Hello! This post could have been titled Hannah doesn't want to study for her Insurance test. I have been very motivated to be unmotivated to study for this test.. I'll give you a little background on this test thing before I move forward with recapping my awesome Mexico vacation.. My work pays for us to take insurance tests to better ourselves at our jobs and when we get a designation, they pay us some moolah for doing a good job.. I have told myself that I am now allowed to check out anymore library books until I have taken my test.. This is a big rule in my life considering I successfully have read 5 books in the past 10 days.. I have to now focus my reading on insurance concepts.. Yay... I did discover a new author the last time I went to the library though.. Her name is Kristin Harmel (this just goes to show that I love all Kristins).. She incorporates Hollywood along with humor and a love story in her books. I read How to Sleep With a Movie Star, The Art of French Kissing and The Blonde Theory.. Definitely check her out if you want a fluffy read.. Okay so as promised, a post about Mexico.. Enjoy!!
I was so excited to go to Mexico for 5 days but I must admit I was a little nervous too.. I am sometimes a glass half full kind of girl and I was a little worried that something would go wrong.. I mean, I was spending 5 whole days with another couple and I have to admit, that I may not be the best person to hang out with for 5 continuous days.. The other couple we went with were one of our best friends and I didn't want anything to jeopardize this. Heck, sometimes I may not want to spend 5 continuous days with my own husband. What if sometime crazy happens on vacation and we can't be friends anymore? I am such a worrier.. I am sure I am going to have a heart attack at the age of 50.. Luckily, we all got along perfectly and had a great time. Curt and I laughed because after about 24 hours of being separated from Michael and Kristin, we had to admit we missed being with them everyday. I just think we need to plan another vacation soon. :) I will give a little plug for our travel agent/agency, they were amazing! We had a little problem with our bank on Thursday morning (the only real issue we had for the entire trip.. Make sure you always double check that your bank knows you are going to be out of the country...) and our travel agent called us and helped us through everything. Also, they told us to travel the week we did because it would be way cheaper and the hotels would be empty because it was right after Labor Day and they were spot on. We were told that the week before the hotel was at full capacity and the week after they would be at 80% but our week they were at about 40-50% capacity. This was amazing because we didn't have to wait for anything and fight through a crowd for anything..
This is the view from our room. It was absolutely amazing. I honestly wish I was there currently. The sand was so white and the water was an amazing blue color and was pretty clear. What this photo doesn't show you is that it had about 2054278792% humidity. We had a note in our room stating that Riveria Maya (where we were) has one of the highest percent of humidity in the whole Caribbean.. Boy was that true.. The first night I did my hair all pretty and walked outside and it was completely ruined and wet in about 3 minutes. It was pretty amazing really how humid it was. I kept a pack of gum in my room and took it back to Missouri with me and now the paper is glued to the gum because it got so wet in the room and then dried.. We got so lucky because it only rained for about an hour one day at about 9pm. We were in the lobby which was completely open when the rain poured down. The hotel workers had the lobby closed up in literally 2 minutes. It was like watching a Nascar pit crew (this will probably be my only Nascar reference as I hate this awful "sport"). Otherwise the weather was a beautiful sunny and 85 degrees. Perfect weather for every white person on earth to get scorched by the sun. I luckily didn't get to sunburned.. However, we all were very amused by the sunburned patterns on our fellow resort goers.. Some people did not believe in any sunscreen and looked like a red Christmas light and some people used sunscreen but only it patches.. I couldn't help but wonder what their crazy peeling will look like later.. Man I am a weird person...
