Priceless

One Euro: $1.32

Round-trip flights to Europe from SLC: $401

Being a student with summers free during a big recession: PRICELESS

Is anyone up for a trip???

Great.

Tomorrow night I am picking up some of my parents' Brazilian friends from the airport so I thought I'd spruce up my car a bit today. I guess I have a short memory because I used the protectant wipes I bought a few months ago but swore I'd never use again because they made my car stink. I remembered that the cleaning wipes made my car stink but I couldn't remember what they made my car stink like. So today I opened the package and took a whiff and... Nothing...They just smelled like a cleaning wipe should smell. So I thought to myself...'maybe there was never anything wrong with the smell...maybe I just had a migraine when I used them before which made me over sensitive to smell...I guess I'll just use them again.' About 2.5 seconds after I started wiping down my dash I remembered why I didn't like this particular brand of cleaning wipe...because they make my car smell like B.O.! There must be some weird reaction with my car and the wipes that produce the smell, but the combination forms what is, without a doubt, a strong, B.O. smell...think sweaty Germans wearing spandex, boys' locker rooms, or pre-deodorant use junior high boys with Mexi-stashes and you've got the right smell in mind. GREAT. Just what I need. So I run buy a car air freshener...you know, the tree shaped kind. I'm not into air fresheners for cars because they are usually too strong for me, but this was an emergency. So I tried to find the smell least likely to cause me to get a migraine and I chose WATERMELON. The watermelon wasn't strong enough however to mask the B.O. smell so now my car smells like a bunch of sweaty guys eating watermelon. I hope it clears out by the time I have to pick up the Brazilians...it's their first visit to the U.S.A. and I don't want to scare them off or give them something to call home about right off. Maybe I'll crack my windows all day tomorrow and hope it clears out. Wish me luck!

Belize or Bust...trip 2!

In February I headed back to Belize for a little more cheap sunshine. This time I brought along with me my co-worker Crystal, my travel buddy Kate and her friend Kristin, and my roommate Mindy and her friends Valerie and Brooke. It was a fun group of seven girls...or that's how we started out anyway. We later sort of added more people as the trip went on. Here below is the group of the original seven of us.

I knew we were in for an adventure when Crystal and I went through security in SLC...it's all how things start. I had gotten through security and was just putting all my clothes back on when I turned around to look for Crystal and spotted her in this glass security booth getting completely frisked down by a TSA person...including having her hair frisked (she has long, thick, hair and it was sort of pulled up so she probably could have hidden some weapons in there).

Just then I get a message on my phone from Mindy up at the gate wondering where we were. I called her back and left a message saying that, "we are late getting up to the gate because Crystal is getting a major frisk over and that it is too bad she didn't at least have some nunchucks or grenades or something hidden in her hair to make it worth TSA's time." Maybe you had to be there but it was pretty funny turning around to see some guy massaging through your friend's hair. So the rest of the trip we teased Crystal about her hidden weaponry in her hair. We had a little down time later on in the trip so we reenacted the moment. I am the TSA officer and Crystal is Crystal. We didn't have any nunchuks or grenades so we used a knife, a can opener and some other metal thing we found in our hotel room for props. I frisked her hair...

and look what I found...that little terrorist! I mean I guess someone could hide stuff in their hair. Lee used to SWEAR there was a girl in our ward who had hair so big that she hid Cheez-Its and other snacks in her hair to eat during church. So I guess it is always better safe than sorry when it comes to airport security.

Anyway, since we were all a bunch of single girls traveling to Belize on February 13th I guess we thought we could avoid the whole Valentine's Day thing. But not so...all over they were having Valentine's Day sales. Seriously, of all American holidays for a foreign country to adopt...why that one?

Anyway, we got into Belize City in the evening and headed straight to San Ignacio which is a few hours away. The next morning we got up and went to the big Saturday market in San Ignacio where they sale fruits, veggies, fresh fish, clothing, crafts, etc.

