The Life of Pizza John

Kristen and I had a couple days off for the 4th of July so what better way to celebrate than leave the country!  She had never been on a cruise so a short one was a great way to get her feet wet.  I'm not sure we will be going on another cruise in the near future unless it is in the Mediterranean, but we did have a wonderful time. The first day and a half were at sea.  We spent most of this time eating, playing ping pong, eating more, exploring the ship, eating dessert and relaxing.  The next day we were in Cozumel and we went snorkeling, wandered around the city and ate more food.  I was surprised how good the snorkeling was.  My past experiences in Mexico (on the Pacific coast), have not been all that great, but I would definitely go back to Cozumel to dive.  The water was blue, clear and warm.  They have this area called Cielo and I'm pretty sure it was the brightest blue I have ever seen before.  The snorkel tour we did was great....

What an amazing trip!  The water, sea life and culture were all great experiences.  Plus having world class surf in our backyard was superb.  And I'm glad it was amazing since it took about 29 hours to get there and 35 to get back (including layovers).  I appreciated the long layovers because it gave us a chance to experience Qatar.  We had 6 hours on the way over and a whole night on the way back. Our first experience in Qatar consisted of going to the Souq Wagif.  This is a local market where you can buy fabric(lots of it), random touristy stuff and grab food/coffee/hooka!  We did it all, I bought a dress for Daria, ate at a local vendor and had coffee at a hooka bar.  The culture was very different.  Everyone was all dressed up in their 'garb'.  I didn't realize it wasn't proper to ask a lady (covered to her eyes) to take a picture until she basically ran the other way when I asked.  Walking down the little alleys reminded me ...

I still have not figured out if the running club goes to Muddy Buddy to actually race or just as an excuse to drink a lot and do Karaoke! It was a great time!  I got paired up with Reuben and since Kristen and Amy had the team name of "Schweddy Balls", of course we had to go with "Saucy Tacos".  Reuben was the Taco and I was Saucy (see pictures).

I never knew how poor of a country Nicaragua was until I got the chance to experience it.  It was a life changing experience.  These people have nothing, live in what might as well be cardboard boxes, but are so happy.  I didn't run into a single person who spoke any English so I got a chance to really work on my Spanish skills (or lack of). This was mainly a surf trip so Corey and I spend most of the time at a surf camp near the beach.  We got a  chance to meet some other cool surfers and also had a lot of time where we were the only people in the water.  That was amazing.  It doesn't get much better than surfing an awesome break without crowds. The house we stayed in was all screened in and had no AC or much of anything else.  It was run on Solar Panels so we really had to conserve energy.  We could use fans while we slept, but other than that we didn't use much power.  There was a pool table, so while taking breaks from the hot su...