good times

How would YOU react if you found that thing crawling in your bed while you were in it? ...yeah tough question, I don't know what I would do either... Good thing I found this guy on the floor and not in my bed!!

Evan and i were the only ones available on Tuesday morning to staff the office. Evan put me in charge of the front desk while he went in the back room and took a nap on the floor. I fell asleep on the job...talk about low rate desk service
I hope these fella's get paid some good Pesos each day for their work. They are absolutely CRAZY. their window washing system consists of two ropes tied to the ends of a wooden plank. They sit on the plank and just go to town washing windows!
When the going gets rough, you get desperate sometimes! Our food stock ran low over the weekend. In a moment of hunger I convinced myself that a cold sausage dog on a stale, hardened tortilla sprinkled in stinky cheese and green salsa would be a good option...I was sick for a while after eating it and about lost it in the garbage... oh Mexico, why do you do what you do to me...

Evan working on some serious homework outside on our patio. (most likely he was chatting with Jess even though he claimed it was homework...) Well, due to high walls for security it's more like a prison.

Too much walking and intense basketball with the locals is no bueno for these feet!
its a bird, its a plane, noooo...its Evan on the log bridge and hes gone INSANE!

Posting up on a historic bridge where over 6,000 natives were killed by Spanish troops. I definitely felt the power...or maybe that was the chili from last night's dinner i was feeling...

lake calderon

Dear blog Patrons: it is with heavy hearts that we bring you this sad announcement-the Amazing camera of Evan Williams (with 10* zoom) was stolen on Saturday afternoon by 3 individuals in a small, red Toyota truck. The loss of the camera itself was tough to bear, however, far worse has been the suffering inflicted by the loss of nearly 120 incredible pics and 5 fabulous videos that were saved on Evan's memory card. As a result, the picture of Evan with a fishing pole that you are currently viewing is the only surviving picture from our fishing trip to Lake Calderon early Saturday morning. Had this unfortunate event not have occurred, you would now be viewing more fotos of our fishing extravaganza in which we used a bottle with fishing line wrapped around it as a makeshift fishing pole-just like the locals do!
fishing at 7am on Saturday morning...well, it was more like "casting" cause we done caught nothin...definitely should have slept in!

Catch up on the last week!

Leaving the Central Bus station at 7 40am Friday for the 2 hr drive to the pueblo of Mezcala! (population- 2,000) our bus pass was the equivalent of $4...that's a bargain!
Evan lookin sharp as ever on the bus even though we had to wake up at 5am to make the bus on time and haven't showered for a couple days...

just a typical home in Mexcala

not a whole lot going on in this pic...just me...and some rocks...

I ate everything...except the head

"Pescado Dorado" yes...served with the head on and everything! They were gracious enough to take out the eyeballs though...

so graveyards are slightly more frightening in small rural Mexican towns. Even in the middle of the afternoon i was still creeped and waiting for something crazy to happen...

Evan postin up outside the bull arena

Yesterday was my birthday! After lots of emails and facebook wall-posts in the morning we taught a whole 6 hour workshop at the center downtown. Afterwards Francis and Jose (pictured on the right) decided to take us out to eat at "Sirloin Stampede." It was just as American as it sounds! A massive buffet. Our manager Alejandro Olguin and his wife joined us. We spent 3 hours at the restaurant! A great birthday.

Learning to survive in Mexico

Evan got trapped by the elevator doors today when he tried to get out at the last second. Apparently elevators in Mexico don't believe in second chances for late comers or late goers. It squished him up pretty good!

This was our second workshop group Tuesday night-- 17 participants in total! It was pretty hectic but we managed.

We each paid $6 to have the people at the laundry mat wash, dry, fold, and package our clothes for us on Preparation day (Monday). Since we didn't have to wait around to do our laundry we walked across the street the mall and enjoyed unlimited beverages for 70 cents and tacos! And the ID you see in the picture is Evan's Drivers license and BYU ID--he left them in his pants pocket. Lucky for him the laundry mat people were honest and gave them back....

We finally made it to see the Guadalajara temple! We thought it was far from our apartment...turned out to only be a fifteen minute bus ride. Our chapel is located right next to the temple.

For a week we stockpiled all of our trash in our apartment because we couldn't find a trash can anywhere around the apartment complex. Yesterday morning I finally went and asked the neighbors what they do with their trash. They told us there are no trash cans-you just throw it all out on the ground by the street and the garbage men come gather it up. So that's what we did! Sure enough, when we got home later that night it was all gone!

