My 26th Birthday

Jake is the best husband. He woke my up at 5:40 this morning to wish me happy birthday (okay, I woke him up to go to basketball, but he remembered to wish me a happy birthday and let me go back to bed.) My sister called be bright and early to sing to me too. I had to work all day (I really think our birthdays should be a paid holiday), but a lady at my work made me a really good cake, so I was able to survive working on my birthday. When I got home, my wonderful husband took me out to eat and then he sat through the cheesiest chick flick I've ever seen, Enchanted. I knew the only way he'd see that movie is if it was my birthday or I tricked him into seeing it. We came home and had cake and I blew out candles, blowing powdered sugar everywhere.

Stop Wiggling Your Leg!

So early this morning, I was sleeping peacefully and the bed started shaking. I thought Jake was shaking the bed, but I looked over and he was sleeping. He rolled over and told me to stop wiggling my legs. I wasn't doing anything. I heard the house shaking a little too. We thought that it might be an earthquake, but how often is there an earthquake in Idaho? When I got up later I turned on the T.V. and there it was. There was a fairly large earthquake in Wells, Nevada that was felt in Utah, Idaho, and parts of California. That was the second time Jake and I had felt an earthquake. I felt a little one while on my mission in Fresno and Jake a small one when he lived in Oregon. Hope there's not another big one close by anytime soon!

WE'RE BACK!!

So we had more adventures coming back into the states. Before we crossed the border, we stopped at a pharmacy to buy Jake some medicine for when he gets sinus infections. We were coming across the border and the border guard said we had to have our car checked. We pulled over to where we were to get our car checked and the guard started giving us instructions, but we could hardly understand him. He didn't speak English very well. Jake spoke to him in Spanish, but he wouldn't reply in Spanish. We had to take every little thing out of the car, down to our i-pod, sunflower seeds and maps. We were a little nervous that they would find the medicine, but they didn't. They looked right at the bag the medication was in, but didn't look in it. I was glad about that. Jake asked the guard if he could talk to his supervisor, and another guard came over and started yelling at Jake and telling him he could talk to him when he was done inspecting the car. He was being a jerk to Jake. Afterward Jake went into the building to complain about the two border guards. Their supervisor got mad at Jake for wanting to make a complaint. He wouldn't let Jake make a complaint. Jake told him that the guards should be able to speak english to work there and he was saying to Jake that Jake was racist because of that comment. Can you be racist for wanting someone to speak English in a country where everything is conducted in English? The supervisor stormed out of the building mad just because Jake wanted to make a complaint, so we got out of there fast. We had a long drive home but we finally got home this morning at 2am. We had a great time on our trip, but like always, it's great to be home.

What? It's Valentine's Day?

On Valentine's day we made it to Monterrey, MX around two in the afternoon. We stopped at the temple, because we were going to go, but we found out it was closed until 4pm. So Jake called his old mission companion that was from Monterrey to see how to get to his house. When he was talking to him, his companion said he was going on a date up a canyon in Monterrey for Valentine's Day. What? It was Valentine's Day? We totally forgot. Being in Mexico all our days run together, half the time we don't even know the day of the week. We went with his companion up the canyon in Monterrey. It was beautiful up the canyon. We then went to a movie. We left in the middle of the movie, because Mexico doesn't have any ratings on their movies, so we didn't realize it was rated R, so we went and watched a different movie.

Teotehuacan

On the 13th we headed to the ruins of Teotehuacan. There are really cool. Supposedly the pyramid of the sun is bigger than the pyramids in Egypt. That pyramid was huge! We got to climb up the pyramid of the Sun and the Moon and the pyramid of Quetzelcualt (don't know the spelling). It was fun to see all the pyramids and climb all over them. They had a lot of salesmen there wanting to sell us a ton of souviners. We bought some souviners and we told ourselves we weren't going to buy anymore. We were leaving and there was a blanket that I pointed to and said to Jake that I liked it. We walked out to our car and the salesman followed us all the way to our car to sell it to us, so we got it for a steal at $17.

Mexico City's Treasures

So on the 12th we explored the largest city in the world. We got to the city the night before and were lost in the city 2 hours looking for our hotel. We went to an amazing musuem, the Musuem of Anthropology. There was a lot of cool stuff in there from all the different cultures in Mexico. We learned that the Aztecs were actually called the Mexicas, which is where Mexico got it's name from. We saw a ton of cool pottery, carvings, and other artifacts from the cultures. We saw Aztec stuff, Mayan stuff, Olmeca stuff, and some other smaller cultures. There were some interesting information they wrote about that seemed related to things in the Book of Mormon and to our temple ceremony.

