Island: Mata la Gata (Kill the Cat)

Today was an excellent day! We (Christine and I) went to a YSA activity all the way to an island called Mata la Gata – in English, Kill the Cat. It is a lovely island. We had to drive 2 to 2 and a half hours to get to the ferry. (It is all the way on the other side of the island.)

The island we went to doesn't have a map or appear on maps... at least that I can find. It is just a little dot off the coast of La Parguera.... anyway. A lovely place!

The drive was interesting…. Puerto Ricans drive interestingly. For example, we were pulling out of McDonalds after a quick lunch and we are sitting waiting to pull out and make a left hand turn. The driver coming on the right hand side just stops in the middle of the street to let us in front of him and then the car on the left hand side follows suit. It was kind of weird to me—but people here are very courteous drivers… that is, until they get to the interstate. This is where they make up for the time they lost letting everyone go in front of them. J

We arrive to the port where we pay $5 (round trip fee!) for a ferry that will take us to the island Mata la Gata. This ferry was awesome! It was a pretty good size--- fit probably 80 people. (This activity was for all seminary and institute students in the whole country, though not all attended.) This was a glass bottom boat so we were able to see some of the plants/ coral/ etc on the ride over. The boat also had music going and some danced bachata. It was quite nice…. I kept thinking… is this real?!!?!?

i couldnt get a good pic.... but here is some seaweed! hehe..

view from the top:

We arrived to this beautiful island and the first thing I noticed was the “pool.” Literally—they call this a pool!

See??? A sign with the pool hours.....

It is all fenced off underneath so you don’t have to worry that much about sea creatures stinging/ biting you. For me, this is a huge relief. I am always so paranoid about stepping on a sea urchin (happened twice already) and getting stung but a jellyfish (happened once, a small one… felt like a bee sting!).

We were able to walk around the island. It was set up nicely for visitors. Very different from the other primitive island we were visiting…. This island even had bathrooms and picnic tables… and a “boardwalk” to go visit the other parts of the island that were a little mushier than the main part.

Leaving the island on the ferry, the institute director insisted we danced polka.... so now, I can finally say that I have danced polka on a boat. I am crossing things off my bucket list that I didn't know were there.

I think it is important to note that this was my first beach experience in PR that I did not come back with a burn! I finally got town the right amount of sunscreen/ reapplying… and I am building up a nice tan. I would say “Beat that, Mr. Sun” but I am truly afraid of his vengeance.

On our way back we stopped at Wendy’s a chatted/ hung out/ etc. Pretty good time—we were able to get to know some of the people that are going back more towards our general direction. We met a girl from Arecibo… where that giant telescope thingy is. We will be visiting her soon I hope! J We also found out that this FRIDAY there is a dance. I am pretty stoked because the last dance was so much fun! And now that I know a few more people, it should be even more fun and less awkward. Ok well, until next time! I think that my blogs will become a little less interesting because I WILL have class on Tuesday. And maybe I will actually get a homework assignment…. And/ or a textbook???

PS- the boredom of the hurricane mess caused me to watch like 5 movies, paint my nails at least 3 times and give myself purple highlights. Hehehe….

Island ICACOS!!!!

Yesterday we went to Icacos. It was probably one of the coolest things I have ever done in my life. (I think topping it would be going to see the lava flowing out of an erupting volcano.) The waters were so clear and blue-- like, we couldn't touch but could still see all the way to the bottom. We had some snorkel gear... I swam out to the reef and saw some coral.... (Although I didn't snorkel when I was out there in the reef.... I was getting creeped out by the idea that fish were all over underneath me. But I am improving in this.... I actually touched seaweed!) Anyway, it was a lovely island and we were able to go for about half the price of what people would normally pay. (We went with locals who bargained the charter boat from $180 to $100! -- - split between 9 people isn't too bad right?)

So we get on the boat and we get our life vests on-- I was actually surprised they gave us life vests!

And were off! This was a tiny boat... I thought the ocean was going to eat it up..... or a shark was going to jump out of the water and eat me. Don't let this picture fool you! This part was calm. Later on the waves were too big and bumpy to have a camera out. I am still surprised we didn't tip over or something.