Friday Night!

After several hours of volleyball and dancing, we decided to throw down a little "futbol" The game lasted until about 1:15am...I was in heaven!! Oh, and everyone was so impressed with my "Calles"

Dana, Ilse, and Yadira provided us with a little dance instruction. They were trying to teach us some sort of 2-step something or another. I don't think we were very successful...

Evan dancing his heart out. Yeah, this guy knows how to move it! I heard one girl comment out loud that it made her nervous the way Evan was moving his hips!

Just another nasty blister from playing too much soccer and walking around the city! Gotta love it. If you zoom in you will see how dirty my foot is...I had just gotten out of the shower a few minutes before, and it got that dirty just from waking around our apartment. We don't have a broom or anything to clean up with because there is a cleaning maid who is supposed to come once a week on Tuesday. She didn't come this week...

fo-hawk and 40 cent ice cream

All the locals rock the fo-hawk. Since we were traveling around I tried to fit in!
In the middle of the day we started walking down a certain street when i ntoiced overyone walking the other way was enjoying a delicious ice cream cone with fudge topping. I asked around and they pointed us in the right direction. It only cost us 5 pesos! That's a ganga!

Just kickin it by the fountain.

We found an awesome hole-in-the-wall restaurant for lunch

some odds and ends

This was our first workshop! We taught them wednesday morning from 9am-3pm. Well, it was schedule to start at 9, but we started a half an hour late cause when they actually showed up. haha. This culture is definitely going to teach me patience! So from left to right is Leo, Lourdes, Francis, Saulo, and Martin.



Our manager, Alejandro Olguin, is hilarious! He told us the other day that it was like a mini mission-he's the president and we are his too elders. Today he whipped out two spanish name tags for us so we look legit!






On Thursday Evan and I spent 11hours straight traveling around the city. Our first stop was attending Mass at the catholic church "La Merced" Quite a different experience to say the least!

Plaza de Liberacion

After a long day of visiting local micro-finance agencies (sounds super important and professional) we decided to take an adventure downtown on the bus (6pesos=50cents!) to the Plaza de Liberacion in the heart of Guadalajara. There we witnessed moments of beauty, entertainment and...creepiness. A guy (possibly girl) was walking around in full Edward Scissorhands regalia. Another guy was painted totally green and...balancing on a basketball? Most enjoyable, however, were the fountains and architecture which were beautiful!

A scoach of luck!

This is my sweet new setup! Our manager hooked me up with a flat screen monitor and a Spanish keyboard. The broken laptop still powers the whole getup. Oh, and its a complete miracle that this setup works because the monitor requires a three-prong plug outlet...there just happens to be ONE such outlet in our casita.

La Llegada

Welcome to Mexico Mr. Deibert!...and here is your broken laptop. Bahh. The excitement of arriving at our new apartment was quickly trumped by sadness when I opened my laptop to connect to our wireless network and discovered my screen had cracked. Now that my friends is a disappointing experience. Hermano Olguin, our manager, was still in the apartment with us when I made the discovery. He started laughing when he saw it and said loudly "Welcome to Mexico James!" Lucky for me Evan was more responsible and managed to bring his laptop without breaking it. So I suppose we can just share his. Sounds like a great bonding experience to me.

El Viaje

After saying our last goodbyes in Provo, it was time to head out. Our last night as Americans was spent in St. George with the Deibert family and in the morning we set out for Las Vegas to catch our flight to Guadalajara. As we walked onto the plane in Phoenix, AZ there were police officers doing "random document checks" as part of the new immigration reform there. They let James and I pass but asked for papers from all the brown brothers behind us. Sounds like randomization to me!

We made good friends on the airplane and even had opportunities to share the gospel! Customs was easier than anticipated, and our director, Alejandro Olguin was there waiting for us.

SLC For Training

"If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail." The Williams-Deibert connection spent our first week at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, UT to receive training for the experience. We spent 9 hours a day in training with 16 other interns. The experience was something like a mini-Missionary Training Center. For 4 days we enjoyed meals at the Heritage Center, playing sports/cards in the evening, and watching Mike and Robert, our instructors, roast each other during instruction. In such a short time we became great friends with the interns. After our closing dinner and 'graduation' on Thursday it was a little hard to say goodbye. But we're tough, we didn't cry. Overall our time in SLC was a great experience and set the tone for an exciting summer.

Beginnings: A Tribute to Amber & Alicia

This blog was inspired by Amber and Alicia. This would have never been possible without their personal training. Thanks!