M and E Live by the Sea: New Years

01 January 2014

2014: New Year, New Beginnings

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all had a joyous celebration with friends and family to ring in the new year. Ethan and I went to a beach party with some friends:

Lots of people we met for the first time...

Bonfire on the beach!

Ethan enjoying the fire

It was a great party! Lots of good food & drink and great conversation. About 2 minutes before the countdown, it started to rain and we all darted underneath the trees for cover. Ethan hit his head on a branch. (ouch!) It only rained briefly, but we were all counting down the last seconds of 2013 under the trees with cups of sparkling wine in our hands. Then we headed back to the fire to warm up again!

It has definitely been an adventure living in Puerto Rico. We have had our ups and downs: seeing beautiful places; exploring the beaches, mountains, rainforests, and caves all over the island; finding delicious restaurants; meeting new friends; learning Spanish; trying to find a decent car; surviving the city traffic everyday; and saving up time and money to visit friends and family on the mainland. Reflecting on all our experiences of 2013 brings me to my resolutions for 2014:

Run more
I reviewed my mileage for the past few years and it has decreased drastically :-/ In 2012, I ran a total of 430.5 miles while only making 375.9 miles in 2013. I definitely want to get this number back up for 2014! So far, I have several races planned: Ethan and I are signed up to run all 6 Xterra Trail Races this year (5k or longer for each race). I am also signed up to run the Puerto Rico Half Marathon in March. Hopefully, I can get a new PR for that distance!

The heat and humidity are brutal in Puerto Rico!

Communicate better
I guess we always can work on this one. This is one of my goals for 2014, especially in my postdoc in the Quirk lab. It's a lot larger lab than what I am used to, but I am learning to communicate effectively more and more in the lab each day. And I am definitely improving my Spanish!

Eat Better
Ethan and I have been struggling to come up with planned meals for the week. Sometimes it gets pretty bad because we come home late from the lab most nights of the week and are too tired to make an amazing meal. So one solution I have for this is to plan our meals for the week and make meals ahead of time so that we have healthy prepared meals for those days we come home late. I also want to try some new recipes!

Here's to another adventurous year on the Island of Enchantment! Cheers!

What are your new year's resolutions? What are you going to do to achieve them?

03 January 2013

¡Feliz Año Nuevo! / Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! We hope you all had a fun time ringing in the new year. Our friend Mercedes came to visit us for a few days and we had a great time on New Year's Eve. We started off the day touring the Bacardí distillery in Cataño... how can you beat a free tour with free drinks?!? After the tour, we headed to Old San Juan for a Puerto Rican dinner at Mojito's Restaurant. We shared a large pitcher of Sangria, and I ordered the cod stew with tostones while Ethan and Mercedes each ordered the mofongo. It was all delicious! We were a little put off that they did not have any mint to make mojitos... Seriously? A restaurant named Mojito's that runs out of ingredients to make their most famous drink!? In any case, we enjoyed our food. After our meal, we wandered around Old San Juan in the hopes of enjoying children playing in the square and seeing some fireworks. Instead, it seemed like everything was closing early and very few people were out and about. We noticed that Calle Fortaleza was being closed off to traffic, so we asked a local police officer what was going on - this also gave me a chance to practicar mi Español! :-D He told us that the governor's inauguration was the following morning, and the new governor rides down the street around Old San Juan and up to the Capitol building where the inauguration takes place. Turns out, the only new year's festivities taking place in San Juan were in Condado at the fancy hotels which required a fancy cover charge to get into the parties. Era demasiado caro para nosotros. So we then decided to head back to our house on the hill to watch the show of fireworks that would be set off all over San Juan. We were so glad we ended up back at the house to see that!

The video doesn't come close to witnessing the real thing, but it will certainly give you an idea of the quantity of fireworks that went off that night. It was like Gangbusters! (you can hear me saying this in the video, haha!)

We explored quite a bit of the island on several day trips while Mercedes was here. Here are some of the highlights:

The Dry Forest and The Southern Coastline

Passing by Bahina de Bellana or Bellana Bay on

our way to the dry forest in Guánica

Rocky Cliffs off the Meseta trail in

Bosque Estetal de Guánica aka the dry forest

Coves created from the waves washing away the limestone rock

Walking around the cliffs

Interesting limestone rock formations just past

Bellena Bay

Mercedes on the cliff

Some of the cliffs had tons of little crabs living on the limstone near the ocean. Hard to see in this picture and when you approached them, they ran away fast!

Dinner in Ponce, PR

After the coast we head to Ponce for some dinner. On the left is the Typical Puerto Rican Christmas dinner at Casa de Las Tias in Ponce that Ethan had and on the right is the dish that Mercedes and I shared.