Chacala

The Swine Flu hit Mexico and the government canceled classes across the country for almost a week and a half. They closed movie theaters, clubs, bars and other recreational places. Their advice to us: wash your hands, eat fruits and vegetables and stay away from people if you think they are sick... profound.

I am in charge of the yearbook this year and needed to finish so this gave me some much needed time to do so. Then on Friday, Dobbo and I took a bus to Las Varas to meet up with Matt, Kerry and Kelly in Chacala. BEACH VACATION! We rented a house with them, Liam and Becca about a block from the beach.

It was funny when we entered the house, Dobbo was telling Matt and Kerry about our trip to Palenque and how there was this one place that was beautiful but in the morning the roosters woke everyone up super early. Matt just laughed and told Dobbo to look out the back window: rooster coop!

Chacala is a beautiful quaint fishing town with a really nice beach. A lot of people were on vacation there and we actually saw some our students. I ended up playing some Frisbee with them and then the next day they let us borrow their kayak to explore the surrounding areas. Earlier that day, we saw them coming in on their kayak and a wave came and flipped them over. When we were trying to get out and in the same thing happened to us. The other people on the beach got a pretty good laugh each time.

Matt, Dobbo, and I got to play a lot of soccer. We did juggling games, soccer tennis and played games against other Mexicans. For one of the games against a group of Mexicans, we had an incredible combination play to win it. I dribbled it up the side and chipped it in to Dobbo, who headed it to Matt, who did a diving header to score the goal.

We also had fun body surfing the waves and using Matt's underwater camera to take pictures and videos of it. Kerry even put together a compilation video that is really good [I probably enjoy it more than most since I'm in it a lot and I was there haha]. Hopefully I can post it here soon.

While everyone else was playing poker, I saw a couple people playing volleyball and joined them. That was a lot of fun.

Kelly brought his guitar to the beach and we had a fun time making up random songs. There are some songs that won't be forgotten haha.

We had a Go-Fish tournament and had some arguments / discussions about the rules that I found hilarious.

We made some really good food there - Matt grilled cheeseburgers, Kerry made pasta with shrimp, we went out for tacos, and each morning we had a really nice breakfast.

On the bus ride to and from Las Varas to Guadalajara, we saw some pretty good movies. They played Shrek 2 [it was pretty funny hearing their voices in Spanish], Wolverine, Slumdog Millionaire and others that I can't remember.

A big shoutout to Kerry, who took all the pictures from my camera. To say she is trigger happy is quite an understatement. =P

For more photos and a video short of the video to come check out Matt's blog:
http://mattcharamella.blogspot.com/