Days 15–21: The Night Life

Well I guess I'm not really keeping up with this thing very well.  Anyway, this week was great!  Monday we had FHE at the hacienda of the family of some girls in our group.  That was fun and we took a party bus back to our houses.  I feel like at a bunch of the activities, I get to know at least one person better.  It was good.  Especially after spending ALL DAY in the library working on my project.  This study abroad is more work than I signed up for, I swear.

I've been discouraged with my Spanish skills a lot, mostly from school.  I don't speak as well as all of the return missionaries and can't understand everything.  However, Tuesday we went ice skating in the mall and I had to go to the phone store to see if they could fix the cell phone Mamá Pilar gave me to use here, and I realized that my Spanish really isn't so bad.  I was in that store for 30 minutes and I'm glad I was able to communicate.  The employees were super nice.  I may or may not have fallen in love with the smile of one of them:)  Haha he's like 35 years old.  ANYWAY.

The fun really began on Wednesday.  We went to Institute again to Salsa dance.  I got a lot of dancing in and afterwards, we invited a bunch of people to go see a play with us.  A bunch of the kids from institute came with us too.  Daniel, a boy who danced with me a lot, had a car, so for the first time we didn't have to walk all around Centro.  We piled 17 people in that pickup truck I think.

All of us that were in the truck.

 We told the kids from Institute that we wanted to eat somewhere authentic, delicious, and cheap, so we ended up driving 45 minutes out of Mérida to eat the best panuchos ever.  Sooooo good.  It was such a fun night just hanging out with friends who live here and who know the best places to go.  That also meant we were speaking Spanish the whole time which is always a plus.

Apparently THE place to get Panuchos.  I'm so glad we have people to take us to the real spots instead of all the touristy places.

Thursday . . . went to the zoo.  Daniel said he couldn't believe that we chose to go there out of all the cool places we could be going in Mérida.  I kind of agree.

Friday was the best night of my life.  Oh, first you should meet Conny!

with Tom on the left and Brad on the right.  Brad is my new bud.  We understand each other.

I met Conny at Institute one day in the bathroom and thank goodness I did!  She's the reason we have so much fun in Mérida now.  She's so nice, fun, and has a ton of friends.  Meaning that being friends with her gives you a ton of friends too! She's always inviting us to parties and events.  A few of us went to a Salsa club Friday night and ever since then, all I want to do is be there dancing.  We also got in free because they love the pretty white girls to be there apparently.  The music was pulsing, the lights were flashing and then they brought out a live band of awesomeness.  They were just so into their music meaning so were all of us.  I can't explain how great it was to be there, but salsa dancing to loud music with your Mexican friends . . . surrounded by all of the locals having a great time . . . Awesome.

Dang this is a long post.  Saturday we went on another excursion, this time to Celestún.  This was a super chill excursion.  We rode on little boats that took us to see the flamingos and to swim in the cenote.

Saturday night I went with Aaron (a guy in our group), Conny, and Conny's guy friend to see Spiderman at the movie theater.  It was in English with Spanish subtitles.  I think Conny and I make a good team because all of my BYU guys friends like Conny (obviously), but Conny's Mexican friends like me.  Perfect!  (Okay, that's vain of me, but the guys here really do dig the red head, super pale skin thing.  I want to live here forever).

As for today, Church was great.  I could understand everything plus it seems like everything said was exactly what I needed to hear.  I've been working ALL DAY on my dumb essay for class.  5 pages, 1.5 spacing (what?), in Spanish.  Not super fun.

Basically, now that I've been hanging out with so many people from México and understanding more and more and able to communicate, I feel like I really am improving my Spanish.  I love it here so much and only have 4 weeks left.  I don't want to go back.