my weekend

hi there! we are back from placencia where we spent the weekend. it was a BEAUTIFUL beach. we stayed at the Serenade Guest House, which was about a two minute walk from the beach. on the beach was a bar/restaurant called the Cozy Corner, where both yesterday and today i had two plate-sized pancakes for breakfast and fresh squeezed orange juice. the pancakes were SO good! before i got to the beach, a guy who had been there described it as looking like a corona commercial. and he was exactly right. there were little pastel colored cabins all along the beach, and fun seafood restaurants and arts and crafts stores. where i really tried not to buy any more things....so we spent saturday sitting in pastel painted wooden beach chairs right in front of the ocean listening to ipods and reading books. it was a wonderful day, i just kept thinking to myself how wonderful it was to be there relaxing and how lucky we were to get to do that. (and simulatneously be getting 6 hours of school credit).

two pairs of boys came up during the day to individually ask all of us if we would like to trade our ipods for some mayan crafts or souveniers. sadly, none of us handed over our ipods. on boy stopped me and said "hi, what's your name?...i'm santiago" (and shook my hand, he's like 8), pointed to his friend who also shook my hand "i'm peter." santiago proceeded to tell me that they were "out here just doing a little business" and asked if i had an ipod. i told him yes, to which he informed me that "you know, i really like to hear music. you know, it's my best subject in school....maybe we could do a little trade?" another couple of boys offered some of the guys in our group a salad spoon and a salad bowl for their ipods. it was pretty funny.

last night we ate at Wendy's, no hambugers, but wonderful seafood. i made a deal and ordered the beer-battered shrimp and split it half and half with someone who ordered herb garlic shrimp. both were amazing. and they had great mashed potatoes. and there was a gelato place across the street that i went to twice yesterday - once i got vanilla and choclate chip, and the second time i got pineapple- which really tasted like real pineapple. all in all it was a wonderful relaxing weekend! this week we are wrapping up our tutoring, we have one more time with each family. so i'm off to the hotel to eat dinner and make certificates for all my kids.

hope everyone is doing well! i can't wait to see you all when i get home! happy monday, hill