Wow! It’s been a long time since I’ve done any blog posts! Well, we have a good reason, no internet. Let me show you around the house and tell you what the last few days have been like!
(I’ll make it seem like you’re actually here by going in order of how the place flows!)
You walk in the front door and are greeted by the kitchen!
Oh and theres the washer and drier!
Now lets journey into our dining room/Living room!
Let’s not forget that every fancy estate comes with a wine rack!
Next you see a pocket door that leads you into the haven of our apartment
This is where we spend our nights sleeping soundly with the luxury of air conditioning!
This is Byron’s side of the closet...
...ANDDD this is mine!!
Every dream apartment comes with a spacious bathroom as well...
NOW it’s time to see the view from our balcony, where Byron and I sip our instant coffee in the morning and watch the cruise ships come in...
I give you permission to be jealous. And we have a pool for the few people that live in these apartments. I have yet to relax by it, but I know I’ll spend many days sunbathing (with tons of spf protection) and swimming in it.
Byron has been at training all week, and what have I been doing you ask? “But Alana, you don’t have internet, or a TV, what can you possibly be doing with your time?” I’ve been have “good-ol-fashion” fun! Oh yeah, and a lot of cleaning and moving stuff around and hard work and sweat and trying to find a job.
DAY ONE:
So Byron goes off to training and I have Brandon, a friend of ours, drive me there and help bring in all of our stuff. Once we get everything in, he leaves me to my work! First, I choose the side I want the best, and take it. WAHAHA (they are actually equal, but I like to pretend that I got a leg up on the deal) I put away all my clothes first. Hang up my shirts, put my shorts in a drawer, designate a spot for all articles of clothing! Then I get hungry so I put the food away that we acquired from our friend Sean.
Let me first tell you that all we had was ramen noodles, and instant oats. Thats what my food sensitive body has been running on. I go into the kitchen and open a pack of noodles! I mean it was something different, sorta. Then I saw a can of corned beef hash (umm nothing better than canned beef!) and I figured that I would use that as sauce. Earlier I went threw all the drawers in the kitchen and saw we were fully stocked with silverware, plates , measuring cups, etc. I assumed there would be a can opener... I ASSUMED, you know what they say about assuming, right? I boil the water and put the noodles in there and once they seemed near done I get the can out and looked around for the make believe can opener. No where. In a panicked state, I rechecked all the drawers once again, and again. Then started looking in places that didn’t make sense, like the oven, fridge drawers, under the sink. You name it, I looked there. After a good 5 minutes of looking, I came to the realization that there was no can opener. In my hunt, I found at least 3 wine openers though. Not quite back into my right mind, I start stabbing the top of the can with the spirally wine opener. That didn’t do much, so I grabbed a knife, which did nothing more. I took one more try and then gave up. I kept hearing the voices of my parents in my head telling me that I was going to cut a finger off if I kept trying. Tisk tisk.
This is as far as I got...
So I sprinkled a little bit of random chicken flavored seasoning on it.
After all that, eating another thing that might as well be random, I got sick. I have been sick for the past 4 days, but I kept moving forward and unpacking! Good thing I had a conveniently located bathroom!
I then unpacked all of Byron’s things, put them away nicely, and after four hours, I was done! Now just had to wait for Byron to come home and then go to the store! I made a shopping list with all of our must haves that would last us awhile!
He got home late and we made plans to go to Brandon’s going away party, so we didn’t end up going to the store. In my disgruntled sickly state, I felt so hopeless about being home all day the next day without anything besides quick oats and random to eat. (Don’t worry! Things will start looking up for me, the protagonist)
We got to the party, have a lot of fun. We played dominos! Not what you used to do as a child (and when you’re alone as an adult) and line them up to knock them down, but the actual game. Once the games ended, we toasted Brandon, and sipped some of the most rank champaign I’ve ever tasted. I didn’t finish my small glass.
