More Pictures!

Here are some more pictures I found from Palenque. These were around the town during one of our free days.


Eating some tacos in Mexico!

Ice-cream stop

I was so excited about my lime popsicle

Hammock store

I also found the pictures from the parade in Oaxaca and I was soo excited so I really want to post those too!








The children are so adorable!

Oh Palenque!

In Palenque we went to see some ruins that were located more in a jungle. These pyramids were beautiful and probably my favorite that we went to. Alot of the pyramids still have not been excavated and they believe it will take 3,600 years to fully excavate all of them. These were so cool though...




Most beautiful view!

The jungle behind me!





All the little vendors trying to sell stuff





Our favorite professors



Those stairs are a great workout plan

Something flew into my eye, don't judge me


Afterward exploring the ruins our guide took us on a little hike through the jungle.


Some people did the whole "Tarzan thing"

We just did the whole "tourist thing"

Villahermosa

We had a quick trip to Villahermosa.
It was very hot there.
We went to a zoo and we took some fun pictures...




This is how they keep their animals clean in Mexico


(This sign didn't stop us)

Monte Alban and a Very Large Tree

While in Oaxaca we visited Monte Alban, which are more ancient ruins, but for those of you who are more familiar with the movie Nacho Libre, you may know what I am talking about.

Nacho Libre was filmed in Oaxaca and at the end they are standing at Monte Alban overlooking the pyramids.

After Monte Alban we took a drive to Santa Maria del Tule.

This tree is 130 ft tall and 175 ft around, and it is said to have the largest circumference of any in the Americas and some say in the world.





It is all one tree

The tree is about 3,000 years old. It was cool to see and now to be able to say that I have seen the largest tree in the world!

Not giving up!

Today as I was talking to Ryan on the phone he asked me what I was doing and to that I responded "oh I'm blogging about Mexico". He felt the need to remind me that trip was almost three months ago and there is no way I can catch up on all the blogging I need to do, therefore I should just give up. As I was going through my pictures this morning I got a little discouraged because I swore I had more that did not get saved onto my jump drive and I must have deleted them already from my camera. Part of me does want to just give up on blogging about this trip, since it was a month long and I have done about a week of it so far. But since I am home for 6 weeks before school starts again, and I know I probably won't have anything excited to blog about during that time since all I will be doing is working, I might as well finish since I know one day I will wish I would have done this.
So bare with me as I try to get the motivation to finish, and in between I will try to blog about more recent happenings, but hopefully I can finish before I start school again...wish me luck!

Oaxaca

Our next stop in Mexico was Oaxaca. Being in Mexico City was cool, but Oaxaca was Beautiful!!



I was reading through my journal a little bit the other day and I came across the entry from when I was in Oaxaca and it made me remember how much I loved it there...



Day 6: "We are now in Oaxaca and today was honestly the most fun I have had all week! We started the day off by going to a few museums and seeing a couple different sights"





...then we went to the Zocalo for lunch, which was super fun because we just hung out with the professors and listened to all their funny stories they had. After lunch we went to a market in the middle of the city to do a little shopping. It was like a crazy farmers market/mall with every type of shopping you could think of; clothes, toys, shoes, food, produce, meat, fish, ect. (it smelled worse than you may be imagining)

Then we walked around the city a little longer and explored. The people here seem super friendly and unlike Mexico City I feel very comfortable and safe walking around these streets."


After we finished dinner we all began to walk around the Zocalo and everybody started acting really crazy. There were bands playing, fireworks being shot off, huge puppet people dancing around, and everybody else was dancing as well. We joined the crowd, danced around, shot off some fire works, and watched as some clowns put on a little show for us. Apparently it was the day of the children so there was a huge party in the whole city to celebrate!
As we started heading back towards our hotel we saw a parade on the street with lots of loud music and tons of people, so we decided to join the parade! We went crazy dancing and clapping and acting really wild. We were all having so much fun and all the locals were watching us and they loved to see "gringos" in the parade. People were taking pictures of US in the parade. It was so much fun!"
I wish I could find some of the pictures we took that night, but I have no idea where they went!

Here are a few pictures from the temple in Oaxaca...





I love Oaxaca!