Friday, November 26

at age fifteen i was kidnapped by turkish pirates

ashley evans hurt her back and was told not to surf for the week, so she let me and britanny borrow her board. we went all day yesterday. brit went again today, but i had to go in service. and Jehovah blessed me for it. i started another study. and i think this one will be there when i show up. so far i've started five studies, and none have actually studied yet. i started one with a guy named enrique on wednesday, and made an appointment for this afternoon, but he had to work apparently. this morning's service group was about how to know if someone is genuinely interested in studying. that's a problem here because mexicans are just too nice to say no. so instead they say yes, and then don't show up. which do you think is ruder? but, i was raised in canada, and that's just my opinion. anyway, lidia is a sweetheart, and was very concerned about choosing a time that would be convenient for both of us, and when she could be certain that she'd be available.

i'm brown now. really brown. yesterday we took off to the beach at seven in the morning, and i didn't get home until five or six. i surfed, swam, slept... all the good stuff. it was a gorgeous day too. driving home was perfect. russel sims, a pioneer brother from california that lives down here, has a beautiful cabriolet. i fell in love with the car the moment i saw it. we stacked the boards on top, and i rode on the back for the drive home. the beach we go to is way at the end past the golden zone, so i got to stare at the sunset over the ocean through the palm trees while riding in my dream car after nearly twelve hours on the beach. and this is my life. i can't believe it either.

speaking of volkswagens... there are tons of them down here, but they are incredibly strange. first, everywhere you look there are old style bugs. and they are in fantastic shape. they look practically brand new. that's because they just stopped making them a few years back. that's right... they have 2000 old style bugs. like, year 2000. and then they have all these new vw's that i've never even heard of. there's pointers everywhere. they look like the vw version of a firefly. the lupo is even stranger; it looks like a toyota echo. there's derby's, polo's, sharan's, pointer station wagons, and even new pick up trucks. those are funny looking. the front end is almost the same as a new golf, very rounded, but then it morphs into a truck in the back. it baffles the mind. you can check them out at www.vw.com.mx. it is in spanish, but if you just click on the car name, you can see a picture of each one. then you'll see what i mean. baffling.

Tuesday, November 23

bag vs bag

yesterday i went in service in a truly poor area for my first time. it was incredibly sad. but the people were just amazing. they were helpful and kind, though very few spoke english. they live in literal shacks on the river. it broke my heart, but at the same time, i'd rather work that territory than the rich area.

in the afternoon we worked my territory, which is where beto lives. i swear he knows every house by heart. our very last house of the day was an english school, and beto used to go there so he wanted to go say hi to his teacher. she ended up inviting us in to talk to her students so they could practice conversing in english. so we conducted a study in the first lesson of the require brochure with the whole group. it was a little odd, but very neat. and every person took a copy of the brochure, and the teacher took some magazines.

anyway, i'm off to try surfing again. yay for beach day.

Saturday, November 20

almost free for you lady

i made my first very expensive mistake. i went shopping.

me and enid and britanny took the day off on thursday and checked out the golden zone. we looked at all the little souvenir shops and i had fun teasing the salespeople into thinking i might actually buy something. in reality i only had enough pesos to take the bus home. but i got an idea of the stuff and the prices, and what i might like to buy in the future. until we discovered the higher end stores. they had some very cool stuff. including a gorgeous mirror that, unfortunately, i fell in love with. and since we all know that erin has no self-control, i went back the next day and bought it. it's beautiful. i'll post a picture if my camera ever works.

about that, actually, we're headed out to the ranch tomorrow morning. about a half hour out of town there's a ranch where a bunch of mexican brothers and sisters live. one of the brothers makes mexican style, wooden furniture, which enid would like. so angie (being the doll that she is) is going to take us out there so enid can see what he has or can make her. which will be great because right now all we have for furniture are our beds and the plastic chairs that were given us for the bookstudy. anyway, there is another brother out there that fixes electronics, and he says he can probably fix my camera. which would be amazing. and save me a lot of money. so here's hoping.

i'm working on my spanish everyday. really, i don't have much choice. i'm surrounded by it. but me and britanny have been practicing on each other, and working with the spanish sisters in service to force us to try to speak it. recently we've started making the jump to forming our own sentences. they're short, improperly conjugated sentences for the most part, but an attempt nonetheless. so my last title was the first sentence i made up completely on my own. it means "i know more girls who would like to come." and when i checked with belen (a very sweet little mexican girl here) as to how to say it, she used the same words, though properly conjugated the verb. i was ecstatic. conjugation is the hardest part. she was explaining all the different tenses to me, and it was making sense, but i forgot a lot of it already. i have to write it down. someone was talking about getting a group together to take lessons, and maybe it would be cheaper that way. otherwise it's 100 pesos an hour. which is way out of my budget. nevermind how much i paid for the mirror, that's not the issue here.

