Caribbean Beach (check) Happy (check)

Ah, I love the Caribbean. Today my friend Josue and I went to Megan’s Bay beach (which is considered one of the top 10 in the world) and it was pretty nice. There were sea gulls and large pelicans flying all over the place trying to find the schools of fish that kept on swirling around us. The seagulls would repeatedly land on the pelicans and try to steal the fish out of the pelican’s mouth as they were catching the fish. It was very comical. The vegetation was lush and the mountains crept up the sides of the bay area. I’m curious though, what was the determining factor in declaring this one of the top ten beaches in the world? No complaints here, though – we spent the afternoon bobbing in the ocean bath water. Large foot-long iguanas are all over the place, I even almost got rear-ended yesterday while stopping for one that was walking in the middle of the road. I made the quick decision to stop because I couldn’t really swerve to the right (there was a blind drive and THAT could have been a really bad situation).

I feel really bad that I keep turning down Josue when he asks me to hang out after we get home from dinner. This is the third time he has asked me and I turn him down. I really just don’t want to put myself in an awkward position – not that I feel threatened by him in any way, but I’m just worried that he’ll try to kiss me or something and I don’t want that. We’ll see how long I can avoid it for; this was our 5th day in a row hanging out together though! We sat down to dinner and he said he wanted to sit in a particular seat because he needed to be looking at the door. I thought ewwww… I have heard THIS before, last time I dated a cop. I think it’s cheesy, one of the show-off things that they say. Josue is a customs officer at the airport here.

Josue introduced me to Kineps. They are little green fruit that have sweet/tart fruit under the skin but surrounding the nut in the middle. They are really good! One of the locals cut down like a tree of them so that I could take them home with me and put them in the fridge. Breakfast tomorrow.

Last night we went out to a latin restaurant – I ate some concoction made of fried plantains and some other stuff. It was good, but a bit too filling. And I was told I have never eaten Dominican food unless I have tried mangoo. I think that is how you spell it. It’s almost like a stew (apparently) made of plantains.

Tonight I worked out and a very large guy said to me (we were the only two in the gym) that he was amazed to see me go on the elliptical machine, and said that he could never ever keep going that long. I was pretty flattered, especially after how amazed he seemed. He said he may have even been inspired to try it himself. “Don’t you ever get tired on that?” I happened to have a non-winded session (I would have kept going if it wasn’t so late).