First days in Mexico

 We are in La Paz! The house is good. It’s not a four-star hotel or anything like that, but it’s a middle-class house in Mexico. It’s not super well-stocked so we’re going to buy some beach towels and some mixing bowls tomorrow. But the kids love having a pool, and that is really why we picked this house out of all the options. We went to church today and that was super fun. Everybody’s always so nice in Mexico. They have a friendly culture. The kids of course didn’t understand anything and Faith said when they sang songs at primary in Spanish she recognized the music but she couldn’t remember the English words. I think it’s just harder to come up with them when something else is coming into your ear. 

I was able to pick out the general topics for what people were saying and sometimes I heard entire phrases that I could translate. That was very exciting!   Apparently they clean the church building on Saturday evenings and Josh caught that announcement and volunteered us so we’ll get to interact with the ward members. .  

So that’s where we are now!   Just enjoying our Sabbath and prepping for a busy week for me of double Spanish lessons.  Jumping in with both feet!  

We spent our first night at a hotel in San Jose del Cabo before driving out to La Paz - they had an ofrenda for dia de los muertos and it was so fun - pictures of celebrities like Elvis and Selena were displayed.

Tomorrow I have my first Spanish classes. Yesterday I did some of the driving when we went to Walmart and home so that I could start getting used to driving around since I have to drive to one of my classes. Today we’re going to drive out there so I can find the address and make sure I know where I’m going.  I also think tonight we will walk along the boardwalk which runs along the length of the bay 3 miles long and it’s supposed to be the most beautiful sunset in Mexico!

The first photo of our family and these next two are from where I think my spanish teacher lives. We were driving out there to make sure I could find her.

Looking over La Paz in the evening facing east above, and west below.

The traffic in Cabo when we left the airport was crazy and made Josh a little nervous, but in La Paz it’s been a little more sensible.

We looked up how to drive in Mexico and didn’t find a whole lot of information at first. The road signs and things are pretty much the same as in the United States. However there are some minor differences. Signaling is used in other ways besides just lane changing. A car behind you might signal to let you know it’s safe to move into the lane in front of them. They tend to put their hazard lights on if they need to stop suddenly or drive slower. And stop signs!  It feels like they might be optional sometimes. What we’re deciding is that rolling stops are pretty normal here - nobody’s going to pull you over for not coming to a complete stop as long as there is no one waiting at the intersection. There’s lots of intersections where they kind of slowly roll through just to make sure there’s no cars coming even though they had a stop sign. But I suspect if you have a stop sign and the other car doesn’t that you better be the one that stops.

And finally, street signs are small and hard to find and so we are so grateful for Google maps!