I'll start this out by saying that I work from home. For our first anniversary, Andy showed up at our doorstep on Friday at lunch time with our bags packed and he handed me a note. The note essentially said that he would be whisking me away for a three-day adventure somewhere out of the country and that I had 5 minutes to pack anything else I would need. The note had a list of items he had already packed. We got in the car and I figured that we would head toward Mexico, but we got on the freeway heading north. I thought maybe we'd go to the airport and go to Utah or something...but Utah technically doesn't qualify as out of the country. As it turns out, we ended up heading toward the Long Beach harbor to board a cruise ship headed toward Ensenada Mexico.
Neither Andy nor I had ever been on a cruise, so it was a very interesting experience. We have decided that cruise ships are essentially floating Las Vegas hotels. They have casinos, activities, drinking and tons of FOOD!!!! Needless to say, we didn't drink or gamble, but I think we each gained about 10 pounds.
When we got to Ensenada, Andy had arranged for us to go on a Mexican cooking adventure. We went to a local restaurant called Mango Mango (my favorite fruit) where a guy named Jesus ("Hey-sus") taught us how to make pico de gallo, tamales and tortas. Of course I found it was particularly humorous to receive cooking instructions from Jesus--and I about lost it when Andy sneezed and Jesus said "Bless you!". However, I was rather disappointed when, at the end, Jesus tried to get us tourists to buy souvenir shot glasses, coffee mugs and beer glasses. Shame on you, Jesus. However, the food was fabulous and I loved watching Andy cook.
For anyone who has been to Tijuana before, Ensenada is very similar. Lots of shops and bars and a great place for people watching.Sunday was a "day-at-sea", so we spent the day attending various seminars, shows and we spent a lot of time relaxing...oh and eating. The nice thing about a cruise is that you are encouraged to try all kinds of things and if you don't like it....who cares?!? Try something else. We also went to the nondenominational church service--which was an interesting experience. We ate dinner each night with some girls from LA and Bakersfield (Monique and Keisha). They are best friends and wer
e a lot of fun! We even entered a Family Feud game with them one night and won a medal.On Sunday, our anniversary, our room had been decorated by the stateroom staff. The staff is also quite famous for creating animals out of rolled-up towels. One night there was a bunny on our bed and the other night there was an elephant. At my encouragement, Andy karate chopped the elephant.
All in all, we had a wonderful time and it was so nice to just have time to spend together. With work, school and church responsibilities, it was a good change of pace for the both of us.
