The date was drawing closer, and my excitement grew exponentially. My trip to Mexico isn't just wanderlust dreams anymore. It is truly happening! One of the items on my bucket list is finally being checked off, as I take my first trip out of the country.

I am back from Mexico now, safely returned into the arms of my home. My skin is sun-kissed now, and my clothes still have a faint aroma of the beach. My mind and my phone are filled with the new memories that I made and the teaching of new experiences. Although I miss the Caribbean seas and the white sand beaches already, I am happy to be back in the states.

Planning is essential!

For weeks before my trip, my mind was filled with copious amounts of disbelief, excitement, and stress. Lots and lots of stress. It rammed into me like a sledgehammer and a never ending to do list of things to research, prepare, and get done before I even got on the plane that would fly me over the ocean.

I took this trip with my boyfriend, and we planned it together. Our parents were blessings as they helped us plan the trip, but they gave us enough space so that planning was a learning experience in itself.

While it seems like planning would be an obvious part of going on a vacation, I never realized how much I actually had to plan in order to go. Hotels, arranging transportation, activities, clothes, money, plane tickets, and various what-if scenarios all had to be set aside, booked, and decided on weeks before we left.

However, I think planning too much takes the fun out of anything, so we left a couple of days open to do things that we found. One day, we found a trip to Isla Mujeres through our hotel that allowed us to go snorkeling, see an underwater museum, and walk through local market places on the Island.

Have paperwork for everything.

There were no printers in our hotel, and I was so grateful that I had the idea to print off all the paperwork before we left. Having paperwork on hand made it easier for us to get into activities that we bought tickets for, check into the hotel, and find our transportation. Having copies of passports also helped so we didn't have to carry it around everywhere for our ID.

Double check everything.

Double check flight times and hotel names before leaving. My boyfriend and I had a flight were we had to get seats away from each other when we first booked the tickets, but we double checked the day before and two seats next to each other opened up. That was our good news about double checking.

However, we forgot to plug in the GoPro before leaving to Isla Mujeres, and we didn't get any pictures or videos of our trip there. Even though we had a great time, it was disappointing to get there and find out our camera was dead.

Bring emergency money.

My boyfriend and I both brought more money than we thought was necessary on the trip, but it ended up barely being enough. Transportation, tips, souvenirs, and anything off the resort had to be paid for. We set aside a hundred dollars though, that we would not touch unless there was an emergency. Thankfully, we had no issues that caused us to use this money, but it was comforting knowing that it was there.

Converting money.

We quickly found out that most shops raised the price of the items if we used American money instead of pesos. So we decided to find a place to exchange some American dollars into pesos. Finding a place to convert American currency to pesos was difficult enough at the hotel, but then we found that they weren't converting it evenly. Hotels take a certain percentage of the money out during the conversion as a fee. So if you need to exchange money, it is better to find a place in the states before you leave.

The language barrier.

While in Mexico, we had very few issues with language barriers. I know enough Spanish to get by, but almost everyone down there spoke English already. I researched this a little, and found the most people from other countries speak more than one language, while most Americans can only speak one. I found that interesting. I fully recommend learning Spanish before going to Mexico, because this made it a hundred times easier on us whenever there was a language barrier.

The scariest part.

For me, the scariest part of the entire trip was hearing everyone's stories before we left. I heard of the diseases. I heard of tourist being kidnapped, murdered, drugged, robbed, and everything in between. I can say that the tourist destinations that we went to while in Mexico were completely safe. There was never a time when I feared for my safety.

The worst part of the entire trip was going through customs in Mexico, where we had to fill out confusing paperwork several times before they let us pass through.

However, the worst part for my boyfriend was being frisked right before our plan ride back. I still laugh when I think about it.