Sunday - Day Sixteen
Because we hadn't had a chance to talk to mama last night, she was surprised when we were up so early to go on our excursion. She thought that we would be leaving when the school sponsored group left, but since we were going independently, we were talking an earlier bus. However, she had our lunches ready and kindly offered to drive us to the bus station (we had planned to just find a taxi), but first she insisted on making us some eggs. Between that and a bit of traffic, Dee and I were lucky to make it before the bus left. Once again I sleepily listened to my iPod during the trip, but occaisionally woke up to listen to Janeice explaining to the man sitting next to her about the LDS church and our beliefs in Spanish. I was quite impressed. She is such a missionary at heart.
I dozed off but woke up in time to see the city come into view in the morning light. It is a gorgeous place, I must say. Taxco is built on the side of a mountain and the streets and houses are built to accomidate the slope. It was an impressive sight. Dee had researched where the ward was here, so after bidding fairwell to our directors, we took off to try to find it. Fortunately it was just down the street from the bus station. We arrived in time and the members were very friendly. I, fortunately, had napped enough that I was not dozing in this meeting, but I still have a hard time following what people are saying. It is funny that I can understand history class more than church. What is going on with that?
After church, our fluent companions asked were the Xocolo was from there and it was close by, but unfortunately strait up one of those impossibly steep roads. I bet the local car shops do great business with all the breaks they need to maintain. We met up with Lisa, Molly and Martha along with a gal I did not know, and then we split up again.
Everywhere you go in this burg there is someone trying to get you into their shop to buy jewelry. It is very annoying in surprising ways. For example, we were admiring the cathedral in the plaza when a guy came up to us, told us he worked for the tourism department in the city and asked if we wanted to know more about it. Thinking that he was an official guide we went along as he began to talk about different features and history of the cathedral in a very loud voice. It was disconcerting because, although mass was not being said, there were still a lot of people there to worship on Sunday. Well April and I followed him although Dee and the others quickly decided not to, and at the end of it all he said that he worked for tips and told us to visit the shop he advertising for. It was just so tasteless.
After that our group was looking for a museum about the city that was nearby, but we had a hell of a time finding it. Even with fluent, athletic April leading the way, it took us forever (and mind you that we were going up and down these hellishly steep roads) to find it. And then it was closed! How rude!! After that, Dee and I and some of the others couldn't handle looking around for the other museum and just decided to start shopping.
We looked in a lot of shops, but Dee was a little bit overbearing about what was worth buying and what wasn't that day so, while it was good that I didn't spend a lot of money, I didn't get as many things as I would have liked. Still the silver smithing in this town in amazing and it is just fun to go into shops and see all the beautiful things that have been made out of pure silver.
We shopped for a while and then went back to the center of the Xocolo to eat our lunch. Unfortunately, it was not PB&J or even a coldcut sandwich today; it was cold hamburgers. Eewww! Neither Dee nor I could stomach the idea of eating hamburgers that had been made six hours or so ago. We ended up eating our apples in our lunch then going off to look for the Dominos we had seen on our way up the hell hill from church.
We ordered a medium pizza and Dee went off to find some drink while I waited. Some venders followed us up to the second floor of the building that housed Dominos and I ended up buying a small basket from one of them. It is so hard to get away from the vendors! Our pizza took longer than we expected so we needed to scoot to get back to the bus station on time, but first we had to deal with a couple more vendors. One was a young girl who would just not take "No gracias" for an answer so we finally bought a small somthing from her for $1. Yes, it promotes the behavior but at least we could walk to the bus station with our boxed pizza in peace.
One of the ways that the vendors did help us though was that some of them would give you cards with a map to their store on them and we used these and Dee's tour book to find a short cut back to the bus station, which was only a short walk down a very, very steep road. We made it with ten minutes to spare and sat down on some steps to eat our pizza, which was nice and big so we shared it with our buddies who were already there.
Dee and I watched the last episode of season 2 Avatar on the way back, but when people asked what we were watching, Dee told them in was Heroes. She just can't embrace the anime/cartoon watching nerd that is so clearly inside of her.
When we got home, Dee immediately wanted to take a nap but I used Quita's laptop to update my LJ and finish the Teotihucan entry that had tormented Amy so. But before I could do much more than that, I was superceded by Brittany and decided to go and take a nap too. We slept way too long, missed dinner, and only were able to wake up the next morning because I woke up enough to set my phone alarm at 3AM. I guess we were tired!
Well, that was the excursion to Taxco. Not the most fun one but interesting in its own way. I just want to well off enough when I come here again to really be able to do some shopping!