The Off Season Part I

The second best aspect of being a teacher: VACATION TIME! (The first best thing is making a positive impact in the lives of children each and every day, of course) Living at the beach makes planning vacations kind of awkward- where do you go? We decided to say no to the snow and followed my love of the sun straight to the Caribbean. Logan and I were both skeptical of going on a cruise. We've heard so many horror stories of people getting sick, boats breaking down, horrible food, and rooms so tiny the suitcase wouldn't even fit. All of our concerns quickly faded as we boarded the boat. Oh my gosh, we had such an amazing time! We took a 7 night cruise through the Western Caribbean, making stops in Roatan, Honduras; Belize City, Belize; Costa Maya, Mexico and Cozumel, Mexico. It was the most relaxing week of my entire life! Just sit back and imagine- No phone calls, No email, No text messages, No social media, No dishes, No cooking, No making the bed, No letting the dogs out, No running out of toilet paper and not realizing it until its too late... Just take everything that has the potential to cause any kind of inconvenience in your life and put a "NO" in front of it and that is a week on a cruise.

We would begin our mornings with room service in bed. Then we'd get ready and head to the dinning room for our second breakfast of the day :-) We spent the first full day at sea lounging on the front of the boat, reading romance novels, mine was about a young 20's girl living in New York, Logan's was about coaching football. Like I said, Romance novels. We had a lunch somewhere in the midst of our lounging and barely stayed awake long enough to eat dinner.

After our double breakfasts on the second day we decided at the last minute to do an excursion. We took a little boat over to a private island that is used as an Animal refuge. It was absolutely beautiful! We snorkeled for a bit, but the coral was spawning which sent billions of little stinging things into the water, and given the fact that we've snorkeled pain free before we decided to trade in the masks and fins for lounge chairs. We walked around the little island and saw all of the beautiful animals- Jaguars, Sea Lions, Monkeys, even a Tarantula and very large Iguana, both of which were not in cages :-0.

The third day was spent cave tubing in Belize. We took a bus through the tiny country and stopped right before we made it to Guatamala. The country side was beautiful! When we finally arrived at our destination, tucked back in the forest. We made a tiny little hike up a hill and grabbed a tube before entering a pitch black cave. We saw a few bats, a couple fish, amazing stalactites and stalagmites and jumped out of our tube to swim in the freezing water.

I had spotted a Coca-Cola Lite the day before in Honduras, but didn't have a chance to get one so when we finally made it back to the port,  I was on a mission to find a Coca-Cola Lite, which is by far the most amazing Coke product ever created and unfortunately cannot be purchased in the US. After stopping at literally every pharmacy, bar and convenience store on the port only to be told "We just sold out," I found a tiny little drink cart run by a random American guy and what looked like his dad and bought 3 Coca-Cola Lites :-)