After the musuem we went to the Castillo de Chapultepec, which was another musuem that told about the history of Mexico. I learned a lot about the U.S. and Mexican history. I learned that America conquored a lot of Mexico, clear down to Mexico City in 1846 and our flag flew over the Castle of Chapultepec for a bit. The U.S. told Mexico what land they wanted and gave them back the part they didn't want. That is when we got California, Utah and Nevada. There were some really cool things to see.

After the Castillo we took a bus over to the Basilica and saw the church that is dedicated to La Virgin de Guadelupe (Mexico's version of the Virgin Mary). We thought is was the church where there are walls of gold, but it wasn't. It was just a mecca for catholics in Mexico, where supposedly the virgin appeared several times. After being there for a short time we took the subway to the Zocolo, which is the main square in Mexico City where we saw the Cathedral. This was the church we had heard about with walls of gold. There where four rooms on each side of the church with walls ornated with gold. In the back and the front there was a big shrine to the Virgin de Guadalupe all in gold. I had never seen so much gold in my life. It looked pretty amazing. This picture is probably less than 10% of the gold in this church. It was neat to see Mexico City, but we were happy to leave the craziness of the city.

Zoofari and Taxco

On the 11th we went to the coolest place. We went to the Zoofari in a town a little south of

Cuernavaca. We got to drive our car through the park with animals roaming around our car. We could roll down our windows and feed the animals through our window. We fed a giraffe, deer, ostriches, llamas, zebras, emus, and some animals we had never seen before. It was amazing. I was feeding an ostrich through the window and the ostrich started eating a ton of the food, so I pulled the food away from the ostrich. Well, the ostrich didn't like that so it put it's head through my window into the car. I started to roll the window up and when the window was up, the ostrich started pecking of the window. In some parts of the zoofari, we could get out of our carand walk around among the animals. Some of the animals were caged up where they couldn't get to you, like the monkeys, chimpanzees, hippos, camels, and elephants, but they had all kinds of birds walking around, deer like animals, and some big gerbil looking thing wandering around with us. We could also get out where they had ostriches, llamas, emus, and zebras wandering around. Jake fed a camel and the camel tried to take the bowl of food right out of his hand. We got to feed an elephant and when Jake fed the elephant, it took the bowl from him. They also had a zoo part where they had all kinds of animals. There was also a part where we could drive your car through a tiger's cage. We had to have our windows rolled up, but right by our car, there was a white tiger and an orange tiger roaming about. It was so awesome. We went on a Monday, but if you go on a Saturday or Sunday you can ride a camel and get your picture taken holding a jaguar. We could never do that in that in the U.S.A. I put lots of videos of here because I couldn't pick which ones to leave off. If you go to Mexico, this is a great place to go, but go on a weekend.

After our amazing experience at the zoofari, we went to Taxco where the Spaniards had the first silver mine. It is the city of silver. It was crazy busy! The city was built on the side of a hill. The streets were narrow and there were people everywhere wanting to buy silver. I got my little chunk of silver there in the form of earrings. The salesman at the silver shop we went to wanted to sell us a set of silver silverware for the mere price of $3500. That's dollars not pesos like I thought at first. It was a steal from the original price of $7500.

Oluta and Cuernavaca

On the 8th we left Santiago, where we had been staying for a couple of weeks, and we headed to Oluta, south of Santiago. We visited a couple of families that Jake taught and some of the members there. A member family took us out to eat for dinner and we ate memelas, which looked a lot like a pizza, except with beans and cheese on it. They were pretty good. We drove that night to Xalapa and got there really late and stayed with a member family. The next morning, we got up bright and early to drive to Cuernavaca. The family we were staying with wanted to buy a school in Cuernavaca so we went along to look at it. On the way there we lost sight of them so it was an adventure finding them. We finally found them and saw the school. We also went to Hernan Cortez's house there in Cuernavaca. It was turned into a musuem. It had some pretty cool stuff in it. I really liked the city of Cuernavaca. It was a lot cleaner and seemed nicer than a lot of the places we had been to.

Tuxtepec

We still didn't have our car, so on the 7th of February we got up really early in the morning and caught a bus to Tuxtepec at 4:30 in the morning so we could go visit some people Jake knew there. The bus ride was really long (4 hours). When we got to Tuxtepec, we walked to the bishop's house and visited with them. They fed us and took us to a natural spring about an hour away. The water was coming straight from the earth, so it was clean. Imagine that, clean water in a river in Mexico. You don't see that everyday. There was also a swimming pool that had the water coming into it from the earth. It was really cold, but Jake went swimming in it anyway. I just waded in the water and got bit a lot by mosquitos. The bishop was a taxi driver, so we got a good deal from him and he drove us back to where our car was getting fixed. It was a lot faster than taking the bus back. Our car was finished getting fixed, so we got it back! It was so good to get our car back.

