At about 5pm yesterday, the six of us and Macrina headed to the plaza saragosa for the trolleybus tour. Our tourguide was very nice, and spoke in english for Haley and Laurel. She tought us a lot of history about the city and the plaza! she also asked us some questions about phoenix, which I thought was cool, since she was also wanting to learn. Fernando, the young man who lead us around in the morning, also came, and was very nice. It's weird, because sometimes it doesn't even occur to me which language people speak, since I'm getting used to speaking in spanish! At first, I was nervous to speak in spanish in fear of embarrassing myself or in fear that they wouldn't understand me, but I think I'm improving.
We rode around on the trolley for awhile, and the tourguide made sure we stayed ingaged by giving us periodic quizzes—she wasn't about to allow any afternoon siestas on that tour ;). it was a great activity for the last week, because we drove past many places that I had already visited, but hadn't completely understood and I was able to get a sense of the layout of the center city since I'm very location and direction-oriented but haven't been able to use GPS (I always go back to the house and try to locate everything on the map by where we drove, but things don't exactly look the same from above and street-view, so it hasn't been a success).
At one point, we jumped off the Trolleybus at a shop in a skinny, old-looking street with the word "Coyotas" written on the walls and store signs. That part of town retained a lot of history from the people who originally inhabited parts of hermosillo, at a time when there was actually water flowing through the city! One of the rivers used to mark the border of the city, but once it became easier to cross, the city expanded. Anyway, when we got out, I was not prepared for the delishous smell and sight of the cookiies (ahh don't remember the name) that they cook there! She showed us the huge oven where they cook them (up to 10000 a day during the holidays when they use all 3 ovens), and we had a chance to buy some to try. We were all sweating as if we had swam in a river (we apparently came 20years late for the river), so most of us tried the ice cream one. I had vanilla, and it was the best thing I have ever tried from a bakery in a long time. It was pretty big, but I pretty much had no choice but to eat it all, or else I would have had melted vanilla ice cream on my arms (so much for that cross country diet, but it was totally worth it)!
Once we finished the tour, we had 40min to kill until our dinner reservation at a patio-restaraunt scheduled for 8 (which we were actually on time for!!). We walked around and went up into the plaza that commemerates hermo's 200th anniversary (the one macrina and mario took me to a few days ago). We ended up spending most of our time in the gift shop, which is the same one as before, so I had another chance to observe the crafts after learning about the history some more. I bought a dream catcher with beads the mexican colors (red, green, white) and a small drum key-chain for my bro louis (hi, louis, if you're reading this, but I kind of have a feeling you're not!). I also helped Laurel buy hers, since the employee didn't speak english, but the lady told me 60pesos and of course I totally butchered it and told Laurel 70pesos, so that was super embarassing! The other day, a friend accidentally said his daughter was 80 instead of 18, which was funny to me (well we were all laughing) especially because I always confuse my nubers in spanish haha. Then, we went back to the top to take pictures during the sunset, which happens to be one of Misty's challenges yay! Sunsets here are pretty like phoenix's.
Dinner was fun, also. It was more relaxing, because we were just eating and hanging out. We were so thirsty! I definately need to remind myself to stay hydrated ugh. I sat between haley and laurel, even though I was really hoping we would stop segregating ourselves at meals between the phoenicians and hermosillians! It's tough, though, with the language barrier. We were joined by pamela's family and zyanya's family, plus Anna Elena who organized it (I believe!) and a committee member who is going to bring us to a factory next week. He was very niice and had good english, except I tried to make a joke, and I don't think he understood it, so that was awkward for me and confusing for him ahah! Later, at like 10, a man started to play live music on a stage behind us, which was nice. He was actually quite talented! Anyway, today we are going somewhere for many hours, so I'll talk about it when I get back :).
I uploaded my photos to z's computer so I could take pictures yesterday, but my hard drive said the card was full, but then said there were no photos when I tried to empty it, so I might not be able to take any more photos with the storage issue on my phone:(. I was thinking about getting a disposable camera, but then again, mine wasn't able to get developed last time because the machine messed up, so maybe i'll just enjoy the memories for the last few days!
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