no internet :(

so we have no internet at the house anymore...we are hoping to get it back soon. we are kinda stealing/borrowing from the neighbors so hopefully it will start working again soon but that is why i have not been able to update my blog. so chris and i are sitting in the middle of the plaza with our computers! but dont worry we have our "knives" in case anyone tries to mess with us! ;)

i was able to skype with my parents for a little bit which i have been trying to do for a couple days so that was great!! but now i only have about 15 minutes of battery left on my computer...not enough time to write about all the things we have been doing...so i promise i am keeping notes and will blog about everything next time we have the internet! We are going to Fajardo on the main island tomorrow to look for cars hopefully, so fingers crossed that we are able to find a cheap decent car!! :) Other than no internet we are doing great! I will blog more as soon and i can!! miss everyone soo much!!
and happy belated thanksgiving!!


i.o.

i have THE cutest nephew EVER!!

even if you dont like nc state you can not say this baby isnt the cutest thing you have ever seen!!! i miss my family soooo much!! especially since i am missing seeing my precious nephew grow up! but my sister catron said that she would try her best to either send me a picture or post a picture of cole everyday so i could "see" him grow up!! I LOVE it!!! :) here are some pics of my precious nephew Cole Wyatt Horton!! :)

he was chocolate chip cookie dough for halloween (catron and i were "chocolate ship shooshies" aka chocolate chip cookies for halloween when we were little and so they recreated it for cole but he was even cuter so he was cookie dough! :) 

i.0.

¡tenemos agua!

WE HAVE WATER!!!!!! Now normally I do not like being woken up in the morning by the sound of construction, but today it was the sweetest sound!!!! They actually fixed it really quick, when we heard no more noise we jumped up (ok maybe not WE but chris jumped up! :) to check and after a couple spurts out of the faucet it was back to normal!! We are so happy!! We were all really beginning to smell – seriously – it was gross. So hooray for water!!

Moving on - Today I got to drive dewey and seira’s car....the people here are crazy drivers, the roads are very narrow, there are terrible pot holes everywhere, chickens, roosters, dogs, cats, horses or iguanas could be crossing the road at any time, its kinda like a video game but more serious!! It really wasn’t that bad, except that the car has no power steering so you get a great bicep workout trying to turn that sucker!

We had lots to do today: laundry (my first time at a laundry mat!! i may have gotten a little too excited about it but thats how i am :) !! There was a little girl maybe 3 in there with her mom and she made a comment about it being her first time in a laundry mat and chris had to go and say it was mine too!! They all looked at me like im crazy!! I guess I have led a sheltered life?!?!), while our clothes were washing we went to the farmacia (pharmacy) to ask the pharmacist about my ear infection and get some meds but the place was packed! You had to take a number, mine was 78 and they were only at 47 so we left and went to meet up with dewey who was at the bank and got the house keys from him so we could make copies since chris and I do not have a copy of keys yet. We get to the furniture shop that copies keys and they just left for lunch and wouldn’t be back for another hour and half. So back to the laundry mat to put the clothes in the dryer, and instead of walking around in the heat while the clothes dried we just sat in the laundry mat and hung out until they were done. Once they finished we folded them (yes we really did fold all of our clothes!) and put them back in our bags, and went to get some lunch at Al’s a bar right on the water by the ferry dock, they have a beautiful view of puerto rico (the mainland)! (this was the first time we have eaten out since we got here!) We had mimosas, and they were goood!! chris had an awesome pulled pork sandwich and I had a very very boring bland meatloaf sandwich :( but for only 6 bucks you get what you pay for in vieques! After lunch we went back to the furniture store to get the keys copied and while chris did that I ran across the street to the farmacia to see if it was less busy – it was not…this one woman who was there when we went the first time was still sitting in the same spot with her number,  ugh ill try again tomorrow. we left and went to the car and headed to the morales (grocery store). Dewey had already gone to work so it was just chris and me out and about in the town with the car! We got to the morales and didn’t get lost! We even found peanut butter and jelly which we have been trying to find forever! yay! PB&J’s in Puerto Rico – im excited! After the morales we came back to the house and chris and I went down to nuestra playa (our beach), the beach right in front of our house, and since noone seems to know the name of it I have decided to name it “our beach”! Chris wanted to snorkel so he put on his flippers, goggles and snorkel and waddled out to the water. It was pretty entertaining to watch him try to stay standing while wading out in the water and every now and then he would bend over and stick his face in the water with his butt sticking up in the air, and then stand up and try not to fall over. it was really shallow a long ways out so he turned back and tried waddling back to the beach, trying so hard not to fall over, its difficult to explain but believe me it was funny to watch! We hung out a little longer until the sun went down a little and we had to get out of there since the bugs come out in full force when the sun goes down!! We both have to work tomorrow and we spent a lot of money at the morales today so we are staying in tonight and hopefully I can catch up on some of my fav tv shows that I have been missing!         

