zipline excursion and breakfast. Not too bad of a deal. After 3 hours though...it's like I said "No" 100 times already, do you really think i'm going to change my mind???

Mexico! Ready, set, go! Sunday, April 13, 2008

Tamee and I at the airport Sunday moring checking in for our "international" flight! We had to fill out immigration papers and everything! Pretty crazy!

Aqui estamos! En los cabos. Apparently, there are two Cabos "Capes" cabo san lucas (the lively crazy city with all the dance clubs, one of which we partook of) and San Jose del cabo (the expensive sleepy town that is beautiful). We went on a tour of both those on Wed. I''ll say more later.

So, just as crazy people like Tamee and I do, we technically didn't have anywhere to stay so we went to church (that was an experience in itself...we got of the plane and got on a bus for 15 bucks and headed west for forever...but welcome to vacation time, everyone wanted to stop and get drinks (and when i refer to drinks, i mean boos...the kind with alcohol, which we got offered multiple times while we were there.) so everyone shuffled off the bus and we just sat there taking pictures!) Every single person got dropped off before we did, because when the people at the bus depot told our bus driver where the "church" was, he was so sure he knew what they were talking about that he didn't pay attention to the rest of the instructions and proceeded to take us to the catholic church! And then when he realized the problem, he said, "Well, are you Christians?" And we said, "Yeah." and i got all crazy and start going off on more things about the church! that wasn't what he was getting after. He said, "Well, there's a protestant church down the road. Just go there." And we were like..."Hmmm, you don't understand!" So eventually after stopping and asking everyone in the area, we finally went like 20 min out of town and found the chapel! When we saw the steeple it was like...what a blessing! it was so great, like a rush of oxygen right to our souls! We gave him a huge tip for taking us all over creation and driving the huge bus on these itty bitty streets! It was great though.

So then we walked in, in our jeans, sweaty and gross and it was fast and testimony meeting. We stuck out like sore thumbs, but we didn't care, cause we had made it to church. I asked Tamee if she wanted me to translater for her, meaning if she wanted me to tell her what everyone was saying in her testimony. And she said, "That would be great! When do you want to go up?" and i was like, what? and she said, "I want to go up and bear my testimony. Will you translate it?" At first I was a little bit apprehensive, which is interesting, cause normally i'm not apprehensive at all, (i think it was the jeans we were wearing the chapel) but then up we went and i bore my testimony and felt the Spirit so strongly, I testified that we are here for a purpose and people are 98% of that reason and that we are supposed to help ourselves get to heaven while trying to help everyone else in the way we can and that no matter what we own, it doesn't matter, as long as we are living the way we should. I also testified of the Temple and families and how we need to get there and then keep on living the best lives we can. It was really special. Memories of my mission flooded my mind the entire week! It was really great!

They announced that there would be a baptism after church, so we decided to go, cause where else would we go? We talked to the missionaries and that really made the mission come right to my head...wow, i remember so many years ago. We mentioned that we were looking for a hostile to stay in or something and a family said, "You can stay with us." So we took their ever so kind invitation and off we went to cook dinner. Everything from scratch. It was great. Virna, Ezequiel and Joe were great hosts. Joe even gave up his bed. He is Virna's brother and just moved there like 2 weeks ago and didn't have a Book of Mormon and said he wasn't planning on going on a mission. I gave him my Spanish Book of Mormon and he promised he would read it daily. I hope he finds his testimony. He's only 17 so he's got two years to figure it out and make choices along the way. It was a great day!

Car Wash fundraiser

We did a fundraiser for the girl's family who was killed in Salt Lake. We made over 1200 dollars and are going to take the money to them today at the funeral.

I took pictures from inside my car as they made it so clean! It was fun and cold!

March Madness

A little bit of a painful game. I was down on the ground half the time! But ultimately we won! It was great game. I did, however injure one of my students (jammed finger) and Tamee jammed her finger too. Sad day, but lots of fun had in the process!