Something I learned

Sarai, I have enjoyed reading your posts about how you three are doing while I am down here with my brothers. I have thought about you each minute of each day. I miss you very much and have really appreciated and felt the words that you have written while I have been gone.

This has been a great experience for me. Something about spending time with my brothers is so much fun. Being with them, and talking with them, and listening to them, and joking with them, and hearing their stories, all of these things are so interesting to me. I can't explain the why, as I myself don't completely understand why, but these two guys are amazing. I love them very much, and for you to allow me to come down here with them is something that I greatly appreciate. Also, Ned is an amazing friend who I love. Us four guys have had a blast down here. We have tons of pics to help us try and explain what we did and how much fun we had.

While being down here, I have had some time to think about us and to think about our friendship and relationship. I have learned something about you, even though I wasn't with you. I don't know if I "learned" it, maybe I just realized it. You know... put two and two together. Let me try and explain.

I see how hard of a worker you are, and how hard you try as you take care of our family. You put a lot of effort into making us happy and making sure that we are doing well. I see this and I notice it. I also work hard. I take my breaks though. I make time for myself to relax. I never see you do this. I wonder "how does Sarai do it? How does she work and work and work and never take a break?". Well... I think that I answered that question for myself. I think that the reason that you don't, is because you want to take you breaks with ME, not by yourself or with other people. You want to take your time off to spend it with me. I have been on a different page for a long time, and I realize now that you and I need to take our breaks together. I love you and wish that I could tell you that now to your face. I will be home in less than a day, and I will let you know then how much I love you. But for now I want to let you know that I promise that I will work harder on planning time off for the both of us to spend together. We are hard workers and don't get enough time for ourselves, for just the two of us. Time for us to spend together and hang out together. While this may be a piece of simple wisdom for most people, it has taken me some time to figure this out. If nothing else, this time here has helped me learn that and I am committed to coming back and being a different person as far as working with you to plan time off for our family and for ourselves.

I have missed you girls so much. The place where we are staying is a small bed and breakfast that is one block from the beach. The owners live here on the top floor, with their small family. They have two little girls, Adina (2) and Noelia (7 months). Each day as we get back from our activities, we have these two little girls that we get to see and play with. They have been so entertaining for us. Ryan, Ned and I have each missed our children, and these two girls made that desire to see them even stronger. They are funny, smart, little girls that are a lot like our girls. You would love them. Adina and I sang the pinata song about 100 times this week ("Dale Dale Dale, no piedas el tiro..."). She loves it and finally found someone who knows all of the words, me. We sang it every day and she thought that it was awesome.

The first two days here, Joel and I went deep sea fishing. The first day I spent most of the day throwing up and sleeping on the boat. Sleeping was the only thing that I could do to prevent myself from throwing up again. It was a rather difficult day for me. That night I took some Dramamine (pills to fight sea-sickness) and then the next morning before we left, I took two most. So the second day, I didn't get sea sick at all. It was awesome. I got dibs on the first fish, since i was sick the day before. It was luck that the Marlin was the first fish of the day. Had it been the second, Joel would have gotten the Marlin. Had I not spent most of the first day throwing up, I might not have gotten the Marlin that I got. It was awesome. The fish was beautiful. It fought for about 45 mins. After that, we could quite a few more fish. On top of that, we both got solid sun burns.

The next day, Joel and I went to some Cenotes. These were awesome. One was like an Oasis, or a natural pool. It was cool. There were tons of little fish in it. We would hold a small piece of bread in our hands and within a few minutes, you couldn't see your hand anymore, as the fish would swarm your hand and eat the bread. It was awesome. We have lot of pictures of this and even got some video of it. It was cool. Joel has an underwater camera, and we got it all on there. After that Cenote, we went to the next one. It was an underground Cenote, or as the guide called it, an Underground River (un Rio Subterranio). It was amazing. I don't know how to describe it to you. You are going to have to see the pics when I get back. It was amazing. I would have a blast doing that with you. I want you to come back here with me and go to a Cenote with me. After the Cenotes, we went and got some tacos. The tacos were made with Cochinita Pibil. They were awesome. We washed it down with some dessert. I had a Gansito and Joel had a BubuLubu. It was funny. After that we went to a town and bartered with the locals. It was fun. I got some good prices. We got better prices on some things than our hosts get. The Swine Flu Scare has killed this economy so bad, that the shop owners were desperate to sell anything, so we got great deals. I bought two hammock chairs, which would cost the hosts 500 peses, but I got them for 400 pesos. It was awesome. I bought a Marlin trophy, some stuff for you and the girls and an America handkerchief. Then we went home, had dinner, hung out, and went to bed.

