Postcards from Paradise- Part I

My favorite place in the whole world is Cancun, Mexico. Specifically the Royal Sands Resort in Cancun Mexico. And that is where I am right now. Ahhhhhhh!



We headed here yesterday, Saturday, June 27, and we'll be staying for a week. Once we got here we had to stand in a huge line for over an hour to go through customs, which kind of stunk. When we got to the Customs Officer, he didn't like the look of my passport for some reason, and I had a few tense moments while he decided what to do. He let me through though. We also had to fill out an additional form to see if we had any Swine Flu symptoms. I guess they don't want their disease back. Finally, they had to search all 10 of our bags by hand. Ugh! It took forever! They ended up switching shifts in the middle of searching, and the new person didn't believe us when we told her most of the bags had already been searched. So some of them got searched twice!
Finally we all squeezed into a taxi with our 10 pieces of luggage, and drove to the hotel. When we got here it was raining, hard. Not a good sign. The driver told us it had been raining all day.


Luckily rain storms don't usually last long here, and it had cleared up by about 7 p.m. so we could go swimming. One of the best parts of the Royal Sands is the pool. It is lots of fun. It has a raised area in the middle, with a waterfall going down into the lower pool, and a restaurant right there in the pool. The kids like to slide off the waterfall and dive into the lower pool. We had a blast!







Today (Sunday) we woke up early and got ready for church. We piled 14 of us into one taxi and rode for 30 minutes to the nearest LDS Chapel. We got there about 9:30, and church was supposed to start at 10. The chapel is in a really scary part of town. The houses are all run down, there is graphitti and garbage everywhere. The chapel is much nicer than the neighborhood, and it has a high fence all around it. It was very interesting inside. There was tile on the floor, wooden benches, and roller shades over the windows. Absolutely no sound absorbing materials at all. The ward members were very friendly, and they walked around in the chapel before Sacrament Meeting and talk to each other and to us. It was a little crazy how loud it was.







There were actually quite a few tourists there, at least 3 other families, plus the 14 of us. (We are here with my parents and my sister's family. My sister's sister in law is also here with her family, as well as the sister in law's brother in law and family. Confused yet?) All told there are 24 or 25 people here that all know each other and are loosely related.) Well, 10 o'clock rolled around, and church didn't start. They finally started at 10:30. I'm not sure if we got the time wrong or if they just didn't worry too much about the time. The service was completely in Spanish, so I didn't understand a word! I recognized 2 of the 3 songs, and we sang along. But the third song was completely unfamiliar. My brother in law, Mark, invited the 8 missionaries out to dinner later this week. They were really excited. I don't think they get to eat out much. They aren't allowed to come into the hotel zone, so we will have to go to a restaurant that is not by the hotels. That should be interesting. After church we went swimming. The kids had tons of fun jumping off the ledge into tubes waiting below.








I swam some laps. I'm trying to get some exercise while I'm here, so I don't gain a bunch of weight sitting around and snacking. We are staying on the top floor (the 8th floor), and my goal is to never take the elevator, just the stairs. I can run up about 6 flights, but then I have to walk.

Mariasha and her cousin's cousin took laptops to the lobby where they could get internet, and spent hours surfing.

Tonight we walked down the beach looking for Sea Turtles. They come up on the beach to lay their eggs at night. It's really cool to watch. You have to be careful not to disturb the turtle so she doesn't change her mind, but once she starts actually laying the eggs, you can go up close and watch. The turtle officials actually let the kids catch the eggs and put them in a bucket. We didn't see any tonight, but we did see some pretty cool things. For instance.... we saw some crabs that had been washed in with the waves scurrying around on the beach. We also discovered an interesting phenomenon. In certain places on the beach, if you kick the sand, some of the sand that you send flying will start to glow blue in the dark. It's just little specks, and they glow for just a few seconds, but it's really cool. We couldn't figure out what caused it. Maybe I will research it on the internet, because I'd really like to know. So far it has been an amazing experience here in Cancun. I'm looking forward to even more amazing experiences.



P.S. I researched the glowing sand and found out it is a dinoflagellate called Lumenella. It's a micro organism that lives in the ocean and gets washed up on the sand. It's kind of like a firefly, but in the water.