Setting Sail (and vomiting in the ocean)

In January, with our college graduations in sight, I decided with my friends Emmie and Dan that a celebration was in order, so we booked a cruise to Mexico. This would be my first time on a cruise and out of the country, so I spent the next five months giddy with excitement, getting a passport, booking flights, practicing my Spanish (‘huevos verdes con jamón’ is always my go-to phrase. It means ‘green eggs and ham’ and is helpful in almost any setting.) and googling the weather for Ensenada. The trip did not disappoint.

 

Ty Burrell insulted me and I was thrilled: As Emmie and I boarded our flight out of Salt Lake, she stopped three rows into the place and hissed to me, “Rachel. Phil Dunphy is on this plane. TY BURRELL IS ON THIS PLANE.” Ty Burrell is the main character, Phil Dunphy, in one of my favorite sitcoms, Modern Family. I looked to the place she was pointing, where a bearded man sat. He was wearing headphones and his face was in a newspaper. Emmie had made eye contact with him, but as soon as he realized she recognized him he suddenly became very engrossed in the banana bread recipe in the Deseret News. There I was, standing inches away from a COMEDIC GENIUS. We waited as another 25 or so people pushed past us until there was a break in the flow, and then I tapped on his shoulder and asked him if he would please take his picture with us. As he started to talk to us, we immediately recognized his deep rumbly voice and I wanted to shake his shoulders and say, “You sound exactly like Ty Burrell! You ARE Ty Burrell.” But instead we just took our picture with him and I told him it was the best day of my life, to which he responded, “You must have a pretty boring life then.” And then we all laughed, and I wanted to say, “You should be a comedian! Oh wait!! Hahahaha!” but really all I could focus on was how excited I was that Ty thought that my life was boring. After the other fliers and the flight attendants were sufficiently angry, we thanked him for the picture and he wished us a good flight. The next two hours to Los Angeles were spent watching Ty from a few rows back and saying things like, “Ty Burrell just adjusted his glasses. I adjust my glasses!” and also trying to convince the woman next to us that we had actually just graduated college instead of the 5^th grade.

We explored Catalina Island: In the morning we zip lined through Catalina Island, and I decided my new career choice is tour guide, because they get to say whatever they want. Our tour guide would go on and on about squirrels roaming around that were the size of bears, only at the end to say “Just kidding! Those actually don’t exist.” Half the group had already stopped listening to the guide and were pushing their faces to the window in order to find the monster the guide had described, while parents were frantically looking in their bags for squirrel spray. We had lunch and then rented beach cruisers to ride around the island. We decided to bike to the botanical gardens at the top of the hills, which I immediately regretted because it WAS on the top of a hill. At the end of our journey was not actually a gorgeous garden, but a boring stone gate that said there were no bikes allowed. Nonetheless, biking was my favorite part of the trip.

I threw up in the Pacific Ocean: Emmie, Dan, and I decided we would go kayaking when we got to Ensenada, Mexico. Emmie and I laughed but were also terrified at the thought of tipping over our tandem kayak or getting it stuck in the middle of nowhere. Dan was paired up with random kid from the cruise, who I tried to congratulate, telling him that Dan was an expert kayaker. The 13 year old just raised an eyebrow and told me, “I kayak all the time.” Apparently he was not impressed that I guided Emmie and me into a patch of kelp. The further and further we kayaked into the ocean, the more entranced I was. The sea looked just like liquid glass, moving our tiny kayak up and down. Emmie said she felt like Pocahontas, and I felt like an Olympian, rowing away with 15 other kayaks through the waves. The further we went into the ocean, the more our kayak swayed. Was the dizziness I was feeling the same rush that an Olympian feels when they’re about to win the gold medal? Was the faintness in my head the same feeling Pocahontas felt when she kayaked just around the riverbend? All of a sudden my head was stretched out of the kayak, and I was losing my lunch. Little did the sea lions that we passed know that instead of swimming through ocean foam, they were actually wading through the croissant I had on the ship. The next 45 minutes of the adventure included me laying on the kayak and Emmie kayaking me ACROSS THE PACIFIC OCEAN. She didn’t even complain or attempt to feed me to the sharks once. Give that girl the Nobel Prize, Oprah.

My monopoly skills came in handy: When my family plays board games, we don’t mess around. A family favorite is Monopoly, which usually takes a good five hours to finish if we’re lucky. I can’t count the amount of hours I have spent relentlessly trying to trade Park Place to the owner of Boardwalk in exchange for the Railroads, St. Charles Place, and a hefty sum of cash. I thought these skills were useless beyond Monopoly. However, after kayaking we found a place to eat some tacos and then looked around at the shops. As I looked into one of the shops, I told the man there I was looking for a bag for my sister. He held up one but I told him that was too much for me to spend, and started to leave. He called after me, lowering the price. I returned to the shop and for the next few minutes I was unsure whether I was trying to secure the pink monopoly or a bag, but I left pleased with my bargaining skills.

I found the most valuable part of the cruise ship: When we were not out exploring the cities, our time was spent on the ship. I lost to Dan playing shuffle board and then lost to both of them playing mini golf, but I still felt like a real winner because there was an ice cream machine on the cruise and no adults to tell me I shouldn’t go back for my 97^th serving.