Today, Joel and I slept in until about two in the afternoon. It was awesome. I am killing that by staying up so late, but it was nice. After that, I got up and showered, had some fruit and then went to the beach to listen to a book on tape and watch the ocean. I found a nice palm tree to sit under, that was right on the water, and I just sat there and listened to my book. It was amazingly relaxing and restful. We will do that when we come back, I promise. I know that you would love it and would really appreciate it. After about an hour, Joel showed up. Somehow he knew where I would be. We sat there and talked for a bit, and then decided to go back to the house and get the snorkeling stuff and come snorkel. We did this. We were going to go out deeper, but I am a wuss. I am nervous about getting eaten by a barracuda or something. So... we stayed in the shallows and collected seashells for the girls. We got a lot of little ones that they will love. I really thing that they will like them. I found a couple that still had little crabs in them. I let them go though. After that, we went back and showered, had some sodas with Ryan and Ned, ate dinner and then hung out until midnight. Then Ryan and I went down to the beach, walked out on the dock and sat at the end. We were just talking and chilling. It was nice. We were playing around with his camera, cause it was doing some cool stuff with the moon as bright as it was. Then we came back home and I am now here writing you.

The food here has been amazing. These people are great chefs. The first night they gave us barracuda ceviche for dinner. It was amazing. Mauricio caught the barracuda with a spear the day we got here. The second night they gave us some huge Mahi Mahi steaks, since Joel caught a huge Mahi Mahi and brought it back. They cooked it up for us and it was amazing. The third night they gave us some seafood pasta. It was amazing also. I loved it. The pasta was homemade and the sauce was also homemade. The entire dish was amazing. They gave us so much. Ryan finished off my plate and Joel's plate. It was that good! Last night they gave us Mole. It was amazing, and perhaps the best Mole I have ever had. Tonight, they gave us Mango Sea Bass with veggies. It was perhaps the best fish I have ever had in my entire life. Each night dinner we given to us with their homemade bread, homemade guacamole and chips, and anything you want to drink. My drink of choice, Tropical Pineapple. It was awesome! In short, the food was amazing. Each night we gave our compliments to the chef, as the food was just superb.

The owners here are Mauricio and Yvonne. He is from Argentina and she is from Switzerland. They are a cute couple. They speak Spanish, English, German, Italian, French and some Indonesian. They are really smart people. They are young, maybe my same age or just a few years older. They really made this trip even better than it would have been. They are so friendly and their kids made it tons more fun for us. The fact that they would let their kids come play with us was awesome, and then when the food was ready and served, they would also come and hang out with us. That might have bothered us, if they weren't so cool and funny. But they are awesome people that are very interesting. Their accents in spanish and english are very interesting, because they speak so many languages. Like when Mauro would speak english, he would "uncht" instead of "and", kind of mixing German, Spanish and English all into one sentence. It was interesting and fun. Yvonne was similar. She has a European accent and would mix words in once in a while that we would have her explain.

Each morning for breakfast they would give us anything we wanted for breakfast. My breakfast of choice was a bowl of fruit and Tropical Pineapple. The bowl of fruit contains Mango, Pineapple, Banana and Orange. It was amazing to have such fresh fruit. You would have loved it, and will love it when we come back together.

Hopefully you see a little of what we went through down here. I want to experience this with you. There are a ton of things that I didn't get to do, because we ran out of time. I would love to come down here with you and enjoy it. We need to plan it as soon as I get home. I have grown to understand the need for a break, and I want to take a break with you. We deserve it.

I will be home tomorrow night at 7:55 is when we will get there. I will call you once we get home and you can come get me with the girls. I have a surprise for each of you.

I love you baby. Thanks for giving me this opportunity to enjoy this place with my brothers. My only regret is that I didn't come here first with you. We need to come back here together and explore the other things that we can do here.

Mua, Loves, Hugs and Smooches.