antigua!

i've been to a few new places since i was in college, so why not take a trip down memory lane? i post a ton of photos from these trips but never get to talk about what i actually saw or did... so here we go!

antigua, sept. 2015

silly background story
funny story behind this trip... it was planned for september 2015, steve and i had been working for about a year by now and decided it was time to take a real, grown-up vacation together (especially since we were both living at home).

so we decide on the caribbean because we want something somewhat-close with a beach. steve is like the poster-child for caribbean tourism - he knows so much about so many of the islands, mostly because he's been to most of them on family vacations. anyways, we go with his family travel agent who helps us pick an all-inclusive resort in punta cana. it seems nice, a good bang for your buck, and we book it. slowly but surely, i have doubts. i keep looking at tripadvisor photos and the beach seems like it has a ton of seaweed. i know, i sound like a big brat... and because of this, i let it go for a few more weeks. but more and more photos showed an overwhelming amount of seaweed washed up on the shores and in the water. the resort, the room, and the restaurants at this place still seemed amazing... and i started thinking we can just stay near the pool most of the trip. but we were paying a lot of money for this trip (especially for us, especially at this time) and we wanted it to be near-perfect.

the decision
when i was living at home, it was common for me to take the train home with steve and then go over his house to eat dinner with his parents. so it was a typical weeknight and steve and i were talking about being unsure about punta cana (we did buy insurance and could be fully refunded if we cancelled everything). the trip was like 3 weeks away and we both got our vacation days approved, so if we were to cancel - we still wanted to go on some sort of trip. finally after dinner and after chatting with his parents about it, we made the bold move to cancel. and 30 minutes later, we booked flights to antigua and a 5-night stay at Coco's Hotel.

more background...
why antigua? well... steve and i came across antigua and Coco's Hotel when we FIRST decided to search around for vacation ideas, but we decided that it was too expensive... especially for our first trip. i fell in love with it from afar and convinced myself that we'd go one day.

so when we had our mini crisis at the kozar's dinner table, we decided that spending a few extra hundred dollars was worth it because every single, stinkin' tripadvisor review was AMAZING. we were tired. we wanted to relax. we knew this place was great... so we booked it and a few short weeks later, we were in paradise. paradise with no seaweed!

onto the actual vacation, please
we fell in love within minutes of arriving at Coco's. greeted as "mr. and mrs. kozar" (lol, it's a couples-only hotel so they just assumed i guess) with a rum punch (with delicious english harbour rum... get your hands on that stuff, i promise it's worth it), local beer, and a spectacular view... even on a cloudy day!

the vacation was great. food was amazing, the staff were so friendly (even gave us a slice of our favorite cake for the trip home), and the views were just magical. everyone else was on their honeymoon so we just pretended we were doing the same thing. we spent the beginning of our trip just taking a ton of photos... basically in disbelief that the beaches were this empty, quiet, and beautiful. we loved every minute of it. the wifi was shit and we didn't bring any ipads/laptops, so we were truly off the grid. disconnecting from everything was tough, but so worth it because we got to fully explore the beaches and the rest of the island. all in all, we had our selves a pretty memorable time and wouldn't have changed a thing.

our hotel is in the background of this photo... each couple had a hut to stay in, all with equally-great views of the ocean.

couldn't resist from befriending some kitty-friends. they frequently came out during meal time, begging for food and looking too stinkin' cute.

so beautiful! private beach all for us

the hotel is in between two beaches, which was awesome because you had access to a significant portion of the island's coast line. we were the only people on the whole stretch of this beach, so incredible. unfortunately, it started storming after a few hours so we had to run and take cover.

enjoying our drinks full of english harbour rum... made by our dude, akil!

i'm dating a professional beach bum

this was the other beach (more popular even though it looks empty in this photo). in general, the beaches were pretty empty because we went in the middle of hurricane season... but this made the trip even more enjoyable and peaceful.

our favorite chocolate cake!

we typically stayed in the water well after the sun went down (not many others did this, no idea why - best view of the day) and since the sun sets earlier this time of year, we had plenty of time before dinner was served.

one day we stumbled into the nearby town village and found this art studio. couldn't help myself from snapping a few photos (mainly to show mom when i got back home).

on our last day, it rained in the morning and remained cloudy afterwards. we spent the morning lounging in the hammock on the porch and then we decided to explore the island for the remainder of the day.

