an american in merida

anora, me, yvette and of course ethan.

ethan whistling for a cab for the six women he was traveling with. HILARIOUS!

got us a cab every time!

beautiful old catholic church.

i don't really know what this building was but red, white, and green was everywhere, i'm telling you!

this is what happens when you feed the pigeons. the square.

la cena en la calle.

my host family.

in order L to R: nayely, yvette, tia chum, alyssa, anora

down in front: ethan

me and ethan at the zoo. : )

the zoo.

apparently you shouldn't feed the hippos...

monkey see, monkey do

the seat ride.

yvette and our hats.

amazingly beautiful maya influenced art in the center of an intersection. of course, i needed to get out and take a picture.

in belize, you don't really want to go to the doctor for anything serious. no major surgeries. no complicated illnesses. so when nayely's allergies were eluding all the doctors in belize, itmeant that we had to take a trip to mexico! : )

yvette, tia chum, anora, ethan, nayely, alyssa, and me were the ones going. the plan was to leave orange walk on thursday night around 8pm. friday (the 10th) is a national holiday in belize, so there would not be school. let me take a minute here to tell you about this holiday before i continue with my mexican adventures...

the battle of st. george's caye day

combatants: the spaniards and the baymen

dates: september 3rd - september 10th, 1798

what went down: the land (what's now belize) was, of course, being fought over. spain had a whole lot of territory in central america and just assumed the this land should be part of their area as well. the baymen disagreed and were willing to fight for it.

what that meant: as far as i can tell, not a whole lot changed after this battle. they fought it out for a little over a week, the spaniards retreated, and then for the most part didn't try to mess around with belize anymore. but nothing really revolutionary changed.

anyways... so bottom line, thanks to the bravery of the baymen we had no school that friday. so we left the house at 9pm, because in belize an hour late is sometimes considered early. we drove to the belizean boarder and i had to pay the silly exit fee ($37.50bz ~ $18.75us -- also side note here- pretty much anywhere you go in central america there is an exit fee). i got my passport stamped, which never fails to excite me. and then we drove to the mexican border, where i got my passport stamped, AGAIN! from the mexican boarder we had to drive about a half hour to the bus depot. just after we crossed the boarder there is this little place that you have to stop. now for the record, i've heard that most people don't, but we were rule followers. i wish i had a picture of what happened here. we pulled off to the side of the road and paid 60 pesos (12 pesos = $1.00 in american money) for these men to spray off the tires. making sure our belizean germs don't make it into mexico. weird. from there we went to the bus depot and boarded the midnight bus to merida, mexico.

we got to merida around 6am. checked in to our hotel and rested. we reconvened for breakfast around 9, went to the doctor with nayely at 10 and were done and ready to tour around by 1pm. we got some lunch, some hats (gigantic sombreros!), and walked the square. mexico was quite festive this weekend in preparation for september 15th when they will be celebration their 200th anniversary of independence and their 100th anniversary of revolution! the streets were lined with vendors selling everything red, white, and green. it made me really miss the fact that i missed the 4th of july this year. how did i spend my day? well, the night of the 4th of july i played infinite rounds of solitaire with my american flag print cards and listened to miley cyrus' party in the u.s.a. on repeat. pathetic? it wasn't the worst night i've ever had. : ) but back to the streets of red, white, and green... i used my spanish more that i have in a long time.

the rest of the weekend was filled with a little shopping, eating, and enjoying the sunshine! we went to the zoo, which was hilariously fun. we got to see lots of animals and there were plenty of signs advising us on how we should behave with the animals-- big on depictions, just in case you didn't understand the spanish. all in all, the zoo was pretty great!

this american enjoyed her time in merida.

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