vida es buena!

(life is good)

i.0.

bad juju?!?!

i dont know what it is about this past week but chris and i must have brought some bad juju with us...first the roof leaks and now we have no water in our house!!!! a water pipe across the street from our house busted and now we have no water in the house....but we have plenty of water flooding our yard and the street! I had no idea who to call or what to do. Chris had to go to work and seira and dewey were both at work too...I was here alone trying my best to figure out what to do so we could have water, and our internet was not working either so the only number i could find was for the police station, so i called and was spoken to in spanish and had no idea what they were asking but i asked if he spoke english and he said very little and then said "just talk to me" so i explained our issue and he said he would send patrol over. so a patrol car drove by and i flagged them down and explained to them again what happened and they took a look at it quickly and then adios! But nothing has been fixed yet and this all started on saturday morning. We woke up this morning and still no water and even more flooding in the yard. But we met one of our neighbors whose house is right behind where the pipe was broken and he said that he had called the mayor! i guess thats one way to do it! and he said it should be done by today. But still no water!
Chris and i went to a kids birthday pool party today (no we were not being creepers we were invited! ) we went to meet a friend of chris' family who has lived on the island for 8 years. Sarah Cook and her two kids and her husband Scott. We decided to walk to the party instead of getting a ride....big mistake....we got directions as if we were coming from town, so we had to walk from the house to town and then to the party which ended up actually being only a couple minutes away from our house...but it was soooooo hot, like the hottest i have ever been, we were melting...and we got lost, had run out of water in my pack, but we finally found it and were so excited we high five'd in the middle of the road! :) Sarah met us at the gate and walked us in and told us where there was cold beer, rum and cold water, we both dove into a bottle of water each and then got in the pool! it was soooo nice! We got to meet a bunch of people and talked with sarah for a while. It was great to meet everyone there, we met a woman who was telling her story about how she got here, she moved here when she was 23 and was only going to stay for about 4-6 months and has been here for 19 years.....chris and i are both 23 and we are planning to stay for 4-6 months....i looked at chris and said we are going home!! haha it was funny to hear how similar her story was to ours but mom dont worry i am coming home! :)
we had a great time at the pool party and it was great to meet sarah and her kids and to know that we have some friends here who know the ways of the island!!
here are some pictures i took along the way there, which was a beautiful walk!

there are some really cool houses too!! the bravos boys own the cool ones and rent them out super cool!!

ill post more pictures of some other ones later! :)

i.0.

oh yea and i have an ear infection now too :( i dont know how since the only time i have been in the water was a week ago...i didnt know you could get one from the shower! but ouch! i am going to the pharmacy tomorrow to get some meds to get rid of this! :)

adios!

