What a GREAT day!!!

I feel like a published writer :-) I have to say, i'm tired and ready to fall into slumber but am forcing myself to stay up yet a little bit longer in order to load pictures and blog. I LOVE the comments! Keep them coming!!!! Denise is Jealous and wants for everyone to "follow" her blog too - so I added a link to the top of mine to make it super easy. I am not reading hers and she is not reading mine, and tina is not keeping one since she forgot her password... she will claim it is because she has such little computer time, but i had to finally wresltle this little machine out of her hands in order to keep my audience entertained!

Yesterday, was.... rainy. We woke to downpours at 6:30 and assumed we would not be going on our boat tour. I posted pictures while the girls slept and while the skys continued to cry. Then it rained some more. We went to class.... in the rain. We had class, on our little terrace with the rain pounding on our tin roof and the instructor trying to yell over the racket. We congegated verbs and blah blah blah. The rain made me distracted and glum. Add to that some horrid cold that i seemed to have picked up from someone back in oklahoma prior to leaving and i really just wanted to be away from others and sleep. I got a short break back at the apartment and then we went to the school we are working at at 4pm. The "school" is actually a community building run by a woman named Gwen. It seems to be more of a ... tutoring, suplimental, not quite defined program as of now. It just started Monday. Gwen used to be a college professor and is originally from the States. She tired of that life and now lives here on $300 a month that her parents send her. This is the same money that she funds the educational program with. She (and the studnets) LOVED the books that we brought. We read with the kids and brainstormed with her. Tina Denise and I are all.... planners and grant getters (obviously) and are all set to provide her with a mission statement and a solid plan of action before we leave. We are already trying to tie this program into our schools, classrooms, and a new grant possibility that was emailed to me from our community schools administrator back in oklahoma. I think this is going to be a great experience and one that will last long term. I actually managed to forget momentarily that i felt bad! For dinner last night we ordered pizza with the only two other inhabitants of our dwelling complex. They were both from Germany. We sat under a palapa by the pool (yes, it is still raining.) The pizza was delivered by bike (not the motorized kind) and i tasted an apple pepsi for the very first time. Oddly good. Ever had a pizza with black beans and chorizo? You should try it. I skipped blogging and went to bed early, sleeping soundly through the night (and the rain).
6:30 this morning, the SUN was out. Best news possible! Javier picked us up right before seven in his old VW bug. Javier is a man that was recomended to us by Andi, the manager of CasaMar. We were promised a lagoon tour, lunch, and a drop of at our school by noon. Javier was young, spoke English a little, lived in the states for Two years and enjoyed talking with us i think. Tina asked him "if you could do anything, what would it be?" this really confused him. He related it to being in school in the US and being asked "what do you want to be when you grow up?". He said that he would want to be right where he was. He is happy, healthy, has family, enough money, everything he needs right in front of him. I like that. I think sometimes that we underestimate the internal happiness of others by ranking it next to our own middle class values. Javier played Bob Marley on his radio while he drove us out to a friends - who had a boat. (and stopped and got a huge block of ice from a nondiscript store). We waited at the friends while they determined the passibility of the road and then loaded back into the VW for a trek through jungle like land to the edge of a river. Spun in the mud for a while before finally turning around, parking, and taking off our shoes. We hiked through the river/creak until it opened up into a lagoon where the boat was docked. My mother would have LOVED the boat ride. SOOOOO many birds. I tried to take pictures..... i don't think i will have done them justice. He told us history of the area, of how the river meets the lagoon, meets the ocean, how now it is dark, the river is VERY dark, but in October the ocean is cut off from it and the lagoon becomes blue. He told us about all the birds, and his home, which was our destination. Puerto Suelo. We saw where the ocean met the river, took a right and pulled the boat to land a bit up on the left. Puerto Suelo is bordered on one side by the river, one the other by the beautiful ocean. About 15 people live there. No electricity, no gas, no creature comforts. Lunch, as it turned out, was not simply sandwhiches, but a meal cooked over a hot fire by Javier's mother and served to us under a palapa. We waited for the meal while drinking cocunut milk out of freshly corked nuts, watching the ocean crash against the shore, and feeling so..... peaceful. The meal itself was amazing. Pescado (fish) - that was crunchy on the outside, and wonderful, a salad of cactus tomato and onion, cheese tortillas and frijoles! I didn't want to leave.

After school we went down to the adonquin area of town, which is an "older" tourist area. It seems to have less "american" type tourists and more tourists that are from other parts of Mexico. It is also where many boats are docked and many locals actually swim, despite the fact that the water seemed a bit dirty and particulate filled. It was a great place to do some shopping. We got handmade wooden toys, instruments, pottery,local art and practiced our ability to name amounts in Spanish as well as barter for better deals! After dinner (of coctail de camerones for me) we headed back to swim (STILL SUNNY... HOT and HUMID) read, blog, and relax.
As soon as my pictures are done loading i'm calling it a night! What a great day!!!!