Mistakes

Ok, so I made a big fuss about my newly dyed hair, and I guess I can't go without showing pictures. In my defense, the dye was only $3, so I guess it did the best it could...

 Its ok in the front I guess...a little darker than I would have loved, but I didn't mind too much.... 

Its the back thats a killer!! The dye didn't take to my hair or something happened! 

It is most definitely 3 different colors...sigh.

I learned my lesson. Don't dye your own hair, or else use the good stuff!

 I also dyed my mom's hair, and hers actually did color the whole thing, but it too was way darker than she planned!

Don't mind her pajamas...she's like that. 

So, try not to make fun of me too much. I'm working on it.

Hot Potato

I am a firm believer in a picture being worth a thousand words. It has come to my attention that I haven't blogged in a week! What is that all about? Instead of telling you (which could take up a blog and a half's worth of words) I will show you.

my power balance bracelet came in the mail! yes, I realize that they are 'proven' to actually be a scam, but I bought it online for 99 cents. I call that a deal. 

I hung out with this little guy. He likes to wear weird clothes, but I still love him. 

That's right folks! I drove a real live tractor! Ok, no I didn't . But I washed all the windows. See how you can see perfectly out the front right there? That's because I am a fantastic cleaner. 

So driving a potato truck is a pretty clean job, right? Wrong. 

I come home every day and I look something like this. 

The dirtiest I've ever been. In my life. 

Hour 6 or 7. 13 hour days will do this to you. 

One day we were waiting around while the potato belt cleared a little (sometimes the pile gets too high and we get backed up) so we did some math. We decided that every truck load gives around 30 bags of potatoes, each bag is 100 lbs., and each potato weighs around 1-1.5 lbs. You do the math. That's a lot of potatoes, people.

Ok, why don't I own any food?? What is the point of a cute mini fridge in your room?! It does provide some deliciously cold water though. 

Please understand that waking up at 6 am, going on my run (keeping strong on the cpt5k!), and then going to work till 8:30 or 9 at night, is super exhausting. If you only hear from me once a week, that might be all I can give. I will try to postpone my 9:30 bedtime a little longer to give you some fantastically great updates. :) Also, don't tell me all about your schoolwork that keeps you up till 3 am, and all of your hard days because I require at least 9 hours of sleep. Always have, always will.

sidenote: Pandora, you've outdone yourself! Way cool layout! I like it a lot more than Facebook currently!

Thinking about potatoes reminded me of this song. Yeah, I'm a Wiggles fan, what of it. 

The Return

Internet! Air conditioning! Electricity! (haha just kidding we had power) My own bed!! I am home. And I think I love it. It's sometimes a good thing to go away for a long time to realize what exactly you have and what a good thing it is. When I stepped out of the airport and took a breath of air that wasn't saturated in humidity, that was nice. I had a really great time in Puerto Rico, but it sure is nice to be home. Here are some of the last of the pictures I took, exclusive to this blog, just as I promised.

Gas was only 91 cents! Jealous? 

Thank You for flying Air Delta.

A little view of Atlanta, Georgia. I might live here someday. I like it.

 On the last flight home from Atlanta, I sat next to this little 12 year old girl flying alone. She looked nervous, scared, and a little terrified to be on the flight. I asked her if this was her first time flying so maybe I could comfort her and make her feel better about it. She told me this was her 9th time flying this year. Alone. Poor kid. She didn't really warm up to me until about half way through the flight, but when she decided I was nice, (after I pulled out my coloring book and started coloring) we talked the whole way home after that. I am going to tell you her story because I was intrigued, and also I thought she was a really cool little girl. She had just gotten back from a cruise with her grandparents that left from Florida and went to Mexico, Haiti, and close to Venezuela. It was her 2nd cruise, her first being when she was 8. Her dad lives in Florida, her mom in Utah. She commutes every summer between the two, and she loves Florida much more than Utah (who wouldn't?). I thought it was really sad that she had to fly alone so much, but way cool to be able to have all those experiences at such a young age! Yeah a 12 year old has flown more in her life than I have in my 20 years of life... what of it? Sometimes I like little kids more than adults. The majority of the time they are much nicer anyway.

Speaking of little kids, at the terminal to get our luggage, I overheard a little boy talking to his sister. He said, hey do you know what WWF stands for? She thinks about it for a minute, then shakes her head no. He emphatically said 'World War Fuzzy!' then cracked up about his own joke for at least 5 minutes. Little kids are such dorks.


Now it's time to get back to real life. Anybody got any suggestions about the next step I should take in my life? This whole being an adult thing and making my own decisions isn't actually any fun.

Islanders

Only getting to use the internet one time a day is kind of hard! I get on fb (yeah, still can't break that habit) and I have a bazillion notifications so I spend my whole time going through those. I promised pictures, but I feel like since they are on Fb, we can just call that good. Maybe I will save some exclusively for the blog, to make your time here worth it. I am so exhausted it is hard to think of something to write. The heat makes it really hard to sleep, and the places they cram me in are also a deterrent of sleeping. So far I have slept on a couch, a hard wood table, and currently a blow up raft for the pool. But, it's just one week and I have the rest of my life to sleep. We started out in San Juan and then yesterday traveled to Cabo Rojo and spent some time there. It took around 2.5 hours to cross the island and the drivers are crazy! They really don't care about using their blinkers or brakes, but they sure do love the horn!  We are now somewhere else (I just get in the car and fall asleep so the drives aren't so miserable) and I think we are staying here until Saturday, so I will definitely get some good pictures of the area. I am having the time of my life and I am so excited that I will actually remember this trip! The last big trip I took was to Paris/London, but I was only like 10 or so, so I don't remember very much of it. I will definitely be coming back here. I am told that more than half the island is related to me! It's our joke that whenever I see someone cute or someone doing something interesting that they are automatically my primo. I have a lot of cousins around here in that case. It is really interesting to learn about the family history here and I had no idea that I had so many relatives around! I guess it will be easy to find a place to stay in the future! Well its time to go watch some telemundo! Not really, thats just the only spanish phrase I have on hand. Nos vemos mañana a mis amigos! Te amo!