When we went back home, Byron wanted to make something to eat. I told him about the corned beef hash incident, so he thought he’d give it a try. He managed to chisel his way into the can. Let’s be honest though, I loosened it up for him. (Guys always take credit for opening the jar after we’ve been working on it for 20 minutes. Who’s with me ladies... and weak men?!?)
Then he wanted to make some couscous. Once he poured it into the bowl and added water, we both stood at the microwave with the same dumbfounded expression on our face. Why is every microwave different? I’m not sure. We stood there pressing “1” and nothing happened. After a few attempts, Byron figured “rice” would be about the time we needed. We were sitting around talking, forgetting about the microwave and started to smell something, at first we thought it was the boiling water that was making that smell, but then it didn’t stop. We both then realize it was the microwave! Byron rushed over to it, with his cat like reflexes, and opened it. The smell of burnt plastic filled the kitchen and living room.
Whoops! That was a close one!
Once Byron had a delicious dinner of corned beef hash and almost burning the apartment down, we turned on the air conditioning and cuddled up for our first night in our own place together.
Let me tell you, after being here for a week and coming from 40 degree weather, air conditioning feels like when you wake up early in the middle of winter and it’s almost as if everything outside of your blanket is the Arctic and you hop into a warm shower! Except our A/C is the opposite effect.
DAY TWO:
Not as exciting as day one, I can tell you that.
Byron leaves for training, I eat quick oats with a mix of special K, which didn’t make me feel that sick! Then I figured, I’m going to clean. I find some bleach and clean with it. I scrub that place down like it was a murder scene! Once I got done with that, I boiled some water, read some cosmo as I waited and drew all over the jug that is our cooking water jug, so we could tell the difference of course.
I take a shower then think, hmm, today is a lovely day to sit outside! I put my bikini on and enjoyed the sun. I lathered myself in tons of SPF protection with the thought of all the men and women on the Island who could pass a leather couches if the laid down the right way. My goal is to not look 40 years older than I actually am.
I come inside and then write in my diary, yes I have a diary, for four hours. I’ve had it since 2004, my best friend from elementary gave it to me. I like to look back on my old writing sometimes and laugh at my childish problems. “I have a crush on blah blah and I want to see if he’ll let me borrow his football jersey, but I’m too scared to ask him!”. Oh how much I’ve grown.
Once 5 o’clock rolls around, I wait at the window like a dog waiting for their master to come home.
After about 20 minutes passed, I figured he was just late so I’d go watch the cruise ships leave.
When Byron comes home, we wait for the landlord to stop by, but it was getting too late and we were scared the stores were going to get scary at night and left a copy of the lease and a note at the door.
We were expecting the scariest of all scary people to be at the store at 7pm. We prepared ourselves! When we showed up, it wasn’t bad at all! The shopping only took an hour! We followed our list and everything! It was one of those bulk stores and we wanted to make sure we were good for at least a month. We rushed home to make sure none of our frozen items went bad. Here, things spoil easily. Also, things you don’t typically put in the fridge, cereal, bread, etc., you have to put in the fridge.
We have a designated place for our ramen:
Food glorious food! Sorry Disturbed, not everyone is down with the sickness like you. I could finally eat in peace again!
Again, we turn the A/C on and sleep in our arctic paradise.
DAY THREE:
This is the day of my interview so I get up early! I ate breakfast with Byron out on our patio and watched the cruise ships sail in. He then leaves and I get all my stuff ready! Not only did I have an interview, but I had a fun lady’s day with some new friends Christy and Lindsey.
I get all jazzed up for my interview. I put on a nice little black dress and did my hair and make up professionally.
This is my dress, but this was taken after the interview. Doesn’t it scream “YOU’RE HIRED”?
The interview was for HOTLOOK sunglasses. It’s an awesome high end sunglass shop and is local. I have a lot of retail experience so I figured I’d be good for the job!