Wednesday, November 17

yo sabo mas chicas que quieran venir

i went surfing for the first time sunday morning. it was great. i didn't even attempt to stand up, i just laid on the board and floated to the shore. i loved it. i'm going again next sunday. that's a regular beach day here, before the meeting. for the rest of the day, every time i closed my eyes, i felt like i was back on the water.

then monday i started another study. this time it's with a girl about my age who works in a yogurt shop. she speaks very good english. so today at five we have our first study. i'm nervous. my study on monday didn't show up, so i have to go in to wal-mart today to set up another time. so people here are willing to study, but they're not perfect. it's still hard to pin them down.

i love these yogurt shops they have here. they have yogurt and fruit and granola cups for cheap. and they're sooooooooo good. they're all over the place. corner stores, hair salons, yogurt shops, fruiterias, taco stands... there's about one on every block. and i found i great fruit and veggie stand right across the street from my study. i got fabulous tomatos, a cucumber, limes, pears, a jalapeno... i think that was it... o, and mandarin oranges, all for less than two dollars. sixteen pesos. i used the tomatos to make fresh salsa. yum. we have a constant supply of fresh salsa and guacamole in our house. it's great.

and now, to balance the bragging... on sunday at the evans house, as karen very nicely put it, "what usually goes down the toilet, came out the shower." i don't know how that can happen, but apparently it did. repulsive.

Sunday, November 14

the hip chick's guide to macrobiotics

i can't believe this society has managed to make my diet trendy and "hip". i am disgusted. but maybe it will mean that i'll be able to find the food i want. so far it has beeen impossible to find seaweed. try to imagine me in a mexican health food store asking for "legumbres de mer" and explaining what i mean through the interpretative dance that i have to use so often. i've come to call it the "stupid gringo" dance. it's one of my favorites.

at the beginning of the week i decided to make it my goal to start two bible studies this week. that's fairly reasonable for a pioneer down here. i prayed and prayed about it. i had been given an rv by an australian brother that went home last week. so on thursday i went to see her, and give her the magazines. while i was there i asked if bernie had told her about the bible study program that we offer, and she said no. so i demonstrated it, and we set up a time and place to meet next week to continue. study numero uno. i still wanted that second one, so i continued praying, and got out everyday, and tried to work territory as much as possible. i had my time for the week by yesterday, but i didn't have that second study, so i was back out this morning. i was hogging all the calls and praying between nearly every door... but the morning was almost over, and the territory was nearly finished. but i still had confidence that Jehovah would give me that second study, so i kept going. on our last door of the day, a girl about my age came to the door, and i asked if she spoke english. anyway, to try to make a long story slightly shorter, she spoke very little english, but understood me perfectly, and said she's too busy to study now, but she'll be back from the states in january and would like to study then. so she asked for my phone number. it was great. i was thrilled. Jehovah's hand is not short.

Friday, November 12

me gusta bailar

i don't really have time to write right now, but i hate leaving this for a week at a time. just wanted to say that last night i took joe and erin and brandon b for dinner down in el centro to thank them for letting me stay with them and eat their food for the first week, and we went to this amazing place. it had incredible food. i had stroganoff de camaron (shrimp stroganoff) and they all had wonderful steak. we sat outside around the plaza in old mazatlan, or el centro. my favorite part was that there was a man playing a harp, right by our table. live harp. unbelievable.

Tuesday, November 9

oliver eyes

it's been a whole week since my last post, and soooooooooooooooooo much has happened. first off, a big fat thanks to everyone who commented. that makes checking this thing a whole lot more interesting for me. i miss you guys too! oh, and the naked monkey statues are all over the place. i'm not sure what they're supposed to be, but they're quite odd, and i was told that that's what they're called. in spanish, of course.

i think the biggest thing that's happened is i found a place to live. i moved in with a mom and daughter, enid and britanny. britanny is my age and pioneering, so that's awesome. and enid has been wonderful, cleaning up the house, trying to make it a home. our house is really close to the kingdom hall and wal-mart... and what else do you need? so far, i haven't been able to explore too much cause even when i do get out, it's all in spanish so i don't really know what's going on anyway. i'm out of my suitcase and in my room. i have my own bed, and i went grocery shopping. it feels really good. but there are some weird things that you can't get here. apparently all the dairy tastes a little weird here. people get very excited for canadian cheese. and you can't get pickles. i'm having a hard time finding all the weird natural food i like. i went to a health food store the other day and tried to explain to two mexican women that i was looking for seaweed. it was harder than it sounds. but they were really nice about it. that's one of the great things about mexican people - they are very patient with stupid gringos like me.

