Visit to Southern Illinois

At the end of July, I took a weekend road trip to visit one of my house mates, Lindsay, in McLeansboro. I have visited friends 3 hours North before but never 3 hours South and it is a whole different world. Here are some highlights from my visit to Lindsay's.

• I got to Lindsay's just in time for dinner and it was amazing. Steak, mashed potatoes, squash, spinach salad, corn, etc. Yum! Lindsay and I went to the store where she left her keys in the truck and in the ignition - can't do that in Champaign.
• The next day we (Lindsay, her mom, grandma, cousin, and me) went to New Harmony, Indiana which is a cute little town. We walked around and shopped and had a yummy Italian lunch.
• '
• That evening we went with the family to Billy Bob & Nina's for some catfish. Lindsay's mom found out I had never had catfish so it was decided that we would go here.
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• Back at Lindsay's, we played some Scrabble and watched Felicity.
• I was headed back to Champaign the next day. It was a quick visit but still great to see Lindsay and hang out since we had hardly seen each other all summer!
  

Fui a Puerto Rico!

Get ready faithful blog readers, what follows is probably a lengthy description of my adventures in Puerto Rico when I attended the Bilingual Therapies Symposium.

Thursday, July 16^th

I woke up at 3:30 a.m. (yikes) to go to my parents so my padre could take me to the airport in Bloomington. Traffic was pretty sparse and we were early for my flight so Dad came in with me and bought me a second breakfast. I walked straight through security and boarded the plane to Atlanta. I tried to sleep as much as possible since it was still sleeping hours. I arrived in Atlanta and found the next gate even though the flight to San Juan wasn’t leaving for about 4 hours. A few minutes later I got a text from Ellie, my roommate, and she was on her way to the gate. It was so weird to meet her in person after all our facebook chatting over the past couple months. We hit it off right away and had plenty to talk about. We are such SLP nerds that this other lady over heard us and we found out she was on our same flight and going to the conference, too. Her name was Veronica and, as will be revealed later, we benefited a lot from forming a friendship with Veronica. We grabbed some lunch and hung out until our flight.

On the flight to San Juan I sat by these two little Puerto Rican girls who were super cute and babbling away in Spanish. One started speaking Spanish to me and her sister told her to speak English to me because I didn’t know Spanish. I turned to them and said, “No, hablo espanol tambien” (No, I speak Spanish, too). They gasped and then began chattering away about…High School Musical. We had quite the conversation about their HSM t-shirts, headbands, backpacks, blankets, etc. When waiting for Ellie and Veronica’s bags they waved across the baggage claim carrosel, super cute. Then Veronica paid for our cab to the Ritz which was awesome. (She was able to write a lot of things off for her company and was happy to share the benefits with us). The eager staff took our bags to bring up to our rooms. I’ve never had that happen so it was kind of weird. We got settled in our room and walked down the street to a restaurant to grab some food.

Next up was a super awkward cocktail party. We had to wait in line for drinks for a while and then couldn’t really find any non-awkward people to talk to, so we kept to ourselves and ducked out early for a walk on the beach. Good choice. Then we stopped to talk to the concierge to plan our trip activities. Upon our return to the room, Ellie started making a list of what we wanted to do. Then we talked about our conference outfits and discovered that we both have the same brown with black issues and had brought an outfit to go with each color. Kindred spirits, I’m tellin ya!

Chillin' on our own at the cocktail party.

Friday, July 17^th

We got up early to watch the sunrise but it was super overcast. But hey, a morning walk on the beach is still awesome; what a great way to start the day! We met up with Veronica on the beach and went to Denny’s down the street for breakfast because just a bowl of cereal at the Ritz was like $8. She paid for our breakfast, yay Veronica! We got dressed and went to our first sessions. Bilingual Therapies had a luncheon for all symposium scholarship people and I realized that Ellie and I were the only traditional students (aka everyone else was older and didn’t go straight to grad school). The conference continued and we learned some cool stuff that would bore anyone who’s not an SLP so I’ll spare you all.

View from our room. First day conference outfits.

We changed and then hopped in a cab to go to Old San Juan. It was late in the afternoon so we had to make a choice between the Bacardi Distillery and El Morro (a fort) so we figured we can drink Bacardi at home but we can’t see a century-old fort at home every day. We did a quick tour and had some great views of the town and ocean. We walked around Old San Juan which was surprisingly filled with lots of American-y outlets and fast food restaurants, yuck! Ellie got some clothes for her kayaking adventure and I shopped for jewelry, surprise surprise, and finally found some good stuff. We then went to La Barrachina, home of the original Pina Colada. Ellie saw it on this show on hulu.com called “Three Sheets” so she was super excited to go there. We even got our picture taken with the super attractive waiter featured on the show. We ordered several different appetizers to share, one of my favorite ways to dine while traveling! And I had the best pina colada of my life. We took a cab home and went for a quick swim in the hotel pool and a dip in the hot tub before bed.

