Life Ain't Bad


It’s the simple things in life that make it great, and sometimes I just have to stop moving, sit back, and remind myself where I live.  So often, I feel like on the weekends I need to get out of Guayama and go and see a new and fantastic part of the island.  But sometimes the best days are the ones spent right here on the beach 15 minutes from home. 

Because really, what do the famous resort beaches have that we don’t have right here?

Saturday, we met at the beach at about 1pm.  Robert had his hammock strung up between two palms, the car stereo playing us music, our chairs set up, cooler nestled in the shade of a tree, grill waiting for our hunger to kick in. 

We call this beach "Corona West."
(Locals call it Playa el Faro, Arroyo) 

The weather was perfect, the sand was soft, the water was clear enough to study the sand dollars on the bottom (which doesn’t happen often on this side of the island), the sun was out, and we had the beach more or less to ourselves. 

It was our own little slice of heaven. 



We spent the entire afternoon sitting in the sun, floating in the water, enjoying good conversation and great music, reclining and relaxing.  Scott and Robert tossed a football around for a bit, and Sonja kept us updated on celebrity news from Us Weekly.  When we got hungry, Robert found some small bits of wood (who needs to spend money on charcoal?) and we cooked hot dogs on the grill.  We ate them with cole slaw on top (a new thing for all of us, inspired by something Robert and Sonja saw on a Food Network show), along with all the other hot dog fixings.  Simple and so delicious.  (Seriously—go try putting some cole slaw on top of your hot dog next time). 

We watched the sunset.  And then, we watched the stars come out.  I wish I could capture in a photograph what it looks like to see the blue-black sky and thousands of stars framed with the black silhouettes of palm fronds.  I wish I could adequately describe the feeling of digging your toes into the sand, the sound of the waves gently rolling in to shore, the chill in the breeze as evening sets in. 

We stayed until 9pm. 
We were home by 9:15pm.

Marathon beach day, 15 minutes from home.
No, life ain’t bad.  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cambodia: Reflections and Highlights

Image
I was really excited to visit Cambodia for a few days and hit up Angkor Wat and the other temples in the area.  Cambodia felt like my kind of adventure--and I can’t even really say why.  But I was excited.  I was excited for our hotel there--a full-out boutique hotel (not a hostel), with AC, a swimming pool, breakfast included, and airport pick-up for free--which cost us a scant $20 per night.  And we’d read about a lot of great tours we could take with local guides.  Flying in and flying out, this leg of the trip would be a breeze, and hopefully everything would be as cheap as the hotel.   The Mango Rain Boutique Hotel Our flight to Cambodia was unlike any other I’ve ever been on.  There were only about 20 of us on the flight--which would not have been strange, except it was, because we were on a full-size plane that could have seated 200.  The 20 of us were mostly grouped together towards the back of the plane.  Second impressive t...
Read more

DI Globals 2016: A Tale of Two Teams

Image
For the past 3 years, I have acted as a team manager for Destination Imagination at my school in Guatemala, and each year, my team has earned a trip to Global Finals in Knoxville, Tennessee.  This school year, I was blessed to manage the exact same team I had last year—the Aguaguates, the most wonderful group of kids any DI team manager could wish for.  This group, all 7 th graders this year, has everything needed to not only excel at DI, but also make a team manager’s job almost unnecessary.  They have amazing team chemistry, and they understand the importance of teamwork.  They’re crazy creative and hilarious and amazing actors when they get on stage.  They push themselves to improve their performances.  They know what they need to get done for DI, and they create their own practice schedules.  In short, they are a DI dream team, not to mention really, really great people .  This year though, I took one look at the school calendar and deci...
Read more

Yearly Update: The Journey to 30

Image
Over a year has passed since my last “update.”  And the year I was 29, despite the fact that I lived close to home rather than abroad, was anything but boring, so there’s no real reason for the lack of blog posts.   The year I was 29, I survived what may have been my most difficult year of teaching yet.  Many overseas teachers say, “Teaching in the States is so much different than teaching abroad.  You’ll see.  That’s why I went overseas; I’d never go back to teaching in the States.  It’s just...too much.”  Well, they’re not wrong.  I admit, I thought that with five years teaching experience under my belt, my first year in the US, my first year at the high school level, would go rather smoothly.  While in a sense it did (no concerns about the quality of my work from administration or complaints from parents), it was mentally and emotionally very taxing.  Even this year, my 2nd back in the States, I’m still adjusting to and coming t...
Read more