To Hell and Back

   I have to document my trip somehow and since scrapbooking and journal writing just don't happen in my life I opt for the blog. I tried to have a mass amount of pictures hoping it would help summarize but I'm sure I still have plenty to read. 

   We left for Miami on May 31 and our ship left on June 1st. Our cruise went a little like this: left port, sea day, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, sea day, port. It was so much fun and I already want to do it again. 

   The first evening we went down to dinner and our table had 9 spots. There were 6 of us. I made my dad sit next to the empty chairs cause I had no clue who would show up. We ordered and about 2 minutes after we did 3 guys come strolling up to the table. Ben, Brian, and Michael. My first thought was this was going to be interesting. We've got the old folks, the middle aged folk, and me. I didn't know how well this was going to mesh. It took a good five minutes for everyone to get comfortable and thank heavens Brian is super outgoing and hilarious. I'm pretty sure if it weren't for him every night would have been more awkward than my jr high years. He was hysterical and had us all laughing every night. Michael and Ben were great too. They were all super nice and our dinners couldn't have been more fun. It seemed like outside of the dining room we ran into them on the ship every fifteen minutes. I wish this was an exaggeration but it really wasn't. They were basically my new best friends. (more on this later) 

I got to help make the cantaloupe flower arrangement in the main galley on the behind the scenes tour of the cruise ship. 

Jamaica 

   Our first stop on the cruise was Jamaica! I must say I was much more excited about Jamaica than Grand Cayman just because I mean, it's Jamaica! And I just wanted to see if they really said yeah mon. Everyone was so freaked out to be there and apparently everyone said people would be all over you when you got off the ship trying to sell you stuff. This honestly didn't scare me, I wanted the true Jamaican experience and I mean say no and keep walking. We got off the ship and there was no one there trying to get you to buy anything. The most chaotic thing was just trying to find the right driver and even then we had some help. Once we found our driver (Dean) we started our day of sight seeing.

   We went to Fern Gully which is a rain forest and the road is a river bed. It was insanely gorgeous and was just like a canyon all the way up. After that we headed to a look over that was close to Mick Jagger's house. That was crazy beautiful as well. You could see all of Ocho Rios. We got to go to a botanical garden after that which was so peaceful. It would be the perfect place to just sit and read a book. After that we drove a little ways to a delicious restaurant that without a tour guide no tourist would know existed. It was definitely yummy. We then requested of course to do some shopping. There was this local market that I really wanted to go to. Dean got one of the shop owners to take us around to find what we wanted. I wish we could've stayed there a little longer but alas we couldn't miss our boat. I did find some awesome stuff (more on that later). Overall I loved Jamaica! I would go back in an instant. Everybody else I was with however would probably choose otherwise. 

1. Jack in the box flowers   2. Mick Jagger's house (our tour guide called him Mr. Jagger haha loved it) 3. Botanical Gardens    4. Ate some authentic jerk chicken and pork at this place.     5. Made friends with this kitty. It helped me eat my jerk chicken...no joke.  I wanted to take it home.  

6. Streets of Jamaica   7. Fern Gully   8. Jamaican hardware store   9. View of Ocho Rios, Jamaica 

Our tour guide, Dean. He was super nice and best of all he legitimately said "yeah mon" all the time.

Oh, also, drivers in Jamaica have a death wish. They were insane! Talk about shooting the gap. 

Grand Cayman

   The day after Jamaica we were in the Grand Cayman. I was obviously less excited for this port because  I had no idea what to expect but I was excited none the less. We had to take a boat from the ship to the island because it was too shallow. I thought this would take forever to get everyone across but we were one of the first groups to go. My dad had rented a car for the day and after we picked that up we were off to a place I really wanted to see. Hell. Yep, there is legitimately a place named Hell. So to all of you that have told me to go to Hell or at least thought it at some point, don't fret, I've been. You should check it out though. 

   We went to the gift shops, took pictures of the signs, and were ready to go. Well we almost missed the reason it is called "Hell". Behind the post office there is a large area with black rock closely resembling lava rock. Basically it's limestone that has gone through way too much to even begin to explain. A commissioner from England was visiting this area in 1930 and shot at a bird above this large patch of rocks and missed and said, "OH HELL" Thus the place has since been known as Hell. 