trabajos

we have jobs!! we are so lucky..we found jobs in only 4 days...where as seira has been here for over a month has been looking for jobs the whole time and just got one. that seems to be the story for most everyone we have met on the island but we really lucked out! So we (chris and I) are working at a restaurant called Cantina La Reina, it's kind of a gourmet mexican restaurant with the most delicious food, for real its awesome!! the owners really really like tequila so at the bar they have all top shelf tequila and the margaritas are sooo good!! (which could be trouble?!?) :) I am working right now as the hostess and will possibly be trained as a waitress at some point. Chris is working in the kitchen washing dishing and plating food. It is seriously the smallest restaurant kitchen i have ever seen! its tiny and to have 5 people in there at a time is insane to me! But the owners are really chill and fun so we should have a good time working there we hope. We have had two days of work so far, opening night was friday and they had happy hour on the second and third floors, the third floor is a rooftop vista ( i think thats what you call it). It was so busy!! The restaurant had its grand opening this summer in june or july and then closed after the summer and they said that the opening on friday was the biggest crowd they had seen ever! so it was great! Saturday night was a record night too so i am sure they are bringing in the big bucks!! it is not a very big restaurant at all there are only 9 tables and then a bar on the 1st floor where we serve food, and chris said that on friday night they had 80 tickets in the kitchen!! Being at the front of the restaurant and greeting everyone who comes in is allowing me to meet a bunch of important people on the island, great contacts and people to know!! Its such a small island there really are no strangers and everyone says it only takes a while to know everyone and what they do, so im working on that! :) So we dont have a car or any means of transportation other than our legs at this point so we are walking to work. chris had to go into work friday and saturday at 2 and i didnt have to go in until 5 so he would walk to work and i would walk later, it takes about 25 min to walk there from the house...so on thursday we had a meeting at the restaurant and the day before one of the owners told me to get there around 4 so i had seira drop me off at 4 and i went to the restaurant only to have them tell me that we are not meeting until 6:30 and to go get drunk or something! ha well i was not too keen on the getting drunk part of that since i then had nowhere to go and no ride....so i walked back to the house...it was a really nice day so it wasnt too bad. Around 5:45 i start getting my stuff together to leave and as i am walking out of my room and heading out the door it starts raining :( not cool! so i grabbed my raincoat and since im such a nice person i grabbed chris' as well just in case ;). so i start walking and about 5 min into the walk it stops raining and its so hot in my raincoat i try to take of my raincoat which proved to be more difficult than one would think since i was hot and sticky the raincoat was like clingwrap and didnt want to uncling...it was probably a funny thing to see as i was walking down the road...so after struggling to get the raincoat off i walk a little bit more and it starts pouring....of course....right after i have wrestled to get the raincoat off i now have to wrestle to get it back on...grrrr... and then it rains like that the rest of the way to the restaurant it was sooooo hot and sticky. but i made it there and then it didnt rain on our way home that night. So on friday, opening night i was so pumped about my first day at work, i was getting ready and making sure i had everything, again as i am getting ready to walk out the door....it starts pouring :(....like flash flood, rivers running down the road, pouring....not what i wanted to walk to work in....luckily seira was here and i asked if she would mind giving me a ride..and she did thankfully...it would have been no fun to walk to work in that mess on the first day...but i am happy to report that saturday i walked to work with no problems!! so yay for jobs!! :)

i.o.

zombies aughh

sorry its been so long since i have updated my blog...i have been slacking a little....but as a little bit of an excuse our internet has been working off and on so its been hard to get on and update!! Ill work on it! :)

so anyways its been a couple days and alot of stuff has happened! first of all....we (seira, chris, and I) were in a zombie movie!! its an independent movie that is filming here on the island and one night when we were at Duffy's in Esperanza a car drove up with a sign in the window that said "Zombie's Needed" this woman Sue was the one recruiting zombies and so we signed up...not knowing at first that we had to be there at 8 am! but we did it anyways! so thursday morning at 8am we show up at the airport to get transported to the ruins of the old sugarcane factories in the middle of the jungle! it was awesome! We get there and meet some of the actors and the crew, who were super nice. Then the make-up artist made us up as zombies, then we marched into the jungle and came up on the set...a bunch of rubble...that is where they put fake dirt all over us and poured blood (karo syrup and fake blood dye stuff) ALL over us!! they poured it in our mouths too...(sooo gross)..so that we drooled blood while we were stumbling along! They said that we were really great at being zombies, which i guess is good for the movie but not exactly what im striving for in life, but good to know! a party trick to show when a party starts to get really lame?!?! not sure what use it has yet but we shall see!! ;) so once we were done filming we were driven out of the jungle and dropped off at the airport and waited for dewey to come pick us up...people would drive by and their jaws were hitting the floor, it was fun to see! We had a great time being zombies, i would say everyone should give it a try sometime! :)
here are some pictures of us as zombies!

