Putting my Costco Membership to use!

I managed to make it out of bed a little earlier this morning...10am. Nothing to be proud of. But better than my noon rise the first day. The weather is extremely hot down here and I think my body is having trouble adjusting. I´ve been having reoccuring headaches that don´t seem to pass and I know it is from the heat. We´re talking around 90 degrees. Not to mention, I haven´t had a cup of coffee since my arrival. Come to think of it, this probably has some weight to the reason my head hurts. None the less, life as a mexican is very slow. I spent most of the day reading my book, ¨Three Cups of Tea.¨ I highly recommend it to all of you. I know Katie wants it after I´m done, but I´m sure she´ll be done with it in a matter of a few days, so whoever would like it, let her know.

At about noon, Maria grabbed her keys and yelled, ¨vamos john,¨and we were out the door. I had mentioned to her yesterday that I wanted to take her to Costco and buy some food and supplies while I was here. Really, I just wanted to take her shopping so she could get some essentials that she needed. She loved the place. We literally had to go through every single isle. At first it was difficult for her to pick out things and put them in the basket, but after 10 or so isles I had her speaking up about what she needed...toilet paper, soap, salt, meat, noodles, peppers, eggs, and milk. We would talk about what was a good price and what was rediculously expensive. It was a lot of fun. She would look at the price of apples, oranges, and limes and roll her eyes to the sky because it was so expensive. I put a few things in the cart for myself like two bottles of wine and a case of beer. They are real into flavored water drinks down here and at every meal we have some sort of powder added to the water to make a sweet, refreshing drink. With this in mind, I put a huge tub of gatorade concentrate into the cart. Oh, the whole time we shopped, little Wendy (her son´s daughter) was with us in the cart. The total came out to be around 1,900 pesos, which turns out to be about $135 dollars. It was about what I had budgeted for the trip...maybe thirty dollars over or so. But it was worth it! I´m staying here for free, and they treat me like one of their own family members. I felt like I was robbing them if they didn´t let me help contribute in some way. $135 for two weeks...not bad.

Tonight, we are going to go over to Viviana´s (Maria´s daughter) cousins house to talk about the idea of classes next week. I have so much time during the day, and I´d like to work on my spanish while I have time. We went to a school yesterday and it was really nice and i´d like to study there for two weeks, but the price is a littl expensive...$380. Not sure if it is worth it. But it would get me out of the house and into a new part of the city which would be fun. The school is right in the middle of downtown. I don`t know. We´ll see how the meeting with their cousin goes tonight. She would charge me what would come out to be $7 or $8 an hour. Which is by far cheaper, but I don´t know if I´d like it better in an actual school.´ We´ll see!

Oh, and I´m sorry I don´t have any pictures at this point. The computer I use won´t recognize my camera cord, so I can´t get them on here. I´m going to see if I can download something from Cannon to help.