Belize!!!

Ok, so I'm finally going to recount my trip, two months later.  Exciting, right??

Seeing as how I had never been out of the country before, I really had no clue what I was doing.  I've never taken a trip like this before in my life either.  I've done some crazy things with friends, and gone on some trips, but I don't feel that I've ever quite done a vacation like this with friends.  I've definitely done it with family (the whole, let's plan this trip and make sure we do all the things that we want to, thing), but never with friends.

You can ask almost any one of my friends from BYU.  I was never one to go on random trips.   I was hardly ever able to get the time off work, and so I usually had to say "I'll see ya when you get back" and then do things with other friends that were in town.

But anyway...

I was so glad that I had Bekah.  This really was my trip.  As much as I didn't really want to admit it, this was all my thing.  It was my idea, and ultimately, it came down to what I wanted to do.  Which is nice, in a way.  But I'm still so glad I had Bekah.  She's been a world traveler for quite awhile.  She is lucky enough to have every summer free (ah, the life of a school teacher), and she usually goes on some foreign trip during that time.

So she and I got to planning.  We always asked our companions what they thought and what they wanted (lest you think I was completely selfish during the planning), but everyone seemed fine to just let us plan it.  They always offered to help, but schedules seemed to get in the way.  Don't you hate when that happens?

So anyway, (I'm kinda scatter-brained this morning... sorry) we plan our trip in two halves, basically.  The one where we have adventures, and the one where we sit at the beach and do nothing.  I was really excited for the second part.  And the first part, but I really just wanted to sit at a beach or at a pool and read and just soak up the sun.  Call me lazy, I don't care.  But I had never taken an extended vacation like that until this summer (I had 2 week long beach vacations! wahoo!!).  So needless to say, I was excited!

The first half of the trip, we went inland.  We were about 20 minutes away from the Guatamala border, which was kinda cool and kinda scary.  Apparently Belize and Guatamala have been in a dispute for awhile, since Guatamala feels that they should own Belize, or something like that.  I sould research that a bit more...  We had such a great time in San Ignacio!  It was this quaint little town that just had a spirit all its own.  We made friends with the local people there and had a favorite cab driver named David.  He was this little old man and was so funny!  We hiked ruins (awe inspiring), hiked through a Mayan cave (one of the coolest things I think I've ever done) and went tubing through some Mayan caves.

There was lots of character in this town, and we had one of the best views from our balcony.  It was on a hill and overlooked the entire town and all the countryside around it.  It was seriously awesome!

Then came the part that I was most excited for.  The beach!!!  We had a day of transport with a few bus rides and a water taxi.  To get the resort, we had to take another boat from San Pedro on Ambergris Caye (prounced Key) about 10 minutes north.  It was so cool.  There was basically just a line of resorts.  As we got off the boat, there was someone there with 5 drinks welcoming us to our place!  They took us to our resort and it was like a home away from home.  It was so nice!  It really was just like paradise in a bottle.  Mom, I'm petitioning that we go to Belize for our next family reunion.... :)

While on the island, we mostly just sat at the pool.  Why not the beach, you ask?  Well, the water was absolutely beautiful.  Super clear and warm and that pretty blue color.  But the beach itself wasn't the type that you want to go spend a lot of time at.  The sand was just hard and compact and it only lasted for about 10-15 feet.  So we hung out at the pool.  There was one day that Bekah stayed in the same chair for about 5 or 6 hours straight (maybe even more, I can't quite remember). 

We did have one grand adventure while we were at the beach.  We went fishing!  Now, for those of you that know me in relation to fish, you know that I don't like them.  AT ALL.  IN ANY FORM.  They freak me out, dead and alive.  Ew, gross.  BUT, I went snorkeling and swam with the fishes!  And I at fish voluntarily.  And I even ordered shrimp for dinner one night (not fish, I know, but still seafood and still not high on my list).  It was so fun!  There's a great story from that fishing trip, but retelling it just doesn't do it justice.  It involved me trying to real in a barricuda, while David stabbed a fish.  I'll try and find the video that we have of it and post it sometime.  If you want to hear the story, just ask, and I'll gladly retell it. :)

It was just so nice to have a week of absolutely no responsibilities and no time.  Especially on the island, we had no plan and usually had no idea what time it was.  I don't want to live like that forever, but man, it was so nice!  Until next time, Belize.  You treated me well!!!