We did venture off of the resort to a snorkeling/zipling resort called Xel-Ha. See photo below :)
I was a little hesitant to go off of the resort.. Hello, I could get kidnapped and die! Okay really, I have only tried snorkeling once before this time and it was an epic fail. Random fact about Hannah, I do not swim well and I do not float well and I do not breathe well. All of these combinations do not bode well for snorkeling and spending all day snorkeling did not sound too wonderful... I only got talked into it because Curt was so, so thrilled about going snorkeling.. This was one of those pick your battles moments.... If we traveled to one of the best snorkeling places in the world and I didn't make Curt feel like he and I wanted to go then I may have failed as a wife.. Plus I was excited about zipling. So on Friday morning off we went to this park. It was actually really cool. It was a 60+ acre through a rain forest with a river leading into the bay plus you could eat and drink all day long.. This was definitely an added perk.. We started about by snorkeling in a freezing cold river.. We saw some neat fish but I was a little scared because there were all sorts of tree over hangs and rocks that made me think snake.. I would definitely not swim in these waters if we were in Missouri... It didn't help that on our way to the park our tour guide told us that we may see a few pythons on the paths and if we do, just to alert a park ranger.. They would be alerted by my screaming... Thankfully we did not see any snakes. We also did some cliff diving at this park. You would snorkel up to these marked off cliffs and go up the stairs and jump off. I believe the cliffs we jumped were about 15 feet up.. It was weird because after you jumped, you had enough time to think about hitting the water before you did. I was very scared to do this but I am glad I did because it was a ton of fun. I think the European guys snorkeling next to us were glad I did too because I totally lost my swimsuit top... in crystal clear water... Oops..... Zipling was a ton of fun too.. We ziplined over water and then we would have to let go. It was cool because you could see all the fishies while you were flying over them.. It was definitely worth the money.... Snorkeling was fun too.. We saw some really cool fish/jellyfish/shells. We saw a school of fish when we were snorkeling.. That was so amazing to think that a group of animals could swim so in sync. (It was so hard not to write N'SYNC... My 90's boy band obsession is coming out here....). We saw a really big rainbow sherbet colored fish. It was by far my favorite.. We saw a manatee from afar.. They may be my new favorite animal.. They are a sea cow! How awesome! I call myself a manatee and Curt tells me to stop but hey, I am drawn to these weird animals! I will admit that I got very tired of snorkeling at the end.. I held on to Curt and he told me when to look down.. My snorkeling routine was looking at the fish for about 20 seconds then come up and remove my mouth piece and cough out all of the water I swallowed.. I have no idea why but I am terrible at breathing through my nose.. I had to laugh because I am pretty sure Michael had the same routine as me.. Apparently only Kristin and Michael could comprehend the basics of snorkeling.. Go Figure!!
The rest of our trip was spent eating, drinking and relaxing by water. We happened to go to Mexico on their independence day which was a very big deal to them and rightfully so. We went to Jamaica on their independence day also. Apparently Curt and I have a knack for going to other countries when they are having a huge celebration.. It was cool to see another county's patriotism.. The food was so good. We had a pretty normal buffet for breakfast and lunch. The omlet they made for breakfast was amazing. Dinner though was amazing. We sampled all of their dinner restaurants. We ate at a Mexican, French, Seafood and Steak, Italian and Japanese restaurant. We had an appetizer, main course and dessert at every place we went. The resort also had a coffee shop with delicious cakes and pastries.. I had a mocha frappe every day with dessert.. It is safe to say that I gained about 10 lbs or so.. Don't worry, my friend Kristin ate just as much as me but she ran 10 miles each day...... I didn't even know where the gym was... I will give you a short overview of the drinks.. They were so delicious.. I can't ever order a margarita again but they can't touch how amazing they were in Mexico. I drank about a million of these delicious drinks in 5 days.. My liver is thanking me for being back into my normal routine of not drinking tequilla everyday. :)
We had to be dragged out of resort after five days.. None of us wanted to go.. We did have a little laugh on the way to the airport.. We had to pick up this very tall man at a different hotel to take to the airport with us.. Apparently the bellman was having trouble/was slow at getting his bag down to the lobby after the man gave him the bag.. Our little driver was upset because we were going to be late (he must be on a strict schedule because we were plenty early..) and told the very tall man that he was going to leave him.. The tall man told the driver that he couldn't do anything and nicely asked him if he wanted him to superman the bag to him.. We couldn't stop laughing about supermaning the bag.. Luckily we got the airport in plenty of time and had a nice flight.. We went through Apple vacations and they chartered DirectTv and 4 movies on the plane of us so the flight we quick. I watched Brave and Dark Shadows and Curt watched the Avengers.. I'm highly recommending Apple Vacations as they were awesome....
I'm sad to say that I think this may be our last big vacation for awhile. We are expecting some changes in our life hopefully soon that will probably leave us with less disposable income to travel for awhile but I am going to go back sometime.. I have placed this on my bucket list.. I will leave you with photos of Curt and I and Kristin and Michael on our vacation. Notice the sweet tan as it is now sweet white.. As always, thanks for reading!
