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The best and the worst of my trip to the Everglades, Miami, the Bahamas and Key West.

Question: What did the Everglades, Miami, the Bahamas and Key West have in common last week?

ME!

Like any financially irresponsible grad student, I followed my spring semester’s finals week with a week-long respite from reality. A tour via car and cruise ship of a bunch of places I hadn’t been. A much needed vacation.

I am back and tan, and happy to report three of the best and three of the worst parts of the trip.

Three of the Best Parts of the Trip

1. Holding a baby alligator. I loitered beside the baby alligator exhibit at an attraction in the Everglades until the guy and the girl in charge of it showed up. Upon expressing interest in holding one of the babies, the girl fetched a gator and the guy grabbed the tape (the kind he uses to tape a gator’s mouth shut). There was not, however, enough tape left on the roll, so the guy wandered away to retrieve more. Which is when, from within the grip of the girl who helps run the exhibit, the gator took a leak. So if there’d been enough tape left on the roll at the start, the following would be a picture of me, standing in a puddle of gator pee. Instead, thank God, this picture did not come with urine:

I named him Gipetto.

2. The snapper. In Nassau, I ate at Sharkeez, where I asked our server for what she recommends of the restaurant’s specials of the day. She, in turn, asked if I wanted something Bahamian. Heck yes, I said, so she recommended the snapper. Only an hour or two earlier, from my underwater seat in a glass bottom boat, I’d listened to our tour guide gush over snapper – grilled or fried – while snapper swam past my face. So naturally, I said, “Let’s go grilled snapper.” to my server. Like an hour later (Only barely an exaggeration. I think they may have gone outside to catch it.), she brought me my dish. And it turned out to be the best fish I have ever eaten in my life. Delightful. Even if it had a face.

Snapper.

Snapper.

3. St. Francis on the Beach. One of my favorite parts about being Catholic is the fact that no matter where  I am in the world, I can a) find a Roman Catholic church, b) go to mass at said church and c) the mass will be exactly the same there as it is at every other Catholic church in the world that day. Same readings, same prayers, same order, same Eucharist. And so it is familiarity in an otherwise unfamiliar place. A home away from home. So on the Sunday of my trip, I went to mass at St. Francis de Sales, a.k.a. St. Francis on the Beach, in Miami Beach. Great to have a home away from home, and for this one to be named after one of my favorite saints.



Honorable mentions: South Beach cab drivers, the roosters in Key West, the obligatory stop at the southernmost point in the continental US in Key West, pizza available 24/7 on the ship, running up a down escalator and the alarm clock incident. (Stay tuned to the true story series for explanations of the last two on this list.)

Three of the Worst Parts of the Trip:


1. Popular beach attire. It is perhaps special to South Beach for women to wear thong bikini bottoms (or otherwise not enough clothes) while they’re swimming and sunning, since never have I ever seen so much butt on a trip to the beach. (And I’m a big Florida gulf coast beach goer.) There is something alarming and sad about a culture in which it is not considered inappropriate to walk hand in hand with your three-year-old child while you rub sunblock into your exposed butt cheeks with your other hand.


2. Sunburn. I love a good tan as much as the next girl who loves a good tan, but on a raft in the water at Coco Cay (Royal Caribbean’s private island), I lost track of time and (as a result) a couple of layers of skin. The burn has since turned to tan, however, and I pledge to reapply sunscreen frequently the next time(s) I’m in the sun.


3. Vertigo. The cruise ended Friday. It is now Tuesday. And I still feel like I am on a ship.


Honorable mentions: Running up a down escalator, Royal Caribbean’s lack of a dessert comparable to Carnival’s Warm Chocolate Melting Cake.

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Worst things first.

There are four things I must do over and over that I frankly (and ultimately inexplicably) hate doing.

