Ttuna and the Avoidance of Pancake Magee

Well, I think it's about time I put a post up! I can't believe it's already been almost a week since we got back from Cuba! Anyway, it was a great time and a lot of fun!

Usually when I go on a trip I keep a journal but this time I didn't and I'm so mad at myself for being so lazy! It always seemed like there was something going on and I "didn't have the time". Or so I told myself. But how do you not have the time when you spend an entire week lounging around by the pool or on the beach? Yup, I was just lazy. So now I suppose I'll just have to try and describe my experiences as they currently exist in my memory before they fade away completely. I don't imagine I'll get everything down in one sitting, but let's see how far I can get this evening.

So the trip started out interestingly enough: Most of the close family associated with the wedding (ie. the bride, her parents and brother) met us at the resort's reception as soon as we got there. We rushed off to the dining room as soon as we checked in as we were all starving. That was when we met the cats. They're these atrociously skinny little beasts with protruding eyeballs that sit by your table meowing, begging for food. Naive as I was, I held out a piece of tuna to one particularly pathetic little animal. It swiped at me, leaving me with a cut on my thumb which would subsequently sting every time I went into the salty ocean (that went really nicely with the blisters I would get on my feet from the too-small shoes I wore to the wedding). Anyway, several drinks later I (naturally) felt some pressure on my bladder so we went in search of a washroom. Faced with a door with an 'S' and another with a 'C', I had no idea which one was the women's washroom. So I ended up in the 'C' room ("It stands for 'Chiquita'!" I was told). Upon entering I noticed a wall of urinals but at that point I had consumed just enough alcoholic beverages to not care! After that, I have a vague recollection of wandering around the resort, a group of us, looking for the pool. It was only the next day that we realized we had walked right by the pool without even seeing it. But we did find it eventually and enjoyed our evening swim by jumping off of the waterfall into the lower level of the pool, despite the extremely low water level...

The next day we found the beach... gorgeous white sand, tuquoise water, very picturesque. Unfortunately, large chunks of the shoreline were rocky so we had to walk further down the beach for the prime swimming areas. Not the end of the world! Anyway, we quickly settled into a deaily routine of swimming in the ocean, tanning on the beach and then going to the pool to rinse off the salt water and cool off.

On Monday we went to the Japanese a la carte restaurant for dinner, where we met out wonderful "Japanese" cook, Juan Carlos. At the Japanese restaurant your food is cooked right in front of you. And Juan Carlos would throw his cooking implements into the air and catch them again, sometimes behind his back. What a show! On Monday night we all ended up in Danny's room. That worked out fine since that was the one night it poured rain. While sitting out on the balcony, (we think) some kind of freaky bug bit Martin's foot, causing it to swell enormously in the next few days and turn a scary shade of dark menacing purple.

Tuesday was the day before the wedding. As such, Christine, the bride, would require a bachelorette party. We arranged for all of the girls to meet up at 9:30 pm. Kim immediately decided to take on the responsibility of organizing something for the party, and it's a good thing she did because it turned out to be quite the memorable evening! Kim's first requirement was to dress Christine up in a toilet paper wedding dress (with trails of beer cans dangling from her wrists to clatter along the ground). From there, we would have her do all sorts of embarrassing tasks around the resort while wearing her TP dress. So, we met up at 9:00 pm to formulate a list. Among other things, Christine ended up doing a crab-walk across the lobby, 15 people kissed a smiley-face beach ball with "Martin" written across its forehead in pen, she got a kiss from a stranger, she got another man to buy her a drink, she ran out in front of a group of dancers posing for pictures in front of an audience and she sang "Relax" in karaoke despite not really knowing the song. And never again will we sing that song, now that we know just how dirty it actually is! While in the karaoke bar, there was a very friendly man from Scotland there with his wife. He got very excited and gave Christine kisses and stuffed a convertible peso down the front of her shirt. Funny how some people can pull off such a stunt. From anybody else that would have been utterly creepy and disgusting but somehow from this man, it just seemed funny and nothing else! What's also funny is that the Scottish couple ended up having reservations at the same retaurant and the same time that we would be there for the reception so Christine was able to go and say hi to them the next evening.

Hmm, I think that's enough for tonight! I'll pick up with the wedding itself next time!