it looks like my nostrils are flared haha but really its bloooodd....haha

it really makes me laugh about flared nostrils because my sister and i used to have staring contests and i would always win because i would flare my nostrils and catron would laugh! haha i miss being kids and getting such a kick out of the little things like staring contest, thumb wars, making forts etc. i miss you kitty cat!

i.0.

onion juice?!?!

so seira came home from work on monday and was complaining that her ear hurt and she thought she had an ear infection...bummer!! so of course we all decide to play doctor and discuss the ways that you could possibly cure swimmers ear at home. Chris got on the internet and played internet doctor and found many claims that you could cut up a fresh onion and get some juice from it and warm it up and put a couple drops in the ear (he also found someone who said that when they were younger their mother would have them pee in a cup and would then put a couple drops of their pee in their ear!!! gross..i think thats just cruel and gross!)... hmmm well luckily we had  a fresh onion so we cut it up and tried mashing little pieces, scraping the inside of the onion to try to get some juice. chris and dewey together were able to get a couple drops and then had seira lay down on the bed and they poured in the juice.....now i bet your wondering if it worked?!?!

no :( sad day...seira's ear is still hurting her and she thinks she might have a fever! she got some peroxide to put in their and thats not quite working either. she is going to the pharmacy today and maybe they can help. but as far as we know...onion juice is not the answer!

3 cheers for the toaster oven

We have a gas stove that is currently out of propane, but we do have a toaster oven! I have always been a little uncertain about toaster ovens, what do you do with them other than make toast?!?  Well i now know the answer to my naïve question….

ANYTHING….you can do anything with them.

We have heated up rice and beans, cooked French fries in a bowl, cooked fish, bagel bites, and just recently made oodles of noodles (ramen)!!! Tomorrow I think we are gonna see what it can do with some hot dogs!

So this toaster oven is our only way of cooking food in the house now, but oh the things this little toaster oven can do! :)  you go little toaster!

food, food, food!

once we woke up and dried out as best we could, we went out in isabel, our mission was to go grocery shopping so chris and i would have some food here! Dewey played tour guide and took us around...we were going to take their car but unfortunately one of their tires is falling apart :/ not good, so we walked....we were so pumped we didnt even care that we were walking over a mile, and that there are crazy barking dogs that may or may not try to bite you all over the place. It was all good we were going to get FOOD!! :) I am happy to report that we were not attacked by crazy dogs just sniffed and barked at! Dewey showed us the laundry mat, some good places to eat, the bank, the post office and the sports store where dewey works. while walking towards the post office chris has to point out the large population of pigeons we are approaching.....(if you know me you know i am terrified of birds!) they must have been having a meeting up there on the wires. So they were far enough away i was sort of ok with walking underneath them, quickly. But then some lady came out of the building and threw bread or seeds or something and the birds go nuts! Not ok with me! I asked the guys if we could cross the street and walk that way but no we were right by the post office and it was out of the way..........so ducking my head and holding chris' hand and walking as close to the buildings as far away from the birds as i could chris led me to the other side of the birds...phew! :) So after looking at the post office we went to the grocery store!! :) I was soo hungry by this point i wanted everything, but i had to keep reminding myself that we were walking back and had to carry everything we got...so i held back. they had more than i was expecting to find. So we got all our stuff and paid and packed our bags to carry, and started our trek back to the house. Not as much excitement on the way back carrying heavy bags, the only thing we were looking forward to was getting to eat! We got home and immediately ate sandwiches and french fries! :) yummy!

here are some pics from walking around town today!

