48 Hours of Perfection.

Please don't hate me after you see these pictures. I almost hate myself, if that makes sense(if such a thing were possible :) However, this weekend was....basically perfect. I know I have said before that I love Sand's, but...i LOVE Sand's!! The bartender there is maybe the nicest person I've ever met in my life. He told me "mi casa is su casa", so now I know for sure we are friends, and that makes me very happy. When I was there on Friday he only charged me $2.50 total. For everything. And....WATCHED THE YANKEES AND THE SOX! Yeah, that's right. If you happened to miss it, don't worry. The only thing you really missed was the Sox fucking themselves over yet again. How can you be carrying a 5 run lead into the top of the 8th and fucking LOSE THE GAME???!!! HOW, Red Sox? How...? Well, Joey (the bartender) and I were watching the game and the Colombians met me there and I made them wait until the game was over. And this other guy, a newyorkrican, met us there to and he is supercool and hopefully i hang out with him again the future. He took us to the most amazing bar I've ever been too. I can't remember the name, but I felt like...I was in Puerto Rico. They had this 10 piece band playing, which was totally awesome. The puertoricans were dancing in the front, and one girl would wear an apron and dance in the middle. Beautiful dancing, not grindy flithy reggaeton style. And after a while, she would take off the apron and put it on another girl who would dance in the middle. It was truely amazing to watch, and the band themselves really blew my mind. So much talent!!! It's crazy. I don't want to taint the experience by comparing it to this awful, awful movie, but... it felt like Dirty Dancing. There, i said it. *sigh* ONLY in the sense, though, that I was seeing something I have never, ever seen before, like a little gem of puerto rico that I was somehow lucky enough to stumble into.

This is supposed to be a girl dancing:

The band: (sorry Julio, I still can't figure out the rotation thing...)


I got home at 8:15 AM, and needed to meet Manda and Dan at 8:45AM because we were goingto Rincon, to the beach! So...basically, I took a shower and went to meet them. The plan was to go to this hotel "Rincon by the Sea", because I had been there with Jaybo and Laybo, and you can just walk in and use their pool/private beach, etc. SO, that is where we went, and I can't think of a better place to nurse a semi-hangover than at a pool bar, knowing you have a private beach 10 feet away. Seriously.

So, after taking a bloody mary poolside (as seen here), I moved over to the beach....


to take a nap.


See, here i am!


got sunburned. But who cares. It was a wonderful, wonderful weekend and I'm starting to realize it's impossible for me to do work of any kind on the weekends. Oh well. That's what Monday-Thursday's are for.

Sometimes, ya just gotta.

OKAY, first things first ---- I am madly and wildly in total love!!! But don't tell anyone....it would ruin my image. :) jejejejejejjjeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! i joke, i joke! but seriously...
Where to begin, where to begin...how about Saturday night??? 10pm-ish?? Does that work for everyone...? Well, that's where I will start, because that's when things started to get interesting!

10pm: I am alone in my apartment, debating if it would be a good idea to go out. I have the option to go out with some columbians. I am a little nervous to go by myself, and nervous for language barrier situations. I decide I have 2 options: 1.) to stay home and not go out (which, let's face it, isn't really "me"...) OR 2.) calm my nerves by getting drunk before I go to the party. I decide to call Bekah and debating it out loud with me as I mix my first drink.

10:45pm: Naturally, Bekah fully supports option 2. Some people look poorly upon drinking alone. In the words of Rhett Butler, "Don't drink alone, Scarlett. People always find out and it ruins your reputation." I beg to differ. Bekah takes the situation into consideration, and understands me and my ways. Which is why we are friends. She gives me her blessing, and the advice to "stay away from the cocaine table". Check.

11pm: Columbians pick me. We go to their apt and drink. One of them is a total dreamboat.

12am: Still drinking. Language barriers cannot stop me.

1am: Still drinking. Dreamboat said he is driving us to the beach tomorrow. WONDERFUL.

2am: we decide to go out. many bars are closed, but we find this fantastic little bar with music and cheap beer!!! dancing, drinking, dancing with dreamboat, smoking with dreamboat, dancing, drinking with dreamboat, smoking....