Then we headed to the Guatemalan border which isn't far from San Ignacio. I guess I must escape to Central America often around Valentine's Day because as we were crossing over into Guatemala I noticed in my passport that I have a stamp for entering Guatemala on February 13th, 14th, and 15th...all from different years. So three of the four times I've been to Guatemala has been on or around Valentine's Day...weird, I know. We drove from the Belize/Guatemala border for a couple of hours on horrible roads until we got to Tikal...which is one of, if not the most impressive Mayan ruin in all of Central America. I'd been there over five years ago but it seemed different this time and luckily I have a poor memory of all the things I learn while traveling so I will gladly go to the same place more then once.

We saw howler monkeys there which are SO LOUD and scary sounding. I couldn't get a close enough picture of any of the monkeys so I instead got a picture of everybody staring at the monkeys. I don't know why though.

Here I am with a side shot of one of the temples.

Here's part of the main plaza complex at Tikal. I couldn't get it all in one picture. The Mayan people still come here to worship I think at the equinoxes or solstices or something.

Me in front of my favorite Mayan temple. I just like how steep the temples are at Tikal...a hike to the top is not for those scared of heights.

A view from one of the temples to a few others in the distance. Most of Tikal is still covered in jungle so you can just imagine what a big impressive city it was just by how impressive what has been uncovered is.

The top of a Ceiba tree. The Mayan people worship this tree. They refer to it as the tree of life. According to them, it unites the nine levels of the underworld (aka hell) with the earth and the thirteen heavens. It is a really cool looking tree and they get super old and huge if they aren't cut down or choked to death by a matapalo.

After Tikal we went zip-lining nearby. Our guide said we had time for shopping or zip-lining and I think both he and our driver were surprised that with seven girls we unanimously chose zip-lining over shopping. I guess they didn't know what kind of group they were dealing with.

We had a couple of crazy Guatemalans who didn't speak much English as our zip-line guides. They were letting/encouraging us to do some crazy stuff on the zip-lines, like hanging upside down or zip-lining Superman style, meaning that you aren't hanging on with your hands at all and your harness thing is on backwards. It was super fun and SUPER safe mom. We weren't up nearly as high as when I did it in Costa Rica.

Here's me zip-lining superman style on the last zip-line of the course as we are getting back close to the ground.

All of us zip-liners

After zip-lining we headed back to San Ignacio where we had dinner at Hannah's. The food there was AMAZING and let me just say that if any of you get to San Ignacio anytime soon, make sure to have the quesadillas at Hannah's. One thing that I was super impressed of in Belize is just how good pretty much everything we ate was...especially the fresh fish we ate at the coast. Yum!

The next morning we went to church in San Ignacio. Other than some guy dipping his finger into the Sacrament water, touching his finger to his forehead and then crossing himself, it was a totally normal and nice meeting. The members there were super friendly.

After church we loaded up in the suburban and our favorite driver, Manny, took us to Placencia which was 3 or 4 hours away. It was a fun and beautiful drive.

Here we are all scrunched in. Valerie, Crystal, Brooke and Mindy all sat in the middle seat so there would be room for our new found friend Ed (who we met at Tikal) to hitch a ride with us to Placencia. Ed is from Canada and was traveling with his brother and his brother's pregnant wife. Yeah, bad idea. So they were basically a drag to travel with and so when we met him at Tikal and he could see that we were a lot more fun then a guy and a pregnant lady he sort of joined up with us.

DON'T WORRY mom, he was a totally nice guy, and he stayed at a completely separate hotel than us and was never alone with any of us. We aren't stupid, I promise. Actually it was kind of nice having a guy with us. Belize is quite safe, especially Placencia, but we did have a night when a drunk Rastafarian wearing a pirate shirt wouldn't leave us alone and having Ed there came in handy. ALSO, seven girls traveling with one guy made for quite a scene and was a great conversation starter in a little town like Placencia made up nearly entirely of locals and retired people from the U.S. and Europe. To say the least we stood out. In fact we started telling people that we were filming season 14 of the Bachelor. To see more about that see Kate's Blog.