   Favorite part of Hell? Walking into a gift shop and having them greet you with "How the Hell are ya?" 

This is what happens when you ask your grandma to use an iPhone to take a pic of your family. We eventually got the one on the right. 

   

   After Hell we headed to a turtle farm. I knew we were going to a "turtle farm" but apparently I never even really thought about what it would really be like or entail because when we got there I was blown away. Coolest thing I have ever done (well one of anyways). Talk about sea turtles. It was absolutely incredible. My favorite part was the petting zoo area. They had little ponds with young sea turtles in each. You were allowed to pick them up as desired. I went a little crazy and didn't want to leave this area at all. They were so fun to hold and look at that I can't even describe it. We left this area and looked at the rest and a short 5 minutes later I was back over there. My dad came with me and I'm sure he loved it just as much as I did. I wanted to hold the smallest turtle there and we waited a good 5 minutes for it to come out of the corner and over to where I could pick it up. I got it on the first try (some of them are freaky fast little swimmers). The one in the bottom left hand corner is the smallest one. We figured out he was some where between 1.5 - 2 years old.  

  I have a new love for sea turtles. They are amazing animals. The fact that they live around 100 years blows me away. They are closely on the same timeline as us humans. To be able to say I've held one makes me so happy. 

   Sadly, we did eventually have to leave the turtle farm. We headed down an unbeaten path that went into some mangroves. We stopped at an area and got to go to a beach for a minute. It wasn't a super sandy beach and you couldn't wade out too far because of stuff in the water but it was super fun. My mom found a hermit crab along the trail to the beach so I picked it up and brought it with. I played with it the majority of the time we were there until he got pissed of and ate my finger. I still have battle wounds. He had a right though. I mean that poor thing had more human contact than its species was ever intended for. 

And in case you were wondering what happens when you drive on the left side of the road... this is what happens. Gosh Dad, you need some better driving skills. Okay, Okay, my dad didn't do that. 

Grand Cayman was a success. I wish we could've stayed longer and done some stuff in the water. It was so unbelievably blue. Just gorgeous. The majority of the way back to the ship you could see the bottom because it was so clear. 

Sea Day

   Throughout the whole trip when they sang happy birthday to people in the dining room I would jokingly lean over to my dad and sing my name in place of the other persons. Well, apparently I never let this go and one night when they were singing to someone I looked over at Michael and Brian and told them it was my birthday. They were like really? and I told them no, it was tomorrow though. They went with it and I eventually told them I was only joking but they did find out through later conversation that I was turning 21 in one month. Well, it was the day we went to Grand Cayman, we had gotten back on the boat, freshened up and headed to dinner. Dinner was good and then it was dessert time. I got what I ordered and I look across the table and see our waiters with a dessert with candles on it walking towards us. I figured they were going to the table behind us. They walked by and everything was fine. Next thing I know they're standing right behind me singing to me. Oh. My. Gosh. Brian and Michael had decided it would be funny to tell them it was my birthday. Okay looking back on it, it was hilarious. At the time? Embarrassing... I mean, it wasn't my birthday! See I'm telling you, these guys were an absolute riot to be with. 

    Skip to the next day (our last sea day). We woke up early and did the behind the scenes tour. It was my mom, dad, and I and we get there and Brian had signed up for it too. It was a good 3 hours long. I was exhausted from Grand Cayman and tired from getting up so early for the tour so I decided I'd take a nap. When I woke up we went to play games and a member of our entourage decided to critique my napping tendencies. That was the last straw for me. I needed a break. I needed to get away but the I'm just going to walk around excuse only gets you so far. We were sitting at a bar playing a card game, it was on the main level of the ship and I just kept thinking to myself... Brian or Michael, please walk by. I figured we ran into them enough why not now? I waited and waited and finally decided it wasn't going to happen. Two seconds later I look up and see Michael. I yelled at him and he came over. He was reeled in and played 2 games with us. I'm not exactly sure what happened next but all I know was that he invited me to go with him and I was gone. We went and met up with Brian and then hung out till dinner. It was then that I was informed that you only had to be 18 to gamble. Say what!?! They told me they'd take me and well, I wasn't sure. We went to our very last dinner together and I asked my dad if I could go gamble. He handed me money. I don't know how much was there because I didn't take it and you have to use your ship card anyways. After dinner everyone else was going to the show and I didn't really want to. Michael told me he'd teach show me how to gamble so after dinner we headed to the casino. It made no sense to me. Give this machine $1.25 to push a button and watch the shiny lights spin. Umm.. no. I wasn't fallin' for that. So I just watched for a while. Then Brian took me to the cheaper slots. He's like here do this, do that. So I pulled the lever. I won some, I lost some, I mostly won. He put in 40 bucks and I'm pretty sure at one time he got it down to 27. We'd kind of go back and forth with whose turn it was but every time I played he got this look. I finally looked at him and Ben and was like what? He goes, "I sat at this machine earlier and lost 40 bucks in 8 spins and you keep winning." They deemed it as beginners luck. I got him up to 46 dollars and made him stop. The best/funniest part was while we were playing on their dime Brian looks at us all and goes "hey, better our money than Ken's" hahaha! 

