HOLA from Beautiful Cancun!

I didn’t think we would have Internet here, but for a small fee (30 pesos for 15 minutes), we can actually connect to the world.

So, let me give you the run down of our activities here. We had a pretty uneventful flight, other than driving through the snow and ice to get to the airport by 5 am (I must interject for just a second to let you know that in his channel flipping, Ryan has stopped on Robin Hood in Spanish. Most all the TV is in Spanish here –go figure– although there is one channel in German, and a couple in English with Spanish subtitles. Oh, great. Now he’s watching Lazy Towne in Spanish. That show annoys me in English, can you imagine it in Spanish?). We met some of the other winners at the airport, and then had a nice boring flight. I decided to pay the $8 for an in flight movie, and we watched Pirates of the Caribbean 2. I’m sure it would have been much better on a large screen (as opposed to the 6 inch screen on the back of the seat in front of me), but it was a diversion, and when I fly, I need a diversion to pass the time. Our hosts from KODJ, Dickie and Angel, had a little trouble at the airport, however. It seems Angel had received a new drivers license recently, and the birth date was wrong. By one day. They told her at the airport that they would let her fly, but she probably wouldn’t be able to come back without the correct dates on the legal documents. So when Dickie got on the plane, he had no idea when his wife would make it, if she does at all. But since he was the “host” and leading all of us, he had to come, anyway. We’ve heard that she won’t be able to come until Tuesday.

When we arrived, we waited a long time for the luggage to come, and while waiting, met up with the members of our group, and one of the winners was from Chicago! Seems they were visiting their kids here, their sister-in-law told them about this contest she was trying for, and he got through and won! Now that’s what I call lucky. After gathering our luggage and going through customs, we met “Pepe”, our fun jet vacations representative, who brought us to the bus, which would bring us here to our hotel, the Riu Caribe’. It’s an all inclusive hotel, with three restaurants, a couple of bars, several pools, right on the beach. It’s kind of like being on a cruise, but we’re not moving (which is good for me, since I don’t enjoy the whole motion sickness thing). Even alcohol is included, which is surprising. Even our mini bar in the room is stocked with bottled water, sprite and Pepsi and Coronas. We told them at the front desk they can take the beers and just give us more waters and Pepsi light, but they left the beer anyway. So, as you can guess, there are a lot of “happy” people here.

It was too late to do anything yesterday, so we just ate dinner and came back to the room and went to bed early. I think I was asleep before 9, I was very tired.

One of the other couples here asked if we wanted to go to Church with them in the morning, and we said we would. So, this morning we met up with them and another couple at 9:30 to catch a bus and get to the LDS church by 10:00. While on the bus, the guy sitting across from us pointed and said, “Mormon?” like, “there’s the Mormon Church, you dolts, get off the bus.” We said, “Right here?” and got up, telling us that “that guy” said to get off now for the Mormon Church. So, all six of us get off, look to the left where he was pointing, and see no Mormon Church. What we do see if a WalMart. “What kind of Mormons does he think we are, shopping on a Sunday?” said our new friend, Sharon. We laughed, realizing that we don’t know where we are, but we didn’t get off at the right stop. We asked someone, and found out that we were about “8 BIG blocks” from where we needed to be. I’m guessing it was about a mile’s walk, in my non walking shoes. By the time we finally found the place we were sweaty and my feet were very much hurting! We went in the church and there was no one in the chapel. That darn website lists the sacrament meeting times wrong. So, we killed a bit over an hour chatting with the others in our group and the other Americans who also came early, and the missionaries. We met a guy named Lemuel, who is a tour guide. We arranged for him to take us on a tour of Chichen Itza tomorrow, and give us the whole Mormon scoop.

By the time the meeting started at noon, there were almost as many Americans in the chapel as natives. Needless to say, I didn’t catch much of the meeting, although it was cool to be there. Three people, who had been baptized the day before, were confirmed, and we got to sing Christmas hymns in Spanish. Ryan did a little bit of translating for me until his brain went into overload and he said he couldn’t think anymore. Our trip home was much less eventful. We caught a bus and came right back. After lunch, we came back to the room and Ryan had a nap and I went out and relaxed on the beach. Since it was late afternoon, there wasn’t much sun, and I could only stand to be out there “sunning” for about an hour until it got to cold. Yes, there were some obvious Europeans who wanted to enjoy the sun topless, but we can look past that.

At 9pm we have our dinner reservations for the Shangri-la. Thanks for reading, sorry this is so long, and we’ll post more in a few days!

A few full size pictures from the trip are available HERE

UPDATE: All the pictures from the trip are now posted here.