Sunday, April 17th

Today we had breakfast at the hotel before driving to Beraka, an extreme adventure park which is in that area. We got there 40 minutes early so we had wait around for a while, but we were the first ones in when it opened. We started out at a climbing wall and then a zip-line, so I wasn't so sure about the level of extremity for the rest of the park.

But I was soon reassured. Next we went to one where you ride a bicycle across a high wire about 4-5 yards off of the ground. My mom, dad and I did it, though I was really reluctant about it.

The next one we did was a ropes course which was also very high off of the ground, again I was the one who was the most unsure. I almost feel adopted sometimes.

We did a trampoline bungee jump for a few minutes to kill time while we waited for the next thing to open.

The one we did after that was the most surprising of everything: we flew. They put you in a baggy suit and hook you up to a metal rod so you don't fly out of control, they turn on a huge machine which blasts air straight up, you jump over onto the column of air, and it supports you there. It's an amazing feeling! Unfortunately mine had a rip which was rubbing painfully against my ankle, so I quit early.

The next one I think was the most fun of everything all weekend, you had to rock it back and forth until you got up enough momentum to start doing flips! It was AMAZING and SO much fun!

We had to leave the park at 12:30 to get my dad to the airport for a business trip, so we ate on the road back.

Saturday, April 16th

We left early today to go to El Rollo, one of our favorite water parks. We arrived about an hour after it opened, but it wasn't too crowded. It was a lot of fun riding our favorites from last time and trying new ones. I even got up the courage to do a 4 meter (about 4 yards) high dive!

It was terrifying but fun at the same time, I wasn't sure if I loved it or hated it! We did slides together for most of the day, then towards the end we spent a lot of time in the Lazy River. Boy is that ever a misnomer. Every few minutes a huge wave came pouring down the river, sweeping along everything it came across. It was easy to get separated there, but a lot of fun! When the park closed at 6:00 we drove to a small hotel which we had reserved ahead of time and got a quick dinner before going to bed. We were all worn out by then!

Monday, March 21st

We got up early today to get breakfast and then go river rafting. It took about 20 minutes by bus to get up there, then about 2 hours to get down by raft. It was a blast! We all got wet and most of us nearly fell out at one point or a another, but thankfully no one did. There were some pretty bumpy rapids there! After that we packed everything in the car and drove to our next destination, a waterfall called Xica (pronounced shica). We walked around there for a while and took some pictures before finally beginning the drive home. We arrived at about 10:00 after stopping for lunch, coffee, and dinner.

Sunday, March 20th

We got breakfast at a very popular restaurant this morning, it was really good! Then we rented a boat to take us out to Cancuncito, a tiny little scrap of sand with nothing but people on it. But we didn't go out there for the beach, we snorkeled the full hour we spent there. There were lots of fish, coral and anenomy, I saw a starfish and my mom saw an eel. It wasn't the best snorkeling place ever, but it wasn't bad. After we got cleaned up and packed, we picked up lunch and then drove to another little town, also in Veracruz. It was supposedly a 2 hour drive, but of course it turned out longer. When we arrived, we checked in and then walked down to the nearby river and then walked around town a bit. We found some late dinner (which wasn't a very good dinner) and then headed back to the room.

Saturday, March 19th

Today we left at about 7:00 to drive to Veracruz. It's typically a 4 hour drive, no big deal for those of us used to road trips. But of course, it didn't turn out that way. Instead, it became a 7 hour drive when we got caught in hours of traffic. And we were only 20 minutes away from the city! Well, at least I got time to knit. I finished a whole scarf before we got there! We finally got to the hotel and checked in at about 2:00, then we went down the street for lunch. After that, we walked from the hotel across the street to the beach. We snorkeled there a while, I found about 14 sand dollars total. The coolest thing we saw was a huge fish, about 3 feet long and silver with green and blue flecks, but I was the only one who saw it! After we got cleaned up we walked about 2 miles to the Zocalo, the main square, but we were all tired by the end and caught a taxi back to the hotel. From there we took the car to Dairy Queen, then back to the hotel where we all headed straight to bed.