1. Laundry. While I appreciate clean clothes as much as the average young adult, I am a far bigger fan of wearing one pair of jeans a lot of times. My disdain for doing laundry is not limited to the washing and the drying. Nay, friends — it is also the folding and the hanging and perhaps worst of all, the ironing (which is why I mostly only buy clothes if they seem like they’ll look the same after I crumple them). The first step leads to the rest of the steps, and I find all the steps tedious and boring. Which is why I can go two years without logging into Facebook but can’t go a week without running out of pants.

2. Filling my car’s gas tank. Fact: I have owned a car for nine years and I have never looked at a gas price (except for the time I accidentally pressed premium instead of regular and didn’t realize it quickly. You are not welcome, Mobil.). This is because I am irresponsible how much I am paying is irrelevant if “conveniently on my way to someplace else” is the answer to the following question: When and where am I getting gas? Because under any other circumstance, getting gas is worse than doing laundry.

3. Going to the bank. Let me preface this by saying I have never had a bad experience at the bank. I’m always easily in, always easily out. Which is why the dread that overcomes me when I realize a reason exists for me to drive there cannot be explained. I just don’t want to do it. Ever.

4. Unpacking. Because it always leads to [Please refer to point number 1 above.].

The point is this:

Regardless of the ease with which I could do it, I hate doing laundry and getting gas and going to the bank and unpacking. Which is precisely why, when one of those things is on my to-do list, it is always, as in, without exception, the thing I should do first.

When I decide to wait on any of the four aforementioned nuisances, I wind up realizing at, say, 1:14 a.m. on a school night, that I have no clean clothes, or I pull a Kramer in the car, or I owe a colleague a dollar for a year (I don’t own a debit card.) or I treat a very full suitcase like an ottoman.

Doing the worst things first challenges us. It feels unnatural to do what we don’t want to do. But many-a-time, I have learned the hard way that the following quote is so true:


“If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.” -Olin Miller

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The home stretch.

Six class sessions, three weeks, three exams (two take-home and one in-class), three discussion board posts (one opinion and two responses to others’ opinions) and one extra credit assignment…

until summer.
1. Say it with me: Do. Not. Quit.
and
2. Patron saint of grad school, pray for us.
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Body parts and celebrities.

As is also the case for many of my fellow bloggers, I really like to check my site’s stats. Using Blogger’s basic tracking tools, I get graphs like this:

And this:

I’m famous in India!

But the best bonus, I think, of having access to blog stats is the set of search terms that Google uses to send readers to my blog. In keeping track of what people search for that brings them here, I have compiled a list.

The Top Five Most Unlikely Search Terms That Lead Readers to My Blog:

[insert drum roll here]

– “enrique iglesias nose” 
– “enrique iglesias face” 
– “where to find wealthy men in tampa bay”
– “big boobs women”
–  “enrique’s penis” 

To the folks who found my blog by Googling any of the above terms, sorry to disappoint.

I think the moral of this story for all of us is that if you want a lot of blog traffic, you ought to mention body parts (such as BUTTS!) and celebrities.

In conclusion, JUSTIN BIEBER.

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What do you do?

Press play, and read on. (It was my soundtrack for writing tonight. Hope you enjoy it as a soundtrack for reading.)

What do you do when

  • you’re not supposed to fit in
  • and you live in a culture where fitting in means everything.

?

What do you do when

  • what you value with every fiber of your being
  • is regarded largely as outdated or outlandish (and the people who value it are labeled as outcasts).

?

What do you do when

  • what is required of you in order to stay true to your convictions (to live what you believe)
  • requires you to do (or not do) what will make most of the people you meet think you’re weird for doing (or not doing) it?

?

You accept

  • that when you aren’t loved
  • when you aren’t approved
  • when you aren’t accepted

you are valuable.

You trust

  • that dislike or hate
  • and disapproval
  • and rejection

have no power over who you are.

You believe

  • that who you are
  • and how much you are worth

depend only on this:

the fact that you exist.

Because you are here on purpose.

Don’t forget it.