   It was the last night of the cruise and I wasn't about to go to bed at a decent hour. After we gambled for a little bit, I mostly watched, we went to a comedy thing and that was pretty fun. It was really short though. Then after that we went to the front of the boat. It was so insanely windy but so much fun. By the time I got back to my room it was close to 1 

Miami

 When we got back to Miami we had a few hours before our flight. We have never seen miami so my dad got us a driver and we got to do some sight seeing.

1. Our cruise ship - Victory   2. American Airlines Arena. The Heat and the Spurs were playing that night    3. DASH Miami... Kartrashians anybody?  4. Gianni Versace house   5. Hotel from Scarface 

 6. Our ride

   I must say I was a little excited to see the Kardashian's store, I don't know why. It kind of made me laugh that it doesn't look as nice as they make it look on the show. It's also on a really random street that I would never have pictured. Again, on the show they make it seem like it's beach front or at least that's the vibe I got. 

   Wow. Tangent. I'm back. There are some EXTREMELY insane houses right next to the port. We got to see them as our ship left. Our driver got to take us into one of the neighborhoods known as "star island" It's a gated community that once you're inside, there's even more gates. It was really cool to see some celeb homes. Every home in this area was at least 10 million dollars. 

1. Julio Iglesias   2. Al Capone   

3. Rosie O'donnell    4. Shaq 

5. Owner of Walgreens (as our driver told us, the largest drug dealer of the United States)

My vacation was amazing and I wish I could have just stayed there. It was an absolute blast. I did come home with some fun stuff, however. 

   I got a Bob Marley carving from Jamaica. This is the guy carving "Jamaica 2013" on the top. It was so cool to watch him do it and he was incredibly fast and skilled. I also got a Bob Marley t-shirt that I'm pretty excited about. I got the Jamaica sign to go beside my Bob Marley carving and I can't wait to put them up in my house. I brought home a good stack of post cards to add to my collection. The majority are from Grand Cayman because they were hard to find in Jamaica and I was lucky to find 1. Postcards were the main thing I got in Grand Cayman along with a bobble head like turtle magnet.

    I also got this disco ball cup from the cruise ship. I saw these one day and decided they were super cool. My mom told me I could get one but I opted not to because, well... I didn't want to spend money on it. At bingo one night with Michael and Brian I must have mentioned that I liked them because the last night before dinner Michael told me he had a present for me. Low and behold, a disco ball cup. 

Catch Up With Ya Lata!

Well, I'm off!!! 

Cruisin' to Jamaica! 

and the Grand Cayman Islands 

Which means I won't be around this here blog for a little bit but I'll be back soon enough. 

I realize this means I'll miss my Bachelorette recap post next week but I promise I'll be back the week after with more of my thoughts on the man boy drama. 

So let's make like Tom and Cruise!!! 

DESperate: Bachelorette Edition

Well it’s that time of year again… the bachelorette..... and hockey playoffs. So what do you do when they're on at the same time? Watch them both of course! 

Umm is it just me or did The Bachelor end like yesterday? Usually it seems like there’s a few months in-between seasons but not this time. I don’t know. I feel like it’s always on. But I haven’t missed a season yet, so why start now?

I’ll admit, I wasn’t excited that Desiree was chosen for The Bachelorette. I was never really a fan of hers. I would have rather seen Lesley. Or what the heck, Tierra might have been a freaken riot to watch! Can you imagine how many more tierrable jokes we’d have? Des just seems… boring. Maybe she’ll grow on me, who knows.