And we arrive in paradise....

Isn't it so beautiful??? Imagine--- not even many locals come to this island!

Here is a map as to our location:

You can't really read it, but its the island called Icacos to the very upper right hand side of the pictures.... with a green dot in it!

chillin out under my palm tree..... this is the life....

Eating some fresh coconut!!

AAAAAAND then we decided to go out and take a walk around. We wanted some latin dancing, but couldn't find any..

So we went home and watched a movie instead. Who knew it would be so hard to find SALSA DANCING in Puerto Rico??? Hahaha... ok, until next time!

Mother nature

Here is my tropical storm Irene recap:

Evening is setting in. There are lots of clouds.... doom is in the air.

We were all gathered together for a meeting, which actually I think caused more fear/ worry than help. I mean, if you get a group of people together and tell them about all the potential things that could happen.... especially a group of people who have never been under "hurricane" conditions... we worry. I remember hearing the fierce winds and running to the window.... and someone said "Where are you from?" Haha. The locals didn't seem to worry, so I was calm (mostly) too.

They did tell us (and turned out to be very true) that we would lose electricity and therefore fridge power. (Didn't mean a whole lot to me because my fridge doesn't really work anyway) But we cooked chicken AND beef quesadillas. I mean, you don't want the meat to go to waste, right?

While they cooked, I played with the windows and the wind. (until someone came and told me to close the windows)

They have all these announcements on the PA system...(they apparently kept announcing to close the windows... for safety reasons or something) but I never understand them. Imagine someone speaking into a cheap walkie-talkie and doing do in a thick Puerto Rican accent (in Spanish).... yeah, didn't get anything. THEN they say the same but in English... and I wish they would just repeat in Spanish. Anyway- point is, if there is an emergency.... the exchange students will have no idea what is going on.

After dinner I went downstairs and played on my computer until the power went out. Thank you to Teresa at the Red Cross for my lovely emergency radio/ flashlight. It came in handy when I had to use the little girl's room when it was pitch dark here in the dorms. :)

Then I went upstairs and watched the storm from the 11th floor for a while.

I wanted to stay awake til 2am when supposedly the storm was going to peak... buuuut I fell asleep, but woke up to this:

(yes, that is my love dorm... the one that costs me a TOTAL of $220 for 5 months rent)

I don't personally think its that bad.... I was expecting worse. BUT! I would much rather see a few garbage can knocked over and some tree branches thrown around than my bedroom window blown out. So.... yeah..... until next time!

Friday BEACH Saturday OLD SAN JUAN

Most students around here don't have classes on Fridays, so a group of us got together and decided to go to the beach. We took the metro there (photo below) and then took a bus. I love public transportation! I am only 75 cents away from most places in the San Juan metropolitan area!

When we got off the bus it was pouring rain. We walked in this rain for about 10 minutes and then got to the beach. We set up the umbrellas with some brick structure and created a little dry fortress for our belongings. The wonderful part about the rain was that it scared everyone off. We went to one of the most popular beaches in the area.... and there was NO ONE there.... and within 15 minutes, it stopped raining... and a little while after that the sun came out. The waves were PERFECT for body surfing. I think I spent about 3 hours in the ocean playing on the waves. Afterwards, when I was standing still I could feel the waves moving still.... like inside of me was swaying.

The next day was beautiful! But, some of us were too tired to go to the ocean again, so we opted for going to Old San Juan. We started off by taking a walk around the edge of the island.

And then we get to this lovely street:

--- which in the plaza just around the corner, we found a geocache!! :) The log was all full, but I tore out a sheet of my notebook paper and stuck it in there with our names!

Just around the corner from this was a beautiful cathedral. We walked around a little.... none of us are Catholic so we were sort of confused about some things... but it was a learning experience. My favorite parts were the ceilings and the candles.

By this point it was about 2pm and we decided we needed to hit the fortress before it closed (at 5!) So we hiked up the streets and walked down the loooong sidewalk to "El Morro."