One lady we met asked us how we met Ed. We told her that we picked him up in Tikal. A little later she asked us, "So seriously, how did you guys all end up traveling together?" And we had to tell her that we seriously picked him up in Guatemala. The funny thing was is that there were signs at the border of Guatemala warning about involvement in human trafficking. So the rest of the trip whenever someone asked us about our interesting little group we either explained it with the filming of the Bachelor excuse or just told them we were involved in human trafficking and were taking Ed back to the states to sell him. If people can't believe the truth we'll just tell them something else I guess.

So here's the new group. Seven girls and Ed from Canada.

We stopped at the blue hole on our way to Placencia which is supposedly hooked through underground caves with the great blue hole that is out in the ocean as well as other caves throughout Belize. There are A LOT of caves in Belize so I sort of believe it. Plus I think Jacques Cousteau said it was true and he knew his diving.

After we finally found our hotel, Dianni's Place, in Placencia... Here we are with our super cool driver, Manny. He was a really nice guy, knew lots about Belize, loves Belize, was funny, and overall just a fun driver to have.

There's nothing better than sitting by the beach drinking a Pina Colada (virgin of course).

This was a sign, I think in front of an ice cream shop in Placencia. My favorite was that "A" stood for "Anti-Sadness." I think we should all promote anti-sadness around the world.

Here's THE SIDEWALK in Placencia. They seriously have a road and a sidewalk....all the restaurants, hotels, etc are either right on the road or right on the sidewalk. It would have been hard to get lost there. We went out to a private island to go snorkeling one day. After the never ending boat ride this is what my hair looked like. Now you can see why I'm wearing a do-rag most of the trip. Humidity+short hair+wind+sweat+hair product=DISASTER. That's why usually if I'm in a humid climate I'll do my hair in the morning but within an hour or so I'll just put on a do-rag. Looking good in humidity is hopeless for me.

Here's our snorkeling guide with a live crab in his hand. We did a morning snorkel and then had lunch on the island and then did an afternoon snorkel. After lunch (which by the way was this AMAZING Rastafarian barbecue/dutch oven meal) and before the second snorkel our guide showed us how to fish for bone fish using live crabs as bait. It was so much fun and I even caught a bone fish!

Here's the little private island we snorkeled around. I think it was called Ranguana Caye. It was such great fun! We even saw a couple of nurse sharks up close and I didn't have a nervous breakdown. It was great. We dove down and picked up conch shells and huge starfish. It was fabulous snorkeling.

Here we are leaving Ranguana Caye after a long day of snorkeling. I mostly put this picture in because I forgot to mention our second add-on to our group, a 79 year-old lady named Dottie who is seen here in the boat. She was staying at our same hotel and just decided to go snorkeling with us and then sort of hung around with us at other times too. She was a hillarious lady from the southern United States that knew everything about everything. It was just funny to see some 79 year old with her little tiny dog (that looked like a fat rat instead of a dog) traveling around Belize.

She must have felt she bonded with us because later that night (after 2 hours of choppy boat rides to the snorkeling site) she asked me to rub BenGay on her back. Super weird but I guess it makes for a great story. I mean, how many of you have rubbed BenGay on a stranger's back?

I think Dottie was secretly fascninated with our group dynamic because first of all she had a crush on Ed and second of all she couldn't believe that there were seven of us girls all traveling together, having a great time and getting along. She kept telling me that she was amazed that we were all traveling so well together. I thought it was funny that she couldn't believe we were getting along. It is like she was expecting some big chick fight to break out that never did. Sorry to disappoint you Dottie.

Here's the sign at the Everyday Supermarket in Placencia. And just in case you don't know what everyday means, they are open Monday to Sunday which equals EVERYDAY!