The show intro/promo was fun. Did you hear the sound clip of a guy saying, “the air get’s sucked out of the room” every time Des walks in? That just seems like more of an insult than a compliment. Then they head on over to the “someone’s got a girlfriend” bit. This has already been played up way too much and the show started what? 2 minutes ago?  Then the whole montage of why she’s ready for love, how lucky she is to be here, it’s a fairytale, yada yada yada crap begins. I must say I am very happy her bangs are gone. They drove me nuts last season (wow, I almost wrote last semester. Thank you, college). She looks much better without them. Anyways let’s move onto the guys.

The video intros… these are always interesting.

Will… just walkin around high fiving people on the street. Umm, no. Just no. Oh and he already yelled that he loves this woman. Who he hasn’t even met yet. Yep, he’s in love. We may as well shut this thing down right now and call it a season.

Nick. He’s a tailor/magician. Apparently a lot of people found his profession “the best in bachelor/bachelorette history” umm I personally just think it’s weird. How many girls out there can honestly say that that tailor/magician label describes their ultimate dream guy? Not I. He won’t be around long, I’m calling it now.

I’m Zak W. and I’m from the middle of nowhere. I thought that was a pretty awesome way to describe it. Then we see him standing on his deck. Buck naked… watching a deer. Coincidence? I vote no. Those producers are so punny. Well now that we know he likes to be naked it’s a good thing he lives in the middle of nowhere. I for one am hoping he’s not contemplating some big move to New York anytime soon.

Then we have Robert AKA the infamous sign twirler. Scratch that… sign twirler inventor. That sign just has winner written all over it!

Then there’s Brandon, the wakeboarder. I immediately liked him. He seems like a nice genuine guy. I’d snatch up a guy that was as good looking as he is and loves boating just as much as I in a heartbeat. It also helps that on his bio he says he likes hockey. Automatic win in my eyes. *swoon* (at least for now)

Onto the limo entrances. Boy, these were just bad this season. Bad.

Brooks was the first out. . . another Salt Laker? Puh leeze can we just move away from the 801 arena? I’m pretty sure we’ve had our fair share of representin’ in the recent past seasons cough, Bentley, Michelle Money, Jef Holm, cough cough.

Of the first 4 guys out of the limo I’m pretty sure 3 of them forgot to tell her their name. We’re on a roll. Whoop… five guys out and already two have brought up the wish factor. How original.

Ooh Kasey with a K! I was hoping he’s as certifiably nuts as Kasey Kahl was. We’ve got to keep up the name reputation. Then he opened his mouth and started spittin’ hashtags. Yup, the Kasey name holds up. He then gave her his hashtags for her #perfectbachelorette #marriagematerial #letthejourneybegin in my opinion? #shutupnow #noroseforyou #gohome #sosickof#

Cue Jonathan. Enter stage right, keep walking, do not stop, exit stage left. He’s basically a creeper that wouldn’t take no for an answer and ended up leaving in a white van. Hashtag irony.

Zak shows up… shirtless. That confirms my suspicions, he’s definitely a closet nudist. You know those signs “No shoes, no shirt, no service” Desiree should implement that here. 

Creeper Larry… his little dance? Yeah, didn’t go so well. It went about as well as that girls back walkover on the last season of The Bachelor. *headshake* when will they ever learn? I think we all know he’s a goner.

Then there’s Mr. I’m going to wear a full freaken suit of armor to get my point across. Well, that was just weird. At least it made it look like he and Des planned matching outfits. I’m pretty sure the only good part about this was when one of the guys said “Don’t go near the water, you’re probably not gonna float” Peace out Diogo, you’re outta here.

Robert…. Or as rumor has it “Bobby” he can’t stand wearing clothes so he rips his tie off. I’m just having major déjà vu from last season… 50 shades of gray girl come to anyone elses mind? 

Anyways… moving on….

Juan Pablo… I don’t have much to say about him other than I could’ve really used some subtitles. eesh.

Then there’s Brian

Then there’s Ben

Then there’s Brody (Ben’s son who did all his dirty work)

But don’t forget there’s also

Bobby

Brad

Brandon

Brooks and

Bryden

Anyone else feel like we’re reading a page straight out of a baby name book?

