6 Months Reflection Post

The following is just a mish mash of several writings I've done over the last several days, and am posting in case anyone wants to read...

Lima – Caracas

10:00am

So last night was really nice. I went to the Jazz Zone music club, where I met with several friends and family members. My brother Gaston and his wife Analia was there, as well as my cousin Leonardo, my friends from the Magis volunteer group Luis and Paola, as well as my friends Zarella and Roberto. I was there from about 10:30pm till about 1am, when I went home and finished packing my last things, such as my camcorder and other random stuff.

At about 3am I called my brother Gaston to come over so he could come with my mom and I to the airport, so my mom didn’t have to drop me off by herself. Then I showered while he got there, and took off. Everything went pretty smoothly at the airport; I checked in, after about a 40 minute line, which isn’t that bad at the Lima airport. Speaking of the airport, they seem to have finally finished remodeling it, and it actually looks a lot nicer than it used to, and again, everything went smoothly. Waiting in some of the lines, I met with a German girl who had been in Peru and Bolivia for four months doing some traveling and volunteer work. We both had a long layover in Caracas, so I thought we might hang out some more while we waited there.

I actually got to sleep a bit on the airplane. Not very comfortable, for sure, but I had hoped that the fact that I hadn’t slept at all the night before would help me sleep later on, especially on the 20 hour flippin’ greyhound bus ride to my grandma’s house.

11:40am

So I’m at the Caracas airport, and I go really excited because I asked a kind young lady if there was wireless internet, and sure enough, she said there was. So I get all excited and walk down a while to the gate that has the wireless access, but it turns out that you have to pay for the internet service… so boooo for that.

I met up with the German girl, whose name I still don’t know (and never did know, we didn’t hang out much at all), and quickly departed as I went to try my internet service (boo for that) and she took off trying to find somewhere she could smoke.

It’s definitely weird to be in this airport (waiting another 5 hours in layover) so soon ( I did the same in January going to Lima), and seeing the same food stands and what not. So yeah, I’m off to eat some good greasy fries and what not that they have down a ways (the food was AWFUL btw), and probably read or whatever, and listen to some of my podcasts. (my stupid ibook appears to have had the battery poop out on me mid travel… super boo for that… but SUPER yay for my new centrino duo Toshiba lappy!)

9:25pm

OK, so I’m sitting at the Greyound bus station now. When we (my mom and I) contacted the via email to reserve my tickets, they said the station was 2 blocks away…. Yeah… 2 blocks away once you get outside of the HUGE huge airport! But I had this really nice helpful TSA (airport employee) guy at the airport exit help me board the right bus that only cost me $1.50 to the Greyound station.

I was worried at first that I would be rushed for time to get to the Greyhound station, since the flight arrived in Miami at about 8:10pm or so, but here I am, about an hour later already at the bus station. The longest part was actually walking from the plane terminal to pick up my bag. My bag came out about 5 minutes later, and I just zipped right by customs (hurray). I then fumbled around until that TSA guy helped me take the bus to where I am currently sitting.

So now I’m listening to “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me” (NPR current events trivia show, I had the power plug at that time) podcasts waiting for another hour or so till I board my 20-hour-bus ride… 20 hours….

9:55pm Wed. May 10^th, 2006

So I’m at my cousins’ (Christie and Claudia) house in Mobile Alabama, watching Letterman with Christie in the living room. We had some pizza earlier so that was nice after the crappy food I’ve had over the last couple of days. (I then fell fast asleep on the super comfy sofa)

8:06am Thursday, May 11^th, 2006

“You guys have the llamas, huhhh? I’ve always wanted to go down there because of the llaaamaaas!” I thought that was pretty entertaining. I just woke up and a few minutes later my niece’s nanny came over to pick her up and had that to say when she found out that I was from Peru.

My last entry was pretty darned short, mainly because I was good and ready to pass out after being awake since Monday morning till last night, with some scattered sleep here and here on the plane and the bus.

Anywho, more trip details. I had begun to write about this on the bus, but my stupid iBook battery had already begun to poop out on me, and wouldn’t keep a charge. More of a reason to get a new laptop (which I know have) for South Korea.

The Greyhound bus ride was better than I had anticipated, and if it weren’t for the constant stops every couple of hours or so, I would have slept right through the night. I don’t even really remember much of the first night, since I was able to sleep through quite a bit of it. I remember we even had to get off the bus at one point (at some ungodly hour like 3am) so they could pretend and clean it, and then we got back on.

Throughout the bus ride I was able to finish my old Stephen King novel “The Long Walk” (which I’ve already read a couple of times, but still doesn’t get old). The dumb guy sitting in front of me apparently bought a coke at one of the rest stops and spilled it all over the floor, and since I was the one sitting right behind him, my poor backpack got nice and sticky underneath, so I went ahead and rinsed that off at the very next stop… jerk.

So another funny/not-really-funny-story-at-all was when the bus almost left me behind in the middle of Florida. During one of the routine stops I went into the gas station to use the bathroom, and then got a coke, and as I walked out the friggin’ bus was leaving the gas station!! I freaked out and started running towards it to catch up, with no success whatsoever. It did some sort of roundabout to head towards the main street, where there was a street light. I was like RED RED RED and BOOM, it turns green, and the bus turns onto the main street. At that point I just chucked my coke to the floor and started running like crazy waving my arms all over the place, as I hopelessly saw it approach the onramp to the highway. Literally like 10 feet away from the onramp it finally stopped and opened the door, as I finished running towards it and got on, exhausted.

TO BE CONTINUED....
and stuff