     

            

  

mom this picture is for you....it was a rainy cloudy day and i still wore my long shirt and pants to protect me from the sun! you should be proud of me! :)

we had just missed sunset but here are some beach pictures, its been storming here so the water is murky and not very clear like normal. but still pretty!

a great day! :)

i.0.

laughing in the rain

We arrived home last night and were all very tired and ready to fall into bed, I walked into our room to find a leak, dripping on the floor a couple inches away from the end of the bed. No big deal we just got a cup to catch the drips and went to bed. We thought we had seen the worst of the storm but man were we wrong!! About 4:30 in the morning I was woken up by water dripping on my tummy….this is no clean, clear rain water either…its nasty brown looking stuff…gross. So naturally I freaked out a little and woke chris up and got the cup and started catching those drips. When another drip starts at the head of the bed right on my pillow….not cool!! Looking around the room we discover little faucets of water falling from the ceiling everywhere….in the middle of the bed, on my pillow, streams going down the beams of the roof, etc. Luckily our bed is on wheels!! (weeeee!!) so we pushed the bed to the wall opposite of where it had been and there were no leaks over there! However the bed was now soaked at the top, bottom and middle….on one side of the bed… so we got whatever we could, tshirts, towels, bathing suits to put down to soak up the water. Chris slept on the wetness, what a nice boy! :) We were happy to get back to sleep! We were sleeping for about an hour and then bam chris shoots up in the bed like he had been shot and starts pulling all the sheets up off the bottom of the bed in a big hurry…(I do not move that quickly immediately after waking up so I was trying to understand what was happening while getting my heart rate back down to normal) Apparently we had sprung another leak…well actually a lot more leaks. We now had a leak in the middle of the bed again, a couple leaks in the middle of the room streams running down the beams of ceiling, and streams running down the walls. At one point while trying to catch water in a cup I began laughing so hard at what we were doing the second night in vieques. It was just too funny. I mean here we were at 5 am each holding cups and Tupperware trying to catch the drips while laying down on the bed sideways and attempting to close our eyes to get a little rest. That didn’t work so well. I looked around and realized that the closet was the driest place in the room so I suggested we sleep in the closet…not really it’s a little to small for us to both fit. But we pushed the bed as far as we could into the closet and actually managed to stay dry and slept until about 11:30! Success!!!  I took a couple photos during the ordeal however they do not do it justice. It wasn’t just our room that got it. Seria’s room, the bathroom, and the living room, and a little  in dewey’s room.  So we had a couple puddles throughout the house this morning, but we survived and we are still loving it! :) Welcome to Puerto Rico!

this is after the first move of the bed after the roof sprung the big leak! What you can't see is that the floor has a nice covering of water!

after move #2 to the closet. look at that gross water ewww!

pushed up in the closet..uh please no comments about how rough i look or how broken my legs look....man i should work on my sleep look :) haha

dewey was mr. fix today and was up on the roof with more tarps covering up the roof and using a rock to hammer some nails to keep the tarps down! Thanks Dewey! :)

i want to dance!

Last night we went to Esperanza to go dancing! Esperanza is the other town on Vieques, (yes I said other town because there really are only 2 towns in vieques! Isabel Segundo and Esperanza, Isabel is where our house is on the northern most tip of the island and Esperanza is on the south side and is more of the tourist area where there are more restaurants bars and such. Where we are there are banks, post offices and business’. Esperanza was a lot of fun there are a couple bars down there that are all open to the outdoors. The local beer here is called Medalla Light, chris and I decided that it is Puerto Rico’s version of  Busch Light or PBR, aka cheap! Exactly what we are going for :) its not that bad but its definitely no Bud Light to me, but it will do! So we went to a couple bars that are all within walking distance of each other on the same road. We were introduced to some of Seira and Dewey’s friends that they have met here and I am sure we will get to know as well, they all seem like very fun and nice people, so I look forward to getting to know some other people here. Well it started raining while we were outside and at first it was just a little bit of rain nothing real bad so we were still hanging out in the rain and not being bothered by it but then the sky drops out and its an all out down pour. So we all ran to take cover at the bar Lazy Llama (I think that’s the name?!? Actually i was just informed that its actually called Lazy Jacks! who know where llama came from!) there wasn’t much coverage though cause the bar is outside and has just a small roof to cover the awesome customers (us!) :) so we were all pretty much huddling together in the middle and getting to know each other very quickly! The rain would slow down a little and then pick up again etc, we were right across from the ocean and there was some impressive lightening that would light up the entire sky over the ocean and the cracks of thunder would cause everyone to jump and let out a little squeal! (it may have just been me but I swear other people did to!) So the rain died down a little and we decided to go up to this little bar where all the locals go to dance and we got there just in time to dance to two songs. It was so great seeing the old men dancing and spinning around like champs, I felt like I was watching a movie! We will have to get some dance lessons so we can learn how to do that! After the last song we went back to Lazy bar and hung out a little longer until we went home.  It was a fun night!

