THE ZOO!

There are two FREE zoo's here in merida so one day after school we got a group together and decided we would go explore the one downtown. It was fun! when we first got there we realized that they were having a special concert/event in the pavillion and walked over to check it out. There was a live band and lots of people dancing! Connor (the kid that used to be in my ward, and NO mom, i know what you are thinking... I am not interested in him, plus he has a thing for latin girls!) asked if anyone would go do the cha cha with him. I volunteered (thank you David and social dance 180) and we ran into the crowd and started dancing. One of the girls recorded us dancing (just at the moment when i messed up! Ha my luck! :) It was very fun. we danced for a few minutes in the crowd! I think most of the people were looking at us like we were crazy gringos. Probably because we were dancing ballroom style cha cha which tends to be more elaborate and fancy than normal cha cha!



After dancing we all headed off to find the zoo, just out side there was a fun little park for the kids to play on with this huge airplane slide that we played on for a little while and some teeter tooters. Then we headed into the actual zoo part with the animals only to have the worker explain that they were closing in 15 minutes. So we ran through the park and saw as many animals as we could. My favorite was the animal the giraffe! I couldn't get a good pic there were too many fences. There was also some ostriches, I have never seen one that close up he was sitting right next to the fence, we could have reached through and touched him except we were worried he would bite off our fingers. Well I learned two things about ostirches, 1. they blink from the side, their eyelids don't go up and down like humans, they come from the side. 2. They can make their eyes go completely white, the black part disappeared. It was one of the creepiest things i have ever seen. It looked possessed! (it reminded me of the crazy creepy black bird on babes in toyland, the one with keanu reeves! classic! haha) Super creepy, i included a pic but you can't see it super well! oh well! We had fun running through and taking fast random pictures.I am just going to throw a few on here! The zebra one is especially for BROCK! Nicole will you please show him!! Funny story real quick! so my roomamte ruthann went to take a picture of the parrots and right after the flash the bird squawked "otra vez!!" (again!)! It was hilarious! but he would not do a repeat performance so we could get it on video :(

Celestun

Sorry i have been sick and this week has been crazy! So here it goes, our trip to celestun was AMAZING! I'm goingto throw in a bunch of pictures, because pictures say a thousand words. We started out on these fun little motor boats that took us out into the ocean and then up the river. They were very fun! (Family: For some reason they reminded me of maine, and i kept expecting the driver to yell "prepare for big fish", I know it is not the same thing but it brought back good memories!) Well we headed up the river and first went to a petrified forest, one of the tourist attractions there. The funny thing is we had no idea why we were there because no one had explained it to us! :)
























Then we headed off up the river to see a spot where thousands of flamingos gather to breed. (if you look closely at the pic of ruthann and I, you can see the small dots of hundreds of flamingos in the background!) They say there color is unique to the diet that they find in the river here at celestun! It is a unique site. We guessed there were close to a thousand flamingoes. The guide told us that in the busy season from october to december, about 3-5 thousand gather in this spot! AMAZING!! I loved watching them fly they really are unique animals!


















After the flamingos we cruised up the river a little more into the mangrove trees. It was like being on a jungle cruise the boats just turned into the trees and we were surrounded by them. The cool thing about the trees is the roots grow out of the water. It was really cool being completely surrounded by trees! on the sides and above they formed this tunnel. The guide said that the pathway is natural!



After the mangrove tunnel we went to the cenote, natural spring, on the side of the river tucked up in the mangrove trees. The water was beautiful and clear! It was slightly salty because it mixes with the water from the river a little bit! But SOOO beautiful! In the picture on the left you can see my cannonball wave, I thought it was perfect timing! There was a little boardwalk that you could walk around through the trees and see other smaller pools with fish and we even saw a crocodile! It was TONS of fun!!

The curious curse!?!

BEWARE This post contains some weird/gross pictures!

So Since i have been here in mexico...I have had to ask 4 or 5 different people to call my mommy cuz i was hurt. I have decided I am cursed! Dun, dum, dunm...hat or severely accident prone HAHAH. So i jsut thought i would share some of my mishaps in hopes that if I publicly laugh at myself maybe i will stop getting hurt. So here it goes... First, the first week here i got about 6 mosquito or what i think were mosquito bites on one foot, one of which was on my right ankle near my Achilles tendon. I went running with some people and my shoe rubbed and rubbed it... well the next morning i woke up to this HUGE blister in it's place it was a weird color and I had never seen anything like it, and my ankle was all swollen. SO I called mom and she helped me through the process of letting out the fluid with a needle and a few days later it started healing itself..