The view from our Hotel in San Ignacio.



At some of the Mayan ruins, Xunantunich.
From left to right, Me, Laura, Whitney, David (our guardian and protector for the trip), Bekah


Our awesome pool at the resort... :)


My favorite thing to do.  And yes, I brought the floatie with me.


Me... fishing.  I'm glad this is documented.  It might not happen again...


The beach with the pretty blue water.  And a coconut tree.


We woke up early one day to watch the sunrise.  Another surprise if you  know me at all.


Goodbye Belize!!!

Out of the Country

What a week!  The subject of travel always seems to come up in conversations.  Inevitably, the question of "Have you been out of the country?" always comes up.  I never quite knew how to answer that question before this past week.  I had been to Canada for about 15-20 minutes before the border was closed and we didn't even stop the car to get out...

So technically yes, I had been out of the country.  But it was so lame, that I never quite counted it.

I now have a definite answer to that question.

:)

Yes, I have been out of the country.  Where did I go?  Oh, a little country called Belize.  Never heard of it?  That's ok.  I hadn't heard of it until one of my good friends volunteered there two summers ago.  It's sandwiched between Mexico and Guatemala and it's right on the Carribean.  Paradise, or about as close as  you can get.

It was such a fun vacation.  In my mind, it had everything that a Carribean vacation should have.  We had a bit of adventure, lots of sun and laziness, and plenty of laughs.  And we left with the longing of still wanting to be there.  Perfect, right???

I'll post pictures later and actually talk about what we did and the adventures that we went on, but now, I'm just enjoying the fact that I have been out of the country.

Finally.

Adventure July

One of my old roommates used to have "Adventure" days with a bunch of our friends.  They would dedicate one night a week to be their "adventure" day.  One year it was Wednesdays.  Another year it was Thursdays.  Then if there was something cool happening on another day of the week, they'd change the evening for just that week.  I wasn't able to, or didn't go most of the time.  Not that we didn't like each other, but we just did different things with our free time.  Although some of their adventures sounded pretty great... :)

My month of July of this year has reminded me of Heather's "Adventure" days.  But instead of it being a day every week, it's been every weekend and 2 of the 4 weeks.

At the beginning of the month, my family had a mini reunion of sorts.  5 of the 8 kids in my family live on the east coast (4 of us in Virginia), so we all rented a beach house down in the Outer Banks for a week.  There were 9 adults and 9 kids, including a one month old baby.  It was fun to see part of my family and just have a week to relax.  Until the last year or so, we've never had many girls in my family.  Now that there are a bunch of baby girls, my Mom made them all matching dresses and we took some pictures.  Here are a few:

The day after I got back from the beach, one of my good friends from BYU came to visit me for the weekend. He's in Connecticut for the summer, so he took the bus down and we spent most of the weekend just catching up and having fun.  It was also my brother's birthday that weekend, so I had to make him a cake!  I think I'm going to have to try that recipe again.... Mmmmm, it was good!

Ryan and me by the Washington Monument.  Sometimes I do love being in DC... :)

This past weekend was awesome!  Thursday night a few friends and I went to the midnight showing of Batman.  I still think I liked the second one best, but this one was super good!  I LOVED the ending.  On Friday a bunch of friends and I went to upstate New York to go see the Hill Cumorah Pageant.  I haven't seen it in over 10 years, and that was probably the most recent out of anyone in the group.  Some had never seen it.  It was a super fun weekend.  We split into 2 different groups.  One went to Niagra Falls and the other went to Hershey.  We ended up being in 2 minivans and just drove around everywhere in them.  It was great and SUCH a fun weekend!  I'm kinda tired now, but it was so worth it. :)

This is what 3am looks like

The group altogether in Palmyra!

The biggest adventure of the month is yet to come though!!!  This next Saturday I am leaving for.... wait for it... BELIZE!  If you don't know where that is (I didn't until a friend went there 2 years ago), it is in the Caribbean just south of Mexico and east of Guatemala.  It has the second best Scuba diving in the WORLD (too bad I don't have my scuba license...)  But the snorkeling should be fantastic!  I'll let you know ALL about it when I get back.  

