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!