Second, I went to this amazing water park here called Rios Salvaje. It is bascially a smaller and more ghetto version of wet n wild. They had about ten slides but throughout the day they take turns opening about three. SO there is always a really LONG line and you can only ride the slides when they are open. So you only have certain options. Well, when we got there i made this goal to go on every slide in the park no matter what it looked like. They were fun slides, nothing too fancy. As i was entering the park i was chatting with one of the mexican girls from the institute here, she said not to go on the serpent, it is a closed tube and is basically a slide for children because it is not very steep at one point towards the end it actually goes completely flat. So as I waited in line with a few of the guys(the line takes forever because everyone gets stuck in the bottom where it goes flat and has to push themselves out with their hands) we were trying to decide how to not get stuck. They had me go first because i was the only girl in the group. At the top there is a bar above the tube so i put my feet on the bottom of the tube and my hands on the bar and kinda rocked myself and then launched myself into the tube. I was cruising it was very fun because it zig zags like a snake back and forth so it was fun until they positioned the zig zags too close together. I was going so fast when i hit that part that it flipped me over and I smacked my head on the bottom of the tube. The funniest part was that the guys at the top heard the swish, swish, thud but didn't know what had happened, as i sat at the bottom holding my head i heard the next guy come down and all of the sudden i heard the swish, swish, thud. It happened to all 5 of us hahah. However, i was the only one who hit my head. A few minutes later i realized i had a HUGE goose egg on my head. I didn't have my camera so i took one when we got back i took a picture but you can't see it well.
Third, About a week and a half ago I went to the beach with a group of people. We got a little lost looking for the beach house and wandered on the beach for a few minutes. I took of my shoes and walked down by the water because it is one of my favorite things(YAY newport, i can't wait). Well, somehow i stepped on a really sharp shell, or some glass, that cut open my foot. It made a pretty deep cut and left this big flap of skin that filled sand as even after i put back on my sandals. When we found the beach house, i cleaned it out and one of the girls, amber h.(lifesaver had a first aid kit). so we put on a bandaid, i knew it wouldn't stay on in the water so we macgyvered a bandage out of athletic tape to keep it on. WE thought the tape would stick to itself even in the water but after a minute or two of swimming it started to come off so i ended up tying it in a knot to keep it on. Here is picture of Kate and I laying out on the porch of the beach house. You can see my makeshift anklet hahah. the yguys were making fun of me! but hey it worked!!










THEN!!! two days ago i got some more bug bites cuz i ran out of bug spray and bought some from here and apparently it doesn't work for me. When i went to sleep the bites looked like this.. They itched like crazy, but i learned on my mission not to scratch(I tend to be allergic and after fleas and crazy mosquito bites i know it only makes it worse) SO i took some benadryl and went to bed. When i woke up the next morning they looked like this! CRAZY huh?? I didnt scratch them or anything...SO i realized something wasn't right. I showed the advisor who sent me to the doctor here in mexico. The doctor is actually one of the dad's of the families that some of the girls live with. He is a retired endocrinologist, when he saw my leg he was baffled. He said he has never seen anything like it and looked thru some of his big medical books and couldn't really find what he was looking for. SO he told me what he thought it was and said i should take some antibiotics to kill the bacteria that could be causing it. And told me to let him know if it gets works because he will refer me to a specialist because he doesn't actually know what it is. I then talked to my mom who called some doctors in our ward and he said he thought it sounded like it could be a fungus.. :-/ SO to cover my bases i am taking an antibiotic, applying a fungal cream, and dying because it itches SOO bad :) The funny part is i think it is an allergic reaction to something that bite me and neither of the medications will really help..but what do i know, i'm no doctor! :)

So there you have it folks, I am cursed! Somehow I keep getting hurt, and now i have the plague of weird blisters that one of the girls told me she thought looked like tree sap! HAHAHA I love MEXICO!!! :)

Oracion! (Prayer) It's TRUE!

