Michael & Liz are Bloggable

I realize I'm blogging a TON lately, I hope at least a few people are enjoying it. I just asked Liz if she is reading my blogs about Mexico and she said no. If she's not reading this, I can't imagine I have a huge audience. Here is the last email I sent to my parents before we left Mexico:

well today is the last day of our trip. it'll be cool to get back to our normal schedule but I am definitely going to miss all the experiences here. I personally have LOVED using my Spanish here. I feel like I have retained so much from High School Spanish. The other day at the girls school festival, I bought Callie a balloon. Most of the balloons said that it was Valentines day with the writing "dia de amor y amistad" which says "day of love and friendship". But Callie's didn't have writing on it. As we walked away, I said to Callie, "is it OK that it doesn't have writing on it?" and she said "yeah" kind of in a sad tone. I persisted and she said, "I want the writing but I don't know how to ask?" and I said "it's OK" and I walked up to the lady with the balloon and said "no escriba?", which is roughly translated to mean "no writing?" and she immediately gave us a balloon with the writing. There were several times where I have surprised myself that I actually remembered my Spanish.

Last night we went down to the beach just to walk around and ended up seeing the turtles again. There is an organization that works on saving the turtle population and every 3rd day at sunset they let the hatched baby turtles out in the water. We were lucky enough to see them twice on our trip. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing those baby turtles released into the water. I just love animals so much and to see them being taken care of in that way is really awesome. It pains me to see all the stray dogs around here and to hear the stories of how they are treated. It's almost just as common to see a dog hopping with 3 legs as it is to see a dog walking on all 4's. I told Hillary today "it seems like it would be advantageous for dogs to be passive around here as opposed to aggressive". Passive dogs get in less fights and get hurt less often and are more likely to receive food from the locals. It's just not in me to not do anything to help any of them, but we're only here for a week.

today was a little more lazy, we went down to the beach and walked up and down. we ended up walking 2 miles total in the sand. It was certainly a work out on my ankle, but i can feel it getting stronger, which is good. i dont think running will be a problem when we get home. the walk was really enjoyable as the waves were the largest I have ever seen. We've been to the north shore in Oahu and these waves were much bigger than those. It legitimately sounded like thunder was hitting the shore and we just stood there in amazement of the size and power of the water. I really have never seen waves like that before. You couldn't have paid me to go out there. I really will never forget how massive they were. Libby, Scott & Hillary's dog, went out in the water where the waves hit the shore, and to feel the power of the water rushing up and down the shore, even Libby going out that far worried me.

We then went to Sayulita to Burrito Revolucion to have "gringo burritos", which are just American style burritos, which is to say that they are HUGE and have lots of stuff in them. Mexican style burritos are small and are a normal portion with just a little bit of stuff in them. I got a "burrito de camarones" which is a burrito with shrimp. It was delicious. I think I can make a similar burrito at home so I may try sometime in the next few weeks. It was definitely delicious.

In the afternoon we did some reading and hanging out and just enjoying our last afternoon here. I constantly got distracted by the number of loud trucks passing by selling things. We then played with the girls building castles with blocks and building train tracks out of the blocks. We also played "go fish", and seeing them play so sweet with each other really made having children that much more appealing. I hope our kids are that sweet some day. We had tostadas for dinner (flat hard shells topped with stuff on it) and that was of course delicious. I went out today and finally caught the donut man and got 10 donuts for dessert and breakfast tomorrow. The last time I caught him, it was 4 pesos a donut (which is about 30 cents a donut), and this time it was 5 pesos. This caused a problem though because I already asked for 10 donuts of all different kinds and was standing there holding 40 pesos. My Spanish isn't good enough to try and say "sorry i only want 8 donuts then", so i ran in the house and begged for 10 more pesos from Hillary. I guess I blended right in with the girls, who wanted ice cream from the truck twice today. But unlike the girls, my request for 10 more pesos was granted. :)

We're starting to pack now and will probably watch a couple episodes of The Office on the computer before we go to bed. It's so sad to be leaving because it really has been a vacation from everything. I have stayed in touch with you over email but this place really is totally an escape from everything we know. Also leaving here means having to go back to work, which is less fun.