La Playa

Yesterday we went to the beach. We woke up and the weather was great, so we decided it would be a great day to go to the beach. The beach we went to is about 2 hours away and the closer we got, the more windy it got. It was really windy when we got to the beach and there was hardly anyone there. The water was really cold at first, but the farther out we went it got a lot warmer. It was cold because of the river that was fairly close. The waves were fairly big. Jake and I had a fun time jumping in the waves and playing in the water. The people we brought with is didn't want to go in because they thought it was too cold outside and in the water.

Catemaco - City of Witches and Monkeys

Our car is getting fixed and won't be done until Thursday, so we decided to go to Catemaco and see some monkeys. We took a bus there and back, which took about 45 minutes each way. Catemaco sits on a huge lake and has a couple islands where lots of monkeys live. It was really cool. We road out on a boat to an island where there are lots of monkeys that live there.
We put some bananas on the end of our boat and the monkeys climbed into our boat to eat the bananas. They were only about two feet from us. Wild monkeys! There was also a tiny island there that had tons of birds on it and the trees were white from their poo. We saw a little baby monkey on one of the islands too. It was really neat to see all the monkeys up that close. This city also has a lot of witches so while we were on our little boat ride they tried to get us to pay a witch doctor to cure us of all our ailments. It was a little crazy. It was a beautiful area and a cool experience to see the monkeys up that close.

El Baile

On Saturday the district here had a talent show for a missionary couple that is leaving this week. The family that we are staying with did lots of different dances that are typical of Mexico. Here is one that is from Jalisco. There were lots of other cool dances that they did. We had a fun time watching them dance.

Thankful Thoughts

Being in Mexico I've become very grateful for many things.
1. A Dryer
2. A Toilet you can actually put T.P. in
3. Toilet seats
4. Hot water all the time
5. Dishwashers
6. Clean water from the tap
7. Soft beds
8. Laws about not dumping trash in the rivers
9. Roads without potholes
10. Very few speed bumps
11. Nice highways we can use without paying
12. Carpet
13. Mirrors in the bathroom
14. Milk
15. Not having military people everywhere with huge guns
16. Living in America

Zoo in Villahermosa

Yesterday we went to a zoo and a musuem in Villahermosa. It was really cool. They had some monkeys there that had babies.They had lots of alligators and even a huge crocodile. We got to go inside a bird cage with all kinds of birds. The different thing about this zoo than the zoos in America is that they had a ton of just one animal. Usually zoos just have one or two of an animal, but this zoo had lots of each kind of animal. There was also a musuem at the zoo where you walked through the jungle and they had different Olmeca statues. There were some amazing carvings that they had.While we were walking through the Olmeca statues, a ton of these wierd looking animals came by looking for food. It was crazy. They were just going around us. We got home fairly late. My legs hurt from walking up the pyramids, I have lots of mosquito bites, but I had a great time. It has been nice to just be lazy today and not do much.

Palenque and more

Lot's has happened since Sunday when I last posted. Monday morning we woke up to a text message that Pres. Hinckley had died. Had we not recieved that text, we might still not have known that our beloved prophet had died. It's a sad time, but at least he is with his wife now. The great thing about the gospel is that the work will continue on. On Monday we went to Los Zapotes. There is a museum there with Olmeca things in it. Some people think that the Olmecas are the Jaredites in the Book of Mormon. The musuem was tiny and wasn't very good. They didn't explain what anything was. They had some cool things, but I would have liked to know what they were used for etc. On Tuesday we drove to Villahermosa with the Castellano family, who we are staying with. We had seven people in a car that only fits five. It was a tight ride, but we were glad they came along. We got there at night and stayed with some family they had there. The next morning we headed to Palenque. It was amazing. The ruins are huge! There are so many of them. We got to climb all over the ruins and go inside some of them. We saw some pretty cool things.It was neat to be able to go inside the ruins. Inside of one of them we saw a tomb where they buried someone. There were all kinds of cool things to see. There was a really pretty waterfall that was at Palenque too.While we were there we saw some monkeys that were getting ready to fight. It was pretty cool. They made really loud noises. They fought a little, but mostly just growled at each other. There was a musuem that was there that Jake got into to look, and I was going the bathroom at the time. When I got out, Jake came and got me to go look at it because it was going to close soon. When we got to the doors, they wouldn't let us in, but Jake said that we needed to go look for our friends in there (they were still in there). They said that only one of us could go in, but Jake said, she doesn't understand, so I got to go in too. I took some video of the musuem. They had some cool trinkets and colored statues that they had found. I wish we could have stayed and seen it, but they were closing, even though they were supposed to stay open until 5pm, they closed 15 minutes early. We had a great time. That night we spent in Villahermosa again because we got back from Palenque fairly late and we wanted to go to the zoo the next day.