Paradise

The network on my phone is down for the moment, so I can't get any pictures up yet. This is the first time I have had interent, so I will give you a rundown of what's happened so far. We left Monday morning at 2am for a 7am flight in SLC. We arrived in Georgia around 12 and had to wait till 3 to leave to Puerto Rico. We got to PR around 7pm and my uncle and grandpa were waiting for us at the airport. As soon as I stepped outside my hair grew about 7 feet in fluffy-ness. They don't joke around about the humidity here. Monday night was really hot and muggy for awhile, and then there was a lightning storm for the rest of the night. I woke up this morning at 5 and it was raining. It has been raining ever since. Hurricane Maria has been working her way through and she has not left very happy people in her wake. Most of the roads that we drove through today had pretty intense amounts of water on them. Sometimes it just drizzles outside and sometimes there was a full blown avalanche of rain happening. I wasn't aware it could rain that hard. It wasn't scary or anything, no houses were blown down that I know of. It has been very warm outside and the breezes feel really good. Just now, at about 6, the sun came out for the first time that I've seen today and that feels different. The roosters are going crazy outside because they are confused that it has been dark all day and the sun is just now showing. They are vocalizing their concerns in the backyard. I almost prefer the rain just because it cools it down a little. We drove from one side of the island all the way over to the other side (which took about 2.5 hours) and we are at this really nice house on top of the mountain that shows everything. I wish my pictures would cooperate. I found a coconut in the backyard that had fallen awhile ago so it was nice and big. I, having never opened a coconut in my life, found a pick ax, and began working on it. I wasn't aware their was a method of opening such a monstrosity. My 84 year old great uncle came over to me and he took out a machete that was hanging up near by and chopped that thing open like he was born in the jungle. I was majorly impressed. It was super tasty and we have little plates of coconut sitting on the counter and we just eat it whenever we feel like it. I won't go into detail about the lizard problem here, I will save the pictures for that. I will try to get my phone to stop being so emotional, and see if I can get some pictures on here tonight. Buenos tardes muchachos!

Management

For some reason lately I haven't been keeping a close eye on my bank account. I haven't been working for a couple weeks, so I haven't had checks to deposit. I just spent money whenever I wanted, without a care in the world. That came to slap me in the face today. I went online to see how much money I could take out for my trip, and I found out that my account had 0 dollars. It had been taking money from my savings, which luckily I had something in there, and each and every time it took money, it charged me $20. If I would have paid more attention, I could have stopped the overdraw I did 3 individual times, costing me $60. I. Am. Livid. It isn't fair that even though I have money in a different account, it charges money for running out of money. Isn't that a little counterproductive? Charge money because the client is out of money? I think so. I guess that's why everybody loves the bank, huh? I guess all there is to do is work extra hard next week. But for now, bye for awhile!!! I will try to update my blog whenever I have internet, but I'm not exactly sure how often that will be.

Here is a little sneak peak at what I will be doing.......

Notice how they are all at the beach?? Yeah, that's where I will be spending 98.2% of my time. :)

The Energizer Bunny

Holy cow! What a day. I am so exhausted I can't even know how much longer I can hold out before I just crash to the floor and never move again. As I mentioned yesterday, I went to the Viking Man race today to help my aunt out with the massage station. All the triathletes came to us after their run and flopped down on the table for awhile until we got their muscles worked out. I got there at 9 this morning and I just now walked in my door at 6:30. I have been giving massages non-stop for almost 10 hours. Throughout the day, the actual massage guy who knew what he was doing gave me all sorts of tips and tricks for massaging all parts of the body so I am almost a professional. He said if I come over to his office he will give me a massage at a reduced price. That means I am loved. All in all, I can pretty much say this day was a success.  The best part was the very last guy to finish. He and his brother finished way after every one was done, all the tents were put away, the timers had left, and the finish line had been taken down. I went up to him and offered to massage him and he said he would love that. His feet were so blistered and some of the blisters had broken, so my aunt and I dragged the massage table over to him and worked on him for awhile. After he was done, his son (college aged, pretty cute, non married) said hey dad, don't worry I got your tip money, and handed me a 20 dollar bill! That was incredibly exciting for me. I do think all this exercising I am doing is paying off in the long run! (haha  pun intended)

Very important side note that I forgot to add: If you have never massaged runners who have trained for months and months, you are missing out on a special kind of person. I am speaking of the guys in particular. Those bodies are in dang good shape! The race rules are that your number is written in permanent marker on your calf and thighs (a very great job that I got to do last year) and your other calf has your age on it. It is a little humbling when the 56 year old guys run through in the beginning and they smoked everyone else. It is the greatest when the 25 year olds come with no wedding rings and big smiles and even bigger 6 packs! Granted they are married to working out 6 days a week for 7 hours every day, but once they finally realize that running isn't everything I think we'd be good to go. Ok, yeah, sure I was focused on the job and not on them. We'll go with that. I love having connections and being one of the volunteers they turn to every year!