MEXICO!!!

so...the ominous "exciting thing that i might be doing this weekend" did indeed happen on saturday, and i'm more than excited to post about it!! two friends and i took a day trip to meh-hee-coh!!!! after living here for over a year, i'd been talking about wanting to go south of the border for awhile, and i couldn't believe i hadn't done it yet. it's so close, and so easy to take a spontaneous trip out of the country. i love where i live!!

basically, the pictures are the most telling part of our adventure, as you can imagine. we drove down to ensenada, mexico, also stopping at puerto nuevo, a lobster village on our way back to la saturday night. justin, holland, and i had 18 hours of conversation, music, laughter, culture...it was outstanding!

the day made for several funny stories, including getting stopped in a 3 hour stand-still traffic jam, which ended up being one of the highlights, because we stretched our legs and enjoyed the view, as you'll see in the pictures...we also ended up on a couple of highways that randomly just ended, which proved to be hilarious (which you'll also see pictures of). ensenada was a cool town, with a bike ride festival going on, so people were milling about, and we found lots of colors and textures to take pictures of (we even made a parody of "satan's alley," which will make sense if you've seen the movie "tropic thunder"). then, our dinner stop at the tiny village, puerto nuevo, was amazing. it was a very warm, authentically mexican place, with family-style restaurants and jovial shopkeepers selling hand-painted pottery and local fruits.
the lobster we ate here was also my first lobster ever, and, oh man, it was delicious!! i couldnt believe how much i loved it...all slathered in butter, yummmm. ok i'm making myself hungry...moving on!

mexico, although very dirty, disorganized, and impoverished, was naturally beautiful, colorful, vibrant, full of friendly people, culture and life. it was an energizing experience all around--we had so much fun.

ok, below are the public links to the full albums from our trip. these pictures have captions, and you can click through them all easily, so i encourage you to do that. seriously, these are some of the best trip pictures i've had, so i'm thrilled to share them with you all. i will, however, post a few highlight pictures below, in case you can't access the full albums, for some reason... it was such a blessing of a day for my friends and me, and i really hope you enjoy it vicariously through the pictures!!

album 1
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016260&l=ea799&id=135000032

album 2
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016261&l=ff387&id=135000032

album 3
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2016262&l=448ee&id=135000032

a few highlights...