Playing Catch Up

The great thing about 1:00 pm church is that you get an extra day to sleep in.  The bad thing is that none of your usual Sunday activities happen.  I am finally back on the 9:00 am schedule, which means I will actually have time to get caught up on my blog on Sundays!  

So, hopefully this year I can get the last two years blogged!

Next on the list, My First Cruise!

My friend Stefanie got a group of us together to share a room on a singles cruise. We left from New Orleans and had a couple of stops in Mexico.

Getting to the boat terminal our first day.

Exploring the boat!

It got a little windy after we started going!

 

Our first night - we decided to be brave and try something new every night (since we could always get something else if we hated it).  

So - the first night I tried ceviche and duck for the appetizers - both were pretty good.

 Our first day was spent at sea - I was super glad to have another albino with me - two of us tried to stay covered up and not burn while the other two got as much sun as they could!

That night was our formal night. 

 It was fun to get all dressed up and wander the ship taking fun pictures with our new friends.

 After checking out the comedy club and getting our pictures taken, we decided to go up on deck and play "Titanic"

 Of course, if you go on a cruise you have to take pictures of all the towel animals they leave on your bed!

The next morning we had to get up pretty early to get off the boat and catch a bus for our first excursion!  I blame the late night and the early morning on my poor outfit choice!

Let's just ignore the very non-flattering outfit I am in and enjoy the beautiful scenery!

 After about a two hour bus ride, we finally arrived at Chitzen Itza.

 One of my favorite parts about this was having an LDS tour guide who had been a Bishop and Stake President and is a native Mayan.  It was so interesting to hear his view on how the Book of Mormon history and the Mayan history relate and connect.

 Our awesome tour guide

 After Chitzen Itza, we raced over to a restaurant for lunch and ate as quickly as we could so we could have some time to play in the Cenote (basically a lake in a cave).

It was a long walk down to the water...

But totally worth it!

 We ended up with only about 10 minutes - so I didn't have enough time to get my nerve up to jump in from the ledge.

But I did have someone take my picture to prove I actually did get in the water (it was super cold and there were a ton of fish!!)

We had another scenic ride back to the boat - it was pretty fun to see all of the little towns along the way.  Then we spent another relaxing night on the boat getting ready for Cozumel the next morning.