Monday, December 24, 2007

Ok, I'm ready now

I'm finally ready and able to talk about our super fun vacation-our Caribbean cruise. Before we left I thought the whole time I'd think-Oh, I can't wait to blog about that, I can't forget to put that in the blog- but...I didn't. Not one time. Maybe that's why it's taken me so long to actually get on here and do it. That, and I know it's going to be a long one because so many things happened and we took so many pictures! I have a video clip I want to post, so I'm going to try to figure that out...I might have to call April to help me, though. (It's now Monday morning, Merry Christmas Eve!!! I wrote that first part Sunday night and Cody and I tried for over THREE hours to figure out the video clip....but obviously we didn't.)
Our cruise was amazing, though! We left from Fort Lauderdale, FL on the 8 of this month. When we first got on the ship our rooms weren't ready yet so they told us to go eat some food! We were pretty excited about that! They have a giant buffet with loads and loads of food, and of course you can eat as much as you want, so we took good advantage of that! And the buffet was at the very back of the boat so there were windows all across the back where you could eat and look at the ocean, or Cuba if you were lucky! So it was pretty awesome. When we got to our room we realized...It was TINY! Our bathroom reminded me of the bathroom on an airplane-the toilets I swear were the same, every time they flushed it sounded like a bomb went off-and the shower we called our "time capsule" because it was so tiny. When we first got there we actually had two seperate beds, too! We called our stateroom attendant and she was from another country and said when she heard the name Stacey she thought I was a boy, so she gave us two beds. Oh well, she put them back together so it was fine. Our room didn't really bother us that much with it's tininess because we weren't there very often, so it wasn't a big deal. That first night we ate dinner in the grand dining room and the couple, well, the two friends-they were always talking about how they were NOT a couple!- that sat with us was Sebastien and Virgine, from France. (We still don't know how to say her name; after she told us and we were like....come again? Sebastien just said it was like Virgina, but with an "e" at the end.) It was so cool to talk to them and become their friends! When they first sat down and said they were from France I was like-I can't WAIT to tell Catheryn! I'll have to make sure to keep a record of this I guess. :)

OH! Before I forget. Brittany, at the beginning when we do the lifejacket thing, we're all split up into different groups and it says what group you're on on the front of your life jacket. We were in A1 and so we went to the Ixtapa Lounge to meet the rest of our group. We sat there for about 20 minutes and they said if anything was to happen make sure to go there. Then it was over! So it wasn't too bad. The lifejackets weren't super comfortable though...but I wouldn't mind if it was saving my life!


The first day I got pretty sick, I didn't throw up at all but I could feel every little movement the ship made, and it built up until I felt like I was going to throw up! Cody told me it was just like a mini-earthquake, which I thought was kinda cool....until I realized-5 days?! 5 days with a mini-earthquake? Oh man..We bought some medicine and about an hour later I was fine. It made me sooooooooo tired, though, which was a bummer, but oh well.

On Sunday we just got to play on the ship and hang out. We played shuffleboard, which kinda made me feel like an old person, but is actually really fun after Cody taught me how to play! Cody got a few perfect hits....I just kept trying.

That night was the formal night in the dining room, so we got to dress up! It was really fun.
They had a GIANT Christmas tree on the ship, which was awesome, so that last one is us infront of it. It had so many cool ornaments on it! After dinner we went to see RONDELL SHERIDAN perform his comedy. I was SO SO SO excited because he's the dad on the Disney Channel show, That's So Raven...Which I LOVE! He's performing here, you can't really tell, cause we sat so far up. But he was SO SO SO funny. At first I was a little freaked out because he talked about being drunk and wasted and I was like...Um...You're supposed to be Raven and Cory's dad, Mr. Baxter...The owner of the Chill Grill...What are you talking about?! Can Disney endorse this?! But after I got over that shock, everything else was hilarious. (that's us...having fun with Raven's dad)

Monday we went to Jamaica!!!!! It was AWESOME. And SO SO SO pretty.
We loved it. We had booked a tour with an ATV company there called Wilderness Tours. We only read good reviews about them and they were so good. I wasn't scared of them at all! They picked us up from the dock and gave us a little riding lesson. Of course, Cody beat everyone with how good he was, so he got to go at the very end of the line! They made us wear helmets and googles, for safety of course. I thought it was kinda lame at first. I was like, Um, hi. I ride Grandpa Dobson's atv allllllll the time and he doesn't make me wear this stuff and I've never gotten hurt...Oh well, everyone had to wear it so I didn't feel too much like a dork. They took us up to a really, really, really high point, it was like 6 miles from the beach where we started, and it was SO pretty.


They did have some weird looking cows though... I wanted to say-I'm from Cow Country, USA..Let me tell you how cows should look...but they seemed like happy little cows so I didn't want to hurt their feelings.



And of course, beautiful Jamaican flowers.



