A hike, a snorkel, and a movie

 I saw some pretty things on my hike yesterday. These huge palms are one of them. I don't know if you can see these leaves very well, but they have to be 15 feet tall.

 Another tree was blanketing the trail with these tiny purple flowers.

 My favorite are the plumeria trees, and their perfect Hawaiian blooms.

 Jeff and I went snorkeling at his lunch time, and we took the car up a little ways and went in near Los Arcos. It was cool with some neat fish, and I found these perfect sea urchin shells, but it was kind of surgy and I got a little seasick by the time we had to get out to get Jeff back to work.

 We watched a movie together last night, and before we noticed, there was a cloud of little moths flying in and out of our balcony doors, open to the breeze. I don't know where they came from, perhaps they were driven in by the big rain storm in the late afternoon.

But by bedtime it was clear and lovely. 

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Manos de Amor Orphanage.

 How cool is my husband? After I messed up the bus trip out to the orphanage the other day, he took the day off work yesterday to drive us out there. So cool. 

It took us a while, but not half as long as we spent on the bus the other day! 

We walked up to the front of the two story white building, to a big metal gate. A dog walked up with us, and when the kids let us in, the dog darted in too. Nobody seemed to care.

We walked through the gate into a breezy partially shaded courtyard, and met some of the kids in a little family room off to the side where they were watching TV. We all trooped out the back door into a little play yard where we played ball and pushed them on the swings for a while until it got too hot even for the kids. It was cooler in the indoor courtyard for some reason. We played freeze tag for a while which was hilarious although I kept getting frozen. 

 This is the director seated on the couch with the little girl. This little girl kept to herself most of the time -- I mean she was kind of hiding from us --so we gave her some space. Many of these kids have been taken out of abusive homes, or homes where addiction has been a problem. I don't know what she has been through. But almost everyone seemed pretty happy overall. It was fun playing with them. 

 This is one girl I worry about. She is 13, and I just want to protect her by placing a big bubble around her. She looks older than her age. I just worry like the freak mom that I am. 

 We spent a big part of the time playing twister. I couldn't play because I wore a skirt, but they let me call out the colors. By the way mano (hand) is feminine and pie (foot) is masculine, so you need to change the "left" and "right" to reflect the masculinity or femininity. So you say "mano izquierdA" but you say " pie izquierdO" It was good practice for me! Italian and Portuguese have a lot of similar words with Spanish, but they sometimes change the gender of words between languages and I get confused. 

 This is right before they fell over. haha

 Little Kai was so worried that he wouldn't be able to do anything because he doesn't speak Spanish, and it actually was a little hard for him. Ari is so used to jumping into social situations where people don't understand her that she was fine. In fact they had a little deaf boy there, so everyone was interested in her and her devices. She did great. But Kai kind of held back, and I feel bad now I didn't facilitate things for him better. 

We had two twister mats, a small one for two people, and the regular big one. 

 This little guy was my favorite. He was the one who let us in in the beginning, and was the one who kept descongelando me (unfreezing me) in freezetag. 

 We did some puzzles together

This is the little deaf guy. I hope they are able to get some aids for this kid. He doesn't even sign. I am really worried about him too! He has an appointment with a specialist next month to test his hearing to see what remains. I don't know. Things are hard down here so they don't know where money for aids would come from. The thing with aiding a kid this old is that they usually rebel against it. It takes dedication and perseverance to keep those aids on, and I can't see that happening even if they can afford to get them for him. I asked about sign language, and the woman who is there every day living there --like the house mother --said he wasn't interested in learning the signs. I told her of course! Most boys aren't really interested in learning stuff at that age --totally normal. But he is missing those crucial language acquisition years! Agonizing for me. I don't blame the lady, she doesn't know any better, and I wasn't about to launch into a lecture or anything. Sigh. 

Back to the playing :) We had a lot of puzzlers!

 Then they finally put us to work. I helped the little boys, then the little girls shine their shoes. We cleaned off regular ceiling fans, then spent what seemed like forever taking apart this fan to clean it (notice the grime on the floor?) and putting it back together. The nice thing is these little boys LOVED taking things apart. We had their full attention. 

 We were able to donate and bring some school things for the kids, but the best was just spending time with them. 

