Saturday, March 22, 2008

A Ramble Worth Two Weeks

The cruise was absolutely AMAZING. Here are just a few of the 200 pictures I took.


This was part of the upper deck of the ship. There were tons of pools/hot tubs and all day a steel drum band played reggae songs.



I took this when we got off the ship in Cozumel. That water was crystal clear.



There's the ship!

The cave tubing in Beliz was my favorite part of the trip by far. We got up at 7am and took a boat to the shore of Beliz. Our tour guide, Tomas, picked us up and he drove us through Beliz City. It was such an interesting city. They are going through some type of reform right now and everywhere there were signs and billboards about voting for the UDP which Tomas said is a democratic government. It was so different from America. Then we drove for about 40 minutes and we were at the rain forest! It was unreal. It felt like we had just left South Philly and all of a sudden we were at a rain forest! We walked through the rain forest for half an hour until we got to the river. I couldn't bring my camera because you get completely soaked cave tubing but walking through that rain forest was the most breath taking and amazing experience of my life. It was so beautiful. The ceiling of the cave had crystals and diamonds. We came up to the bottom of a waterfall where the water is completely pure and clean so everyone drank from it and got completely soaked.

There were so many things we did. We went to Paradise Beach in Cozumel. It was full of palm trees and even had parrots! Sammy and I bought huge $13 drinks from the tiki bar that probably would've been atleast 20 in the U.S. The men that work the bar walk around the beach with bottles of tequila and pour it in your mouth while you lay out in the sun. I don't know if I've felt as relaxed and free as I did on that beach. It truly was paradise.

Beliz and Cozumel were our two big stops but on the ship there was so much to do! There were 3,000 people on our ship and 1,000 of them were Spring Breakers! Every single night was the biggest party you've ever been to on the ship. We made a lot of friends (who were 21) ;) and lived it up almost every night. There was a night club called The Dungeon and we went there a few nights. There was a huge casino. Every floor had tons of bars and all of them were packed. The Royal Promenade was the size of a football field and full of places to eat, bars and shops. It felt like we were walking in a town on the ship.

I could go on forever about everything that we did and more details about the ship. Two people told me that they thought I was the happiest I had been in a very long time when I got back to school on Sunday. And then Monday came...

I had a very straining week. On Wednesday I had a breakdown. I felt like I let down someone really close to me, and that is the last thing I ever want to do. I also have come to the realization that I'm not happy at West Chester anymore. But, I'm not going into that right now. I felt like I was failing in so many different aspects of my life. Mom's in North Carolina visiting Kristen so she let me borrow the car so I could come home. I needed some time to myself away from campus.

Today I came across a quote that I'm going to print out and take back to college with me on Sunday. It's from one of the most inspiring people I know.

"Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it's not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't. It's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere."
-Barack Obama

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