Weird happenings in Cancun

-A lady pulled down her shirt and nursed her baby right smack in the middle of a food court at the Mexico City airport.......with nothing covering her breast. It made for some interesting/unwanted entertainment for those around her eating their lunch. Like us.

-Our waiter at the restaurant we went to at the airport came over with a little credit card machine for us to pay. And then he asked us how much of a tip we wanted to leave him. The choices were 10 or fifteen percent.

-When we arrived in Cancun and walked out of the airport there were at least 25 or 30 taxi driver's yelling at us to come with them. We were warned ahead of time about this so we ignored them, but it still took us by surprise how intense they were. I felt like a movie star with the paparazzi yelling at me. (In case you're curious how we got to our hotel, we took a shuttle bus. Much cheaper. My hubby did his research.)

-Luckily our hotel was all-inclusive and included gratuity because we got so tired of people asking for money outside the hotel. After our tour to Chichen Itza ended, the guide held up a box asking for tips as we got off the bus. This was after we spent $120 for the tour AND had to buy bottled water on the bus even though we were told beverages would be included. On the snorkeling trip which also was NOT cheap nor very impressive, our so-called "tour guides" in the water held up a box before we left as well, and also the men that drove us to and from the snorkeling boat. That tour at least included beverages. :)

-My only other experience at a "market" was about ten years ago when my family went on a cruise to the Bahamas and I have only good memories from it. Maybe I'm forgetting, but I just remember walking through and looking at the things I was interested in. I bought several little things for really cheap because they were very willing to bargain. In Cancun it was a very different experience. It didn't help that we were literally the ONLY ones there, so every person yelled at us, begging for us to come look at their things. They would try to wait patiently as we stopped in one place, and then yelled, "My turn! Come look here." We had a couple people lie to us to get us in there, by telling us they had t-shirts for only "one dollar". We would walk in to find out he just meant one dollar off the price. One man even lied to Kyle about the peso exchange rate hoping to make a sale. So funny.

Warning: Very long post ahead

I still haven't figured out how to make picture collages but I'm not going to let that stop me from posting all of our pictures to Cancun- they're just too good. So ready or not, here they come....

We had a 6 hour layover in Mexico City and we passed the time by playing our favorite game-Settlers of Catan. (Ours is actually a different version-Settlers of Zarahemla)

For some reason when we arrived at our resort, they didn't have us coming for two more days. Luckily our papers showed otherwise, and they sent us to another resort that we think was even nicer. We got there late and went right to bed but when we woke up the next morning and walked out of our building and were directly on the BEACH we realized we were in paradise. I couldn't have been more excited about the beautiful scene around me.

One day the it clouded over and rained for about 3 minutes and then cleared up again

None of the pictures do it justice. The restaurants all had really pretty views

Even the hotel lobby was pretty






We spent most of our time lounging by the many pools (I think there were 5) and on the beach. There were swim up bars in the pools where I enjoyed many diet pepsi's, and Kyle fell in love with the virgin Miami Vice. (A strawberry and pina colada daiquiri) There were also snack bars with hamburgers and fries and at least 10 restaurants that we could choose from for each meal. With our black "all-you-can-eat-for-free" wristbands, we were set for the week. We found that the buffets weren't delicious, but the rest were great. We could order as much food as we wanted, including appetizers and desserts. It was great not having to wait for a bill or worry about a tip. My favorites were the Thai, Mexican, and Italian restaurants. Kyle made sure to order a couple Miami Vice's almost everywhere we went and I'm pretty sure that's what made him sick all week. Let just say, we didn't do any exercising while we were gone, but a part of Kyle kept running.

Should I order another daiquiri...

No I shouldn't have.....

There were mariachi players at the Mexican restaurant

Kyle requested a song and they serenaded us

One day we took a short snorkeling trip that we were really excited about. We've both had really cool experiences in the past so we had high expectations. But we weren't able to explore on our own because we had a "guide" that insisted we follow him. And maybe it happened to be a bad day, because there wasn't a lot see. It was still fun though, and on the boat ride back one of the guides put these hats on us and offered to take a picture.

We spent one day on a tour to Chichen Itza and that was probably our favorite part. We left in the morning and came back in the evening so we were able to see a lot. On our way we stopped at the Yucatan Cenote, which is a really cool cave with fresh water that we were able to swim in. It was considered magical to the Mayans. The trip included lunch at a Mexican Restaurant and after that we went to Chichen Itza. We welcomed the rain that started as soon as we stepped off the bus because the temperature must have cooled 20 degrees. AND we heard thunder for the first time since.....I don't even remember! We haven't had a thunderstorm in Cali yet. Another night at our resort we sat outside and watched a lightening storm. The waves were so loud next to us that we couldn't hear the thunder.






