Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Taxis, Zapatos Chulos y Tito Puente..

(Tampico Plaza)
June 14th PM entry

Arriving back at the hotel after meeting the Mexican Army, we had some free time. María the Dentist and one of the women from Texas named Vicki decided to take a bus into town and do some shopping. I realized this may be our only time to get any real quality shopping other than at the beach so we,(Laura and I) took off with them-we had to be back by 5 pm to go to the night service.

I love doing this sort of thing because you put yourself in the situation where you could get lost or have a real adventure. We got to the Plaza and it was beautiful-like all the other Plazas in Mexico.

María and Vicki were looking for shoes and baby's clothes and I was looking for a silver turqouise ring-because the stone broke in one my Mom gave me. We found some really nice rings and they cost less than 40 dollars. After that the adventure wained, I became the bored tag-along on a shoe hunt. Shoe shopping with three women rarely becomes exciting, no matter what country you are in. Prices not so hot either. They stayed at it so long we had to take a taxi back-which was kind of fun, and we made it back just in time.

The service that night was held at a stucco church called Agua Viva (Living Water)in a poor neighboorhood down by the beach (that is Pastor Dave from Indiana in the picture). They had lovely mango trees, a friendly pastor who looked and acted a lot like Tito Puente-¡El Rey de Salsa!. There was a real feeling of fellowship between the people from the US and the Mexicans. We all had a lovely service.

I got to give a testimony in Spanish, and it went really well. María said that she understood all of it. This was a real high point of the trip for me, that my Spanish is getting to the point where it is useful and people understand me.

Even though the service was great, it wasn't until 10 pm we got out of there, and did not get dinner until after 11 pm. I got to bed after midnight, totally exhausted...

No comments: