Primero Semana- Juan Clark

Senor Keach did a fantastic job giving a complete summary of the first week. He is very correct in that we have a great group down here with no severe dislike for anyone which will make for an excellent trip. It has been about 100 degrees most of the days with what it seems like the everyday short rain shower. The heat has made the first few days of sleeping without air conditioning pretty tough but starting to get accustomed to it. The first week was a lot of traveling going to Valladolid, Ek-Balam, Tulum, Puerto Morelos, and back to good ol Merida and the whole trip was great. It seems as if my snorkeling experience turned out a little better that Michael's and was a highlight of the trip. Aside from the before mentioned small colorful fish and the small nurse sharks I was lucky enough the deceptively speedy sea turtle, which was incredible, about 4 or 5 massive barracudas, about a 5-6 nurse shark, a small eel, several huge parrot fish, the list continues and I wish I had pictures. The trip to the beach at Progresso on friday morning was a good time being only around a 25 minute bus ride from merida and costing only 14 pesos I see many more Friday morning trips there in our near future. The Independence day festival here in Merida was a pretty cool thing to get to go to and see the similarities and differences from our Independence day back home. The streets were crowded and blocked off and swarming with police officers and apparently getting to see super latino pop sensation Pedro Fernandez was a pretty huge deal. Other than that Keach pretty much summed up everything; it has been really hot, I haven't had a bad meal yet, transportation is cheap, the locals have an obsession with coca-cola, the bus system is pretty difficult to figure out, cenotes are awesome, night life is fun, not all homestays are created equal, and I have a great Mexican mom. Great start to the semester, Juan