Sounds like a fun July, right??? :)

Almost Dying

I wish that the title of this post was not serious.

First things first.  I'm ABSOLUTELY fine.  No injuries or scrapes or anything like that.  Not even any resounding psychological trauma.  But there was a serious chance that I could've died or been seriously injured about a week and a half ago.

This is a short story.

My roommate and I were visiting her hometown of Princeton for the weekend.  It's a really cute town that just has that country charm.  Seriously, it reminded me why I want to not live by a city for most of my life.  I hate traffic...

Anyway, after church on Sunday, we were driving around seeing some sites.  The road we were driving on on our way back to her house was this normal country road.  Two lane, no shoulders, 25 mph speed limit.  As we drove down this road, we saw a car coming from the other direction.  Not thinking anything about it (because let's be honest, who normally thinks about it when a car is coming in the other direction?), we just keep driving.  The other car swerves, and in my mind they were attempting to miss something.  No.  That wasn't it.  They swerved completely into our lane and didn't move.  And they were going at least 45 mph, if not over 50.  And they just kept coming.  Head on.

Luckily, I was not driving.  I have no clue what I would've done.  Bekah had her head in tact a little more than I did and slowed waaaaay down and laid on the horn.  At the last moment the car swerved back into their own lane and kept driving.  We thought that they may have fallen asleep or something, but as we looked at her face, there was no surprise or shock or anything like that.  She had the most dazed look on her face.  I hate to accuse anyone of anything, but I seriously think she was super high.  I really wonder sometimes...

Bekah and I were definitely dazed for awhile after that.  She would've pulled off into the ditch if the lady hadn't have swerved back into her lane when she did, but the end of the car probably still would've been hit and who knows what that would've done.  Or we could've been hit head on.  And seen it coming.  I feel that that would not be fun, to see an accident coming and not be able to do anything about it.

It was definitely a scary moment in my life.

Addendum

Apparently my strep throat story was not quite complete when I wrote that post.  On Friday night, I noticed a rash on both of my shoulders and my forehead.  Ughhh, really???  Not fun.  So I called the urgent care place on Saturday just to make sure it wasn't something that I should be worried about.  When they called me back, they said I should probably come back in just to make sure.

So I went in, thinking I'd be there for 30 minutes, at the most! 

2 hours later... I had a bruise on my hand and was feeling sick again.  Man, why do doctor's offices seem to make you feel more sick than when you got there?  So they tested me for Mono (luckily that came back NEGATIVE), and couldn't find a good vein except in my hand.  So in went the needle!

They decided that I must be allergic to the medicine that they gave me, so they changed my medication, and voila, 2 days later, I feel back to normal!  No wonder it took so long for me to feel good.  Hopefully I'm done with that debacle!

What an interesting week

Ok.  

So this week started off to be really awesome and has just gotten more interesting every day (an not necessarily in a good way).  It started last Saturday morning.  After arriving at the Outer Banks at 1 in the morning, my fellow road trippers and I decided to sleep outside instead of crashing on the floor in the common room (we claimed it was to get more sleep and have more quiet).  Little did I know, a little creep crawly friend of mine was just begging to sleep next to me.  Luckily I didn't see it, but it definitely saw me and decided to take part of my cheek as a souvenir.  So as I awoke bright and early hoping to be at least somewhat refreshed to be at the beach and hearing the waves of the ocean all night, all I could think of was "wow, my cheek feels itchy and puffy..."  

I turned to my friend Whitney and asked if there was something on my cheek.  Her eyes got HUGE!  Ok, not really, but they did get big and she did say that my cheek was really swollen.  I went to look at it and yup, it looked like I just got my wisdom teeth out.  What a great way to start a long weekend at the beach, huh??

Luckily, I was able to get some allergy medicine (Thanks Chelsey!) and go buy some benedryl cream which helped a TON!  By noon the swelling was mostly gone and most people couldn't tell that anything was wrong.  Whew!  Crisis averted!