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Nice day off.

I have been hiking up that trail to El Eden every day except Sundays, and usually take the kids with me. I made it up to the top the other day when the kids did lap swimming exercise the other day. I told Ari yesterday if she made it up to the top I would get her a treat. She made it! Not one lick of complaining either. This is going to be so cool to zipline through one of these days!

 We spent the rest of the day lazing around by the pool. We took a quick trip down to the beach, but the storm the night before had swelled the river running into the cove, and made the water all cloudy. So, pool day. I finished my book.

Poor Jeff was on a conference call when this sunset came through. It was actually much prettier in real life. I could not get the camera to record those colors! More pink, more purple, brighter --is there a metaphor there? Probably. :)

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"A three hour tour"

We had a hard day yesterday, but it ended with THIS! So everything turned out ok.

Yesterday was our day to volunteer at the Manos De Amor Orphanage. There are two in Puerto Vallarta, but this was the one that responded to my inquiries, so is the one I planned on. We realized Saturday though, when we planned to drive by just to see where it was, that it was located in the far north part of the city called Bucerias. It was 50 minutes driving from downtown Puerto. This did not bode well for me and the kids, as I knew we would have to take buses to get there since Jeff would be working, and we only had one driver on our rental car. The company didn't want to add me over the phone, and were charging quite a bit extra to put me on the policy. I researched bus routes as well as I could on google, then used google earth to see where to walk when the last bus got us the closest. 

 As far as I could see, we needed to take three different buses, and then walk a kilometer or so at the end. I thought we could make it in a little over 2 hours. However that isn't what happened. 

Our first bus started out just fine. We talked to the man sitting next to me, and played with the baby held by the couple in front of us. There was a man in the back playing his ukulele and singing, and he actually had a great voice. It was still coolish, and a breeze blew into the open bus windows.  

We rode that bus to the end of its line, and got off and walked a couple of blocks to get the next bus which we caught without a hitch. 

 But this bus is where I messed up. We came up to the side of the store where I knew we should be dropped off, as it was the main interchange for all the buses going to the outlying areas. however, the bus didn't stop. I honestly thought it would turn around and come back to the other side of the store. Or I thought maybe I was mistaken, and they were going to another store named the same thing. The bus kept driving and driving into more and more rural areas. We passed lots of little houses with people living their lives more or less in peace, and that is where I got the little epiphany I told you about yesterday. But I was also getting a little panicked. 

 I was sure that any minute now the bus would make a turn and bring us back into the town and paved roads, and the highway. But then it stopped. End of the line. In the middle of nowhere --and I mean nowhere! I asked the bus driver if we could get another bus to Bucerias somewhere nearby, and he was surprised to see we were still on the bus. He told us that we would have to take another bus going back the exact same route we had just come by and get our stop on the way back. It was almost near the beginning of the ride there. So I broke the news to the kids, and we climbed down onto the muddy dirt road and back up onto another bus heading back. 

 Well we got to see lots of country! I told the kids that when we got down near the store that I would get them some lunch, and promised them air conditioning in whichever place we ate. Those buses had filled up with people standing in the aisle, and the breeze was non-existent. It was hot. We got back just fine, and had a nice little lunch in air conditioning. At that point it was far past not only the time when we were supposed to be at the orphanage, but past the time when we were supposed to leave. Kai asked if we could just get a bus home. I told him "it is two buses to get back, but hey! two buses are a bargain after the three it took us to get to where we are!" He and Ari giggled a little bit which was nice to see. 

 We made it back, after an almost scare where I didn't remember which stop to get off in the middle. The bus driver shooed us off in the right place luckily. Kindness of strangers! 

We got home and I felt like an utter failure. This was the one thing I wanted to do to help down here and I blew it. Jeff felt bad for me, and I think that is why he suggested that tonight should be our night to try out Tony's hideaway. This is a restaurant literally across the street from us, and all day my phone says "at Tony's? leave a google review".

This is the menu at Tony's. They bring out this platter, and you pick what you want them to cook for you. The kids had never had lobster, and this was going to be a little cheaper than anywhere else, so we let them pick that. Jeff and I don't care for lobster (although I love crab!) so we just got the shrimp, which were huge. 

