Punta Cana Journey - Shark Attack!
Long time no see, blog! It's been a while. As they say in Spanish... Buenos Días (Good Morning)!
I was out of the country for 7 days so I was unable to blog while I was there. It was a week break for a reason, so I took a step out of my school mindset and enjoyed the beautiful Barceló Bavaro Grand Resort in Punta Cana and put all my homework aside (regretting it now)! This blog will include a little bit about the trip as well as include my learning project, which I managed to carry out during my trip. Please stay for the rest of the blog, you'll get to see some amazing photos!
Our flight left Regina last Sunday at 6:20 PM and then we landed in Edmonton at 8:00 PM. We had a loooong layover in Edmonton but we got free buffet food in the WestJet lounge so we stuffed our faces before catching our next flight. We flew out of Edmonton at midnight and arrived in Toronto at 6:00 AM and then we were supposed to leave Toronto for our final destination in Punta Cana at 10:30 AM, but we never ended up leaving until noon, so we sat on the plane for over an hour. We finally took off and landed in the beautiful Punta Cana at 5:00 PM. By this time, we had been in Airports for 24 hours and we were running on only 2 hours of sleep (at least I was). We were meeting another family in Punta Cana who are friends of ours from home, and we got a text from them when we arrived in Punta Cana (they had arrived a day earlier) that her husband cut his head open on the brick siding on their balcony of their hotel room. We didn't think it would be that bad but it literally looked like a shark (I CLICK BAITED YOU, MUAHAHAHA) took a "half bite" out of his head and left that "moon shaped" bite mark! It looked pretty sweet. He ended up going to the hospital where he received 15 stitches. It didn't put a damper on the trip whatsoever, we all still had a blast and he came back from the hospital grinning from ear to ear.
I have been very fortunate to have had the privilege to travel to many beautiful places, and Punta Cana being one of them. One of the most important things about staying in a resort for a long time is having access to good food, especially in another country. We have been to a few places where the food wasn't as good and that definitely put a damper on the experience. However, Punta Cana did not disappoint! The food options were amazing. We were in an all inclusive resort so you could eat and drink as much as you want and never have to see that $300 tab at the end of the night (we've all been there, oops)! There were lots of à la carte restaurant options that were incredible. We ate everything from smoked salmon, steak, shrimp, exotic fruits and octopus (I know what you're thinking, but it was actually super yummy)! We ate at Kyoto which is a Japanese restaurant (very similar to Teppanyaki in Regina if you've ever been there). A little glimpse of what I had below...
As you can see, it looked, smelt and tasted amazing! You had the choice of a protein/main that was cooked on the grill and it automatically came with chicken fried rice and mixed vegetables. I chose surf and turf which included steak and shrimp. All of it was made from scratch on the flat top grill in front of us. It was a really neat experience and tasted so yummy!
The beach was beautiful. I loved feeling the white, smooth sand in between my toes and coming out of the water after being in the ocean and tasting the salt on my lips from the salt water. The water was a light, turquoise blue and was breathtaking, as you can see from the photos (below). We went parasailing and the view from up top was gorgeous. We saw sea turtles from above and we ended up getting to 150 feet. My brother and I have never parasailed before, so it was a first for both of us!
What you've all been waiting for... MY LEARNING PROJECT!!!! As some of you know, I have been carrying out my learning project for the last month and a bit and I have been taking on dancing. I have used YouTube for all of my videos where I have learned how to do them, but I decided that since I am going to Punta Cana, why not find an "outside" resource that I can learn from. I tried getting into Salsa Dancing lessons but they costed quite a bit of money and they were 3 times that week for 2 hours a day (Wedneday, Thursday, Friday) which was too time consuming while on the trip. At first I thought I wasn't going to be able to carry out my project for both of those weeks (I did 2 different dances a week apart). BUT.. I was swimming in the pool one day and they started dancing pool side at 4:00 PM and I was like "THIS IS MY CHANCE!" I shot up out of the water and grabbed my phone and had some stranger videotape part of the lesson! I was in my bathing suit because there was no time to go back and change so my apologies! It was quite simple to learn but now I know that if I go back and some "tropical" upbeat music starts playing I can show off my moves! There was a team of 3 to 4 people showing us how to do these steps, it was so much fun! You'll see at the beginning of the video that someone fell beside me, but she was okay.
The second dance I learned was a dance that was meant for younger children. We were waiting for our reservation for supper and we were walking passed the Grand Theatre and they were showing the little ones on stage how to do this dance. A few of the kids seemed really shy and nervous and I thought: "I am great with kids, so why don't I go up there and learn with them and maybe they would follow along with me!" It was so so so sweet, and the kiddo's were adorable. I posted the short 2 minute video on YouTube (link below) of both dances. I have the children's dance first in the video and the poolside dance second (error on my part). I hope they make you smile and make you wanna get up and dance!