4:30am: Dreamboat walks me home and i am offically in love.

5:10am: I text Bekah and pass out.


SUNDAY: Essentially, I go with Dreamboat to Rincon, he has to find some endangered plant for colegio or something that supposedly grows in Rincon. We went to this beach, and it was fantastic to swim. I fucking love the ocean so bad. I love swimming. And I found a bunch of sea glass, which I've been collecting since Barcelona in 2003. And then we went on this crazy adventure through the jungles of Puerto Rico searching for this plant that i can't ever remember the name of and have no idea what it looks like. So I guess he was "searching", not me...but whatev. He never found it, in the end. Which is truely a shame, because that means we will have to go back next weekend to look again :)

QUE AVENTURA!!!

AY benditoooo!!! So, Rincon is amazing. On Wed night I went out with Jason and Leilani, and it was such a damn good time. I love going out with those 2, they are a riot...! For sure I am moving to Rincon, asap. Like when i get a car, and my lease in Mayaguez runs out. I did a little "networking", and I am pretty sure I will be able to work at a bar in Rincon over Christmas break, when I can't afford to fly home. SO, that would be fantastic....! Let me start from the beginning:
we go to "the rum shack" to eat and have some drinks. They had the most delicious shrimp I have ever tasted. We became friends with the waitress. We plan to meet her at this other bar (i can't remember the name) after her shift.
Unnamed bar: It was a dive place with pool tables. I clearly remember Jason going to the jukebox, and coming back with his money still because, in his words, "there is nothing I want to spend 25cents to hear...not even something ironic." Puuulleasse. Leilani and I took care of the tunes. Then after a while, we decided to move along to a different bar by the ocean which they said was really cool.
However, once we arrive, it's closed. Luckily, there are 3 puertoricans sitting outside still, and we become friends and tell us about this other bar they are going to and so we all ride there together like old friends. I can't remember their names, but they were super cool and I think we made plans to see them again soon. And I think I it's them who i put in my phone as "rdson", you know, because that almost spells "rincon"...i don't know. then there was this old lady at the bar who we started talking to and she was cool, but then she started crying and telling us this story about her brother...who died. It was very tragic. and then she invited us over to her house for lasanga. Why lasanga??? i don't get it, but it sounds delicious. However, it was like 2:30 in the AM, so it wasn't really the right time for a lasanga party. OH, and they best part: that night. I had my first puertorican fell madly in love with me!!!! Since I'm so charming and all :) jejejeje. He wanted to give me a "tour of the bar" which was like, you know, 20x20 sq. feet, so it's not like there was much to tour. So that was slightly creepy, I can't remember what i did, but i avoided the situation like pro. It was all very strange, becuase the 3 guys from other other bar we also bartending at this bar. it's like, they closed the one bar to come work at this bar or something.
Let's face it, it's all a blur, so i'll stop boring you with trying to piece it together right now.



Jason and Leilani:

This weird surfer bar and Jason's head. I think i was trying to get a pic of the bartender, who was the epitomy of Point Break and all other surfer cliches rolled into one living human being (Jason's description):

The last bar we were at, Tevo's or something....? Where the drunk lady telling stories was.

group shot:

OKAY, i wake up at Jason and Lei's in the morning to this:

...which is why i'm moving to Rincon. And then I skipped my afternoon class and we went to the beach:

And then I went home to Mayagez, took a nap and went to class. And then that night, it was "Yellowpass", which my students have been talking about, but I don't really know what it is, but I found out it's this gigantic music festival party thing, and it's happening right outside my apartment. It was HUGE, people and cars EVERYWHEREEEE...cars were parked on the sidewalks. i wish i would have taken pictures, but i wasn't expecting to drink or stay out. HOWEVER, in the line for the bathroom, i met a girl from Boston, she is teaching surfing lessons in Aguadilla!! So then, I had to stay, because she was so fun!! AND she said she will give me surfing lessons this weekend, which i hope comes true. Umm, and now i am sitting here writing this before i teach in 2o minutes, but i know none of my students are going to be in class today because they will be too hungover from last night.