Postcards from Paradise- Part 4

Wenesday

On Wednesday we decided to just relax by the pool. Tuesday was fun, but we felt we were working a little too hard on our vacation. We got to the pool about 10 a.m. and didn't leave it until about 3 p.m. We applied lots and lots of sunscreen, but the kids burned a little bit anyway.

The hotel staff has lots of fun activities throughout the day. David, Karina, Jordan and Kallai played water volleyball. Kallai could barely touch, but he had fun. They had some crazy rules, like the girls always got 2 chances on every serve. When a girl biffed a serve, the ref would yell "Happy Hour!" and imitate a woman by grabbing the air in front of his chest and dancing suggestively. I'm not sure why it was called Happy Hour, but my guess is that during happy hour you could buy 2 for 1 drinks, and the girls got 2 for 1 serves. Our team won 2 out of 3 games, and had a great time!

The little kids played games as well. Taliah, McKade and Treyson played tug of war, which they won, and lots of relay races and balloon tosses. They had a blast!

Later we went to the Cuculcan Mall. It is only a block away from the hotel. I saw a necklace I liked there, but they wanted $32 for it, and I wasn't sure it was worth it. I decided to look for a necklace at the flea market the next time we went. I bought a cute plaid tank top though. I though it was funny that there were 4 or 5 of the exact same tshirt shop there in the mall. Are tourists really that dumb? Ok, well maybe...

We headed back to the hotel and decided to go down to the beach. We had fun playing in the waves and playing Boce Ball. The beach kind of makes me sad. It used to be so amazing! It's still pretty good, but it is about 6 feet lower than it used to be, and 20-30 yards thinner. There were only 2 spots of beach in front of the hotel that were open to swim in. The rest of the beach had exposed rocks, so they wouldn't let us swim there.

After a while we headed out to dinner with the missionaries. It was fun. They couldn't go into the hotel zone, so we took a taxi to downtown Cancun and met them there. We ate at a place called Tacolote, which is a local favorite. The missionaries hadn't eaten there, but they had heard it was good. They heard right! It tasted amazing. The best thing about the food in Cancun is the Limonade, it's lemonade, but made with limes and sparkling water. Delicious! David and I ate a beef and pastor burrito. It was very tasty! Pastor is pork that is sliced and then put on a big skewer with pineapple and other things. The whole meat skewer is about 1 1/2 feet across and 2 feet long. Then they cook it slowly all day, and just cut off chunks as needed. We also had roasted onions. Basically they take small onions, and toss them into a fire whole, and then serve them to you. They tasted quite good.

The missionaries that we ate with were Elder Schwantes from Alaska, Elder Jensen from Park City, Elder Guerrera from a place in Mexico that is near Texas, and another Elder whose name I never caught from Mexico City. David and I ended sitting by the two Mexican Elders, who didn't speak much English. Since we don't speak Spanish the dinner conversation was very sparse. We tried, but it was difficult. We had Elder Schwantes translate a bit. Elder Guerrera asked where I had learned Spanish, and I had to laugh, because my Spanish consists of counting to ten and a few words like Buenos Dias, and Hermana. He seemed impressed, but I think he was just being nice. LOL. We found out from Elder Schwantes that they got 800 pesos to live off of a month. That is about $65 American. They don't have to pay rent, and the members are supposed to feed them lunch, but they often forget. The Elders said most American missionaries usually lose about 30 pounds on a Mexican mission because they don't get enough to eat. Elder Schwantes was having some extra trouble living within his means that month because the local mall was having an incredible deal on ties, and he just had to buy 5 or 6 or 7. He had only been out 3 months, and I am thinking he was a bit of a mall rat before he left. :o)

After a while a Mariachi Singer showed up and started singing very, very loudly. I thought it was funny that his "Mariachi Band" was acutally an ipod. The missionaries told us that the songs were all about drug runners and their successes and failures, getting shot, dying, going to jail, etc. I guess drug running songs are very popular in Mexico right now.