The view here is just so lovely... I wish I could post more pictures, but the internet is beyond slow here. I am talking about 10 minutes per picture to load on my blog. If it weren't for the fact that they cancelled school AGAIN tomorrow, I probably wouldn't be sitting here so long.... :/ Hopefully later on the internet will be faster....

And then we bought slushies.

Tropical Storm Irene made me sit still for a minute....

I am sort of thankful that we have this storm coming in. It means that I have time to sit and do "nothing." Which would include logging my now TWO geocaches, posting pictures on Facebook, sending a few overdue emails and BLOGGING!!

It has been a whole week since I blogged. WOW!!!

School started this week. Here is a picture of my campus:

It is a beautiful campus. It has its quirks.... but its lovely. I recently bought a new camera and I will be doing a photo shoot of my lovely school. It is really quite photogenic, but that will have to wait until after this tropical storm passes through! I need my blue skies back.

I have been making lots of new friends-- and with these friends we do "community meals." Everyone brings something and we tie it all together and make dinner. We eat lots of this:

This is a pretty common food that we have been eating.... rice, and beans (with pumpkin chunks!) with freshly made bread and an egg! Love it!

I have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays ONLY so I spent Wednesday at the beach. This time we went to one called Isla Verde. The colors were beautiful-- white sand and blue water. My camera phone just doesn't do it justice!!!

Thats all for now! I have some pics from Saturday that I need to put up! But the internet here is being funny and is uploading very slowly...... maybe it doesn't like the storm..... in the mean time I will be singing this song:

Rock you like a hurricane.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxdmw4tJJ1Y

:)

Adios San Juan, HELLO Torre Norte!

Saturday was move out day. I was sort of sad to leave. I had been there for about 6 nights, and the owner was such a nice guy, very accommodating. If you ever need a hostel in San Juan, let me know. Very economic, family owned/ ran. It’s like ½ star rating, but I loved it. The owner, “Quique” called us a taxi. The three of us with all of our suitcases pretty much filled the back of this large 15- passenger van. When we were loading up, this homeless guy tried to help us load stuff. The owner of the hostel didn’t like the idea, and I didn’t really either. I guess I was afraid that he was going to take the bag and run. But, he didn’t… he just helped load up and then walked away… where was he when we were carrying all these bags up and down the 3 flights of stairs? (Our last room was on the THIRD floor with NO elevator)

So, we made it to the dorm and moved in.

Here is the view from my 11th floor room:

The only students moving in on Saturday were exchange students. And to my surprise, only maybe 1/3 of them are Americans. There are a handful from Spain, France and Haiti… a couple from Italy and Canada (Quebec), one from Honduras… and I’m sure I am missing some places. It’s very very cool. In the elevator I met Claudio and Silvia from Italy. We went to Burger King for lunch and then we went shopping for the dorm. I was so exhausted. The heat didn’t even bother me [that much]. It was so fun getting to know everyone. We had a pretty fun group together.

The group of us on the bus to go shopping!

Sunday morning they want us downstairs and in the meeting place at 8:30am for an ALL DAY orientation- something that I didn’t know about/ was expecting until later Saturday evening. They gave us breakfast and a presentation. Then, we took a tour of the campus and they gave us an authentic Puerto Rican meal for lunch.

I LOVE my campus. I honestly feel like I am walking around in the jungle.

We had a break and then we went to Old San Juan. The part about going to Old San Juan wasn’t too exciting for me… especially since I had spent the last 7 days there. BUT the bus was free and I was going to get a walking tour of the city. It was interesting.

We stopped by the castle again!! This time, there were lots of people flying kites.

We passed one of the sites of where a geocache was hidden, so I was able to retrieve it, sign my name and catch up to the group. We were then taken to a little café for dinner, where we were given more Puerto Rican food and lots of shade.

Part of the group, resting a minute.

ALSO! We saw flamenco dancers! It was during a festival and they were representing the Spanish influence here in Puerto Rico.

It was such a hot and sunny day. After that we were shuttled home… once again completely beat.