we took a local bus (basically commuter van shuttle) to the main city, st. john's, and the total ride cost under $5 between the both of us! it was pretty simple and we got there in no time. there wasn't much going on in st. john and after an hour or so, we decided to take the local bus to the other side of the island. we quickly realized this wasn't the best idea because the bus doesn't have a set route or schedule, so we ended up getting dropped off at the end of the supposed "route". it was a pretty desolate area but we thankfully found one woman who set us up with a taxi (thank god - because steve was about to chop my head off as he wasn't too keen on taking the local bus in the first place). it ended up being one of the highlights of our trip because our driver, letric, decided to not only return us safely to our hotel, but to give us our own private tour of the island! i remember him playing some great tropical caribbean music and telling some great stories, especially the one about how he watched a volcano erupt on the nearby island of montserrat from his home in antigua in the 90s. he even snapped a few great shots that we may have to put in a frame one of these days!

giving this another shot?

so i'm giving this blogging thing another shot, out of fear that i will lose my memory and turn into my grandmother (and possibly my own mother, tbd on that still though - only time will tell how far the apple falls from the tree)

here we go, where do i start?

the last posts on here were from college when i got foot surgery and was miserable. my memory is not shit yet because i do remember that time pretty well - i was so annoyed being stuck in bed during my winter break that i took it out on everyone, especially steve. we got into some stupid fight the night of his 21st birthday and i was bitter he'd be celebrating/having fun (without me). pity me, selfish me!! thankfully that time has passed, steve still likes me even if i'm a little selfish sometimes, and i'm back on my own two feet (literally). that was like four and half years ago! i was a baby. but i still feel like a child sometimes, even though i now have a real job and people are supposed to take me seriously (are they though?).

grad school - what, why?

i like my job, it's been 3 years - which is crazy. also in that time, i made the somewhat rash decision to go to grad school part time while working full-time and be miserable for two and a half years. sometimes i think i like making myself miserable... really though. without fail, i will always find something to worry/stress about if life is becoming too easy for me to handle - hate it, but kinda have to accept it by now.

and speaking of making myself miserable, as if deciding to torture myself with more school after i just finished four years of engineering undergraduate classes and began working at an engineering company wasn't enough... i somehow turned my "zero-credit thesis paper requirement" into a 20-page research paper that was submitted for publication and got accepted into the largest transportation research journal. this meant spending another 9 months editing/revising this paper, on top of my day job and the other silly grad classes i was enrolled in. this ALSO meant i had to present my research at this conference. when a professor asks you to submit your paper to a journal/conference/etc and it seems like "why not?" just please give it some thought before saying yes, unlike me. it. truly. never. ends. (side note - i then re-presented this research at another related conference for my job... lesson here is that rachel has a problem saying no and she loves being stressed, apparently).

grad school wasn't all bad - while suffering through some tough classes and research papers (that also taught me nothing helpful for my day job), i met a few great people who made suffering together sometimes enjoyable. but happy to say, now when i get together with these people - it's not at school and drinks are always involved. school is over, forever.

moving out, yay!?

other life events include moving out of mom and dad's house, bye bye park ridge and hi hi hoboken. this girl can't get out of jersey, apparently. moving out seemed like a no-brainer after living at home for 1.5 years and doing the hour-long commute to and from work every day. looking back on it now though, that was the good life... when i could blame NJ Transit's train schedule for why i couldn't stay late or come in super early for field work. now, i have no excuse really and sometimes i work too much... but that's adulting, i guess? 

moving out also meant that i had to learn how to cook... which i still have not mastered at all. no more getting diner food/pizza/chipotle/you-name-the-takeout-food with the parents after they picked me up from the train for dinner. this has probably been the hardest adjustment and you know it's bad when co-workers start to refer you to cooking recipe blogs/give you cookbooks they had "laying around the house" and christmas gifts revolve around cooking recipes. even grandma gave me her old crockpot (which has still not been used, i know i'm dumb - i've heard great things about them though). i blame it on the fact that my dad never, ever cooked and my mom only did it when she "had" to. i grew up eating (no joke, seriously) pizza, burger king, wendy's, chinese take-out, taco bell... the remaining nights would include "slop" (pasta with sauce and hamburger meat) or some other simple pasta dish. you get the picture. my mom justified this by designating every night an "apple" or "carrot" night, which meant that after dinner we had to have five carrots or slices of an apple... to be healthy? i honestly had and still don't have any problems with this, both of my parents worked full-time and didn't want to waste time in the kitchen. but because this was what i saw growing up, i kind of have a negative attitude towards cooking and would much rather resort to buying prepared foods or going out to eat (but i'm also cheap, so this is where the dilemma kicks in).

presenting my research (pictured here with my professor and Jen) at the transportation research conference this past January. you can't see it here, but during this photo i am screaaaaming "i can't wait to EAT!!!" i didn't eat anything this entire day before my presentation because of my nerves lol.... oops

my first instagram inside the new apartment... couldn't get over the view, still kinda can't sometimes...

one meal that steve and i made that was surprisingly pretty enough to take a photo of. i'm still struggling though, don't be fooled by this photo (we used too much ginger during this time, so it looks better than it tasted)

here's to hoping i'll post more frequently? bye!