more house

the kitchen

chris and sarah eating at the table with strawberry shortcake sheets as the table cloth with a shower curtain covering :) awesome!
view from the porch
porch
looking into the room from the hallway

home away from home

here are a few shots of the house there are more to come....

this is the "dining room" table/where we all hang out. I am sitting on the couch/single bed to take the picture.

this is our closet. we unpacked this morning! mom i know your impressed that i actually unpacked! ;) who knows how long it will actually be this neat.
view from the bed.
view from the bed and my toesies! in the corner of the window is the picture Andi gave me of me and her! :)
here we are! we took this when we got in last night! :)

i have a blog?!?!

i am new to this whole blogging thing...i never thought i would write a blog or even do anything that would warrant needing a blog to write about my adventures.

it is exciting and kinda scary to start a blog, but the reason for starting the blog is awesome!!

i have moved to puerto rico!!! :) NEVER in my life did i ever imagine i would move to puerto rico....let alone move anywhere more than a couple hours away from mom and dad!! (I have the best family anyone could ask for!) But I did it!

My boyfriend Chris and I got to puerto rico last night. We both just graduated from college in May '09 with degrees in Technical Photography. i was/am not to keen on the idea of completely entering the "real adult world". so here we are in puerto rico. Vieques to be exact. it is a small island off the east coast of the main island. it is about 25 miles east to west and about 4 miles north to south. we are living in a house with two of chris' friends from back home that he went to middle school with.

so chris and i flew from raleigh to atlanta, atlanta to san juan and then we took a very small (9 passenger) twin engine low wing plane to vieques! I was verrryyy nervous about the puddle jumper of a plane where the man from the airlines asks you how much you weigh (which is something i usually do not share with someone i just met, i didnt even catch his name!) and then weighs everything that you have with you! so this plane would have to carry all of us, and our bags....one of which was mine that weighed a ton. (actually 49.5 lbs!) So we wait a little while until they call us all to board the plane and we put all our carry on's in this compartment in the wing! chris and i were the 2nd and 3rd people on the plane but the first woman on the plane got to sit in the co-pilots seat!!! holy batman i wanted that to be me!!!! :) but i got to sit right behind the pilot and i mean right behind the pilot.... i was all up in his bubble... the seat was like 3 inches from the pilots seat! So me being oh about 5'4" i was able to fit alright and but poor chris at 6' he had to fold himself up in order to get in! Then we got our instructions from the pilot and then he started engine 1 and then engine 2 and we taxied to the runway and we were off!!! i know i said that i was nervous about this flight......but "that was aweeesssomee!!" (if you've seen tommy boy you should know how this is said! :) seriously it was so cool! (minus the few air pockets we hit when it felt like we fell about 20 ft) oh and the landing) but other than that it was so cool! being so close to the pilot you really get a sense of what it is like to fly a plane, i have no idea what the gauges do but they were really cool to look at! :) i just have no clue how they know where they are going, its not like there are street signs or arrows in the air? crazzy! but we made it to the "airport" and got our bags and got picked up and headed to the house. we just relaxed for the rest of the night and went to bed kinda early we were very tired!

i will be posting some pictures of the house soon, and we went snorkeling today at mosquito pier (i was happy to find no mosquitos!) we saw 2 squid, alot of star fish, pretty fish, ugly fish, a flounder, eels, and these little snot ball looking things that i would freak out about because i thought they were baby jellyfish but i guess they were not, but really they looked like snot balls and felt like snot balls...gross.

Anyways we are here safe, sound and a little sweaty but really excited!! i will try to keep up the posts as the days go by and put up pictures too!

i.0.