Celebrity Cruise: Puerto Rico--It's Just the Beginning

Writing about our family adventures almost a year later is not ideal, but not writing at all about them is quite unacceptable. So here we are! Ten months later...but let's pretend we are still in the moment, shall we?

Let me tell you, when your kids are in high school, priorities really shift to being present at school when school is in session. I remind ourselves multiple times a year how grateful I am that our big Asian and European travels happened when no one was in high school yet. And now we pretty much have to travel only during the summer, spring or Christmas break. 

This year was a special year because it was Alex's senior year! Originally, like Katya, Alex wanted to visit Ukraine and go somewhere else. Ukraine was not possible...so we focused on finding "somewhere else". We went back and forth between Dubai and Jordan and Egypt and finally after much painful deliberation and research, we decided to take a nice relaxing cruise to South Caribbean. I know it almost sounds like a cop out. A cruise? AGAIN? But we have always really enjoyed our cruising experience for the simple reason that for us cruising is truly a vacation. Plus the kids really do enjoy the social aspect of it and this time they were older--14 and 17 years old. 

So we chose a cruise with Celebrity Cruises, catered to adults and families with older kids. We were cruising out of Puerto Rico (so we had to get there first) and then stopping at a few amazing places like St. Lucia and Barbados. We were super excited!!!! 

And then! Two weeks before our trip, we had a double date with our friends, the Roylances and we talked up our cruise so much that they went home that night and booked their cruise for their family (they have two daughters that are our boys' friends). We were super excited, of course, but we decided to make it a little more interesting and promised to keep it a secret from the boys that they would have friends on board. 

So on the first day of the spring break, we flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico, for the first time ever! 

Our flight got it pretty late, so that night we took a taxi to our Hyatt hotel (booked with points), rested and in the morning, Robert got picked up by Enterprise to go get our rental car for the day. It was more convenient for us to do that for a day than Uber. 

We were keeping our plans pretty relaxed for the day, so the biggest assignment was to explore El Yunque National Forest. I could not remember it's proper name ever, so I may or may not have renamed it to Younique Forest. 

We drove around 30 minutes to its entrance. We had to pay about $2 for entrance but we did have to reserve the ticket online. Ever since the hurricane came through Puerto Rico and damaged the trails and vegetation massively, a few areas in the park had been closed and still not reopened. We drove the scenic route and stopped at a few places to walk around. 

Our hike was pretty mild but steep, humid and beautiful. 

We stopped at a place where in the middle of the last century, they had a beautiful pool where people could bathe. Kind of a nostalgic place. 

The views from the parking lot if you drive all the way to the top. 

Our hike took us to an overlook tower to see the view of the island! 

Just another Puerto Rican picture. 

And we did hike up to the waterfalls. 

I can't say they were spectacular or anything insanely unique. But they were fun for the boys. 

Mark clearly "enjoyed" himself. It was pretty cold. 

And that was the extend of our excursion to the El Yunque Forest. 

We drove toward the coastal area (you don't have to drive very far to find it) and found a bite to eat. Food was actually quite expensive. 

We also got the acai bowls which were pleasantly not too sweet...but expensive. 

In the evening, we got cleaned up and told the boys we are going to eat at a certain restaurant near a fancy resort. Little did they know that when they got out of the car, we all "surprisingly" ran into our friends, the Roylances! The kids were so surprised and excited! We spent the evening getting some food in the dark (that took too long) and getting swarmed by little gnats flies that were everywhere. 

Later at the hotel, the boys reinstalled the blinds...because they were installed the wrong way and did not work, so they fell down as we tried to close them. Hyatt...take note. 

In the morning, we were ready to rumble! We dropped off our car and took a taxi to the cruise port. 

We were SOOOOOOO excited to embark on this weeklong journey!!!  

To Be Continued...

 

When You Are Raising Very Ambitious Children...

Alex and Mark have been keeping us so busy this spring season! We regularly have to discuss priorities in our family, choices between good, better and best, and balancing life. Alex has always loved hanging out with people, do team stuff, compete, study, push himself as hard as he can and sometimes simply overbooking himself. Mark enjoys his responsibilities and is not afraid to say “no" to some fun things if it means he gets to compete in something hard. He also follows his own school schedule and juggles all the studying with his training, with me hardly ever having to help him or answer his questions. 

This spring was amazing! It was Alex’s final high school year so he focused a lot on Speech and Debate tournaments as soon as rowing season was over in December. He was still doing his winter rowing training, but at least he could compete on the weekends! 

Our Apex Friendship High is quite brilliant at Speech and Debate, if I say so myself. Largely thanks to Miss Eckstein, our team has been getting better and better in the last five years. It’s been a joy to watch them grow and improve.

Alex had a few very successful tournaments and placed 6th, 3rd and then 1st in the first three tournaments in Extemporaneous Speaking. And then he earned 1st place at the NSDA Qualifiers and qualified for Nationals! 

Here is their Speech and Debate Team on their awards night. 

Alex and his mates who qualified for Nationals in different events. 

Alex looks pretty official with his suit and a nice clean cut. 

Excited that Alex qualified for two National events! He had to choose to go to the one that was happening in Louisville, KY in late May because the other one, in Arizona, coincided with his possible rowing Nationals in June.... 