So if you can't tell this is going to be a little more spiritually based. Here are a few pictures of us at church our first sunday! the first is by the sign out on the street and the other is in front of the building it is different than any other church building I have seen. It is two stories and only the second story has air conditioning so sacrament and sunday school are up there. Then the men kick the women out so they can have priesthood there and the women have relief society down stairs, It is SOOOOO ridiculously hot it is hard to focus, we just sit and glisten profusely together! HAhah. The ward we attend is very small and so cute, I think we, 34 americans, we almost out number the mexican members. They are so nice and friendly especially the youth who invite us to things and a few even came to our FHE with our byu group. It is very fun to be in a different country again and recognize that the church is TRUE wherever you go! sidenote: I brought my heels thinking that others would do the same, nope i was close to the only person wearing heels at church! Oh well I like them. I probably wont wear them that often because we do walk quite a bit on Sundays. We also had the Aa-mazing opportunity to go to a session at the Merida temple last thursday! It was SOooo wonderful! I just LOVE the temple and it was fun for me because eventhoughI have done a few spanish sessions in Provo (and that one with mom and david in the San diego temple, hahaha dave i hope you remember it! I thought of you when they called the couple up! :) The temple is small and gorgeous inside. there are only 30 chairs in the endowment rooms, so only about 32 people could do a session at a time. The rooms were hand painted with nature scenes, it was beautiful. I just sat and stared while we waited for the session to start. It was fun, we went with the ward, ruthann(my roomate) and I are the only endowed girls but about 6 of the guys from the group came with us. There were quite a few mexican women and a few men from the ward there with us too. It felt so nice to sit in the celestial room. I am always amazed by the peace that resides there!!! We went and got icecream after and there was a soccer game on, I snagged a picture of the guys in their white shirts and ties cuz i thought it was so funny! I'm sure we looked completely out of place!!














NOW for the real story and reason I decided to write this post!! TODAY the coolest thing happened!!! Background info:For some reason BYU has a strict no proselyting policy for their study abroad students. We are not even allowed to go out with the missionaries to their appointments. We are allowed to answer simple questions that people might have, but then refer them to the missionaries. THIS really bummed me out! Ever since i stepped off the plane I have been having these flashback moments of my mission and i just want to walk up to people and tell them about the church. Everytime we get on the bus, i have this moment where i look for who i should sit by to talk to on the bus to share the gospel with and then i realize i can't proselyte even if i wanted to :( (however, i have started random conversations with a few mexicans on the bus, but since i can't pull the "i'm a representative of Jesus Christ" card i think they just think that i am some crazy gringo! don't worry i don't break the rules or bring up the church i just try to talk to them about their lives and often they jsut look at me like i am crazy! I met this cool girl named kenya-she goes by "kenny" she is originally from cuba, we talked about adjusting to mexico and the modismos or the difference in slang from cuba/chile to mexico. It was fun to chat, She was really nice! Ok back to the story! Well, the lady we live with is catholic, she doesnt attend church that much but does go every once in a while. Well, the first day when we sat down to eat she just started eating so we looked at each other and prayed in our heads. We asked out prof. his opinion and some other kids in the group said that they prayed over their food with the people they live with. SO we told her that we like to pray before meals and asked if it would be ok with her if we prayed before we ate. She said yes and that catholics do that too! SO we pray before every meal. The first couple of times we just said the prayers then one day she said "yo lo hago"(i will do it) and she recited the "padre nuestro"( don't know the name in english, the lord's prayer maybe??) adressing the father but doesnt end i nthe name of jesus christ like we do and it is all memorized words. After that we started taking turns rotating around the table at meal times. One day she says "girls i have a good one today" and she pulled out a book and read this REALLY long prayer typed front and back! Well we have been here about 3 weeks and for the last little while she hasn't prayed, one day when i was at the beach and ruthann ate with her, she told ruthann she liked when we pray because she liked to listen to the way we pray! Well TODAY, i went down to eat lunch and she said she would say it. And then she said the cutest little prayer from her heart! Just like we pray! She thanked him for the food and she prayed for me! and closed in the name of Jesus Christ amen! I about jumped out of my seat for joy! It was so cute!! I know we can't proselyte or talk to her about the church but at least we are leaving a good example It made me SO happy!! :) here is a pic of her and us, it is the only one we have so far of all of us, I wanted to post it so you could see how cute she is, Just don't mind how weird my neck looks from the weird angle or my grossness after waking up early to finish packing and flying all day! hahaha (p.s. dont take this the wrong way but ruthann thinks that when addy smiles she reminds her of izma from "emperor's new groove" the way her skin pulls back! you might not be able to see it in the picture but it is kinda crazy/creepy! haha)

Dzibilchaltun

So, we had class thursday and friday at 7 am... I'll share more about that later. On our first saturday we went to a place called Dzibilchaltun! It is a classic period Maya site. It is small but still very cool! We had the craziest cutest old Mexican tour guide who kept drawing diagrams into the dirt with a stick he was carrying! it was classic! It was actually quite fascinating that the mayans knew so much about astonomy and astrology that they built the observatory (see the next few pics) so that the doors and windows were in exact positions so that on certain days of the year(equinox, and solstice) the sun would shine directly through the doors or windows. It is amazing!


