Friday

Friday was our last real day in Mexico, so we had decided to do nothing for the day and just enjoy the weather and the resort. I got up that morning and worked out - first time ever on an eliptical and still not sure what I thought about it - and came back to the room for our daily room service breakfast. I was loving the daily breakfast on the balcony... I had the same thing every day - granola and a plate of fruit - and we enjoyed the breakfast, coffee, the birds building a nest in the palm tree in front of us, the woodpecker giving himself a headache, and the random people that we would see below (not many before 10am). We discussed Cornbread's business, the stress of everything going on and the ideas we were getting from the people we were meeting. It was peaceful, quiet and time by ourselves.
We eventually made our way down to the pool and grabbed some chairs by the roommate and his wife and a few others. We got a game of pool volleyball together - the weather had changed at some point on Thursday: the humidity had broken and it had cooled down to around 80 degrees... now the pool felt kind of cold and I had no interest in staying in for too long. In fact, it felt much better to sit on the chair in the sun. My biggest problem of the day was that I was at the best part of my book and I was struggling with wanting to read it and not wanting to put it down and wanting to save it for the plane ride;)

We had lunch and decided to spend the rest of the afternoon on the beach. We grabbed some chairs and read for the rest of the afternoon... I finally got up around 4:30 to go to the room to shower, change and pack.

Our farewell dinner was on the same terrace as the welcome dinner. The weather was nicer - we didn't sweat just by breathing this time - and the view was still amazing. We sat with Kevin and J. Twidd, the couple from Albuquerque that had gone surfing with us, and the head of Compliance and his wife (another general partner who was hosting the trip). Dinner was surf and turf - a big fillet felt kind of heavy and wrong to me in Mexico sitting by the ocean, so I focused on the shrimp portion:)

Dinner was nice, but I was emotionally and socially exhausted by this point and decided to go back to the room by myself for a little bit. It was only 8:30, but I needed to be by myself for a while. It occurred to me that this trip was awesome and amazing and a wonderful gift, but it was exhausting for me... we endured nearly constant small talk for a week. There were 75 other FA's and their spouses at the resort and it was almost impossible to go anywhere without running into someone that looked familiar. It always involved the same 5 minute conversation: "How many years have you been with Jones? Where are you from? How many trips have you been on? Where have you gone? Which was your favorite?" Occasionally, the conversation would go further, however, relationship building was not really on anyone's mind. Which is totally understandable, but just difficult for me to endure for 5-6 days straight and I needed to get away from it.

I went back to our room and reluctantly finished my book;)