Today (Monday) I woke up on my own around 7:30. The heat really won’t let you sleep later than that. I hope I get used to the heat later on. I got ready and popped over to campus. I had to adjust my schedule. NOW I only have classes Tuesday and Thursday. I got my ID (awful picture, by the way) and then I got to talking to a girl named Christine. She is LDS (just found out today). I thought she was… but today it was confirmed. We went to the store together and went to lunch. It will be nice to have someone to go to activities/ institute/ church with me.

I am very excited for classes to start!! I am ready to meet new people.....!

Geocaching

It has been a few days since I have been able to get on here! Goodness- so much has happened. I find that the less time I have to blog, the more fun I am having. I will try to be on top of this, because I don’t want to forget about anything! Friday I didn’t end up doing much but geocaching. I was very unsuccessful but I came SO CLOSE.

I decided I would be better off taking pictures of the beautiful flower I found.

All over this park there were "statues" of empty shoes.... sort of creepy. In this same park there were hundreds of pigeons. I had to walk very confidently to be able to get through them.

Later that day I got on the internet and looked at clues/ pictures and it will be helpful for finding them in the future. That evening I really wanting to just sit down and watch a movie, but I couldn’t find one. So I had to settle for a paperback novel and a Sudoku book. I think it was a nice evening: Sitting on the balcony, live band/ festival outside in the street and the nice breeze of the trade winds cooling off the evening.

Beach: El Condado

(August 11^th)

Because of our beach failure yesterday we decided to go to a different beach today. We had heard lots of good things about one called “Condado.” BUT! We agree that it is not as nice as “El escabron.” At the other one there were palm trees for shade, etc and at this one… NOTHING. Also, this one had hotels all around it…. And it was a lot busier. But--- the waves were bigger at this one. (Which is probably why the water wasn’t as see through….) but anyway. Been there, done that. Probably won’t go back. We will be searching for another beach soon…. J

the start of the swimming area. this is where we camped our towels.

this part was very pretty!! (below!) right next to us...... love it!

Afterwards we grabbed a bite at a restaurant across the street. It was surprisingly cheap… I thought we would only find high end restaurants. … seeing as how it was next door to Gucci… and many other high end stores that I don’t know how to spell. But it makes sense…. You would need somewhere cheap after spending all your money at those other stores… hehe.

In the evening we went to a street festival… some culinary festival they have every 6 months. Many of the restaurants open up and put stands outside and sell smaller portions for less. These restaurants are usually around 15-25 dollars a plate and in the festival they "lower" the price to around 5 or 7 dollars. So it was sort of a good “deal”-- but not really. I chose to have flautas for dinner. Yes. I chose Mexican food in a Puerto Rican festival. But I have officially been here for more than a week and eaten maaaany Puerto Rican things… so there. Haha, I really was craving Mexicana food!

It was also fun because every street/ plaza had different live music- mostly Salsa. (This was my FAVORITE PART--- all the music in the street!!!) One band played a lot of American music…. Which we thought was weird. But regardless, it was a fun night with lots of food and music. The only tough part was that when I wanted to go to bed, the party wasn’t over. It took me FOREVER to fall asleep last night…. Loud salsa band playing right outside our balcony. But… regardless It was a fun night! Tomorrow night it continues, and it is our last night here. So, we'll see what it brings!

No swimming allowed.

(August 10^th)

Today could have been better. We went on a tour which wasn’t very interesting…. but the tour was on an island… and we thought we could do some historical stuff and then go and find a beach. So the tour gets out and behind the building we see the ocean. So we go walking and find a park. The park employees were looking at us funny and we couldn’t figure out why. We walked to the ocean and found the “NO SWIMMING” sign and were like DANG! But in the distance we see a pretty pristine beach… and were both up for an adventure, so we decide were going to find it. After climbing up and down beach rocks, wading through what seems to be radioactive water (because it was very warm, almost hot!), driftwood, seaweed and the smell of dead fish….. we arrive at a river. Not just any river, a somewhat “river rapid” type river. And therefore, our journey ended and we had to head back. Such a waste of time. So- if you were at all curious if Puerto Rico had ugly beaches let it be known- YES THEY DO. And we still don’t know how to get to that nice, far-away beach that we saw.