After our tour the nice man that picked us up from the dock that worked for the tour people took us to the shopping mall, called..something. It started with an S. We walked around the shops and at one I took out one of those hats that has the gross dreadlocks attached and told Cody to take my picture. He said to give him the camera and I was like...I don't have it. I gave it to you. He was like-I don't have it either. We had left it in the guy's van! MAJOR CRISIS! We immediately left the store and were freaking out. We tried to figure out a payphone, but we needed a calling card and didn't know where to get one. A couple rude Jamaican people started talking to us about braiding my hair and buying calling cards and I wanted to just yell at them-LEAVE US ALONE! I DON"T LIKE YOU! But another guy came over to Cody and shook his hand. Without me knowing, he asked Cody if he wanted to smoke some weed with him in the alley! He of course said no, so the guy asked-Oh, do you already have some (weed)? Cody said, No, I don't smoke. The strange high man was like, Oh, much respect mon. Then asked if we wanted to use his cell phone to call the people. We said thank you, thank you, thank you! (I don't think I would've said yes if I had known he wanted to smoke weed with us...but pretty much everyone wanted us to smoke, so..) He called the tour company and told them to come back to bring us our camera. After about 10 minutes of calling and waiting with this guy he got it figured out and when it was done, said, "Give me some money for beer." We were like, ok, whatever and gave him 5 bucks. $9 down there can buy a giant thing of Jamaican rum, so we thought he should be pretty happy. We waited for about an hour and the guy brought our camera back to us. We were so happy. When we saw him drive up and he handed it to us I felt like I started breathing again! Like I had been holding my breath that whole time.
After that we realized we were really hungry, so we went to The Jerk Center. We wanted some really good jerk chicken and had asked our drivers where the locals went to get some. He told us the Jerk Center was the best. It really was AMAZING. Oh, so good. I had chicken and Cody had pork. I wish we had taken pictures of our food! They just cut up everything all together, so every bite I was spitting something out. Bones, tendons...Oh yum. One piece I SWEAR was the head, but I didn't realize it and gave it to Cody to eat. After he ate the only part he could-which we think had to have been the brain-he put it back on my plate and I was like..Oh man, that was chicken head.
We went to Margaritaville and I stopped in to go to the bathroom. In the stall next to me was a bottle of beer on the floor and vomit everywhere...Jamaica really isn't a very clean place.
There was a little stand outside of Margaritaville that sold coconuts that you drank the milk out of. Cody didn't really want one, but I did so we got one. I should've known it'd be gross..There was a rat running to and from the stand. I drank the milk once and was done. I let Cody drink the rest. It was only $2, so it wasn't a huge purchase, but Cody doesn't waste money! He drank almost all of it.
We were kinda bummed because all the beaches cost money to go to, so we snuck on one and swam for about 15 minutes before getting kicked out. Oh well, we got to swim in Jamaica at least!

That night Cody decided to teach me a lesson about how bad gambling is. He had found a one-dollar piece that you could only use there. We went to the casino on the ship and I picked my slot machine. I think his lesson went a little backwards, because after I lost my dollar I was like-I need more money! I can win, I just need more money!!! Luckily he didn't give me more and we left the casino before I could get more hooked!
The next day, Tuesday, we went to Grand Cayman. SOOOO much cleaner than Jamaica!!! And the only people that would yell anything at us, asking if we wanted stuff, was when we first got off and people were asking if we wanted to do tours. In Jamaica it was EVERYWHERE! We walked to the Seven Mile Beach and went snorkling ALL DAY LONG. It was SO awesome. This is part of the beach we were at.
We had a blast. We had a disposable underwater camera and only took like 10 pictures, so we haven't developed it yet. There were SO many cool fish! I saw a sting ray, and by the time I called Cody over to see it, it was gone, so we didn't get a picture of that. It kinda freaked me out at first, but it was just so exiciting that I forgot to be scared! We went to another part that had a sunken ship and it was SO neat. We explored the boat and I felt like Arielle from The Little Mermaid. We even saw a pufferfish! That was really exciting, but it was kinda scared of us so it was hiding under a big metal piece of something. I picked up some rocks and tried to drop them on him, and I swam RIGHT up in his face, trying to make him mad and puff up, but he never did. It's probably a good thing, because Seth told me later that they're poisonous! I was trying to remember if it could hurt me when I was swimming with it, but the only thing about pufferfish I could remember was the one from Finding Nemo. And whenever it puffed up I thought it was hilarious, so I was like-Pufferfish are funny!!! It won't hurt me!
After we were done snorkling we walked around town. There were pirates and chickens EVERYWHERE! Well, statues of pirates, but real chickens!



I know...Not a chicken, but still cool!

Every night when we came back to our room our stateroom attendant had made a cool animal for us out of towels, just like the commercials!!! The first night I thought they had given us a new pair of sunglasses...but really she just found ours and put it on the animal.

The first night was an aardvark.

Then a dog

And a monkey!

Then a stingray!

We even got to go ICE SKATING in the middle of the CARIBBEAN!!



So, all in all, our cruise was amazing and we loved every second of it!

Merry Christmas!!!

3 comments:

james & erin said...

holy smokearonis that was long. too long too read, but i enjoyed the pictures. :) see you soon!

LynnEl Springer said...

It wasn't too long for me! I read every bit of it! I was glad to have some explanation for all the pictures that I had already seen from when Cody posted them earlier. I loved it! Sounds like you had a really great time! How was your Christmas? I realized this morning that each time we talked yesterday, that I was only helping you with a recipe, and I didn't really get to talk to you about your Christmas...How did the fruit pizza turn out? What else did you cook? What did you guys get for Christmas? And was Cody's favorite present the one I gave him??? Christmas-Colored Candy Corn?? Did you like the cruise ship ornament? I'm glad you liked the apron! I loved making it! Back to work today. Ugh.

April said...

looks like you guys had fun!!! Someday I hope we can make it to a tropical island again :) Merry Christmas!

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