Finally the clown car limo was empty and it was onto the cocktail party. I don’t really have much to say about it. I found it boring and nothing stood out to me much. I felt it was typical and we’d seen it all before.

In the end Des sent six guys packing. The magician made himself disappear. The suit of armor didn’t protect Diogo one bit. And the ER doctor couldn’t save his own life. 

As my brother (who is lactose intolerant, who also only watches the show because he's "extremely bored", even though we all know he really loves it) said, "this season is so cheesy, I'm lactarding!"

Yes, yes it is. But I'm sure in the end it will be the "most dramatic/exciting/romantic/unforgettable season of The Bachelorette ever" 

That Time Our Boat Blew Up

I wish I could say I’m surprised when bad things happen to me, but I’m not. I’m used to it. After a while you just come to expect everything to go wrong. It just seems like that whole when bad things happen to good people saying. I’m not saying this is a bad thing because if bad things are going to happen to anybody, hey, bring it on! I’m one of the few that can handle quite a bit before it completely breaks me. I’ve been through enough that I consider myself a strong individual and don’t let a lot get to me. I make the best of what I’ve got and go from there. 

So as I’m sure you can tell this past weekend didn’t exactly go as planned. Well, most of it did except one minor detail. Our boat. We have a nice boat… fairly new, clean, amazing sound system, ideal for wakeboarding, surfing, tanning … you get the gist.

We were up at Bear Lake for Memorial Day weekend. Our condo community has an annual clean up day and that was the main reason for going up there but we thought we’d bring the boat. We knew the water would be freezing still (we’re talking 50 degrees) so we left the wakeboards and surfboards at home. Saturday after the clean up we decided we’d go put the boat in and just go hang out on the lake.

We got to the marina and picked up our annual pass, had the boat inspected, showed them our form saying we’re not contaminated with muscles, and were ready to put the boat in. This all took quite a while… we lost the slip from the inspection within a matter of seconds and they told us we didn’t need to fill out a muscle form and then later requested we did… which was clear back at the front gate. We finally got to the launch ramp and backed the boat down. The boat wouldn’t go off the trailer. Well, in the midst of everything else, we had forgotten to unhook the back straps so up the ramp we went. Then the boat was already too far back so we had to go back into the water to get it up to the front of the trailer again. After that, back up the ramp to unstrap the back and finally the boat was in the lake. (That was a lot of back and forths, did you keep up? Did it even make sense?)

Looking back now, we should’ve realized this was a sign… DO NOT GO BOATING. Talk about an omen.

Once outside the marina we cruised around getting the boat warmed up and all seemed fine (it was the first time we've had it out this year). After doing that for about 5 minutes we headed to the south end of the lake. We had the music up loud, cruisin’ down the lake when we heard this loud explosion. It had to have been really loud because it was extremely audible with the music and boat on and I can only imagine what it was without the extra noise. We stopped immediately because we didn’t know what it was. The smell was a good indicator that things weren’t all right. I was convinced the whole boat was going to turn into a bomb and blow any second. My dad opened the engine cover and sure enough there was smoke. Now I’m not talking a cute little trail of smoke coming from a campfire with a burnt s’more in it kind of smoke. I’m talking a big huge heaping gray cloud of your boat just blew up kind of smoke. And that was the end of our weekend of boating. My dad got the oars out… I just kinda looked at him. The only good those were going to do for us was provide us an opportunity to better our jousting skills. 

Rewind to getting our boat inspected. The ranger that was inspecting the boat was talking to the girl he was training. He asked about oars but told the girl that it really wasn’t applicable because if the boat was over 21 feet long an oar wasn’t going to do you any good, “You could paddle all day and it wouldn’t get you anywhere.” Cue Kylie’s head thinking, “yeah, good thing that will never happen to us.”  And then reality slapped me in the face.

After playing a good game of phone tag and scrounging up phone numbers we finally had our amazing neighbors call and tell us they were on their way to the marina to come and tow us in. After a long slow drive pull back to the marina we managed to get the boat back on the trailer and that was that. Our boat blew up. 

Then my dad came down this morning while I was cleaning the bathroom before we left and says, "Hey Ky, the lakes really smooth, do you want to try the boat again? (insert long pause as Kylie was processing this) we can just use the oars and paddle around." 

