Farewell to La Palmilla

This morning was especially tough for our team as we bid farewell to our new good friends at La Palmilla. Our host families fed us well and helped us get our baggage to Jennifer's house by 8:30. We loaded everything onto a truck and then piled into pickups, SUVs and minivans and headed to Tlapacoyan to catch our 9:40 bus to Puebla.

Dave is feeling better today, but he's still not 100%. Still, it's good to see him back on his feet. I know a lot of people back home have been praying for him so we thank you all for that.

We boarded the bus in Tlapacoyan and prepared ourselves for the ascent into Teziutlan. The road winds and turns back and forth, back and forth, as the bus rolls and pitches up the narrow roadway. I am still in awe of the bus driver's skill at keeping the bus on the road while dodging oncoming traffic. All we could do was trust in God that he would deliver us whole. A few of us took Dramamine before the trip, remembering the road from last week. So when we got to Teziutlan we were all still basically in once piece and feeling OK. The trip on to Puebla was basically flat and straight but the bus does bounce quite a bit.

We went on to the hotel, back up the ramps to the bridge over the road that we remembered from last Saturday when we were here before. Was it really only a week ago that we were in Puebla? Seems a lot longer. But we stayed at a different hotel this time, Hotel Grenada, which was very nice and had big soft beds and hot showers. After a short break to settle in we had lunch in the hotel restaurant and a lot of people ordered las hamburgesas (hamburgers) which the waiter described as having mayonnaise, mustard, butter, avocado, lettuce – you know, the classic burger. (We all had a good laugh about that.) Ken had some trouble ordering the hamburger and especially when he said “with cheese.” The men of La Palmilla reminded us that Chiz (pronounced like”cheese”) is a slang term kids use for going to the bathroom. So once Ken asked for the burger con queso everything was fine.

After lunch Jen took us to the market near the center of Puebla. The market is a couple rows of shops with awnings with all kinds of wares laid out in front plus the more expensive items inside. Most of the stuff outside was your typical tourist fare – brightly colored handbags with Puebla stitched on them, small pottery, leather wallets, toy guitars, wooden snakes, the kind of stuff you find wherever you find tourists. But a lot of the stuff in the back was very nice and very nicely priced. Remembering the lesson Jen taught us before we came down, we haggled for pretty much everything, and for the most part got what we wanted for what we offered.

While we were at the market the skies opened up and poured rain for about ten minutes. We huddled under awnings until the cloudburst passed and then we continued on to the center of town.

In the middle of Puebla is the city center, el Zócalo, with a cathedral on one side and the government offices/governor's residence on the other. The first cathedral we went in, Santo Domingo's Church, was built in the 1500s and had amazing gold fixtures and gilded wood everywhere (it seemed a bit out of place among some of the poverty we've seen thus far but it's quite old and historic). There was a wedding going on in one room (the Capilla del Rosario) that absolutely shone with all the gold in it. It was quite beautiful.

The second cathedral we went in, Puebla's Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, was just as old but not as opulent as the other. It's inspiring to see how people worshiped when they first came to the new world. Over the centuries they have collected artifacts and items that were important to how they relate to God.

We still have a few on our trip who need prayers. Jeremy is having a lot of pain in his back and his chest and feels generally run down, and has been experiencing chills. Erin has a heat rash that is very painful, although she was able to find a farmacia that had an anti-fungal cream that we're hoping will work. Jordan has a sore throat and is finding it difficult to eat anything. And Karlie and Sue have been having digestive system troubles since we got to Puebla. So please keep praying for our team as we return.

In two more days we will be back in New Jersey. Tomorrow we will be in Mexico City to see the sights there. We have been so blessed on this journey already but we are definitely looking forward to being home. Still, a part of us will long for the friends we have made, the places we've been, the sights we have seen in Mexico.