Fast forward a few days.

Let's start with Tuesday.  I drove into my parking spot around 1:45 in the morning.  I don't want to do another day of driving like that again anytime soon.  So when I woke up with a sore throat, it just seemed normal to me.  I often get colds/sore throats when I don't get enough sleep.  I just thought that if I went to bed early that night that it'd help to make up for it.  I went to dinner with a friend and then came home and basically crashed since I felt so tired and just ikky.  The next morning I didn't feel any better, but I still got up and went to work.

Bad decision.

I lasted about 2.5 hours and then lysoled everything on or around my desk, and went home and crashed for a few hours.  I tried to loosen my muscles and then as I started to think I felt better, I looked at my throat with a flashlight.  There were big white spots on the back of my throat.  That couldn't be a good sign.  So I went to the urgent care, even though I was sure I wasn't THAT sick and couldn't have a fever.  

Definitely wrong on both of those points. :(

Good news:  The Strep Throat test came back negative.  

Bad News:  There are at least 5 different strains of strep that they didn't test for.

So on the bright side of the week, I had a good excuse to get 2 extra days of sleep and movie watching in.  And I guess I got sort of a 4 1/2 day weekend...

But now I know what strep feels like, or at least what something like strep feels like.  (I still don't know if I actually had it or if it was just something similar)  Who knows???  

My adventures

I want to apologize for my lack of posting. I made a goal this year to have more adventures and to be busier. Little did I know that that would very much come true! I am booked almost every night of every week. Usually it's with the same things each day of the week, but even still. I have things that I should do and then other things that I choose to do. It's kinda hectic, and it's problematic when something else needs to be done (like laundry and getting a tire fixed.) So here's my usual weekly breakdown (after work, of course):

Monday: FHE
Tuesday: Neighboring Stake's Institute
Wednesday: Bowling
Thursday: My Institute
Friday: Usually some basketball game is going on, bday parties, other parties, etc.
Saturday: Also usually some basketball game going on
Sunday: Church

So although Basketball is ending next week, I'm sure my weekends will still be busy. And in the spring I'm on a softball team, so that's going to start sometime soon. I somehow never have free time to just relax. I haven't had time to watch a movie in a loooong time! And I LOVE movies! But I honestly do love constantly having something to do. It is a big difference from my last year in Provo when I felt like I never had anything to do. Anyway, this is my apology for never posting about the adventures that I've had. Mostly because I'm never home to grab the pictures of said adventures. Besides that schedule, I do make time to do some random things and have fun with friends. This last week I basically lived and Shauna and Bekah's house. That was fun! Anyway, hopefully I'll get a bit more time to write about my real adventures, but for now, this will have to do!

President's Day Birthday

So before it gets too far past my birthday (and it was a month ago... oops), I figured I'd write a little bit about my day. I am officially a quarter of a century old. Weird... Anyway, I don't know why, but I've always loved my birthday. No matter what I have on the day, it's always been fantastic. This year was no exception!

It was honestly a pretty chill day. I slept in (Yay for birthdays falling on a National Holiday!), made chocolate cake, played racquetball, ate a fantastic dinner at Benihana, and had some friends over for cake in the evening. It was just a fun day that I was able to spend with good friends!

When I lived in Utah, I had a tradition of going to Tucanos on President's day for my birthday. For those of you that don't know, Tucanos is a Brazilian meat buffet. It's making my mouth water just thinking about it... Since there isn't one out here in DC and those types of restaurants are super expensive, we went to a hibachi place instead. So we got dinner and a show! Fantastic! The only thing was that Steve wasn't able to come. He had to work... :( Oh well. That's life, right? He made it for cake later, so at least I still got to see him!

My friend April was super nice to me and spent all day with me. Seriously, she's so great! She also made my birthday cake. It was a 6 layer chocolate cake. We recreated P.F. Chang's Great Wall of Chocolate. If you haven't had it, you need to go try it because it's absolutely delicious. She was so great to do that for me!

Anyway, it really was a pretty chill day and I was able to rest and relax and just enjoy talking to some old friends. That was probably my favorite part. I talked to some of my best friends in the world, who, unfortunately for me, don't live by me. So it was good to talk to them and catch up. It was a fantastic day!