Saturday, February 12th

Today we went with the Etters and the Owenbys to see the butterflies in Valle de Bravo. They migrate from Canada every year and always come to the same spot. We rented ponies to get up the mountain, then the last part we had to hike so that the ponies wouldn't disturb them. It was really cool to see so many butterflies so close and all together like that! The only problem was the dust. It was like moon dust, you take a step and it puffs up around your foot. As you can probably imagine, the ponies didn't just kick up little puffs! We were all dirty by the time we got back down the mountain. The guides kind of took us each on our own, but a few of us didn't have a guide because they wanted to control their own pony. One of the people without a guide was Mr. Etter. He fell behind, and then his pony took the wrong path. We waited for him at the bottom for a while, but then people started to go out looking for him, and they eventually found him. He had come out a LONG ways away from where we had! After that excitement we went into the town of Valle de Bravo to have lunch and then went our separate ways back to our houses.

It's hard to see, but those tiny orange dots are all butterflies!

Sunday, February 6th

We got up at 8:00 again this morning, and had breakfast the same as yesterday. Then we drove to Monte Alban, an archeological site with a lot of pyramids. We were allowed to climbmost of them, and it was pretty fun, but started getting pretty hot near the end.

After that the parents went black pottery shopping, which wasn't quite so much fun. We went to the Oaxaca Zocalo for lunch, then bought a launching balloon and played with that for a while before going back to the hotel. We kids stayed there for the rest of the day while the parents went out again.

Saturday, February 5th

We woke up at about 8:00 this morning and went to the restaurant downstairs to have breakfast. From there we went carpet/tapestry shopping and saw a little demonstration about how they make them. I liked the demonstration, but the shopping got a bit monotonous. After that we went to Hierva del Agua, a petrifiedwaterfall. To get up there we hired a truck to drive us up the mountain. Fourpeople sat in the cab of the truck, while the other six sat in the back, which was completely open to the wind. It would NEVER be allowed in the States, and it was a lot of fun! Oh, and the road wasn't paved. It was a very bumpy ride. Once we got to the top, Wyatt, Ethan, Lucy and Nate decided to swim in the infinity pools there. Ms. Ranee and Abbystayed there withthem while my mom, dad, Mr. Marcus and I hiked down the the bottom of thefalls. I really liked the hiking, it was pretty strenuous, but a lot of fun! We went back down in the truck again and then headed back to the hotel.

Friday, February 4th

Today we left straight from school to go to Oaxaca with the Owenbys. After a 5 hours car ride we arrived in the capital, Oaxaca in the state of Oaxaca. We checked into the hotel, ate dinner, then went to bed around 10:00.

Saturday, January 22nd

Today we went to Nevado de Toluca with the Michaels, Noelle's family. Nevado de Toluca is a huge, extinct volcano that we can hike inside of. Two large lakes have formed inside of it, and we can see the lava dome. We hiked up the side of the volcano, down into it, across the bottom, up the other side, then all the way back! My dad got to an altitude of 15,300 ft., my mom and I got to 14,800. And at that point we weren't hiking, it was more like hand-over-hand climbing! The best part of climbing the volcano is going down, there are very fun screeing trails! Screeing is like sliding down the side of the volcano on dust and little pieces of rock, it's a lot more fun than it sounds! By the time we got back to the car, everyone was exhausted so we just picked up some McDonald's on the way home.

Breckenridge, CO (Jan. 2nd-Jan. 7th)

We arrived in the late afternoon, so we had to wait until the next day to ski. We woke up and got out there fairly early, we started out easy and slowly worked our way up to harder slopes throughout the week. By the end I was learning to tree and powder ski and had done my first mogul run! And on the last day I even tried a black diamond! It was cool to be able to say that I can do black diamonds (the one I took wasn't even that hard), but I prefer blues. My dad went up to the top of the mountain and did a double black diamond! Nate and Abby were taking all of the jumps they could find, and my mom was flying down the slopes! On the last day Nate was trying to take a jump, but got off balance and ran into a tree. He was okay but a bit shaken up, so he went back to the cabin for a while. It was a fantastic vacation overall!

Denver, CO (Dec. 30th-Jan. 2nd)

We arrived in Denver in the evening, then we had to drive to our friend's house, the Forces. We knew them in Dallas, before we both moved, and it was good to see them again! They live in a house out in the woods, their yard looks like something you'd see on a postcard, with everything covered in a thick layer of snow! While we were there we spent a lot of time playing out in the snow and then coming in to warm up and playing Settlers of Catan almost every night. One day we went out to skate on a frozen lake that was nearby. My mom and I didn't, but everyone else had a lot of fun! Nate had to be convinced that the ice was thick enough to support our weight before he got on. We saw a lot of beautiful ice sculptures nearby, and spent some time shopping as well. We had a lot of fun during our time there!

