May 17th. It is our Engaged and Graduated Party. We have a bar (smoke free) rented out all night just for us. Live band. All the cool people will be there. Emily is graduating with her Masters, with a 4.0! Which is almost as amazing as her agreeing to put up with me for the rest of her life.
Here are pictures from our trip. I still need to scan in our pictures from swimming with the dolphins. Conveniently we could not take our own pictures, so we had to purchase the $12 pictures with the nice cardboard frames..memories folks...memories!
The Flight
I have a problem with flying. I am not afraid to fly, just makes me nervous when we take off and land. Once we are in the air at 30,000, I feel great. I have a fear of getting to the heights. Being at the top of the Eiffel Tower didn't scare me, but the loud clanking glass elevator did. This same fear is why I avoid roller coasters. That slow CLICK, CLICK, CLICK drives me crazy. Once I make it over the hill, my fear subdues and I have fun.
So, to combat the fear of taking off and all the noises, that in mind sound like the plane is going down, I stay up all night so I just pass out. It is a good plan as long as there is no layover. We had an hour flight to Atlanta and then a 3 hour layover. I was super tired, but forced myself to stay awake. I was asleep on the plane before we even the ground. 30 minutes before we land I am woken by the captain to tell us that we are landing. I read a gossip magazine trying to ignore the sounds of the landing gear, telling myself that the wheels will not fall off. As you can deduct from me writing this, we landed safely
I had arranged for transportation when I booked the vacation, so we had a van waiting to take us to our resort, 30 minutes away. The roads in The Dominican Republic are actually nice, better than many roads around St. Louis. The problem is that most cars drive like they are the only car on the road. I fear for my life while passing a car on a hill numerous times. One time our van and another car got in a game of chicken: who's going to move first. We had a car (in the correct lane) and a scooter on the other side (there are more scooters than cars on the road. they all drive on the side of the road). Luckily our driver "chickened" out and swerved over, forcing the car in the correct lane to swerve over as well. No horns were honked, no middle finger was flashed, and it was as if this was completely normal. Meanwhile, I needed to change my pants.
We arrive at our resort tired and relieved to be alive. Emily and I go to our room, change, grab a drink and hit the beach. After dinner
we watched an Africa Show
and went to bed.
MONDAY
We played on the beach all day
It was amazing. No cell phones, no work, no worries! It was the first time in three years that I was able to sit and do nothing, and I loved it!
We joined in a volleyball tournament with some guys that we had meet. Emily, who is much better than me, loved it. She was the best person on the team. We won 3 games in a row to win the championship! It was a nice victory. We played against an all French team, and I couldn't help but feel a sense of national pride. I won one for you guys!
OCEAN WORLD
Tuesday I woke up to the excitement of Emily. We had booked a day at Ocean Word and swimming with the dolphins, which had been Emily's childhood dream. She was as gitty as a school girl. I will admit that I was happier to see Emily happy than swimming with the dolphins.
Ocean World is a waste of money: unless you swim with the dolphins, which I will say is worth the extra money. The dolphin swimming was much better than I had expected. And, regardless if I had fun or not, seeing the smile on Emily's face was well worth it.
We started by just petting the dolphins,
(These are not the pictures from the swimming, just dolphins hanging out). You could stick your hand out over the rail and they would jump up and hit your hand.
then they kissed us and then we danced with them. The best part was grabbing hold of both their fins and ridding them to the dock. They are super smart animals and I would recommend swimming with them to everyone!
Next we got to play with the Sea Lions,
which was totally different than the dolphins. They remind me of a large 300 pound dog that can swim and do really cool tricks. Not quite as cool as the dolphins, but once again, worth the extra money. Like I said before, Ocean World would have been a total waste of money without swimming with the Dolphins and Sea Lions.
We headed home that night with my excitement of deep sea fishing early Wednesday morning.
The Love Birds
There was a cage full of Love Birds and we were allowed to feed them. Emily was freaked out at the idea of birds crawling all over here, but I loved the idea. The lady gave me a pinch of food and I held out my hand and the birds flocked to me.
The Nurse Sharks
Another feature that we could have done is Swimming with the sharks and stingrays, which we opted not to. But there was still a show we could watch. The shows they had were the dolphin show, sea lion show
and shark feeding show. And each of those, for extra money of course, you could do the experience. Swimming with the dolphins, playing with the sea lions and actually feeding the sharks. We swam with the dolphins and played with the sea lions.
The shark feeding show was cool, just not something I would want to do, I like to keep my distance: call me crazy.
WEDNESDAY
We woke up Wednesday at 6:30 (which, in case you were wondering, the RD is only one hour ahead than Missouri). We eat breakfast and rush to meet our tour guide at 7:20. I have been excited about Deep sea fishing for weeks. This was my swimming with the dolphins. We sit in the lobby until 8:20 and Emily goes to find our guy only to fond that all water sports have been cancled for the day, including my much anticipated deep sea fishing. I felt like I just was told there is no Santa Claus. I sulk back to the room to take a brief nap. I had the fishing itch, so I "fished" off our back patio.
and I caught a small leaf.
We head down to the ocean to find that no one is allowed in the water based on the nasty under toe.
The big waves in the normally calm water did make for some good sea shell finds, which I hope brings Norah joy.
I will say, the sights of the beach is well worth the 7 hours of travel...
Even though we were not able to deep sea fish, I enjoyed another relaxing day with Emily on the beach and at the pool. I never understood how much a relaxing day meant to me: I think I need another one already. We enjoy our last day on the resort by playing some more volleyball, meeting up with some people from New York and heading to bed with visions of how the house will look when we get back.
(While we were gone, we had planed to have the new floor in the kitchen and entry way be put down and have the whole house painted. We thought this would eliminate a lot of stress on our part).
I had purposely booked a later flight, 3:30, so we could spend some time in the morning on the beach. But we were informed that if we wanted a ride to the airport, we would have to be there 3 hours early (point of advice: This is a crock of shit). We get to the airport 3 ½ hours early only to find out that our flight has been delayed one hour. We spend 30 minutes getting through customs and now stare at the clock for the next 4 hours. We land in Atlanta and sprint to catch our connecting flight back to St. Louis. We had called Emily’s Dad from the airport and he informs us that this is the last flight back to St. Louis. For those who have not flown out of the country: When you get back to the States, you have to grab your bags from baggage, then recheck them through customs, a process that takes about an hour: which was 5 more minutes that we had to catch our flight. After pushing kids and old ladies out of our way, we cram some horrible Chinese food down our throats and load the plane.
Justin picks up at the airport and we trek home to see the “perfect” house.
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