.. getting to puerto rico ..

alright, so as i am sure most of you know, cody works for an airline. so we get sweet deals especially when it comes to flights. but the catch is we have to fly standby. boo! so we had decided that we would leave 2 days before the cruise so we could have time to make it there, which in our case proved to be a good thing.

august 6th came and it was d-day. we both went to work and then came home and did laundry, showered and packed. yes we didn't pack until the day we left, but we are pro packers let me tell you. we checked on the flights and the flight we had planned on taking, or rather not. it was full already and it didn't leave for another 4 hours. so we looked at other options. we found one. nyc. yes i had just come from nyc the previous weekend. fun. but that flight left 2 hours before the one we had planned on. so we finished up, fed jet took him for a walk and then packed up and left. yes i did cry, i hate leaving him. we got to the airport and made it onto the flight. before we got on we looked at options on how to get to puerto rico. NYC had one flight down there a day. if we both didn't make it we would have to split and try to get there or just go to another place and see if we could work our way down. so sure enough.. we got to NYC and rode to the terminal for international flights, and surprise surprise there was only one seat left after all the people boarded. so we decided to divide. i went on the direct and cody went to atlanta. 

here is where it gets almost comical. i arrived in puerto rico at 10am the next day. cody was stuck in atlanta and my brother and sister in law and friends didn't get in until 12p. so i got off and got cody's and my luggage and found a little corner in the airport to sit and wait for them to get there. I talked to cody for a bit and then we realized. we had taken out cash for the trip, we didn't want to spend more than what we had saved. instead of us splitting the money up, cody had it all. so i was stuck in a foreign country with no money and hungry. nice. i had to wait until my brother arrived who graciously bought me lunch / dinner since by the time we got to the place it was close to 5p. 

{another comedy, apparently while i was sitting waiting and had my legs up on our bags a luggage sticker made its way to the back of my knee. i didn't find it until about 5 that night, and it was stuck on good. wow!}


{me and m*}

what's that you say? where is cody? oh yes that is right still in atlanta. then by some miracle he caught the 5p flight out of atlanta and would be to us by about 8-9p that night. i was so relieved. meanwhile, my brother, sil, and friends ventured out into downtown old san juan. neat city and very fun.


{us at a bird park. they made a brick wall with holes and tunnels in it for the birds, yep just for them. this is me and e* at it}
 after dinner we walked around a bit and looked at all the city had to offer, really cool. around 7p it was starting to get dark and then we realized everyone was off the streets. shady people started to come out of the woodwork, my brother got stopped by a man bleeding from his head saying his dad and him had just been mugged and his dad was on his way to the hospital and he needed money to get in a taxi to get to him. um creepy much? so we told him we didn't have any cash and ran to the nearest taxi and were off to the hotel. 

cody showed up about an hour later, i was so excited. we had a snack, he was kind of hungry and chatted for a bit and then all went to bed. the girls all shared one king size bed, i was in the middle and the boys split up a bit. cody and my brother shared a fold out couch bed and our friend slept on a rollaway bed. talk about comfy. the next morning we started our first day on the ship..