H
Happy Wednesday which feels like Tuesday which is a week from Hannah's Mexico vacation! I'm so stoked about my vacation. I can't wait to spend a week not thinking about insurance, housework, grocery shopping, laundry or what I am going to eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner for an entire week.. I have to admit that I may be a little stressed about having to go through an airport but since I have some company in this journey and my journey ends at the beach, I think I will survive this time. I won't be bringing my phone or computer for a whole week so that will be a little bit of a shock. I know everyone will be so sad that they can't read any blog posts probably for the next two weeks but hopefully my next post will be so awesome that you will forget. I do have some more sad news to report before I get into my topic...... Katy Perry and John Mayer were reported being back on after they were reported to be done... Boo! Hopefully my future girlfriend makes the right decision and leaves him.. I wouldn't mind being one of her friends! (Nice transition into my next paragraph.. My English teachers of the past would be happy by this transition.. However, they would not be happy by my troubles with commas..)
Friends bring me some of the best moments in my life. I can't resist being in a good mood/happy when I am surrounded by a group of people I love. However, I can't help but being in a terrible mood when something isn't right with my friends.. I was thinking today about all of my different groups of friends that I have in my life. When I started thinking of my different group of friends I immediately thought of my old friends.. Not my old friends age wise but my friends who have been in my life the longest aka Vienna friends. I have girlfriends that I remember being in kindergarten with way, way back in the day. Since I don't live in Vienna anymore I don't see my old friends as much as I really should. I know a lot of this is my fault.. I need to make a better effort to see them whenever I go home to see my family. I was home for 2 days this weekend and didn't have go see some of my best friends back home.. This scenario = bad job Hannah. It is funny how we all used to in high school all get together on the weekend at parties or friends house and now we see each other at class reunions or weddings. I do have about 2 really good girlfriends that I still see on a regular basis. I love when we get together we tell tales of all the crazy/fun times we had in high school. I realize that if I told these stories to non-Vienna people then they wouldn't understand or think it is funny but we tell the stories and are almost in tears because we think it is so funny. I guess it should have been told earlier that since I am from a small school that all the kids a few years older or younger than me could be considered my old friends. Curt and I have some of our best friends right now that we knew growing up but we were never super close until the last couple of years. I guess that goes to show people that you should never lose contact with people because they may end up being your best friends.
College... College is kind of a weird time for kids. It was weird for me because I was one of the few people in my group of friends that was actually going away to college. Most of my friends were staying in Vienna and just commuting to school. I found that most of my friends who stayed behind actually became better friends while I was drifting away in a far away land called college. I literally got dropped off at my dorm without a car and maybe knowing two whole people on campus, both of which were older. If that doesn't motivate you to make friends, I am really not sure what will. Luckily, my roommate in college was awesome and was in a similar boat as me. We had to become friends or we would spend a lot of time alone.. This is a prime example of how opposites attract. We had the same morals but otherwise we were completely opposite. I have no idea why her mom made her join a freshman sports interest group as I get texts from her on a regular basis on all sorts of sports questions but I am glad she did it. I kept making new friends at school but it still felt weird because I had all of my friends back home. I found myself having less and less to talk about with my old friends and spending more and more time with my new friends. I think this is a cruel joke that someone is playing on 18 year old girls.. It's not like they are confused/emotional enough much less adding this new scenario of balancing friends. In the end, I just had to find a balance between both of the groups.
After college.. I remember a little bit after I graduated college going through my phone and wondering what I should do with the phone numbers of my college friends/classmates. I knew that I would probably never need their numbers again but I felt like deleting them would be like a wiping them out forever and closing a chapter of my life.. It is like you aren't old but you aren't young anymore. What do you do with these old friends? Most of them were moving on and leaving you behind. Do you really want to do a long distance relationship with people who were your friends but not best friends? Sadly, I didn't put the effort in for a long distance relationship and deleted most of them out of my phone.. Luckily, most are my Facebook friends so they are never far away.. I can always creep on them when I want to keep up with them. How did people keep friends before Facebook? I stayed in the same town in which I graduated college. I can drive by all the places I used to go to hang out with my friends but not have the same friends to go with me. It was depressing. I was in a familiar place but all alone. I watched all of my friends pack up their belongings and years of memories and move off to their new lives while I was still here. Luckily my senior year of college I scored an internship at an insurance company in the same place as my college. I was offered a job before I even graduated college so I didn't have to deal with the finding a job stress. I didn't realize that when my college life was over and my college friends were leaving me that I would find new friends through work. I seriously work with some awesome people and they have become my new core group of friends. Curt happens to work with awesome people too and they have became my friends by default. I honestly don't know how people don't work because I would go crazy. I miss my co-workers and social interactions when I am gone from work.