 I got the combo plate with garlic, coconut, and bacon wrapped. I couldn't finish it. These shrimpy guys are huge. 

 Kai really worked hard on his lobster, but preferred the shrimp too. Same with Ari. We will try the orphanage again on Wednesday when Jeff is taking the day off and can drive us. I don't think I can talk the kids onto the buses again for a little while!

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We went to church --and the human connection.

We got to church yesterday. It was hard waking up while it was still dark outside. I can't get used to the late sunrises here. We must have been up a little late the night before too --I had a few times during church where I got drowsy. Oh well, Elder Uchdorf says church sleep is the healthiest sleep right? And I didn't actually sleep --just...rested my eyes a few times. 

 Coming down the stairs to leave for church, we found a little friend who must have jumped through the gate.

 Church was nice, we had some good talks, and the Sunday school lesson was good too. 

 Last week I met this young mother that seemed really sharp. Really cool. Like if she lived in my neighborhood, she and I would be great friends. She taught the Relief Society lesson (women's meeting lesson) and I learned a lot. It was neat to see her again yesterday. It was neat to see a lot of the people, and start to suss out personalities. My historically anti-social husband really has started to come out of his shell the last couple of years, and I noticed a lot of that yesterday. He is usually the last one talking to people wherever we go down here. 

 We had kind of a hard day today with a lot of time to think --I will write more about it tomorrow. I started to wonder why I keep getting down, and what I can do about it. I know it is connected to seeing the poverty around me and I wondered if the solution is to just isolate yourself from that sort of thing when you travel --pick a nice sanitized resort, or only do humanitarian type travel --which with my history of poor planning hasn't been working out for us. Then as I looked through windows into peoples' lives I remembered something. 

 I remembered just hanging out with people on my mission. We would go into a member's home that was nothing more than a cinder block shell with a sink and toilet plumbed into corners, and a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. But, I remember really connecting with these people. I remember Monica Chopitea inviting us into her home for breakfast every morning, and exercising with us, and her fiery temper that secretly made me like her more. I remember another young wife, and how she and her new husband seemed so in love, and how she made me want that for myself. I remember laughing with people, and crying with people and none of those things having much to do with what the people had or what I had, or how pretty everything was around us. The people made their happiness, and they made mine too. 

I think I need to get more out of my shell like Jeff, and try to build some relationships. In this sense, church is a gift. Here are a group of people that are already open to connecting with us. That are primed to love us a little. I already feel like I have one potential friend. 

I don't know how brave I am going to be, but here's hoping for at least one experience, that true connection with some of the people here. 

I set this trip up as more of a life experience, not a fun all the time excursion. We are cooking in our home most of the time, Jeff is working, we are trying to have an experience LIVING here with some fun stuff thrown in. But I have been feeling conflicted, and wondered if it was because I was actually a coward that belonged in a walled off resort --that I couldn't handle the reality of what this place is really like.  I think I found the missing piece. It is connecting to other lives here that I am missing. 

Not that only cowards go to resorts!! I am saying that part of me wanted to run away to one like a coward. Also, we are not ascetics -- I picked this area for the snorkeling, and we hope to do some really great excursions. I just wanted to the longer time here to be an experience of a culture, of living in another country. This country isn't perfect, and it is easy to get hung up on the flaws without some good personal experiences happening along with your material experiences. Anyway, that memory of the mission gave me some ideas to try.

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Old Town Puerto Vallarta

 Yesterday we decided to go to downtown Puerto Vallarta to see the sights. I spent an hour or so in the morning trying to figure out what I most wanted to see, and writing down addresses for the gps. First on my list was the farmer's market, but we headed over there, and nobody was there. Maybe it is just for tourist season? This is the off season, so a lot of things are closed I guess. 

 The next thing was this glass gallery, and it was worth seeing. The place was huge. I let Ari use my phone, and she took probably 20 pictures. She is still mad that I deleted over half of them. The store has pieces in clear glass, ceramic, and stone, then walks through to another related shop that does all pewter dishes. Audrey you would love the pewter place. 

 These are some of the stone pieces. The entryway in our building has these light fixtures and they are lovely when lit up. 