Quick change of topic...quite drastically...but this always on our minds. I decided to include these pictures here to portray the fact that as we are doing all these exciting things in our everyday lives, we can’t forget about the war that’s going on back in Ukraine. Alex and I were able to go to the vigil on Feb 24th to show our support to those fighting this unfair war.

It was a very moving night....

Praying every day that peace will come to Ukraine again. 

Finally, a short report about Mark and his tennis journey. 

Mark is getting stronger, faster and taller. He is still a bit shorter than his favorite doubles partner and friend, Connor, but not for long! 

Mark and Connor won the L5 (hard) in Charleston, the tournament at the end of February (Robert usually takes him there). He also got 2nd in singles after a tough match with a match tiebreak. 

And then he went on to get 3rd at the L4 (harder) in Florence, SC in singles, just a few days later. 

Rainy day shenanigans of Connor, David and Mark at the arcade. Rain delays in Florence are a little boring.... 

And later in March, another fantastic tournament for Mark and Connor--an L3 (hardest) in Greensboro. They got third! Sadly, singles didn’t go as planned.

A cold front must have just come through because wow...both Kelly and I are wearing our warmest coats! 

It’s always so rewarding to go back and see the pictures from these great memories of achievements... But sometimes it’s important to remember the emotional/sad ones as well. We get plenty of disappointments in life and in sports, but thinking about bigger issues brings us closer to figuring out the necessary perspective. I’ll be honest, I still struggle doing the normal stuff while knowing my country is suffering... and at the same time I don’t want to forget that there is something horrible happening there. And so life continues....one day at a time. And we feel grateful that our kids keep inspiring us, keep working hard and have faith in their bright future! 

 

Lyana and Robert Go to Mexico FIRST TIME!

I wish I could tell you that we flew to Mexico and explored the country's rich culture, got to know the people and managed to soak in as much as possible of Mexican hospitality. But it ain't so-haha. Lyana and Robert (that's us) went to Mexico this March as part of the team building event for Robert's practice. It was our FIRST TIME to Mexico!!! 

Pretty fancy, eh? We found this amazing cozy place in Tulum, about an hour from Cancun airport. It was an all inclusive resort, so that was fantastic too! 

Mark and Alex stayed home on their own, by the way! 

We arrived later in the afternoon and headed to check out the beach right away. Heeellllooo, seaweed! 

The hotel staff had to clear this out several times a day, that's how bad it was. 

Every evening we got to go to a different specialty restaurant that we had to reserve. This is our group, actually minus two assistants who were late for dinner, so we took a picture without them:). 

And this is a lovely group of people Robert works with. It's tough sometimes to have an all female staff but these ladies are actually pretty amazing and hard working. 

Oh, and we had some time to get some pictures on the way to the restaurant. The property of the resort was gorgeous and the walk was manageable. 

It was definitely time to get into the romantic mood! 

One of the evenings we went out to the beach to just talk and enjoy the sound of the waves. 

It was very peaceful....

Right before we decided to join the Abba night and go dancing-haha. 

And now let's turn our attention to the Exhibit A of why it was such a beautiful place! 

We had four nights and four days at the resort and every day we enjoyed this gorgeous view of the beach. We took some walks on the beach trying to go as far as we could, pass the abandoned hotels and recreational areas. A bit sad.... It was almost eerie too. 

The main reason why Robert and Mike brought their staff here is to actually do some training as well. So on a couple of occasions they did their job while I lounged on the beach enjoying my books. 

The water was super nice and warm! 

Although the color of it was not the blue that we see in North Carolina, we mostly cared about not having seaweed. 

We spent a lot of time together which was great! 

On the way to lunch... 

Another evening, another unique restaurant to go to. 

Oh, and one of the highlights of the trip was our day trip to see the cenotes--these swimming holes underground--as well as go ziplining and snorkeling. Ziplining and jumping off the small cliff was terrifying and really not that exciting for me, in a good way. I am just not enjoying these activities as much anymore... a little too anxious and sometimes not too sure I can be strong enough to make it fun. Thus the picture you get is a picture of Robert who loves this sort of stuff. 

We did have fun snorkeling though in this place where cold water meets warm water, so we got to see a lot of colorful fish, even though it was pretty crowded actually. 

And here is a picture of the cenote. It was a pretty cool experience, although cold, to get into that cave water. I do wish they would let us explore a bit longer in there. 

Somehow, they time went pretty fast and here we were on the last afternoon on the beach. 

On the last evening we had the most memorable dinner with our team because it was set up as a dinner and a show with acrobats and dancing. We had a lot of fun especially when Robert and Mike were offered tequila shots by the DJ because "they are the best bosses ever" according to Terry, one our assistants who announced it to the whole audience-hahaha. It was quite hilarious! 

And the following morning, it was time to get on our airport shuttle and finish our vacation. It was a great team building event and everyone was very grateful for the opportunity to go. We had offered them all to bring their husbands but they all decided to go without them and keep it "girls only":). So good thing that Robert and Mike brought their wives-haha. 

Now we have to wait another five years probably before we go on another grand adventure with Robert's dental assistants and hygienists! It surely was fun!!!