Pretty view from El Morro and Ellie in a little nook we found.

Picture made possible by the nook and the fort as a whole.

Streets of Old San Juan - mmm, pina colada! - super attractive waiter at La Barrachina.

Saturday, July 18^th

Another breakfast at Denny’s was in store and Ellie and I split a French toast Grand Slam (seriously, awesome travel buddy!) so it was cheaper and we had just enough food. More conference sessions followed to complete the day. One of the professors from U of I was presenting and I had talked to earlier in the summer. She treated Ellie and I to lunch in the hotel. Kelly, a U of I SLP grad, also joined us.

2nd day outfits - pink tops and brown pants (totally unplanned). With Kelly and Dr. Proctor.

At the conclusion of the conference later that day, we suited up for the pool and hot tub. We walked on the beach and went in the ocean which was the perfect temperature. Then we hung out at the pool. This pool was HUGE with about 4 appendages so you could swim all over!

The beach and the huge pool.

Ellie was hungry so she went to the pool restaurant to get some food. When she returned, the following happened:

E: Ok, don’t freak out, but do you watch Grey’s Anatomy?

J: Yeah…

E: I think Denny’s sitting at the bar over there.

J: OMG! Really?!

E: Do you want to come wait for my food with me?

J: YES!

I was unsure that the guy she saw was really Denny until he looked up and spoke. Goose bumps. He was SUPER attractive and I kept saying, “Denny IS alive!” We decided to leave him alone since he looked like he was in a meeting with movie-type people but, later, he was walking around and these girls started screaming and taking pictures. He pointed at them and said “you could ask…” So they started lining up to get a picture with him. Ellie and I looked at each other and decided to go for it. We waited for all the obnoxious screamers to get out of the way and politely asked for a picture and he obliged. He definitely did some shoulder squeezing when he put his arms around us. Oh Denny, we love you!

It's Denny! (aka Jeffrey Dean Morgan)

We returned to the room so Ellie could get ready to go night kayaking and I could go to get my massage. I’ve never had a massage but it was amazing, luxurious, and so relaxing. I returned to the room and sat around in my hotel robe (it’s not every day I stay at a hotel with robes!) and at some Twizzlers for dinner while I waited for Ellie to get back.

Chilling out in the room and eating at Denny's.

Sunday, July 19^th

We got up, checked out and left our bags with the bell man and then went to Denny’s again for breakfast. Then it was off to El Yunque, the rainforest, for our guided hiking trip. We drove for a while to get to the rainforest (the only one in the US National Parks System) and stopped at a waterfall first. We climbed up some huge and seriously slippery rocks to get up closer and get some pictures. I had to go first because Ellie was nervous about falling so I blazed a trail through the rocks for us. We stopped at an observation tower to get an amazing view of the rainforest. It was so pretty and we could see rain in the distance but we never got rained on. Tour guide Tony was full of information along the way. We finally got to the hiking part to get to another waterfall and pool you could swim in. When we arrived, it was super crowded and the water was SO cold so we just got in to about mid-calf and walked around, took pictures, and tried not to slip on rocks! Then we took another trail back to where Tony would pick us up. The end was SO steep and we were super gross and sweaty!

We owned those rocks!

With tour guide Tony and the view from the observation tower.

Hey, it's the rainforest! Mega huge leaves.

Crowded water fall and pool. Hanging out on some more rocks.

We had time for a brief nap on the way back to the hotel. We had planned to change first and then go to the airport but if we wanted to share a cab with Veronica and her friend, we had to leave right away so we did. We got to change once we got to the airport but I still felt kind of gross. Veronica bought us dinner at the airport and we got on the plane to Atlanta. Ellie and I got to sit together so we were able to watch a movie on Max’s iPod (that he graciously let me borrow – it also proved quite helpful since it had internet and I could check my mail at the hotel with the free wireless). We had more food there and then said goodbye to Veronica. Ellie walked me to my gate and we had to say goodbye. She was such a great person to have as a roomie on this trip. We got along better than I can imagine and are already planning our activities for the conference next year in Las Vegas! We might even go on a trip sooner than that! My flight home was uneventful and I tried to study for my quiz the next day. Max was waiting for me when I got off the plan and he took me home. What a great trip! And it totally seemed longer than it was! A huge thanks to Ellie for being awesome; the trip would not have been as great without her.

With Veronica at the airport.