It is suspected that President Obama tried to welcome me back: On Thursday I got through customs, got off the cruise ship and was back on American soil. We were in the Los Angeles airport, ready to take-off, when the pilot was told we needed to stay on the ground for a bit. Apparently President Obama was flying into LAX. I listened as people sighed unhappily, realizing they would miss their connecting flights. I could hardly hear them and I pressed my face to the little airplane window, searching for Air Force One. President Obama was flying into the Los Angeles airport. And there I was, sitting on the runway in the Los Angeles airport. OBVIOUSLY THIS WAS NOT A COINCIDENCE. BARACK OBAMA WAS COMING TO WELCOME ME BACK TO AMERICA. But minutes later the pilot was on the intercom again, announcing we could take off. Amid the cheers from the passengers my shriek of “But the president!! He probably saw my tweets I sent him!!” was hardly heard. It is still unknown if when President Obama took the first step off his plane he heard me calling down ideas about education reform.

Although I was sad to return to normal life, I am slowly coping by eating large amounts of ice cream and correcting people on their Spanish. (Do I speak Spanish? Of course not. But I usually follow up my correction with “I was just in Mexico, so I would know.”) Adiós amigos!

How to be an Adult (And Also Super Popular)

     

Although I am a middle child, I hold the prized calling of an older sister. I have older brothers, but my only sister, Katherine, is younger than me. This is something that I don’t take lightly. I am constantly trying to pass my life advice onto her so she never has to make the foolish decision of getting locked out of the house or accidentally leaving moldy oranges in her backpack for a semester. It must have been this sort of drive that urged a 10 year-old me to sit Katherine down upon her kindergarten graduation and insist on teaching her how to be popular. I am unsure whether it was my Harry Potter-like glasses or the fact that I frequently taped the misspelled ‘Do not distrb, scintist at work’ sign on my bedroom door that made me feel so qualified. (I hope that those who attended school with me are now in hysterics because instead of being popular I actually walked around outfield while the rest of the kids played kickball and would run to the opposite side of the field where the ball was coming so I wouldn’t have to make an attempt at a catch.) I lectured her on the importance of picking popular friends, wearing cute clothes, mastering a hair flip, and being occasionally bossy.

Not much has changed since then. My sister graduated high school and moved in with me last week, and I am still trying to use my wealth of knowledge to drench her. Upon arriving, she turned to me and said “Okay Rachel, teach me how to be an adult.” Although I am clearly more qualified to be a mentor of popularity, I finally gave in.

Rachel’s Guide to Being a Grown-Up: Part 1

1.     8 am college classes will always come too early. 12pm classes are during lunch. 2pm classes will interfere with an afternoon nap. 4pm classes are in the hottest part of the day, so if you walk to campus your back will be covered with sweat from your backpack. 6pm classes are too late. I have found the only good time to take classes is between 10:24am-11:09am. All other class time is spent googling where the nearest vending machine is.

2.     Coming up with excuses is hard. Before I was an adult, I always avoided activities that I didn’t want to attend by swiftly saying, “My mom says I can’t go.” There is a group of people who will read this and think, “Just be completely honest! No need for excuses.” Wrong. Until there is a way to politely inform someone that you will not be attending their party because you think it will be super boring and you would much rather stay in your pajamas all evening while taking 700 selfies on your webcam trying to see how many double chins you can make, there is no way to be completely honest. A completely adult way to address situations like this is to kindly say, “I won’t be there, but thanks for inviting me!” or pretending that you can’t hear the person inviting you and continue to say, “What?!” until they’ve repeated their invitation so many times that they decided they don’t want a person with that caliber of hearing problems at their party anyway.

3.     Learn to say no. Why am I on the Famous Footwear email list? Why did I let that guy at the mall take 15 minutes of my time trying to convince me that I needed a nail buffer? Why have I watched one zillion of those videos shared on facebook that has the caption, “You’ve GOT to see this, lol”? Because I couldn’t say no. Now that I’ve learned to say no my nails are certainly not as nice, but I do have more time to do great things like eat ice cream.  

4.     Learn to say yes. Sometimes you have to say ‘yes’ to things you don’t want to, like flu shots or going in to talk to your school counselor about changing your major. Other times you have to tell yourself that yes, you will buy spinach at the grocery store instead of eating out. Sometimes you have a bad day and you have to look in the mirror and tell yourself that yes, you really are an incredible person. But there are also lots of great things that you get to say ‘yes’ to, which include but are not limited to: wearing pajamas all day, choosing the least gross fluoride flavor at the dentist’s office, and deciding to eat out instead of eating your spinach that’s in the fridge.

5.     Celebrate. Being an adult can be hard. One day you’re hanging out with your family and the next day you have to do your own laundry and go to the bank and buy your own groceries and be financially responsible and know how to get grape juice out of new shirts and talk to strangers at the grocery store about tomato prices. Whenever I do something that is particularly adult-like, I congratulate myself. Sometimes I celebrate my transition to adulthood by doing things I couldn’t do as a kid, like eat food in the living room or pillow-surf down the stairs.

6.     Be yourself. My sister Katherine is always full of an infinite amount of love. (Except for the time she told me I used the word infinitely incorrectly.) Her constant desire to help others inspires me. Not only does she help edit and revise my blog, but she also came up with the name ‘Sense and Sarcasm.’ One day I was looking at the stats of people who had viewed my blog, and was quite pleased when it looked like a huge number of people were reading it. I made immediate plans to call Ellen DeGeneres and tell her that of course I would love to be featured on her show as the newest internet sensation. When I opened up my sister’s laptop later that evening, I saw that my blog had been opened on enough tabs to cover the whole screen. The more I deleted, the more appeared.  Not everyone has a sister that opens your blog a zillion times to make you think you’ve gone viral. So as good hearted (and super relevant) as my popularity advice was to my sister, I sure am glad she didn’t take it. I’m glad that instead of selecting elite friends and bossing people around, she was simply herself.

(But let’s be totally honest. With glasses like these, I actually was the coolest person in elementary school.)