One thing that's become tradition for my squad of friends from college is that we like exploring new places and have photoshoots along the way, so we planned on having one last outing this year before everyone went home for Christmas. Harrison took us to this old area near where he used to volunteer at, and we had a blast looking at all of the old buildings and scenery.
We even got to see a train pass us up close while we were leaving the bridge where the train tracks ran. Afterwards, we went to Ninja to have dinner. Most of us had never been there before, so it was a new experience for most of us. All in all, a pretty good place with lots of interesting sushi options, lol.
The next day was the big day where me and my besties from high school were driving down to Cape Canaveral to go on a three-day cruise to the Bahamas. We left an hour later than expected since Meethu had to take one last test in order to graduate this semester, but with Emily's crazy fast driving, we still managed to shave off an hour and a half of time from a six hour trip and got there with plenty of time to spare.
There were some ups and downs with the overall organization of the cruise, but we still enjoyed ourselves. The food was great, the staff service was exceptional, and the activities were hilarious. There were so much to do onboard that we were always like, what are we doing next? Because the cruise switched ships and needed a longer time to board, they gave us all $15 onboard credit to use. Added to that was the free $50 credit that came with me being a return member, so we had more than enough money to get drinks while onboard, which was nice.
When we stopped at the Bahamas, we had a general plan of going to a couple of places for souvenirs for friends and family, but we also ended up going on a tour and visiting a lot of cool places like the Queen's stairs, Atlantis, and some other cheaper markets to bargain for gifts. Lol, we were a little hesitant to go on a tour, but we felt better after we found out that other people were also going. While we were waiting for our tour guide to finish getting a couple of other people to join the tour group, Meethu ended up trying to feed the birds some of the cereal we packed as a snack and ended up dropping the whole box of cereal on the ground beneath her.
We had to walk around a bit to find the Graycliff company which is famous for its cigars, alcohol, and chocolate. Emily wanted to get a cigar there for her boyfriend, and we basically had an adventure exploring the grounds because the place was also a beautiful restaurant and hotel. The place was a giant plot of land with different buildings for different sections of the company and beautiful shrubbery and landscaping used to connect them all together. They even had a mosaic pool, which was so pretty!
Some of the best parts of the cruise was enjoying the hot tubs, midnight pizzas, and watching Akeem, a hilarious standup comedian who gave no shits about making fun of you. Jackie told us that she had never been in a hot tub before, so we had to rectify that immediately after we ate the second day we were on the boat. It was so relaxing, and it felt even better the next day after we came back from the Bahamas. Unfortunately, it started pouring the minute we were getting food, so we had to wait a few hours before we could find a hot tub to get into. Then, we found out why the hot tub was pretty empty compared to other ones: it was extremely hot. Like almost boiling you hot. But it still felt really good for our legs, lol.
And of course, the other best part of the cruise was all of the good food. I was so stuffed during the captains dinner when we dressed up and ate a fancy dinner, but I still made room for creme brûlée, which was soo good.
The next day, I went around town looking at Christmas lights with my squad since Harrison wanted to do one last thing together before he went back home near Savannah to visit his family for Christmas. It was hilarious because we got so hyper and judgmental towards houses that we started yelling "BOOOOO" at the houses that barely tried to decorate. Some houses were really awesome though, and that was when we learned from Harrison that people actually get their houses professionally decorated, lol.
Because Mikey and Jerry got back into dueling and bringing along David back into it, they wanted to duel again at Alec's house, and somehow the plans changed to include a nerf war, so I was like, I'm in! It was great; we spent around an hour split into two teams in Alec's backyard trying to pelt the other side with as many bullets as we could. We ended up eating pizza for dinner at his place and goofing off even more afterwards, which was hilarious since Jerry made the mistake of calling himself senpai the day before. XD
The next day, David's cousin, Paul, came down to visit his family, and I was invited to get dinner with him, David, and Kim, so we had a good time eating at Thai Pepper with Christian as our waiter. Apparently Paul wanted to do some Christmas shopping for his family, so I also ended up helping him pick out Christmas presents while we ran around town. Then we came back to David's house, and I had to help teach them how to wrap presents, lol. We played a couple of rounds of Exploding Kittens and talking before he had to go back to their aunt and uncle's place to go to sleep.
I spent Christmas Eve til the day after Christmas with David's family in Milledgville. We stayed at his aunt and uncle's house, where they hosted the Christmas party. I met them once before a couple of years ago, but I barely got to talk to them back then since they had an even bigger party back then. This time, I actually got to talk to them and play with their kids more and found out that they are the sweetest and nicest family ever.
On Christmas day, we went to Atlanta and his aunt and uncle treated us out to Korean BBQ at this fancy place called Breakers and paid for all of our tickets to watch Moana at AMC Phipps Plaza 14, which is a fancy movie theater that has really nice reclining seats. They also bought a lot of snacks and desserts for us later that night even though most of us were still full from the BBQ, lol. The next day, they bought us a lot of food as well before we left to go back home.
The day we came back home, we also went to Alec's house because he was having a bonfire to get rid of a lot of papers. This was mainly for Harnish's sake, since he had a lot of paperwork to burn from his family's businesses. It was great playing around and being pyromaniacs, lol. We only got through half of the paperwork that Harnish brought over, which was ridiculous. There was so much ashes in the end that it was starting to get out of hand, lol.
Since winter break started, our workout group grew exponentially since a lot more of our friends were free and back in town again. Because of that, and also because we workout for free at the Taekwondo school, the owner, Mr. Rankin asked us to help repaint the school this Tuesday and Wednesday, so the past two days have been really busy helping them reorganize and repaint the school.
David's friend, Allan, wanted to hangout with us yesterday, but because we already made plans to help repaint the school, he ended up helping us out after treating us to lunch at Thai Pepper since he really wanted sushi, lol.
And I was extra tired yesterday because Mr. Rankin was holding a three-day Jujitsu lesson from this Monday through Wednesday, and I got peer pressured to take the class yesterday since I expressed interest in it the day before. It was really fun learning how to do arm bars, and I was fortunate enough to not have to pay for the lesson since Mr. Rankin said me helping out earlier that day was enough as payment. The last lesson was a couple of hours ago, but since my parents came back from their vacation in California earlier today, I decided to stay home and hangout with them. Not to mention vegetate in peace since I've barely had any alone time since this break started.
I'm also kind of irritated with David because of the way he's been acting for the past couple of days. I was kind of thinking about it before I took a nap, and I think I woke up even grumpier and took it out on him when we were helping repaint earlier today. Whoops.
But yeah, this has definitely been my busiest break yet, and I really enjoyed it. I'm definitely feeling the need to recharge for a while to recuperate, but I don't regret any of my plans this break. I realized just how lucky and thankful I am to know such awesome people who like spending time with me and inviting me to do stuff together.
