2017 Year in Review

2016 may have been my first complete year without graduate school but 2017 was my first complete year without graduate school and the proper time to plan trips. The result was several incredible journeys with friends and family and my most country-countingest year ever: 21!*

Before I re-hash some favorites, I’ve just come back from a trip with Dad to Honduras and Guatemala. We cruised Mayan ruins, saw Star Wars in Spanish, and visited a fort.** The trip trifecta, if you will. 

I also neglected to post about a lovely Thanksgiving week at Cumberland Island off the coast of Georgia.*** The island was beautiful and it was incredible to be so close to home and feel so remote. We rode bikes, toured old homes, and were thankful for each other’s company. The Thanksgiving trifecta, if you still will.

Looking back at the many trips of 2017, I have a lot of favorite things beyond the amazing places I visited. In perhaps chronological order:

• In Lebanon I ate a magical dessert that was delicious and also was a giant chocolate ball that dissolved when a sauce was poured on it and revealed the gourmet equivalent of a Nestle’s Crunch bar inside. I would be lying if I said I didn’t think of it often.

• To fly to and from French Guiana/Suriname/Guyana, AT and I had a completely bonkers flight plan that included four different Caribbean countries. We got stuck in one and flew a completely empty plane out of it.****

• Teachers Summer was a reality in London with frolleagues in one of my all time favorite cities. 

• What “favorite things” list would be complete without a tribute to the queen of all things that are favorites?

• The accidental theme of riding bicycles places with fellow sporty people.*****

• Hamilton. 

• Friendships? More like friendTRIPS!

• 2018 needs more beaches, but St. Lucia came through after hurricanes canceled a few other plans. 

• And of course, these goofs. 

I can’t wait to see where 2018 will take me. I hope everyone has a wonderful start to the new year!

Love,

KT

*As always, country counting is designated by the Traveler’s Century Club. I continue to remind you that I did not make the list but I must now disclose that I am a local chapter advisor.******

**We now consider ourselves to be fort experts (Fortperts? Expforts?) and I can tell you this one was highly enjoyable due to: 1) no insane climb to get there, 2) abundant greenery and flowers, 3) no lectures about how people were tortured. The fort trifecta, if you must. 

***This was not a failure on the trip’s fault and was 100% a failure on December’s fault. December is a very busy time to be a musician, a teacher, or a music teacher, let alone all three. 

****Also I forgot to pack underwear so now whenever I pack for a trip someone in the family asks if I packed underwear this time and laughs. You’re welcome, family. 

*****Not pictured is bikes in Indianapolis with Robert. Probably because we were on actual roads and neither of us would have been coordinated enough to take a picture, ride a bike, and avoid crashing into traffic. 

******A completely separate story that I am happy to share in person about how improperly timed meals can lead you to make questionable life choices. 

#BUmeangirlsDC

This blog is neither teacher nor summer. It is a huge time saver from starting my college reunion blog, though!

A selection of BU's finest Allegrettos rendezvoused in DC this weekend for a much-too-fast, less-than-48 hours of fun and frolicking centered around the preview of the musical, "Mean Girls." We saw it together in college and have quoted it constantly ever since. When I first heard it was being made into a musical by the Queen-of-All-Things Tina Fey, I knew we had to be there.

We saw some history and ate lots of food before and after the show but mostly just looked, like, really pretty everywhere we went.

We swung by some sights and posed with judgement or posed absurdly, whichever felt the most right.*

Ptarcie took all the selfies:

 I posed with my heroes:**

We all learned many facts we did not learn in history class. I have since concluded that if teachers led with more bizarre factoids, it might make the student buy-in higher.*** Case and point:

Oh, and, #obvs, we saw Mean Girls!! It was funny, it was fetch, it was not the last time I'll see it.****

Should I start planning next fall's reunion? Whatever. I'm getting cheese fries.
-KT

*Except Rey, he always smiled appropriately.
**And got the subtitle for my as-yet-to-be-written self-titled memoir.

***Get ready to focus on random composer gossip, my students!

****And definitely not the last time I'll think about being Ms. Norbury in a community theater production.

St. Lucia!

An absolute perk* to being a teacher is that, along with summers, we get random break weeks throughout the school year. I hear accountants don't get a "Spring Break" week every year and it is just another reason why I am confused that people choose to be accountants. This week was my school's Fall Break and I was determined to go somewhere, even when it seemed unlikely.

