ROCKY!

My name is Shannon Best...and I have a dirty laundry problem. I, at one point, had a lady wash it, but that meant that I had to lug it to school...not fun! There is a laundromat in my town, but it's got some weird hours and is on the other side of the tracks, so I just gave up trying to make them work with my schedule (9am-7pm with a two hour lunch).
Finally, I decided to take my laundry to the laundromat in Salina Cruz (where my friend Dahmnait lives). She said they were trustworthy, though they did lose her jeans, but they bought her nw ones. So, as I returned from Puebla, I stayed on the bus all the way to Salina Cruz and got to see a very pretty sunrise.All this, you ask, for laundry? Well, I do pride myself on my clean appearance, and I do enjoy the fact that the people there know my name and are indeed very charming. But there is another attraction that keeps me loyal, and that would be their smiling dog, Rocky.
This fuzzy little friendly guy always greets me when I get in and is generous with the kisses to anyone who will give him attention. Really, how can I not keep coming back?

Puebla Pics

This past weekend, I boarded the bus at 9pm and headed North to the city of Puebla and around that time, Jason was boarding a bus in Guadalajara. At six in the morning, or there abouts, we both arrived and merrily began our search for a hotel. We went to the centre of town where we saw one of the most beautiful cathedrals, made even better by the fact that there were no tourists around so it was really peaceful and calm.

We went around to a couple of hotels, but due to the long weekend, and an unbelievable amount of elder European tourists, the first two we went to were completely booked up. The next one we went to either had a room with a balcony but two single beds or a room with no balcony, in fact barely even a window, two single beds and a massive depiction of Jesus on the cross opposite the very lacking window. So we decided on one of the higher end hotels that was 2km from the centre but that gave us a really pretty view of Puebla since it was higher up.

Puebla was established in 1531 and is one of the bigger cities, though it was knocked out of the top 3 by Guadalajara. It's much colder here as opposed to Oaxaca, due to the elevation and, when it's clear, you can see one of the 3 snow topped mountains that surround the city.

We then wandered around our area because we didn't want to hang with the tourists in the Zocalo so we went to a new shopping mall that was built over some ruins but they kept them intact and placed Plexiglas over them so you can look down at the display. There wasn't a lot of shopping to be had, but I did find some English books and magazines, so I was happy. Then we saw a movie. We had dinner at a sushi restaurant, where Robert, our server, who looked like a Mexican sumo wrestler, made us a special order as Jason is allergic to shrimp and crustaceans. He then presented me with a rose made of a napkin (I know, this is all cheesy, but felt I would share it anyway).Sunday we walked around the Centre and admired the colonial architecture. Everything is so fancy, they even had the fast food restaurants done up nice. We started watching the Superbowl at KFC then rushed back to the hotel to watch it on the giant plasma one in the lobby with a bunch of older Mexican men. I was cheering for both, had to show some Manitoba pride for Israel Idonije, but I also knew that Peyton Manning had yet to win a Superbowl (that would tidbit would be from my NFL guru...my brother).
When it was over we had to head out, but that's when my stomach infection decided to return. So, needless to say, um, that 13 hour bus ride was much less fun than I had expected. But I did have an awesome time and now I am just counting down the days until I am officially out of Ixtepec and in Colima!