When Jalizza hungry, she eat

Over the Memorial Day weekend, Nate and I will be visiting Nauvoo with some friends. Because I'm kind of a travel agent, I decided to take care of the hotel; you know, because I'm professional. I booked it a few months ago, but in the last couple days a few questions have come up, so I called their reservations department yesterday.

My conversation:

Liz: "Hi, we have a stay coming up and wanted to check if there was a refrigerator in the room"

Reservations: "I'm sorry no"

Liz: (hesitates)...well okay-so you know we had booked the room for six, but there will only be four in the room, do you need to know that?"

Reservations: "It would help because our breakfast portions are really large"

Liz: (hesitating again because maybe four people could eat for six) "oh, okay, thanks"

After that conversation, I proceeded to discuss (via email) various plans with traveling companions, but still wasn't getting a response regarding whether we should buy groceries before arriving in the area. So I sent this email off:

"any thoughts on the grocery situation. "

Fine. The only problem is that I emailed the hotel...about groceries. I hoped it was an inbox that no one checked and I'd maybe get away with my idiocy. A few minutes later, I received this email:

"Hi Liz, I'd be happy to help, but I'm not sure what you mean by "the grocery situation". Do you mean that you don't want to be eating out and want to know how to store something?

If that's the case, I would recommend bringing a cooler... That might work.

~Ashton

Reservations"

For some reason, I felt like a (hungry) backwoods girl getting ready for her crazy (and food filled) weekend at a church history site. I'm imagining how our reservation has now been flagged:

room notes: Please check any bulging pockets for food upon check in. Please also tell "Liz" that breakfast will be large enough. Do not hesitate to use the word "pig".

Awkwardness revisited

My last post was a general "we had a great time!" post, but there were a few moments that I didn't share and now want to. Luckily, I have pictures to go along with them:

This was one of the images on the ball court at Chichen Itza. It is a representation of a man being sacrificed. The snakes you can hopefully see shooting out represent blood. I realized a long time ago why I couldn't be a nurse, and this image (along with other detailed sacrifice descriptions) reminded me. On top of which, I started getting really overheated. Right after we looked at this and walked out of the court area, I started to see stars, but no Nate. I eventually stumbled my way over to a tree with some shade where I sat down. I continued to walk, then sit at the ruin sites until we got to the coke stand by the cenote (sink hole). Coke helped along my recovery, but I felt like a wuss because there were at least a handful of people older and (I thought) less fit than me. Maybe it's hip to be weak.

One of the days we went to the gym, we took our camera to document how nice the gym is so we could drool over it later. As we were leaving, this "magician" came up from behind Nate. The three of us stood around awkwardly for a moment, then the magician motioned to Nate to take a picture of he and I. I was secretly thrilled at the chance to get such a weird picture, but I tried to act professional. My big smile might have given me away.

While we were at the pool one day, we actually saw another couple. One of them was reading the popular novel "Twilight". Guess which one it was? I don't even think every woman should read that book, but a guy? They had books at the gift shop, so something tells me the only thing this guy was desperate for was a vampire love story.

I'm so proud of this one; I don't think he noticed cause Nate was doing a fake pose-you can almost see the edge of his hand. Keep this man in mind for the next one:

Nate was taking pictures by the pool and wanted me to pose. Our camera doesn't have a view finder and Nate was experimenting, so I had been standing around for a few minutes. Suddenly I hear, "Come on, you can do sexier than that!!" noooooooooooooo.... it was my tanned friend, now sitting at a table where he and his wife could watch what was happening with Nate and I. So to review, his wife and my husband were present...and that's what he decides to say. I could also comment on how I looked similar to a drowned rat, but that is beside the point. I don't want to look like anything, especially not for Tan Tannerson. I guess that's what I get for sneaking shots of him. oops.

This wasn't the exact sunset, but one evening Nate and I were out on the balcony enjoying a sunset similar to this one. Suddenly we hear: "FEATHER*!!! FEATHER!!! Where are you?! Where's my wife?" Eek. Apparently someone's all day drinking fest had caught up to them by 8:00pm. The good news is that he found Feather and she and a mother in law (I think) took him to his room.

*name has been changed

The last morning of our trip we saw MJ in the restaurant during breakfast. He was promoting a Michael Jackson show for that night and because we'd be missing it, I really wanted a picture of him. He was milling around the buffet tables, couples eating, etc., every now and again yelling "Woo Hoo!" ala Michael. It was awesome. Luckily, he had the same hammy spirit as the magician (it could've been the same guy for all I know) and was willing to pose!

I love swine flu

Nate and I had been planning our summer vacation since about last December. Our destination? The Riviera Maya, just south of Cancun. I'd been there for a quick visit a few years ago for work and I knew I liked it so after many discussions, we knew we wanted to go; and in May. What we didn't know is that our trip would be right around the height of the swine flu business. I considered not going for a few minutes, but that quickly passed. We took an early morning flight last Saturday (6:20am departure=3:00am alarm setting) and got into Cancun around 10am their time. We got settled into the resort by around 12:30 and we began our eating, swimming, and resting as soon as we could.

We stayed at the Aventura Spa Palace and it was lovely! I was able to swing a discount because of my travel agent "status"-really I was just pleased that it's finally paid off this first time in the last almost two years. The resort is right on the ocean, but the water is a bit too rough/rocky for the beach itself, so we had the ocean along with a man made reservoir that one could snorkle in along with the pools throughout the resort. I won't bore you with all the details (maybe I'll save that just for family), but we enjoyed nice restaurants, a nice room (that cleaned itself), pools that were nearly vacant, an air conditioned gym (I'd almost forgotten what it felt like) and fun tours of the ruins (complete with a heavy emphasis on buying authentic crap-which we totally did).

It was also fun to listen to a bilingual Nate all week; it was amazingly helpful in every situation. Between my travel agent status (I didn't realize, but we were awarded the VIP wrist bands...ooooh!) and Nate's language skills, everyone was nice to us. And I try not to brag because it's unbecoming, but every person that Nate spoke with complemented his Spanish (I could at least understand that much); good thing he has such white skin or they'd be totally confused. HA. Speaking of that, we both got burned and were reminded once again that our future children have little hope of skin pigment. Get it, PIG-ment? Swine?

In short, Nate has now completed his second year of law school, we had a fun vacation, and we aren't sick, so we are totally satisfechos.

Liz in front of the hotel

Nate with "the Mask"...who knows; it's near one of the pools. We wanted to make fun, so we took this under the cover of night.

Nate and I in the lobby

Liz and some gators

Just a regular day at the gym...ps-the magician encouraged this photo

Nate and I eating our weight in Mexican food.

Nate and I at Tulum

Nate at Chichen Itza near the wall of skulls

I really like that this looks like a stock photo-it really was taken while we were there