 My favorites were the quirky animal figurines. Well, maybe those and the hand painted tiles. I would love those tiles in my house. Wait--I bet I have a picture of those...

 See those to the left? They also had some large and more elaborate ones. OK, moving on.

 Just a couple of blocks away we saw this restaurant using the ceramics from the glass gallery in a beautiful way. Everything in the gallery was pretty overpriced in my opinion --this window display cost around 1,000 dollars if they paid retail, but I wish I could do something like this. I love color --especially blue and white. 

 

 We kept walking, and finally ran into the cathedral. Except, I think this may be just a parish church. I tend to call all catholic churches cathedrals in my ignorance. It was hard to get a good perspective on it close up. Once we got up the steps we noticed that a service was being performed inside, and I felt skeevy about walking in on it.

 So we got some lunch instead while we were waiting. We all liked what we got. I got something called a "sope" which I had never had before. Kind of like a really thick corn tortilla, made into the shape of a shallow bowl or nest. It was filled with whatever you chose, so I got three with different fillings (they were small). Here is a recipe page you can click to see what they look like. 

We had an unexpected perk in this restaurant. There was an older guy at the next table who asked us where we were from. He was originally from Minnesota, but said that now he was mostly "from here". I guess he has been living all winter (6 months or so) and a month or so in summer down here in Puerto Vallarta, and had been coming down here for 30 years or more. Kind of a fun story from him: he and his buddies all loved to fish, so they bought a boat together, and gave it to a Mexican friend of theirs. Now the friend has a boat to run as a business, and they can go fishing with their captain friend whenever they want. Our guy was really happy this day because his Mexican friend got an unexpected visit from his daughter and her children. He hadn't seen her in years, and was so happy. They had been estranged since everything went south for this guy in 2006. He had been working in the states and lost everything with the crash, and his wife left him. So here he got some of his family back. Me and my new Minnesotan friend agreed that sometimes, when something good happens for your friend, it makes you as happy as if it happened to you.

He gave us some great tips on restaurants and boat excursions, and was really kind to us. It was better than watching a movie with our lunch. 

 We noticed people exiting the church across the street, so went back to try to look inside. 

  I didn't love the kind of gruesome crucifixion image, but the rest of the church was just beautiful. 

The Catholics make their churches as beautiful as we make our temples. I always love to see inside. 

 I did get one good shot of the Guadalupe angel crown once I got some distance. 

We even got to hear them ring the bells.

 Next we headed over to the Naval museum --following the recommendation of our new friend. It was worth seeing. I honestly would have paid the admission price just to get air conditioning it was so hot at this point, but it was worth it in its own right. This whole museum was about how the Mexican navy originated, and was a testament to Mexican pride. It got a little uncomfortable seeing the displays about US aggression in Mexico. First we took away Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado; then around the beginning of WWI we were back at it, invading in Veracruz, messing around in there for almost ten years. I was a little embarrassed. 

They had models, and projectors, and even a life-sized battleship simulator that Kai thought was really cool. I recommend this museum for families. 

 We headed over to the Malecon (or boardwalk along the shore), just to see the shops and things. While we were looking in a shop, Jeff came up to me and said under his breath, "go look at the bench outside --the first guy on the bench is a statue, but look at the second guy". There was a man dressed up as a statue in soldier's clothing to match the real statue next to him. Then we saw a Peter Pan "statue" balanced on half a foot apparently with wings and a sword. I still can't figure out how he was really supported. Maybe a brace running up his side? I wish I had taken a picture of him. 

This guy had a watering can and flowers, and Jeff swore the water wasn't real. Ari bet him that it was. 

It was real water --he had some sort of pump system running under his clothes recirculating the water. So clever!

 I did get one shot of the mailman guy. These living statues made the walk extra fun for us, but finally we were too hot to think anymore, let alone walk, so we headed back to the car.

 I wanted to show you some examples of the colonial houses in the area. This is right by where Liz Taylor and Richard Burton would secretly meet up when filming their "Night of the Iguana" movie, but I wasn't interested enough to track down the house. I just like to look at the old architecture. 

Puerto is so pretty with all of its red tile roofs and white washed brick, and wrought iron. Maybe some day we will come back and stay in town.

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