**Bachelorette starts tonight... check back for my weekly posts**

That Time I Got Stuck in an Elevator....Twice

About 2 weeks ago I was in the process of packing up and moving. My brother had moved about a week earlier and had mass amounts of boxes so my mom got them from him and brought them down to my apartment one morning. I went out to meet her and we each grabbed a stack of boxes and headed into my apartment. Now, we weren't about to haul heavy awkward boxes up four flights of stairs so we summoned the elevator. It came from the sixth floor no problem. 

We hit the button and thought we started going. All of the sudden we feel this huge jolt and indeed the elevator had stopped. I was convinced we were still on the parking level but my mom said she guessed we were between parking and level one. We waited and pushed every single floor button... they turned red...that's gotta be a good sign. We finally hit the "call" button that connected us to what I am assuming was the elevator company. They could hear us but we couldn't hear ANYTHING they were saying and it got us no where. We called the apartment building's main office and those people are naturally helpful (extreme sarcasm) and said they'd do something. At this point all I could do was laugh. 

The only thing that I could possibly think of was... "Establish a pee corner!!!" (The Office... anybody? anybody?) 

We threw down all the cardboard boxes and took a seat on the elevator floor. Thank heavens we had something to sit on. Who knows the last time they cleaned the elevator was. 

This began our hour of waiting time. 

I had enough time to stare at my shoes and realize that they didn't match. Apparently as I was in a hurry to go meet my mom I grabbed 2 different flip flops out of my already packed shoe box. One was Old Navy's old flip flop style and one was the new one. One was also a size 8 and one a size 9. Awesome. 

An hour later we still hadn't heard anything. We called the main office again. They didn't care to do much of anything and said they'd "call us back" 

After that phone call we hit the call button again and they picked up but we still couldn't hear them. All of the sudden we hear quite a racket outside and see a small sliver of light come in under the door. I thought I might be dying. Finally we hear the maintenance man who, I'm not sure where he's from but, has the thickest accent of all time. He pries the door open and we are indeed a good 4.5 feet up from the parking level. We jumped down and were finally out. I didn't realize how hot it was in there until after the fact. 

 The elevator company was still on the speaker in the elevator and the maintenance man started yelling at them. It was pretty hilarious. I couldn't make out a word he was saying except the last sentence, "YOU GUY'S SUCK!" and with that he let the elevator doors slam shut. And with that we picked up our awkward heavy boxes and hauled them up four flights of stairs. Thank heavens there was no one else in there with us. 

This is the maintenance man and his crazy hair just makes his thick accent and personality even better. 

Fast forward about 3 days later. It was the day I was set to move out of my apartment and into my house. We decided the most effective way to move out of a huge apartment building would be to get the elevator keys so we could control it and not have to wait as it goes to all 6 floors. We got the keys and went to stop the elevator. It was really busy at the time and every time it stopped there were people in it. We finally decided we'd just jump in and wait till it emptied out to use the key to turn it to maintenance mode. We were headed up to my floor and we turned the key before the doors had opened. Bad idea. The elevator was stuck and the doors wouldn't open. We turned the key back to operate and nothing happens. At this point I am busting up with uncontrollable laughter because was this seriously happening again? All the guys were on the other side of the door and I can only imagine how much they were laughing. 

So we started pushing all the buttons. Levels 1-6, covered. Parking, covered. Door open and close, covered. They didn't turn red this time but instead turned blue like we were going to each of the floors. 

Basically it was a little like this. . . .

Finally the elevator started moving and sure enough we were headed to all the floors. We went down to the lobby first and there was a gaggle of people when the doors opened and who else would be there but the maintenance man himself. He looks and sees all the levels pushed and goes, "Oh, boy." They all just proceeded to stare at us and thankfully no one got in with us. Next we were off to the other 5 levels. We finally got to my floor, jumped out of the elevator and basically threw the keys to everyone else who was helping. 

Getting stuck in an elevator is not something I would highly recommend but lucky for you, if you do, there's this from ehow.com 

http://www.ehow.com/how_4457423_survive-trapped-elevator.html

Just remember, you can "deal with the loneliness by writing, reading, singing, playing cell phone games, and anything else you can do to keep calm until help arrives."

Thanks ehow