Off to Belize!

Thursday morning....at 2:30am....I left with the Kuhns and our friend Grant to catch our flight to Bleize! Yep, it's already time for another trip for me ;)

When we landed in Belize City, we had to catch a mini plane to the island we are staying on, Ambergris Caye. That was the first time I've been on such a tiny plane, so we were a little nervous! Haha!

The half dirt, half cement landing strip! :o

downtown San Pedro 

reception desk at our resort 

they left a surprise for McKenzie's birthday waiting for her in the refrigerator! 

After we got all of our things settled, we went for a ride around town in the golf carts to see what the island was like

 everyone drives golf carts around the island 

police/fire station 

We stopped for drink at the bar on the water at the end of the town. They have inner tubes to float down and they lower your drinks in a bucket down to you while you float on the water.

Someone stinks at taking pictures... 

the view from our front porch 

Later, we walked down the beach to a restaurant on the water and had some dinner. First Belizean meal was a success!

4th of July

On the morning of the 4th of July, Dalton and I made red, white and blue pancakes for breakfast at the house I was house sitting.

And then I took the leftovers to work the next day :)

Later that day, we went to my friend Clark's house to make pizzas in his pizza stone oven and then went swimming in his pool with the view of most of north county...a perfect place to watch multiple firework shows!

NURSING SCHOOL!!

On July 2nd at about 11:20am, I was babysitting the kids of a friend and anxiously awaiting a call from the Cal State San Marcos Nursing School because it was the last day for them to send out the acceptance calls or rejection emails. Every time I heard my phone ring, my heart would start to race hoping it was the call from the Nursing advisors!

My friend from my math class called me (who also applied to the program) and she told me she had just gotten the call! I knew they had about 40 other people to call so this made me even more nervous. Just about when I decided I wouldn't be getting a call for a while because I had 13 less points than my friend and they have a long way down the list to go, my phone rang and it was the school!

I GOT INTO THE CAL STATE SAN MARCOS NURSING PROGRAM!

I'm officially a nursing student in Cohort 8 at CSUSM!!

It was SUCH a relief to hear my advisor's voice on the other end of that phone, I worked way too hard this last semester, taking 20.5 units of school and 140 hours of volunteer work at the hospital and the Red Cross. This moved my points up a whole 10 points and that was JUST enough to get me into the program! I can't wait to start to learn the things I've been waiting for all along at a school with such a good reputation!

But it's going to get expensive :/ 

When I came home from babysitting, Mckenzie and her mom had gotten me a DELICIOUS congratulations cake form the Danish Bakery. Unfortunately, before I could see how pretty it was, Shadow, our giant Great Dane puppy had demolished the box...but it still tasted good!

All around, I'd say that day was a pretty good day

I GOT INTO NURSING SCHOOL!

Back to Reality

The first thing I did when I got home to Carlsbad was go to the beach! The one thing I missed more than anything! :)  There was also quite a long list of foods I missed from home too, but that was easy to get through pretty quickly.

And of course, I rocked the Universidad de Valladolid sweatshirt 

When I came home, Dalton had discovered there were a lot of foods that weren't working so well with his body. So he was on a new gluten-fee, lactose-free, soy-free, and MSG-free eating diet. I missed being able to cook at home (even though my host mom cooked me delicious home cooked food for every meal), so I started cooking MSG-free food for both of us quite a bit the first week I was back. It seems like he can't eat ANYTHING, but there are a lot more options than you would think! And it all still tastes good!

Steak, fried eggs, rice and beans 

Fajitas 

Home-made burgers and salad with balsamic dressing

gluten-free pancakes, eggs and meat

Steak and bell pepper omelet with potatoes and bacon

Another thing I couldn't wait for was to see my friends again! It was perfect timing because some of them were about to go back up to school for the rest of summer, so I caught them just in time :)

Courtney, Gina, Lindsey and me at our black light party at DJayce's house ;)

 The next morning, we hung out by his pool and had a BBQ.

I made a trip to the Del Mar Fair on the second to last day (also the second-busiest day of the year) with my friend I travelled through Spain with, Drew. He'd never been to the fair before so it was fun showing him all the fair traditions: weird fried food, rides, exhibits, music...

The picture of a cat that I'm pointing at is McKenzie's 3rd place photo project...wooo! :D

 Luckily, right when I got back, I got in contact with a lady I used to house/dog sit for and she needed me for about a week after I got back! Watching this little guy for $200 by the beach is a perfect way to start paying off my debt from Europe! :D

A couple days after being back and resting, I also started working at Dalton's parents' shop, Oceanside Transmission again. I had to stop working during last semester because I was taking a lot of units and volunteer hours to make my last stab at getting into nursing school! It took me a little while to get back into the swing of things, but I'll get used to it soon enough again. I'm hoping I can find time during next semester to start work again!!