The interview went really well! Too bad for Lindsey and Christy, it lasted two hours and they were forced to wait for me the whole time in the 90 degree weather! They continuously made jokes about how I owed them for my long interview, but I knew they were happy that it went well. I tried slipping my swimsuit on in the back of the jeep, but the no shirt law made it really hard and so did the tight dress I was sporting. At this point, I was sweating pretty bad, but I was just going to wait for the beach to change and not the gas station parking lot.
As we were driving, we decided to make a pit stop at a cute bar called Duffy’s. I mean, every girls day out needs a fun drink. After looking at the menu for awhile, we all decided what we wanted. I got the coconut daiquiri in a whale cup, Christy got a pineapple mixture (can’t exactly remember what it was) in a cool pineapple cup and Lindsey... she got one we could all share, all sorts of run in a fish bowl. It was called the shark tank. There were sharks in there with shots inside of them. It was kinda scary. We took a few pictures, and were given lays and then headed to the beach with our drinks, and fish bowl. (you’re allowed to leave the bar with your drink here, and legal drinking age is 18. Though I don’t really care for drinking, I just had a good interview and one girly drink was much deserved.)
Here's the cute whale cup I purchased, to be honest, I didn't really care what was inside of it, I just wanted the awesome cup!
We swam, snorkeled and sipped our drinks. There were some awesome fish that would bump into our legs and the water was literally crystal clear! While Lindsey and I were swimming, she announced she thinks she sees a stink ray. I thought it was just a shadow, but I ran back to our towels to grab the snorkeling gear anyway. Sure enough, it was a stink ray! I’m so mad I didn’t have Byron’s gopro, but it’s something I’ll never forget. We told another older couple that was also snorkeling to come over and check it out. A few minutes later, we let a family from one of the cruise ships borrow our gear to check it out too.
This is what it looked like:
Successful day at the beach I must say.
Byron called and said he was heading home so we packed up our stuff and headed back.
That night we didn’t have time to go get wireless, so we played a long game of war. He has won every single game of war we have ever played, but after a 20 minute game, I finally won my first game. I celebrated my victory by eating some cereal and then the long day caught up to us both and we headed to bed.
DAY FOUR:
Day four I wrote all of this ^^^^^. That took... awhile, but I didn’t have internet and I was home alone.
As I was doing my typical lay in bed and play hours of draw three Vegas style solitaire, I got a call from HOTLOOK, the place I interviewed at the previous day, and got the job! I couldn’t contain my excitement and I danced around the house while I was still on the phone with my future boss.
Once I got done celebrating, I made a home made checker board for Byron and I to pass the time with!
When Byron got home, we went over to a friends house to use their internet while they use our day (fair trade I’d say) and we skyped with Byron’s parents. It was their first time “video chatting” and so we had to coach them how to get the dang thing to work. After our little skype adventure, we went home and I taught Byron to play checkers; it was a good time.
DAY FIVE:
Productive day! Byron and I got up, ate breakfast, and headed off to town!
Let me tell you about something thats very different when you live here and are going to town. You can't just walk in the door of a public place silently and take a seat, oh no, that's considered very rude. You have to enter the building, know the time of day and make an announcement to everyone in the room.
"GOOD MORNING!"
And you have to make sure you say the right greeting, if you're still waltzing around town at 12 pm saying "Morning!" to everyone, you kinda come off as an ass. The night time greeting I still have to get used to! You need to say good night as you walk in, such an awkward thing to say. Oh well, it'll grow on me.
***So I'm not going to bore you with the details of us running errands**
What’s important though? We got wireless! Whoohoo! Easy for Byron to live without, he’s been a hard working man, but as for me, solitaire and making a home made checker board was all I really had.
As for us right now? Well we are sitting in our living room catching up on emails and Facebook. We just got done with checking out our pool upstairs and boy is it awesome!
I hope you enjoyed this huge post! I have given you much to read and catch up on our lives!
Much love from Byron and Alana!
***Cute accidental picture, Byron could only take pictures with his eyes closed because of the sun and I thought it was funny***
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