Tucson, AZ (Dec. 23nd-Dec. 30th)

The first place that we went for our winter vacation was Tucson, AZ. We went there to visit my grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousins. We spent Christmas there with the whole family. My cousin Maddie and I went out hunting for 2 hours with BB guns one day, I killed a rabbit and she got a rabbit and a quail. It was a lot of fun hunting, but actually hitting the animals was a bit sad.

Saturday, December 11th

Today I went to do a service project with a bunch of friends from Capital City, the English-speaking church. We went to DAYA which is a place where homeless teenage girls (ages 13-18) that have babies come to live and are taken careof. Noelle, Miah, Courtney and Abigail were my friends that went. We repainted almost half of the interior of the small building that they lived in, the boys did the other half. My friends and I got REALLY messy in the process! Miah and I got into a mini paint war, first she used my shirt to clean her brush, so I marked her, so she marked me, etc… Then we purposely began to paint ourselves, like Indian war paint! :) We had a lot of fun!

Tuesday, November 23rd

Today we went to the pyramids at Tenochtitlan. We've been there tons of time before, but it was still pretty fun. We climbed the Sun pyramid and one of the smaller ones, by then we were all tried so we headed back home.

Monday, November 22nd

Today we got up early to go to Xoxafi, a really cool cave network.

We've gone once before but I forgot to blog about it. First we had to put on a harness and helmet, we thought that the helmets were an unnecessary safety precaution like in most cave we had been to, but this cave was different. We started out by walking down stone stairs into a large cavern. Boring, right? Well then we got to the hard parts. Going down into the Xoxafi caves means an hour or two of squeezing through tight spaces, climbing steep rocks, dropping down through holes, and other exhausting but really fun activities! There is also a zip-line in the dark and repelling down 10 meters. The zip-line was fun, repelling not so much (for me). I'm not a big fan of heights. The rest was really fun though! The hardest part is at the end, there is a place called 'Born Again', it is a space so small that people describe it as like being born again! After Xoxafi we drove to Tolontango, a hot water spring. The water is really nice, like bathtub water, the only problem is getting out. After really warm water, getting out into fairly chilly air feels like freezing to death! We finished up there pretty quickly and went straight home from there.

Sunday, November 21th

Today we went to la Marquesa, a large area filled with zip-lines, four-wheelers, and all sort of cool stuff. The first area we went to had these large, blow-up, plastic balls (think hamster balls for humans) that float on the water. You're supposed to run like a hamster, but it's a lot harder than it looks on water. You spend a lot more time falling than running! The next place had padded, plastic, blow-up balls that went down a hill instead of on water. These were a ton of fun! You climb in, roll it up the hill (someone is always there to help you), then take turns rolling down. You start by running, but after a while it starts going so fast that it's hard to keep your feet. Anyone that falls rolls around in the ball until the bottom of the hill. It was SO much fun!

After that there was a huge zip-line that went across a valley, I was the only one that didn't go. And finally we went to a go-cart track and did that for an hour. I don't like driving go-carts so I just rode with my dad, I was literally hanging on for dear life at every turn!

Saturday, November 20th

Today we went to San Ángel, a large market area that is well-known for selling art and small, traditional Mexican souvineers. Jamie wasn't feeling well today so after that we went back to the house for the rest of the day.

Friday, November 19th

The Joslins arrived yesterday really late at night. For those who don't know, the Joslin family consists of: Mr. Brian, Ms. Sherry, Wes (13), Monica (12) and Jamie (9). Today I had a school field trip to Xochimilco, but I decided I could miss it, so instead I went with everyone else to the Zocalo (city square) and afterwards to Jamaica (the flower market). After we finished there we went back to the house to eat and relax until about 7:00 when we went to see Harry Potter 7! I put on my Hermione costume and wore it to the theater! I LOVED THAT MOVIE!!!!! Who ever hasn't seen it NEEDS to go ASAP!!! :)

Monday, November 15th

Today we got up earlier than normal and packed a bit before going down to the beach. A little while after getting in, all of a sudden I felt a really strong pinch on one of my toes, it really hurt! I pulled my foot out of the water and saw that an inch-long crab was latched on! My mom pulled it off, but I was paranoid for the rest of the day. Whenever I stepped on anything on the beach I jumped, thinking it could be a crab! We also saw stingrays that were riding the waves, it was really amazing! One wave I saw had a group of about five of them all swimming along together. After we had finished at the beach we went back to the room to finish up packing. We managed to get on the road by noon and back to Mexico City by about 9:00 after picking some lunch up at BK.