Mexican Monday!

Yess, oh yess how I love Mexican Monday. All my MG's know it, and they of course celebrate with me. Gotta love 'em!

Today I missed when Justen was on the internet, so we didn't get to email back and forth, which is kinda sad, but he did send me a nice happy email!!

Justen is doing wonderful, in every email he seems to get happier and happier. I know he loves his mission and the work he is doing. It warms my heart, to hear how much he loves Heavenly Father. He said that this week he baptized a woman, and that him and his companion have been working towards many more. Apparently his investigators have been in a little bit of a rut lately....but no worries he says.

He always plays a lot of soccer but he says he played football for the first time in Mexico since he has been there, which is shocking..And he also told me he is so out of shape, that I could whoop his butt. What is that supposed to mean?? Am I a weakling?? haha.. thanks Justen. Its ok though, because his english stinks real bad right now and my grammar could whoop him any day.! Love you too!! :)

Okay okay, most of the rest of the email was mushy, or random, or not really important for America to hear...but finally, he asked me to watch this video, and thought it was a Perfect song for us. Dang, he is adorable. So go check it out, or say "barf they are so in love" a hundred times. Your choice!

Yes, I want to watch this cute video.

Mexican Monday Countdown: 47 weeks to go!

-Sara Jacqueline

Ahh-Toe-Lei

The other night when I was out with my Mexican friends, one of them ordered this stuff.

Yeah, I call it stuff, because it took me two whole days to explain it to like five hundred people, and also to my family sixteen times, until FINALLY someone knew what I was talking about. Thanks to mi Papa, he understood what I was describing. Not even my friend Edwin, who knows lotsa english could translate this.

Its called Champurrado, and basically its a hot drink, sort of like hot chocolate, but not chocolatey. It was vanilla flavored and is made with milk and then this special sugar called panela. Apparently, people here drink it for breakfast, or around Christmas and other holidays. So next time I am out and about I am going to try it for sure.

Anyways, after I got my family talking about it, my dad decided he wanted some Atole, which is also like the brother of Champurrado and hot chocolate. Atole is thicker than hot chocolate, and is made with milk, vanilla, cinnamon, sugar and also some sort of flour. Chumpurrado and Atole are NOT the same thing, I was told by my sisters. It was white and creamy, and I actually liked it. I am doubting it is very good for you since when it gets cold, it starts to congeal like pudding or flan, but I tried it, and am still living to tell about it! I am betting Justen would like this because its also sort of reminded me of egg nog, but warm. I will have to ask him :)

So as you can see my night consisted of American card games, Tangled the movie in Spanish and some Atole!

-Sara Jacqueline

Zoo Poop, Pan, and Other Love/Hate Relationships

For our first Saturday where we weren't busy with school stuff, we decided to go big, and jam pack our day with fun. Haha..Ok, we weren't that crazy, but we still did a lot of fun stuff. We met up downtown Tehuacán and just started walking all over places, we were trying to hit up all the streets we hadn't before check out some new shopping places and see what kind of lunch we could come up with.

El Centro de Tehuacán

There was tons of shopping, and plenty of people who wanted our money, but I wasn't the one who came out with any souvenirs. Shopping is great, and its one of my favorite things to do, but it was extremely hard to move on those sidewalks with all the people, and we also had a few creeper moments. But, no big deal.

After plenty of shopping and people watching, we decided to head over to this giant Panaderia which we had seen earlier this week. One of the best things I have found are the bakeries in Mexico. They are all yummy, they have a billion different choices, they don't all have the same things, and you come out smelling the best! No matter how many people I ask, its all called Pan (bread), there aren't really any other names for each different type of bread, except maybe a donut. Either way, we love the Panaderias.

Today we bought a bag full, and it only cost me 8 pesos, or 65 cents. I got a cookies, a donut and a churro! Cheap huh?? Ashley ended up with a muffin, some other rock hard bread with chocolate and some sort of mystery cake, which we all tried. Jen also had some of the rock hard chocolate bread..haha. Like, I said before..its a Love/Hate thing because you never know if what you picked will be good or super good. My donut, was not as good or even special, but this square neapolitan looking cookie = Fabulous, and the Churro = Even More Fabulous. So I would count it as a win.

Our bag of goodies!!

Well just to make the dentists and Moms out there happy, we didn't just have sugar for lunch, we also stopped at one of the many fruit stands for Mangos! I didn't try one today(banana instead), but Ashley and Mandy said they loved them, so I know we will be getting them again. The little old man who sold them to us, was trying to put on TONS more chili powder than we liked..haha..he thought we were pretty funny. I don't think the chili powder was successful, but the lime juice bath the mango got was pretty good they thought.

Mandy and Ashley with their treats from the street

For our afternoon, we decided to head across town to the Zoo, so we took a taxi which was quite successful. The taxi driver wasn't kidding when he said the Zoo, was just a Zoo. In the U.S. we would not call that a Zoo, its definitely a glorified cage, with many animals. It was like one whole city block, a giant green cage, and about 30 different kinds of animals. The animals were barely contained, and at any time, any of us could have opened a cage door easily. It was kinda scary to say the least. Of course the Zoo is fun, and the animals are cute, but we hate Pooop. Ohh my goodness, I had never seen so much Poop in one place. It was nasty people. Straight up gross-i-os. Basically just imagine the Zoo being put inside a giant port-o-potty. Thats enough for you right??

Atleast I can say I have been to a Mexican Zoo now, huh?

Clearly I was not excited..

After a long long day of fun, we also hate how ugly our feet look. The city is just so full of dust, and dirt... oh well. Gotta Love Saturdays!

-Sara Jacqueline

TGIF.