Groundhog Day

Ok, so before February ends, I need to write about one of, if not my FAVORITE unappreciated holidays. GROUNDHOG DAY! I think there are two main reasons that I like this day so much:

1) It's in February and I just love February (mostly because of my birthday, I think)
2) It's in Pennsylvania! Yay for my home state!

In case you hadn't heard, Punxsutawney Phil predicted 6 more weeks of winter. Although seeing as how on the east, we've only had a few days here and there that have even FELT like winter, I'm still waiting for it. Here's to hoping that we'll have the snowstorm of the century in March. Anyone with me???

Anyway, back to Groundhog Day. The groundhog website says that he's always 100% correct (of course) but in all actuality, he's usually wrong. But we should still celebrate the day, right? And what better way to do that than to watch the movie that made the day a phenomenon, Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day"

And along with watching the movie, I thought I would recreate some cute and yummy groundhog cookies that my sister and I made last year. We got the idea from our friend Mandy. Sad that Sharon couldn't be here to make them with me this year though! Not the neatest things ever (when I make them at least), but super cute. And what is the best part, you may ask? Eating all the messups and scraps... Yummy!
I got kinda lazy with the "grass" this year, but you still can get the idea. Anyway, it was a fun night filled with yummy treats and good entertainment and great friends. Till next year Punxsutawney Phil!

It's a SMALL world

Most of what I post on here is going to be about the fun and random things that I do, seeing as how life is too short to not go on adventures. I will, however, occasionally post things that I've been thinking about recently. This is one of those posts. It has been amazing to me how small this world really is. It seems that everywhere I go, I find people that are connected to important people from my past. And even if they're not connected to people in my past, there's some story there from before. I know this isn't true with every single person that I meet, but it just seems to happen a lot. Here are some of the crazy connections that I've made over the last few years:

-My freshman roommate was in my older sister's ward in Boston, and we first met when we were 14.
-Another friend freshman year used to live in my stake for a few years while we were teenagers.
-My best friend's older brother and my older brother became best friends in the dorms, which is consequently where we met and became best friends as well (as well as I met all of her best friends when I was 15 at EFY).
-A good friend's great uncle (or some strange relation like that) was my grandma's good friend and I met him on several occasions.

Now, these are definitely from awhile ago. These friends and I put the stories together years and years ago and it's something that we always seem to come back to. I wonder why small world stories are so fascinating? Maybe because it really shows that everyone is interconnected and it helps us know that we aren't alone here. I don't know, it's just a thought.

The reason that I've been thinking about this lately is because the last few days I have had my mind blown with small world stories. And that really doesn't happen to me often. But it just happens to be that these particular stories hit closer to home than usual. It's been good friends that I have now are telling me of crazy connections with other really good friends, or people that I was really close to in the past.

There was one recently where a really good friend of mine served her mission with this boy that I sort of dated a few years ago. I had even told her about this boy awhile ago, but didn't bother using names because what were the chances that she knew him, right?? She's in DC and he was part of my Provo life. But we were talking about another random mutual friend that we had and she asked about this particular guy. And I had actually run into his old roommate a few weeks ago too. Talk about coincidence, right?

And the night before we put that together, I had my mind blown with a crazy connection that is just a little too hard to explain without saying names, but I'm going to try anyway. Basically, I had heard about this random boy from one friend and he ended up being really, really good friends with another one of my best friend's fiancee. This boy was planning on coming out for their wedding, but is unable to make it. Just the fact that I heard about this boy previously and knew that he was thinking of coming out for a wedding that I am going to attend was just a crazy connection to me. There are a few more details to it, but that's the basic jist. It doesn't sound as crazy written down as it really is, trust me.

I have definitely made a few others in the last few months that have been so ridiculous. It really is amazing to me how small this world is. I absolutely LOVE it though! I love finding these random connections between people and realizing that I have connections with people that I've never even met before. Or finding out that someone that I am good friends with NOW used to be close to someone that I was close to years ago. Or my favorite is when I find out that one of my friends now is someone that I used to hear about years ago.

It's great, isn't it? What are some of YOUR small world stories??