Placencia is just a cool peaceful little place. Everybody was super relaxed and cool and nice. How could you not be though? Here's half the town out playing baseball.

Our hotel had bikes for rent so we rode out to a beach farther away from our hotel and also rode all around Placencia.

Here we are at the restaurant called Wendy's (not the hamburgur place). The food was super good here as it was everywhere in Placencia.

Here we are having gelato for the millionth time and I'm not exaggerating. The gelato place, called Tutti Fruiti was run by this Italian guy, named Lorenzo, and his wife who just up and moved to Belize to enjoy a nice relaxed life making gelato in a beach town. The gelato was amazingly good and about one-half or one-third the price that you'd normally pay for gelato so we went SEVERAL times in our time there. Lorenzo even took requests from us and made special flavors just for us. Kate and I wished he'd had punch cards for frequent customers because even though we were just there a few days we probably would have filled one.

The beach near our hotel

Here we are getting on a little tiny plane to head back to Belize City to catch our big plane back to The States. I'm not as comfortable with little planes as I am with big planes because it actually feels like you are flying when you are in a little plane and not like a big jet plane that seems more like a magic bus you get on and bam, 8 hours later you are in Europe or somewhere. I like magic busses rather than actually feeling like you are flying, but I still do okay with the little planes.

Goodbye Placencia!

Overall it was a great trip because it was inexpensive, I had a fun group to travel with, and we had many great adventures and yet were all safe.

I like all the cool people I meet while traveling. They are people who are LIVING LIFE to the fullest. People are just friendly on vacation too...in fact our last night there we met a couple of really cool older couples who I think were interested in our group's dynamic and thought we seemed fun and nice and even invited us to go out on their yacht with them...too bad we had to leave, we could have had even more fun.

Belize or Bust...trip 1

In January I headed to Belize with my brothers Russell and Tyler, my cousins Nathan, Heather, and Alison as well as Alison's roommate, Anja, and her sister, Cara, for Belize trip number one. How, you ask did I convince so many people to go to Belize? Well, the tickets were only $224 so it wasn't too hard to convince people to come. How, you especially ask did I get my doesn't like to leave the state of Idaho brother Russell to come??? Well, Belize has some amazing fly fishing...so I guess I don't need to say anymore about that. The first night there we went out to eat at a place near our hotel. On the way there it was raining a little bit, but when we were at the restaurant it really started to pour. As we left someone at the restaurant asked us if we wanted them to call a cab. I don't know what we were thinking but we all just decided to walk back to the hotel. I don't think we had any idea how bad it was pouring. The streets were completely flooded and the rain was coming down like it only does in tropical places. We started out running but our clothes got so wet and heavy it kind of slowed us down, not to mention the chaffing. It didn't take two seconds out in the rain for all of us to realize we were complete idiots. I'm sure the people at the restaurant were like, "dumb Americans" when we left without a cab. BUT, it was fun and was quite the adventure. I was just sure there was a crocodile waiting to eat me in the flooded streets, but I made it back okay. I don't know why but I'm always afraid I'm going to get eaten by a shark or crocodile or some other evil animal. I guess I just worry that I'll look like good eatin, and let's be honest, I probably would be good eatin. Here we are...a bunch of dummies soaked from head to toe. The only reason part of my jacket is still dry is that I did have an umbrella with me which kept me a little bit dry. The rain was coming down so hard though that it didn't take long for the water to start soaking through the umbrella.

Ty decided that if it was still raining the next day he'd wear a shower cap. What a goof ball!

But it didn't rain the next day (not very hard anyway), so instead of wearing my soaked through Diesel shoes I wore flip flops. Ty and Nathan however decided to wear their still wet shoes. Bad mistake though, bad mistake. We all payed dearly the rest of the trip.