We had a wonderful first week teaching english to the baby kiddos. They are so much fun, and I think now we are all getting a hang of planning lessons and teaching class so its much better than our first day. One thing I have noticed about the people here is that they are SO extremely motivated to learn english. They really are a bunch of dedicated people, because they come to english school two hours every weeknight after they already go to work all day and do all the other things that make us all so busy. I am really impressed with them, seriously.

At the school I work at, Instituto Heslington, me and four other teachers teach english to primary students, and then upstairs teens and adults take english classes as well. Between 4 and 8 p.m. this school is hoppin with tons of people. Its great to meet so many new friends, and to start to know the kids so well cause they really are the best part of teaching for four hours.

Here are some of my students playing with our parachute today in games.

After school is when the fun began.! We went into el centro, which is the downtown area of Tehuacán and just walked around and did some people watching. You would never believe me, but I get super cold at night, and basically I kinda froze my buns off, but it was still awesome. Me, Ashley, Jen and Mandy went out to dinner with our friends Carol and Edwin from the school. They are natives, siblings, and also our body guards: We love them. Lucky for us, they speak both spanish and english, so they brought us to this adorable little restaurant and helped us translate the menu as well. All over the city, there are little holes in the wall with great places to eat, and this was TOTALLY one of them. It smelled delicious, and there were already a lot of people inside, so we knew we had found a good spot to eat.

Between all 6 of us, we probably had 8 different things. I actually had an enpanada con quesillo, which is like a calzone with string cheese inside with sour cream, lettuce and salsa. However, it does not taste like that, because it was WAY way better. It was yummy, the perfect size, different and also only cost me 13 pesos which comes to about $1.05. Crazy right?!?! I think next time I will be more courageous and order some tostados, or a ranchero tamale. Either way, we had a wonderful time, ate lots of great food and learned lots of funny spanish words from Edwin.

Edwin, Me, Karen, Ashley, Jen and Mandy

Empanada con quesillo

I am so glad it is Friday so I can sleep a bit more tomorrow, and not have to worry about lessons or class.!

-Sara Jacqueline

Photo Day!! 1

My bedroom is very very red, but its cozy!

This is the street I live on, Benito Juarez. My whole family lives here too.

My super delicious lunch which only cost me about $1.50. It was extra yummy and freshhh from the street!

These are the precious faces I get to be with every night for four hours. :)

-Sara Jacqueline

And I'm the Weird One??

My host family tends to laugh at me a lot, and well I am totally okay with that, cause its all a bunch of fun anyways. However, there are things about me (me?? Yes.) that I know they are thinking are very weird. Let us begin..

1. For the first few days I was here, I got sunburnt because we were always outside, and my red nose and arms are plain bizarre.
2. Not drinking milk is odd and down right illegal.
3. This one teeny tiny blemish on my face is suddenly a huge magnet for attention, practically screaming out some insane curse word at everyone. These Mexicans have perfect skin.
4. Sometimes when my family talks to fast, I cannot understand, and they ask me to repeat, in which I say stupid things like, huh.. Pepperoni?? And they crack up....for what seems like hours.
5. I am directionally challenged. This map stuff is just not for me. So sue me.
6. I am still thrown off when the salsa is SOO green. Like something in a diaper.
7. I don't have a scarf or a coat to wear in January...in Mexico...and sometimes, I take my cardigan off (gasp).
8. I do NOT like mayonnaise, it is worse than boogers. These people want to lick the jar with a spoon.
9. I have no Aunts, Uncles or Cousins that live in the same state as me. All of theirs live in the same block.
10. I run in shorts when its 60 degrees out. Apparently, I am supposed to wear a parka and a hat. Even though I am in Mexico, I am STILL that crazy girl running around in shorts.

Well I am sure there are many more things about me that they think are weird..and there will probably be many to come. But thats ok with me. :)

Also,

Today was my missionary's Mom's Birthday. Mrs. Turley turns 23 today!!! She is such a sweet and caring lady, and I know how much Justen loves her. He is SUCH a Mama's boy, and I know he really really misses her. Something funny I remember is that Justen's friends would always tease him about his hot mom...haha. That drove him nuts.!! She always would take care of him, and well, I think he was a little spoiled by his Mama..but thats ok, it makes him sweeter. I hope you had a fantastic day Mrs. Turley!! We love you!!

This is Justen and his Mom before our High School Graduation in 2009. Precious Right??

-Sara Jacqueline

Mexican Monday!!

Today was Mexican Monday, which is where my very handsome missionary boyfriend writes me an email on his preparation day. He is in North Mexico and I am in South Mexico, so now he has all sorts of advice and questions for me.

The good news from him though was that they have a baptism soon!! Woohooo!

Anywhooot.

He thought it was pretty funny that my host family fed me hot dogs, because the first few days he was in Mexico, people fed him hamburgers like non-stop. They are not good people. Not all Americans love 'em. Justen also told me to ask for Tacos de Pansa..which I found out is cow stomach!!! I told him that was awful, and he said ooops, oh yeah.....like he didn't know!! Also, he requested that I learn how to make flour tortillas so that we can eat them together for the rest of our lives. :)

He also demanded that I eat elotes (I gotta find them first) and tostitos salsa verde chips. So I guess I have a few things to look around for at lunch time right?? I also need to practice my spanish verbs. My to-do list is full of itself..Oye.

If you aren't in a Mexican Monday kind of mood..just check out this song, get yo self a taco and dance around a bit, okay??

Lastly Justen says in spanish, "Don't be writing me about no Mexican Honeys that you bring home, ok?? I do not want that darling"...hahah, he is crazy. xoxo I Love him.

Mexican Monday Countdown: 48 to Go

-Sara Jacqueline