Mmmmmelaque

SOOOO here we are! Melaque Melaque Melaque! I've got a lot to cover here, so I'm just gonna take a running start at it, it may or may not spiral out of control and end up being a semi-life changing rant about global warming, Whitney Houston's death, and/or my opinion on the 54th Grammy awards earlier this week. I'm about 57% kidding.

This is Adele winning like 5 or 6 Grammy's and making everyone else look like your average shower singer.

Also:
I don't have any photos of anything yet, so I've included a bunch of stuff I found online which I thought would be cool instead.


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For those of you who don't know, Melaque is kind of like, Ryan's THING. Like, he walks around and its like any small town, you go 5 feet and run into someone, and this repeats itself all day every day. This is fabulous because we've been such vagabonds lately, aimlessly wandering around towns that we're pretty sure we know the name of, but beyond that, we've got nothin.

How we were traveling before. (Actually we've been rockin it. But it felt like this at times.)

This town feels more like home, even to me, who has never been here before, just because everyone is so happy to see us (Ryan). The town is on the beach, which as everyone knows, is ballin'. Its a small town, next to another small-ish town, and it only takes a few minutes to get between them, so really its like one big town right at your fingertips. Melaque is full of taco stands lining the streets, and retirees roaming around. Its the kind of place that draws the same people back year after year for the same months. People come to escape the winter, their lives, or whatever else might be troubling you in the great North. The other people who come back every year are SALT SPRINGERS. I know Ryan knows everyone, but even I know half the people here, and I've never been here before.

This is a baby Chihuahua. I held one the other day. They're cute. That's all.

I've heard a LOT about the people here, so meeting them was like meeting famous people. I hear about them almost every day, but from the moment we arrived, it became clear to me, just how great Ryan's friends are.

These are some friends..

I was expecting the normal, "Oh hey, what a surprise its so good to see you! Let's meet up sometime and have a drink!" The typical, excited, but also busy and "its been a while"-ish response. I was wayyyy off. From day one they were ready to drop what they were doing and hang out all night, every night. Somehow, they all find the time to get together and its almost like he never left, except for the raging excitement that fills the air (although that might be normal too, I haven't decided yet). We've been traveling pretty low key, so we're still working on being able to stay up until 4am...

This is what we had for breakfast today. Except not as awesome.

Our first week was spent in a pretty run down hotel on the beach. On one hand...its on the freaking beach. On the other, the sink was broken and leaked all over the floor, so my first morning experience was walking, eyes still pretty much closed, to the bathroom and putting one bare foot down into a cold puddle of water. I don't care who you are, there's nothing more concerning than your foot landing in a puddle of water on the bathroom floor, because there's a good chance it came from the toilet.
After a week, and what was a totally wild goose chase house hunt, we have moved into a house. Its one that Ry and his family have stayed in before (those of you reading will know it, its the green one.) While it may not have been our first choice, it quickly became clear that it was probably our only choice for the money we wanted to spend and the space we needed. Right now it's a little big for us at 3 bedrooms, each with ensuite bathroom, living room, and full kitchen, but when Ryan's sister Jessy comes to join us, we'll fill it out a little better. We are loving having our own space again. To be able to wake up and not have to walk several blocks to get your morning coffee is something that I used to seriously take for granted.
The only down side was lack of internet, which we use often for our phone (Skype) and communication with our loved ones (thats you guys) plus things like Ryan's morning news check, etc. We were prepared to go without it for a month, until our loving neighbors turned out to be AWESOME and gave us their password, so now...We're hooked up!

This is how we felt when we got the internet password.

I'm an invalid right now, and can't walk due to my hip, which didn't get the memo about being 21 years old and has done something to realllllly impair my walking abilities,
so I'm sitting in the house stretching it out and watching Aquaman in Spanish on the TV here.

The man is riding a seahorse. Seriously? They couldn't give him like a shark or something?

Ok, who's still with me?
I could go into more detail and really paint you guys a picture of the strange and hilarious nights out, Valentine's Day, or our various taco experiences (Mom...)
but I'm not sure how that would be possible in any less than a million zillion characters or less. I'll take some very descriptive pictures for you guys soon.
Until then (or next time I feel like subjecting you all to another "update"), I think that pretty much covers it.

And this is Whitney Houston, because she was amazing and I'm still really sad about this whole dying thing.