I think I am kind of a weird girl. I love sports and bluntly talk like a man sometimes but I follow celebrities and like fashion/makeup.. I used to be a huge tomboy but I guess I realized that in order to communicate with 99% of the female population I would have to expand my knowledge of clothes/makeup/shoes. I always joke with Curt that I hate it when we go to our friend's house to watch major sporting events because all the wives/girlfriends like to sit and chat while I actually want to watch the complete game. I want to hear the commentary while the other girls like for it to be muted. It is hard for me to find girlfriends because we don't have a ton in common. We do have a couple friend where the girl, Nikky, likes sports a lot also. I told Curt that my new rule is that I will only go to major sporting events at other people's house if Nikky is going also. A friend of mine once joked that we are friends because we hate the same people. This made me laugh so hard because this is probably true.
Politics.. I need the November election to be over quick as I am not sure I can remain friends with some of my friends after I see their political statements/views. Curt tells me that I am a confused voter so my beliefs are all over the dang place. However, I cringe sometimes when I see a friend's/spouse view on politics posted all over Facebook. People probably think this about my views too which is fine. I think November needs to hurry up so we can all remain friends. I sometimes have to stop the urge to comment on people's posts because what they posted drives me nuts.. I have to say, I am doing pretty dang well. Please remember this in the future if I post something you dislike, don't blow up my status bashing people/ideas/things that I am obviously in favor of.... That is all I am going to say on politics.. Next topic!
Facebook... I can't type a lie on this blog so I must confess that I creep often on the Book. I feel like if you put it on a public site for my eyes to see then I won't feel bad about reading it. I have decided that I like some of my friends way more because of Facebook. I didn't know some of my friends could be so insightful/humorous/awesome because of Facebook. I feel like this about blogs too. I read a couple of blogs and it makes me like people way more than I did before.. However....... This goes both ways.. Facebook sometimes makes me dislike my friends.. I am not the best with grammar but I don't think I am horrible either. My Nazi grammar friend, Kristin, may disagree though.. Kristin and I have a game where we screen shot a status that someone posted on Facebook and text it to the other person and the other tries to top it... One of my biggest pet peeves is when people use the incorrect form of your/you're and there/their/they're... Look over there and you will see their beautiful new house. I bet they're happy with it......... I bet you're happy with your new Ipad purchase so you can creep on my blog....... If you struggle with these words, please use the last couple of sentences for references.. Facebook needs some spell check so I don't judge you.. I am a horrible person..
Family.. I normally thought of family as just that, family. However, the older I have gotten the more I am seeing family as my friends also. I remember severely disliking my siblings growing up. They were not my best friends to say the least.. I couldn't wait to leave the house to get away from them.. Now they don't live in my house but 2/3 live in Columbia with me. We now get together about once a week as friends to play games or just to hang out. Someone makes dinner and we all sit around a table and eat-something we used to hate doing. My family/friends have expanded as my brothers are now married. I'm really glad I have siblings now that I am older even though I hated it when I was younger. A great part of getting married was I also inherited Curt's sibling to be my family/friends. He has a great sister whom I love hanging out with as a friend as opposed to a sister-in-law.
I must confess that I really started thinking of the friends topic at a BBQ with friends on Labor Day. We hung out with 2 other couples and honestly had a great time. We all got along and actually enjoyed each other's company. One of the couples was an old friend from high school and his wife and the other was a couple who was friends with our old friends and then we became friends also. Curt and I were discussing this on the drive home and decided that we are finally extremely happy with our friends situation. We feel like we have surrounded ourself with positive/happy people. I am done having friends who are negative. When I am around those people I find myself conforming being two faced and not the person who I want to be. You can never ever have too many friends but you can have too many negative friends. Actually one negative friend is probably one too many. I am now to the point in my life that I am not striving to be accepted by people and will do whatever it takes to be someone else's friend. If those peole don't want to accept me for me then I don't need to change to be their friend. This is one of the reasons I enjoyed the group of friend we were with at the BBQ. I didn't feel pressure to dress up, act like a normal girl or be someone I am not.. It is a really good feeling to finally be in this place in life..
I know this post wasn't a normally fluffy Hannah post but I will promise one of those posts soon. Say a little prayer that I don't get kidnapped in Mexico like my father-in-law is sure will happen. As always, thanks for reading my rambling!
H