me and britanny have been working on our spanish together. she's already been here for a month, so she knows quite a bit more than i do. we practice on each other while we walk to the service groups or the meetings. that's helping already. we thought about taking lessons, but decided that salsa lessons were more important. we're girls with priorities.

last week we went to white chicks. movies here are really cheap, and it's neat cause the movie is in english, with spanish subtitles. so i try to use it to improve my spanish. anyway, we were really early for the movie, and we were all too cheap to go anywhere for coffee, so we walked on the beach in the dark for about an hour. there was a lot of walking that night, actually, cause we were also too cheap to take a bus or a taxi to the theater. anyway, moonlit walks on the beach are fantastic.

then on thursday i went to my first baseball game. it was crazy. there's people wandering around selling the weirdest snacks, and souvenirs. and there's a big screen that is constantly showing people from the audience. the cameraman was completely avoiding me. i'm sure he was doing it on purpose. he must have been cause he showed everyone that was sitting around me, but always kept me out of it. i was getting a little offended. i even had a team jersey on that someone had lent me. i think mexicans are scared of redheads. or maybe it's just me. anyway, at the very end, i think it was the last inning, i got on screen twice. and i was so excited i got up to show off my shirt and gave a nice big thumbs up to everybody. people i didn't know were saying goodbye to me after the game, so that was cool. or embarassing. if i got embarassed by the stupid things i do. it's a good thing i don't.

i went swimming in the mexican ocean on friday for the first time. we had a bonfire on the beach, under the stars, and a few of us jumped in the waves for a while. i can't wait to try surfing. i was having so much fun, diving into a wave and just letting it twirl me aound and wash me up on shore. the water is so powerful, at times it was terrifying, but that just made it better. the adults had a hard time dragging us out when it was time to go.

i've been in service lots more in the past week. i'm still getting my bearings though. the weather is quite muggy again, so for the most part, people like to drive around in their air-conditioned cars and do calls... sound kinda familar? i try to do as much approach work and territory as i can. i have to build up some calls and studies. i had a really nice call today with a girl named rosa. unfortunately, she lives in tijuana. i was showing her the table of contents in the require brochure, and asked her if any of the titles interested her, and she picked "practices that God hates". i thought that was a little strange, but then she explained that her sister is having lots of trouble with her son. so she took the brochure in english for herself and in spanish for her sister. she wants me to call back on her sister, but i'll have to take a spanish sister with me cause she doesn't speak any english. i also talked to a woman at the wal-mart pharmacy counter. she took the magazines and i invited her to come to our meetings. now i have two rvs in wal-mart. that's how i justify shopping there.

and tonight we went to the circus. they have them here all the time apparently. it was quite funny. my camera still isn't working, but britanny took some pictures, so i'll try to post them later.

Tuesday, November 2

naked monkey statues

since my last post i've had my first meeting and my first day in service. i love this place even more. first off, everyone greets everyone at the meetings with a handshake or a kiss on the cheek, a tradition i hope to continue when i get home. i met, at the very least, half of the congregation. i'm sure it's more, but i can't remember them all because there were so many. and i think i reintroduced myself to a couple people more than once. which was a little embarassing. i arrived at the meeting a half an hour early, and stayed almost an hour after. hard to believe, i know. it was a little intimidating, but i'm determined to get to know these people quickly, otherwise i may never get to know them.

it seems the muggy, humid weather we'd been having here was building up to a storm. it poured rain on sunday. now the mugginess has gone down, and the weather is pretty much perfect. sorry, i can't help bragging. it's just too amazing.

yesterday i was out in service all day. i worked with ashley evans and rick and leslie... i can't remember their last name, but they're from kelowna and they got here the day after me. it was their first day in service here too, but they were much braver than i was. we did some business territory in the afternoon. i was working with mexican karen at that point, and we found very few people that spoke english, so i let her take most of the calls. we did rv's, studies, approach work, a little of everything really. except door-to-door. i even went on a study with karen and maylin (i have no idea how to spell that properly) that was in spanish. they gave me a spanish require brochure and i followed along as best i could. it was interesting. my goal was to be able to tell which scripture they were looking up, but i don't know my numbers very well. did you know that james in spanish is santiago? i thought that was strange.