I heart Aruba

The Water Taxi on the Island Side

I know, I know.. you all are sick of hearing about my trip. I'd like to say I am sick of it too, but the truth is - I'm not even close. I guess living through a very hard winter in PA and training in rain, sleet, snow, ice, and all other sorts of nastiness will do that to you. Bring on the sun- that's what I say about it. I hear nice weather is on the way, so don't give up hope fellow PA'ers.

A new friend, his name is Herman

Today wasn't too exciting. I got up early again (and when I say early, I mean not even close to normal early - I can't get to bed before 11:30 because of our marathon dinners that start at 7:30pm and end at 10:45pm, so early is realtive for sure!). The gym here is beautiful and has everything I need, now if I would just spend a little time there! I rode the bike for a bit (you know..those um..electronic kind..not spin bike or anything), and really tried to simulate my "speed bike" for the week.

I'm pretty sure the rest of the people at the gym thought I was nuts the way I was huffing and puffing and sweating everywhere. It was actually flying off me at one point and I thought about warning the guy who decided to jump on the recumbant bike next to me that he might want to give me some space, or put up some kind of towel gard against me or something. He braved it though so I guess he was ok with it!

The meeting went well and I only got yelled at once for checking my cell phone (whoops!). Six hours of sitting in the same room is ROUGH. We did it though and when we were let out at 1:30 I was running to get my suit on!

Lissa and I at dinner last night

Then it clouded over.

Boo hoo.. ohhh woo is me...ha.

Don't despair.. we went shopping. After getting a few surprises for family we headed back to the room and are getting ready for dinner again. I swear, all we do is eat around here. Normally, I would be thinking I would gain ten pounds on this dang trip but luckily I found out there are NO CALORIES on the island.. Not even one. So, that's a good thing. I said "whew, that was a close one!"

I leave you with some pics! I wish you were all here.. Jen, Beth, ADC, Marit, Maija, Heidi and everyone else who for some strange reason reads this blog.. next time I will pile you all in my suitcase and that will give me more motivation to train. Either that, or NONE of us will train and then I won't feel bad at all about it.

Have a great night everyone! I miss you family!

Free Drinks

The Free Drinks!


I brought a cowboy hat thinking that I might need it for something. I don't think I've worn it once but I just figured if there was somewhere to wear it, it might be here. So far, I'll we've done it play dress up!

I think I have entered a new era. Either that, or because we were wearing our bathing suits our bartendar was being "overly nice," but either way, we walked away with a few free drinks today at the bar. I really only wanted ONE drink, something fruity and girly, you know the yummy frothy ones. However, the bartendar had other ideas and passed the leftovers from some other snazzy drinks on to Lissa and I. I really don't drink that much and believe me, over here, you couldn't unless you were pretty rich at 8.00 a piece. I actually said to Lissa that I was planning to do a little open water swimming after this but I might have been too drunk at that point to:

A. feel safe

B. want to

C. not throw up in the water

I decided to nap instead for a bit and I did do about 30 minutes and that was fun and didn't involve seeing my drinks again so that was good.

Work was good today. I managed to get up and go to the gym to do a hard 45 min run on the treadmill before getting ready in 10 minutes and rushing to our meeting. We were all pretty focused because we wanted to get out by 1:30pm (started at 8am) so that was nice. The morning went fast and I was getting lunch and off to the private island by 2:00pm.

The water taxi!


The view from the boat of our hotel

We had a nice afternoon of playing with the flamingos, blabbing about who we took to every high school dance from 9th to 12th grade, and hopefully not getting burnt. Not getting burnt is a sport here in Aruba. You're so close to the equator! You have to put on sunscreen like it is your job!

Right after this he opened wide and I got scared and ran~


Dinner under the stars with the company

Dinner last night was so much fun. We ate at a place like george and the jungle. Ok...well, not exactly but it was outside..the whole restaurant was outside. Very cool. They had little areas built with wood or canopies but our table was completely under the stars. The floor was well, rocks and the trees were lite with christmas lights. Teki tourches were everywhere and lighted our path. The food was excellent which I think I finally got served around 9:30pm. I thought I might eat the table cloth, but they brought the bread just in time.

Pre-swim modeling dorky pose!

We're having a great time and hopefully the blog is working to let everyone know we are not getting into trouble (not too much anyway), and phone service is still 1.99 per min. so don't expect any calls. We miss you all, and will talk to you soon.

Have a great week everyone! Happy swimming, biking and running..do some for me!!