A Day in Paris

Originally I had planned for my one day alone in Paris to be filled with a trip to the Lourve, the Eiffel tower and then wandering around the city looking at the architecture and eating crêpes. But unfortunately, although I got to my hotel early (another freebee only using my dad's frequent buy points at the Hilton this time...score!) I passed out the minute I hit the bed! After an hour or two, I kept trying to motivate myself to get up and go see Paris since I was only there one day, but I couldn't help but continue to sleep as I listened to the voices of Modern Family in French.

My personalize welcome sign ;) Premium members get two free water bottles per night! Oh wow! Haha

Eventually I had rested enough (6 weeks going non-stop in Europe was finally catching up to me) and I decided that I only had time to go to the Eiffel tower before it got too dark. This may have been a good thing because traveling in Paris...well EVERYTHING in Paris was literally 10 times more expensive! I usually paid 3€ round trip for multiple metro rides and round trip on the train was almost 19€.  I couldn't even believe it, and I thought the lady at the ticket window misunderstood what I wanted to do...but nope! Paris is just a price gouging kind of place!

My very expensive train! I could have ridden the train all over Spain for this price! Nonsense...

The two guys sitting in front of me heard the electricity on top of the train when we were going through the tunnel and started panicking because their window was open. So they got up and ran away. I don't know why they came back 2 minutes later, but they did. I guess they had to embarrass themselves even more or something :p

Train yard

I wasn't really sure where I was going, so I figured I would just walk around until I saw a 1200ft building somewhere. And sure enough, I look to my left and behind the trees was the Eiffel tower!! Even bigger than I imagined. I couldn't stop starring at is as I walked towards it! I kept thinking to myself "you're at the Eiffel tower right now? WHAAAT?!"

I walked around the area and the gardens surrounding the Eiffel tower for a while, trying to kill some time and take some pictures. And then I finally convinced myself I had to spend the money to go INTO the Eiffel tower as well! The line to take the elevator up was at least a half mile long, plus the ticket to use the stairs was  8€ cheaper and not a soul was waiting to use that, so I took the stairs! And it wasn't even that bad! I would've chosen the stairs any day over being in an elevator crammed with smelly tourists anyway! Plus the views were way better!

The stairs going up the tower

The original stairs in the tower

They had a movie theater inside the middle level of the tower that taught about the history and making of the tower and famous events that have occurred in it since then

When I finally made it to the top, I was 281 meters off the ground! In the top level, they had a mural of all the other tall buildings in the world in any given country, and not too many stood up against the Eiffel tower. Originally, it was only suppose to be able to stand a couple years and it has made it all the way until now! It went from being a hated and ugly building to one of the most commonly visited attractions in the world.

View of Paris from the top

Afterwards, I still had a couple hours until it was going to get dark so I went around and looked at the shops and walked along the board walk along the river.

I had almost the whole train to myself for a 30 minute ride home :)

I went home to pack up my things and get ready for my flight early in the morning to my connecting flight London and then finally onto my last leg to LAX!

The next morning, I woke up before the sun rose...like usual...to catch the shuttle to the airport. It was so weird to me that I was finally going home! I did miss home, but I knew I was going to miss my freedom and adventure that I had in Europe. And I couldn't wait to go back! Going home to San Diego meant I got to start my favorite summer activities, but it also meant that it was back to reality. I had to start to work again to pay off the debt I had gathered up during my adventures, and within the week I was back, I would finally know my destiny of whether or not I would be accepted to nursing school! :o EEEEP!

When I was at my layover in London, I saw one of the carts drop this luggage...and no one came by to pick it up for the entire 45 minutes I sat there. Everyone just kept driving around it. I wonder how many times this has happened to my luggage and claimed "it got transferred to the wrong plane".

double decker airplane!

Fancy first class seats I wish I could have! They layout into beds...that would have been delightful because I didn't sleep one wink on the way home! I watched 5 movies: Steve Who Lives at Home, Safe House, On a Ledge, The Vow, and another movie I can't ever remember  AND 4 episodes of Modern Family. I forgot how hilarious that show was...

My Dad was at the airport to pick us up and it was SO WEIRD that I was in California again! I kept thinking like I was in Spain, just a new part or something :) But it definitely felt good to be home!!