My first trip-planning snafu came from my passport. I was running out of pages so I had sent it off at the end of July to be renewed.** At the end of August I received an email that it was on its way and would be to me in three short days. Great! Three short days later, USPS tracking implied it was lost in the mail. One week later, this became even more evident. Two weeks later, it was a problem. When I called on the third week, the passport people*** agreed that this was exceptionally strange and helped me set up an appointment to go in person and have one printed later in the week. My passport, suddenly sensing it was truly wanted, showed up the next day.

Now that I had a passport, I could continue my trip plans to Turks and Caicos. But, oh. Hurricanes, y'all. Watching what Harvey did to Houston had me intensely watching Irma. When the projected path of Irma had it going right over Turks and Caicos, I changed my trip to a more southern Caribbean location, St. Lucia. Fortunately, the airlines**** were super accommodating and one woman I spoke to even learned where Turks and Caicos is located!

Once St. Lucia was booked, I neurotically watched Hurricane Maria. St. Lucia ended up having only a tropical storm warning for a day and no hurricane damage. On that note, many other islands were not as fortunate and they need all the help we can provide.******

But enough with how I almost didn't go anywhere. I got here!

Naturally, I went from the airport to the beach as quickly as possible. That did involve an hour and a half car ride over some mountains in the middle, but it was worth the wait!

I have definitely spent some days just sitting on the beach reading all the books.******* However, I did want to get out and see more of the island than the stretch of beach outside my hotel. To that end, I rented a car for a day and hit the streets!

...the incredibly-mountainous, not-entirely-paved, hairpin-turn streets!

St. Lucia was originally settled by the British and they carry on many British traditions to this day. One of them is that the queen is on their money! Fun! Another is that they drive on the left. PANIC!

This was my first time driving on the left and it was shockingly easier than I expected. I thought I would need to constantly chant, "Stay left, Kelly, stay left" as I drove but it was easy enough to adapt. The real thing that threw me off was the mirror-imaged car! Sitting on the right doesn't seem like it will be a big deal but did you know the blinker and windshield wiper are also switched?!?!? I managed to turn without turning on the windshield wipers maybe three times. Sometimes I even mentally prepared myself to signal with the other hand and then it came time to turn and habit won out. If it had actually rained, I am confident I would have been the old guy driving with their blinker on for miles and miles down a one-lane road with no turn-offs.

Though driving on the left was no big deal, the mountain roads did not mess around. Fortunately, the return was huge. After an hour and a half-ish of mountainy roads, I ended up here:

Not bad, right? This is the black sand beach of Anse Chastenet. It is located on the western coast just north of the Pitons- two volcanic mountains that define the shoreline.

After some beach time, I headed for the nearest waterfall.******** I had some waterfall options, but went for the one that lets you swim underneath it. It was way cool.

I have no pictures of me actually swimming under it, but I assure you I did. I also specifically took the above picture to feature the photo SUPERSTAR in yellow shorts who was posing for her family's photos. Little did I know that a few minutes later, she would see me posing for a photo and then crash it. She insisted we pose "Lucian Style" and described that as "Butts out. Tongues out." When in St. Lucia, apparently...

I capped off the day with one more beach visit. This time the stop was Sugar Beach, heavily plugged by the locals as "where Matt Damon renewed his vows." I like to live my life with the philosophy that if something is good enough for Matt Damon, it is good enough for me. This beach definitely was.

I snuck in one last Piton before beginning the return trip.

On the journey home I challenged myself to drive slightly faster than the old lady speed with which I drove out. The end result was I reached the speed limit at least twice on a flat stretch. The speed limit was 60 km/hour. It was terrifying.

I will definitely need to sit on a beach all day to recover. Whew, the stress.
-KT

*And when I say "perk," I mean "back off, we earned this" but with at least two expletives that I won't include here because it is the internet.

**"I was running out of pages" is possibly my favorite traveler humblebrag. I was actually heartbroken to trade in my passport for a new one. I had finally this summer achieved my life goal with 3 different immigration officers where they flipped through my passport looking for a place to stamp and then commented about how many places I had been. "Yes, I have been to a lot of places, Madame Immigration Officer. Please tell me more about how glamorous my life is."

***Who picked up after I was on hold for maybe 20 seconds, by the way. Get it, US Government!

****Shout out to American Airlines who are in no way endorsed by this blog but were lovely on the phone with, again, practically no wait time.*****

*****I do not enjoy calling people on the phone so any time an experience is even halfway bearable, I feel relieved.

******Pick your pleasure. I donated to Hispanic Federation but there are many excellent ways to support the incredible amount of work that needs to be done, specifically in Puerto Rico.  http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/can-help-hurricane-victims-puerto-rico/

*******I have, of course, also walked along it. I do love long walks on the beach. And I'm a libra, thanks for asking.

********Likeyado.