Two Tickets to Paradise!

Yes, I know, bad me. I said that I was going to update this the next day...and that was about a month ago. It's scary how life gets in your way sometimes ;).

So, my way more fun 'first' news is...I get to go on a tropical vacation!!! In less than two weeks, I will be in Puerto Rico with one of my best friends from college, Michelle. I have never done a vacation like this, so I am extremely excited to get to go. For this vacation, we are going to relax. No planning, no tight schedules. Our biggest decisions will be if we want to spend the day by the beach or by the pool, and if we decide the pool, what kind of drink we want at the poolside bar (the poolside bar apparently has a drink called the Michelle, so she was definitely excited that there is literally a drink with her name on it waiting for her in Puerto Rico).

So this is how we decided to do this trip...originally, I was planning on doing the summer Birthright trip to Israel. My best childhood friend did the trip last year, and she absolutely loved it. I was really excited to go. Then the news reports started coming in. Bad reports about tension between Israel and Syria, Israelis and the Palestinians (not that that's old news), and I started to get cold feet.

Now, Michelle had been thinking about flying out to Israel to meet me after the Birthright trip was over, and we'd spend an extra week going around Israel on our own. However, once all the reports started coming in, we decided to put a hold on the Israel idea and to think of something new. We knew we wanted to go someplace with a beach and that was tropical. Michelle had been to Puerto Rico the year before, but only for a few days, and she never left the resort she was on (partially because she was staying 40 miles outside of the city). So we're going for a week and staying at a resort only 7 miles from Old San Juan and two blocks from the beach...the best of both worlds!

Usually when I've gone on vacations, every day would be planned, it would be go go go from beginning to end, and I would be so tired at the end that all I would want to do is sleep for two days once getting back. This time, I'm hoping to come back fully rested, energetic, and ready to go back to work!

I plan on posting my adventures with Michelle while we're there, though not until we come back (bringing a computer to Puerto Rico is not in the cards). There'll be lots of pretty pictures I'm sure!