Hasta luego, Juana!

I realized today, I don't think I've mentioned in a while, it's still scorching hot!!! The newspapers have been covered with stories talking about the intense heat, ways people are trying to cool off, and all sorts of ads for pools and fans :) If I can just make it another week and a half, I'll be so proud of myself! You know it's bad when you walk home at 7pm and you arrive at home completely sweaty, how does this happen? I don't know. But I am so incredibly thankful for the protection we've all had - no one has gotten sick directly from the heat, and we've all stayed safe! Praise the Lord!

Spanish class we really dug deep today into different things that came up, and we made Ana proud as we sort of "led" the class by asking more questions, initiating interesting conversations, etc. It made it very fun! After class I talked with Ana for quite a while about some different things I'm looking for to bring back home. One was recipes - and she had me write a list of things I'm interested in and she'll get me her recipes! Can't wait to try to cook some of my Yucatecan favorites when I'm back in the States!! I've realized I have found a new joy in recipe books - whenever we pass a bookstore I go in and look at all the unique ones! Ana took me home after class (what a lifesaver), so we continued to chat and I asked her about seatbelt laws. It's something you'll quickly notice here - seatbelts aren't used nearly as often as they should be. It turns out seatbelts are in fact required for the driver and passenger, and also no talking on phones is allowed. But seriously - people do not buckle up here. Which is pretty sad. What's even more sad is the lack of child car-seats. I frequently see young kids sitting in the front seat (again, without a seatbelt) or even worse - standing or jumping around in the back of the car. It's something I hope the government or an organization takes a stand on and starts to reinforce more strongly. I'd be interested to learn about the vehicle related death rates.

I worked my way through homework today and then headed to play practice. We've got major work to do before we perform in on May 5th!! But it'll be great - and we all have good attitudes about it, everyone is starting to put in some extra work! I should probably consider memorizing the few lines that I have... But the good news is, I sit at a table making tortillas for a majority of the play, so I'm thinking of writing them on the tortillas...? Why not?

We made egg salad sandwiches tonight for dinner with my Easter eggs! I know, that's really irrelevant, but now you know!

Tomorrow Juana will leave to head back home to the States. She is the student from Cornell College who was just here for a month, doing an internship, as the Cornell schedule does single classes for a month straight. It's so crazy to think that her month is already done, as I remember telling myself, "Once Juana leaves, we'll have less than two weeks left..." But here we are! So tonight for a little farewell we went to Chilimoon to celebrate! I don't know why lately we've been staying out so late on school nights, but I guess we're only in Mexico with 16 friends once, and we're only here for a short time more! So out we went! We all really enjoyed ourselves, there was a live band who was on an American song streak, so we loved that! I think they loved us singing along and dancing, so they kept up the English lyrics that we actually know! However we realized we are getting more acquainted with Spanish songs - we belted out a few of those too! Fun evening! Said goodbye to Juana, we really enjoyed having her with our group!