Ancient Ruins

It's another long weekend for me! :) I feel like every other week we have a day off school for something. I'm sure it's just magnified by the fact that we never have school on Fridays, but I can't really complain. This Monday we have school off for what I call Benito Juarez Day, mainly because I don't know the real, official reason, just that it has something to do with Benito Juarez. I think it's his birthday or something on Saturday, but when I said el cumpleanos de Benito Juarez, I got corrected. And then the real reason was kind of fuzzy and got lost in translation so all I really know is...I don't have school because Benito Juarez was a great guy. That's really enough explanation for me.

Thursday night we all went to a resteraunt/bar place for a concert & my friend Emma's birthday. It was really fun & the resteraunt was so cute. They had stars hanging from the ceiling that I'm going to try to recreate for my room at school, and a tree inside as well. Plus all the houses/buildings here are pretty old so they have such cool architecture like high ceilings and exposed beams and cool bricks inside. It's neat. The bands were a mix of traditional music from veracruz, reggae, and funk. It was a really cool combination with all kinds of instruments.


Last weekend we went to El Tajin, Papantla, and Tecolutla. Tajin is an ancient city with really cool ruins. But the coolest part of the place is the Voladores. They do a traditional dance to worship the sun and they climb up this huge pole and then swing down by their ankles. It's kind of scary to watch because they just tie a rope to the end of their ankles then swing upside down the whole way down. And there's a guy on top of the tower who has nothing to secure himself with who dances and plays a flute-type instrument and stomps his feet all while spinning around a crazy distance up in the air. The plate he stands on is about half an inch wider than his feet. It was absolutely crazy & one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

^Crazy Voladores getting ready to go^

^take off^

The next day we went on a boat ride through a river in Tecolutla which was really pretty. We went through the mangrove trees. They had these crazy roots that twisted everywhere and the trees formed a sort of tunnel that our boat passed through. Our guide told us they thought pirates used it as a hideout, it did seem like it could be straight out of Pirates of the Carribean. We saw a crocodile on our river ride too!
^my friend Amy & I on the river ride, taking extra safety precautions with our life jackets!^

^mangrove trees with their crazy roots^
^one of the river banks^
^crocodile hiding in the branches on a log^
^always the little kid, holding the crab our guide scooped out of the water^

All in all, lots of interesting sights and fun times. Plus, I haggled for the first time in the parking lot of Tajin! I desperately needed new sunglasses since I lost mine at Carnaval and a man was selling them on our way in so I stopped, grabbed a pair that I thought I would like and asked him how much they cost. When he said 60 pesos I hesitated and started to say no so he lowered his price to 50. In a hurry to catch up with the rest of my group I said 40? and got an 'esta bien!' as an answer so I succesfully haggled my sunglasses down a good 20 pesos. It was quite an accomplishment for me. But then all my haggling skills from Saturday went right out the window on Sunday when I bought a hammock from a man on the beach for what was supposed to be 150 pesos, but he said he didn't have change for my bill so I essentially bought it for 200 pesos, which still isn't a lot and he was a funny old man who went away happy and I got my rainbow hammock so I was happy, so it was good for everyone in the end.

^my new favorite thing, coconut icecream. I got to keep the coconut it came in too!^