Santa Lucia

Wow, we’ve been busy! Sorry to let our loyal fans down yet again because of going a whole day with posting. However, we do have a really good excuse for why! Yesterday, we went to San Juan de Dios for informal witnessing and some more local shopping. That place is awesome! It was like the tiangis, but indoors and four stories! We only we went to the bottom floor and we still didn’t get to see all of that. It’s pretty crazy there, with everyone trying to get you to buy from them. We had a hard time haggling with the people because their prices were already very reasonable! But we tried, and felt an immense sense of accomplishment when they gave us a 5 peso discount ($0.50)!!! As you walk past all of the vendors, who might as well be reaching out and grabbing you, you can hear them all saying “A sus ordenes” (which basically means “at your service”). Slightly overwhelming, but very cool, nonetheless.

We did have some really great service-related experiences. We learned an easy way to converse with foreigners. We just say to anyone who looks like they’re from anywhere else, in English: “Do you speak English?” Easy, right? If they don’t, they have no idea what you said and continue walking. But if they do, you just say “Oh, I thought you looked like a foreigner, where are you from?” So this one lady we talked to was from Britain and she was very friendly. She told us that she used to teach a religion class and she told us some of the experiences she had with it. It was really sad to hear how uninterested people have progressively gotten in learning about God. She expressed her disappointment in that fact as well, and we had a very wonderful conversation with her.

It doesn’t always turn out so well, though. We asked one man if he spoke English. Not even stopping, he said to us in perfect American English “No I don’t speak English.” We didn’t take it personally, but how sad that someone would be so unwilling to even talk to someone from their own country. At San Juan de Dios, we got a little caught up in shopping but were promptly reminded of the real reason for our being there when a man asked Kelsey if we were the people with "la atalaya" or the Watchtower. (We were the only ones there dressed up, and most of us had book bags.) Turns out he didn’t speak a word of English so we asked our new friend Alvaro to talk to the man. Overall, it went very well and we had an awesome time!

The bus was a different fun adventure. On the way to Centro, we encountered some really bad stop-and-go traffic. The bus had to turn and take a different route because the street was blocked due to a protest. Care to guess what they were protesting? Lactose. Well, that’s only what we were told, and we think it might have been a little jumbled in translation. They must have been protesting dairy products. Who knows? Anyway, on the way back, it was raining and we got to watch the deadly walls of water from the safety of inside the bus this time.

Afterward, we went to Josh’s house (well, actually Arnie’s house, but he’s in London and Josh is “house/puppy sitting”). Since there were three guys and three gals, Lesley wanted to dance. But we ended up just playing a game of 8 questions and listening to Josh play and sing a beautiful Mexican song called Santa Lucia. Then, thank goodness, we got home at a decent hour. Today is the day we’re taking to relax this week but, as we’re preparing to leave the day after tomorrow, we also need to get some packing done. Now, we're set to go to our favorite place in the whole wide world. That’s right, Sorianna Super. Just kidding. Do we really even have to tell you??

Your friendly neighbors south of the border,

K²