This was the start of the journey... looks nice... but NOT.

We saw this sign when first entering the park..... should have known the rest would have been LAME!!

On a brighter note, we have a new roommate. Her name is Chrissy. She is from Kentucky. (So that makes three with her, me and then Jennie from California.) We went out for dinner and I had a Puerto Rican tamale. It is very gross looking—but very delicious. Back at the hostel we met two guys from Paris. They’re our neighbors. We sat out on their balcony and hung out for a while. They’re 21-ish and they are on a 3 week vacation here in Puerto Rico. I must add a side note- everyone in Puerto Rico is in a good mood. And me included!! Being here just makes me so happy!!

El Morro: San Cristobal/ San Felipe

August 9^th

OKAY! And as if yesterday wasn’t a good enough, today got even better and more eye opening. I just never knew that such beauty exists. Today after our room change (I am now in a room with two “beds” AND mini-fridge!!!!) we went to see the fortresses.

There are two of them: San Felipe del Morro and San Cristobal. They were both incredible. We first went to San Cristobal. That one was very spread out. Each of the levels seemed to be carved out of the land. It was like a castle with grass as the floor. It was a little hilly and had IGUANAS everywhere. I mean everywhere! Anywhere we stopped for a picture we could find one. We found many “iguana holes.”

Can you find the iguana in the picture below???

The colors are so vibrant!!! Definitely a drastic change to how dry Indiana was when I left.

We were very hot and took about all that we could of the sun so we decided it was lunch time. We went to a cute little restaurant called “El Juarito.” (I think) They serve a lot of seafood, the which neither of us liked… but we tried the place anyway. We shared 3 side dishes: White rice & beans (BEST beans I have ever had!), Mofongo de yuca (can’t really explain it…. Just a fried blob of potato like substance) and Tostones de pana (like fried plantains…. Only better in my opinion.) And they serve these things with this delicious fry sauce. (Mayonnaise and ketchup) As we were eating, a gentleman, probably in his 60s started talking to us. First in English… and when he found of we spoke Spanish he was delighted. We talked about the university and such. Then he gave us avocado. Then the owner gave us avocado and told us that “even if you don’t speak Spanish, after eating here you leave speaking it.” Haha, and then when we were about to leave… we find that the gentleman that first spoke to us paid for our lunch. What a lovely man! J

We then continued down the street to find the next fortress. This one was definitely better. The view was AMAZING! I think it had 6 levels if I remember correctly. At this place we were climbing up and down ramps and stairs… we even got to go inside a light house! (but they wouldn’t let us go to the very top.) The fortress had a beautiful view of the ocean and the city of San Juan. From there we could also see the “Island of Goats.” It was the island where the Spanish put people with leprosy. That is where we will go Wednesday. This fortress also had a beautiful cemetery. I sang my own version of the song “If I Die Young…” I decided I wanted to be buried here. I really wish I could describe how breathtaking this place was. I have on here pictures…. But they truly do not do the scenery justice. If you ever come to Puerto Rico, “El Morro” (the two “castles”) are a definite MUST.

Walking up to the castle....

Below is the cemetary.

Majestic no?

On our way back from El Morro, we passed by a plaza that had a TON of pigeons. I mean a TON. And we also met the bird man. He loved the birds and he wanted you to love them too. He tried to get us to hold them… but we settled for just throwing them food. It was fun to throw it in the air and watch all of them fly up to try and catch it.

We went grocery shopping later that evening because we’re sick of eating out…. AND we now have a mini-fridge! I know I said that already…. But since Sunday night I hadn’t had one…. It’s the little things in life, I believe. I washed some clothes, which was sort of an adventure as well. There is a single washing machine on the terrace of our 4 story building…. And the machine looks to be as old as I am. But it washed my clothes and then I hung them to dry. And that wraps up my day… pretty much. J