That first full day in Belize, Russell went bone fishing and the rest of us went to the Mayan ruin called Xunantunich that is down on the Belize/Guatemala border. It was a pretty area and we had fun climbing all over the ruins. Here we are on top of one of the temples with the guards who were packing heat to keep us tourists safe from the Guatemalans. Belize and Guatemala don't get along too well...part of the problem being that Guatemala keeps claiming Belize as part of Guatemala. In fact many Guatemalan maps just show Belize as an extension of Guatemala. So I guess sometimes there can be tension at the border...hence the big guns.

View from Xunantunich

Me, just acting like a weirdo in my big, yellow, paper thin, poncho.

More of us. And no, my cousin Alison isn't 8 months pregnant here. I think she was wearing her backpack backwards and then had her raincoat on over it...it made for some nice pseudo maternity pictures though.

A view from inside one of the ruins.

Xunantunich still...

After we got back from Xunantunich, we met up with Russell in Belize City and Nathan, Tyler, Russell, and I took a ferry out to Ambergris Caye, an island about an hour from Belize City. The rest of the girls all stayed in Belize City the rest of the time and just did little day trips from there.

While we were waiting for our ferry we got offered drugs by one of the guys that worked for the ferry company. I guess Belize is a pretty lax place because he wasn't even trying to be sneaky about it. Our tour guy the day before told us that everybody in Belize smokes pot, including the Prime Minister...no wonder Belizians are so cool and easy going...and no wonder there are a lot of Rastafarians there.

So right off this guy at the ferry dock asked us if we wanted any "buds." And of course I don't have a clue what he's talking about so I'm like, "what are buds?"

He answers, "you know...Marijuana." To which I said, "no thanks." So then he's like, "well do you want some crack?"

SERIOUSLY, if we didn't want Marijuana, do you think we're going to want the hard stuff???

Anyway, we thanked him kindly for the drug offer and he left.

A little while later, as we were leaving the ferry docks, we saw the same guy and he said something to the effect of "good luck on your trip," to which I answered, (not even thinking of course), "good luck with your drug sales!" Luckily for my sake he didn't even seem phased at all by me yelling out "good luck with your drug sales!" in the middle of a crowded ferry dock and he yelled back, "THANKS!"

I'm lucky I guess that all the drug dealers were all chill from smoking pot so I didn't get beat up. And...in my defense for saying stupid stuff...it was daylight, there were a lot of normal people around, and they seemed like nice drug dealers, not the bad kind.

Here's a picture near our hotel on the island.

And here's a scary restaurant on the island. I just wasn't too comfortable with a CALL HOME sign right by a restaurant called "Cannibals Edible Solutions."

However...I wasn't too concerned about the cannibals when I saw this sign above. I knew they had to be civilized people if they wanted dog poop picked up. That to me is the line between a civilized people and an uncivilized people...what they do with their dog poo.

Waraguma's is the place where my brother Russell fell in love with the El Salvadorian food called pupusas. He even learned how to make them since coming home from Belize. It was the tiniest little restaurant...literally a hole in the wall, but the food was good.

We had a little bungalow right on the beach. This is the view from our deck. Good thing a tsunami didn't hit...we would have been dead for sure.

Our little hotel on the beach...it was a simple little place but was nice and clean. And, they had a dive shop there so we were able to go SCUBA diving (Nathan) and snorkeling (me and Ty) with the people that owned the hotel. It was super duper fun.

On Sunday after church we rented bikes and rode ALL over the island. The only cars that are allowed on the island are taxis and service vehicles so you see a lot of people on bikes or driving golf carts.

We had a lot of fun but the trip was definitely too short. I had a pit in my stomach as we headed to the ferry dock to go back to Belize City and then back to the U.S. I could have stayed there forever...or at least another week or so.

And look what was greeting me when we got back into the SLC airport...a whole bunch of big yellow boxes full of sample to be tested at ARUP Laboratories (my now ex-workplace). Seriously, could I not even enjoy my last few hours of freedom from thinking about work before having to be at work the next morning? Oh well, that's all in the past now.