This Mayan girl sang to us. She was so sweet. She was selling little handmade hankerchiefs and I had to buy one from her.

Looking down from the top

There was a different show every night at our resort and we went to the Circus show which was seriously fascinating. There were amazing acrobats, a juggler, a poodle dog that did really cool tricks, a Michael Jackson impersonator (random? yes.) and a hoola hooper that had 4 going at a time and picked them up off the floor with her feet. It was crazy and I loved every minute of it. After that Kyle suggested we stop at the dance club and see what was going on. We found the dance floor empty and my husband surprised me by asking if I wanted to dance...not slow dance, but dance dance, by ourselves with everyone watching. I couldn't turn down an opportunity like that, mostly because I wanted to watch him. I haven't seen him dance for like 2 years back before we even started dating. And he didn't want to stop! I had fun for a few minutes and then truly starting getting embarrassed when nobody would join us. That was our goal, of course. I snapped this blurry picture before I pulled him away. It's something I hope to always remember.

They say all good things eventually come to an end, which of course was true for this trip and I was a little depressed coming home. I loved spending so much time with Kyle and I knew coming home meant he would be starting his busy life with student teaching, work, and school. I'm so glad that we were able to celebrate our marriage by going on such an amazing trip together and to experience another part of this beautiful world we live in. And I'm extremely grateful that unlike our trip, our marriage will last an eternity.

Update

Kyle starts his student teaching next week! He has had meetings all day this week so the"madness" has begun. He's been getting up at 5:30 in order to make it to the gym, come home from work and make phone calls, etc. for work, is at the school from 8-3, then works until 8 or 9. On top of that, he has 2 online classes and will have lessons to plan for teaching. I'm not sure when or how he's going to do that, but he never ceases to amaze me with his productiveness. Is that a word?

I have been quite the opposite. Besides not having a lot of appointments at work, I've been really fatigued. Those that are sick of hearing me talk about it can skip this paragraph. I feel like I haven't been the same since I had mono in December. I used to be somewhat like Kyle-I was pretty productive and I rarely just sat around. I think I wore my parents out when I was in high school because I was constantly busy and always on the go. When I was living in Provo I worked 40 hours a week, and for a year was working 45 or 50 and would spend my spare time cleaning or doing something fairly active. It's frustrating for me to have changed, I feel like a different person because I don't have the energy I used to have. A couple months ago it got a lot worse, to the point where I had to fight to stay awake every time I got in the car, and I could no longer finish my aerobics classes at the gym or at least without taking a few breaks. A couple times I even started blacking out and had to sit down. I finally went to a doctor (it took me a while to get a good recommendation) and he ordered blood work to check my thyroid, liver, iron, and blood sugar. Everything came back normal, which made me more frustrated because I was hoping for an answer. I went back and he decided he wanted me to go to a sleep study. He thinks I could have sleep apnea. He had mentioned it before, and said if my labs came back normal this was his next guess. He also ordered more blood work to test for pregnancy (this was my idea-everyone here thinks I'm pregnant because of how I've been feeling and I wanted to be able to tell them I'm not, once and for all) and also Epstein-Barr Virus. This is something a couple people have that I know and their symptoms seemed to match mine. I had thought it was something you can get from having mono, but the research I've been doing says that EBV can cause mono. When I went back to the doctor a third time, he told me I did test positive for it, but that it's dormant. He seemed to think it could still explain why I've been feeling the way I have because that often causes Chronic fatigue syndrome and he thinks it's likely that I have that. But he still wants me to go to the sleep study place. Anyway, long story short, I'm confused because I don't really understand what is wrong with me or how to help it. My doctor said to take it easy at the gym and gradually try to build to where I was before. Even just walking on the treadmill wipes me out so it's easy to follow orders to take it easy. The problem is, I don't have energy at work and I definitely don't have energy by the time I get home and the last thing I want is for Kyle to have to worry about cleaning when he has enough on his plate. I don't like people worrying about me, and I don't like asking for prayers for myself, but I could use them right now.

On a brighter note, Cancun was amazing!! We had a blast and I'm going to post pictures eventually. We have so many and I want to figure out how to make collages so that my post isn't 15 pages long. So until then....

cAmPiNg

The last few minutes of the sunset...I was too late.

We had 5 desserts in one night. We got ice cream before dinner and then later roasted s'mores and starbursts over the fire, and had hot chocolate and dutch oven apple crisp. Did I mention that I love camping?

This is taken from the beach and our campsite is just right over that incline.

Kyle had a blast on this beach because he had boys and toys to play with. I'm always content to just nap or read the whole time. The guys taught him "Smash ball". I'm not sure if it's a real game or if they made it up, but it's basically ping pong with no table. They also did some skim boarding and boogie boarding. I'm such a baby....still not used to the salt in the water. Kelsey and I soaked up the sun with some good R&R. And took pictures of course.