After climbing and exploring the ruins and taking some pictures. The guide showed us the only water source the mayans had at that time a "cenote" or a natural spring. The interesting thing about the yucatan peninsula is that there are no visible rivers above the ground. The only access to fresh water is underground rivers that surface in these types of cenotes. Well, they said that people could swim in the cenote. Side story: we were toldthat we were going to the ruins and then going to the beach to swim and have lunch. Our Doña Addy told us she would take our swimming suits and towels to the beach and we could change there. SO when we got there and saw the cenote and they said people could go swimming and a bunch of people has brought their swimsuits and got in I was jealous/feeling left out! I REALLY wanted to swim in this cool one in a lifetime chance cenote in the middle of the maya ruins. SO I was sitting there sad that i didnt have my swimsuit with my feet in the water and i looked up and saw my prof and this is how the conversation went...
Prof: it would be nice to swim huh?
ME: YES! i almost want to jump in in my clothes!
Prof: haha why don't you?
ME: I can? (shocked he would allow me to)
Prof: i guess..? if you don't mind being wet (shocked that i actually wanted to)
ME: ok then! (and i got up and cleaned out my pockets and took off my shoes as everyone around me watched in amazement as the CRAZY Cortney prepared to jump in FULLY clothed. SO I did and my roommate got this killer picture mid air!


After the ruins we headed off to the beach to meet up with all of the families that the students are living with. There are 32 students and we live in groups of 2 or 4 In different houses all over the city. There are a few of us that live in the same neighbor hood a few blocks away from each other so we tend to see each other more often and do things together like swim at each others houses, or go running! SO we met up at the beach with all the mexican families and all the students and had a BIG lunch and just sat and played and hung out! Then one of the guys in the group Connor(who was in my first byu ward two years ago so we have become good friends on this trip because we knew each other from before). Well connor pulled out his ukulele and played and we just sat and sang on the porch across the street from the beach! It was Awesome! If you watch you can hear some of us singing along. At the beginning and end there are some shots of the other people in the group and at the end my professor is also in the video! It's kinda long so you can skip thru it if you prefer I jsut thought it was fun! Just kidding! It is taking WAY toooo long to load, over 3 hours. So i'll try again later. (if anyone knows a trick of how to get it to load or post faster I would appreciate some tips) I'm still learning!

Bienvenidos a Mexico!!

Ok, so i have finally given in and joined the bloggin world. I have been here in Mérida, Mexico for 2 weeks! time is flying. I am going to try and throw up some pictures and some quick stories over the next few days to catch you all up on our adventures here. First off the basics.. I made a video of the house where we live

It is amazing here, we feel like we are getting a pretty true mexican experience because our house is very elaborate but very ghetto at the same time. We have recently been to a few of the other houses where students are staying and the houses are just like the US clean and they have Flat screen TV's.. I actually not like having a TV because it helps us want to get out of the house and find things to do. We have been exploring quite a bit in our neighborhood. I actually started a group to go running(Yes nicole, I am getting ready, or at least trying my best to stay in good shape while i am here). We also go downtown a lot to el centro. There is a big plaza that they actually call la plaza grande, it has a huge cathedral on one side, the governors palace on another, and the "city hall" building on the other, the fourth side just has shops. In the middle of the plaza they have performers and vendors out trying to make some money. The picture to the left is me and one of our cute neighbors Samantha(BYU student) on the balcony of the city hall building looking over the plaza at the big cathedral as the sun was starting to set. It was gorgeous and the picture just doesn't do it justice. One of the other fun, yet sad occurences in the plaza is the are the maya indian women who come out to sell bracelets, belts, and shawls. They often have a cute little child in tow, SO cute the kid just wanders around behind the mom. half the time you don't realize they have a child until they turn to walk away because the child hides in or behind her skirt. The very SAD part is sometimes they have newborn babies that they carry on their backs in this sling thing. It is ridiculously hot here I melt every day, and they women carry around their babies on their backs. I got a picture of one at night because i thought the little girl was SO cute, i will try to get a better picture of one during the day. Well we are off to Uxmal today so there is MUCH more to come...