illusion_is_mine

So In my previous post I said I would talk about my trip to Panama, but I think I'll just mention a few things that happened to make it a bit easier. I'll use bullet points even.

We got caught in a tourist trap as soon as we got there, and some douche driver decided to charge us $20 a day (for each person) every time he took us anywhere. He was supposed to be a friend of the family, some friend eh?
The beach was beautiful, and a guy riding a horse on the beach kept trying to get me to ride the horse...lol. Anyone who knows me knows I'm deathly afraid of horses. I'm not sure why, but I always have been. Anyway the guy was like "You scared amiga? Don't be scared! You want ride the horsie." To which I just kept shaking my head no...lol.
Lots of communication issues due to the fact that my Spanish is pretty awful. Luckily for most of the trip we did have Spanish speakers with us during the duration of the trip.
At one point the relative who hired douche driver had us waiting at her cousin's house for her brother to fly in from Miami. His plane was delayed, and they didn't know when he was coming. After 4 hours of waiting we got tired of waiting, and asked if they could just have a shuttle take us to the resort.
I really don't like Panamanian food at all, and neither did my stomach. Everyone in our group got sick of it by the end of the trip, and had stomach issues when we got home.
The food I did enjoy was at this really nice Panamanian restaurant that my grandmother's sister, and her sons took us to. The food was really good, and that's where I had that delicious hamburger (cause I'm a loser american.)
The locals there were surprisingly really friendly, and would talk to you assuming you knew how to speak Spanish. It's such a diverse country with so many different cultures that they automatically assume you speak Spanish no matter how you look.
The scenery was really amazingly beautiful, and I really miss it.
My dad got emotional when he went to the old house he grew up in. I've never seen him cry, but he cried when talking about it. He told me that his mom must have went through so much to bring them to the US. She was only 21 when she brought them to the states.
My sister bought lots of great souvenirs, and I bought some good stuff too despite my limited funds.
The disparity between the rich in the poor in Panama is huge, and you can really see it. It was a huge wake up call for me about how much we really take for granted in the US. There were really young kids on the street begging for money. It was very eye opening.
Electronics in Panama are really expensive, and I noticed that they had older model TV's in the resort hotel rooms. The video games there are ridiculously expensive ($76 for a Nintendo Switch game), and even though they had a really nice looking video game shop in the mall, it was practically vacant.
The family reunion was nice, and it was cool meeting family I'd never met before. Apparently there was a relative from Germany who came all the way to Panama.
Overall I had a great time despite a few issues we had. It's a very beautiful country, and I'd like to visit it again and see more of it.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: Pvris - Winter

Here are some pictures from the vacation in Panama. I won't post them all because it's too many, but I'll post the best ones with brief descriptions. I'll post a text post of how my trip went following this post within a day or so. I have to make sure I can remember everything XD!
( Read more... )

Current Mood: calm

I finally got back today at around noon. Since they're time is an hour behind, and most of us didn't sleep the night before we were all super exhausted. Our plane left at 5am this morning, and we had to be at the airport at 1am. We caught a shuttle from the resort to the airport, and reminisced, about the trip a bit. It was a good experience. I wouldn't say I would go back anytime soon, but I'm glad I went. I'll post pictures probably tomorrow when I'm more rested. Until then I hope everyone is doing okay.

Current Mood: exhausted

My plane flies out tomorrow, and as of Tuesday night I will officially be in Panama. We have a hold over flight in El Salvador for about an hour, and I'm taking my Gameboy to pass the time. I'm done packing, and today I'm just going to chill, and play a few video games. I'm really excited guys! This will officially be the first time I'm leaving the US. I will definitely post lots of pics of pics on my journal when I get back. I will see you all in a week. :)

I will be updating on my twitter if anyone wants to follow me there. I have it locked so as soon as you add me I'll add you back as long as I know who you are. :)

Current Mood: excited

So my trip to Panama will be a week from now, and I'm pretty excited! I've never been outside the US before so this should be an awesome experience for me. We'll spend the first 2 days at a hotel, and from there we go to the resort. I believe this is some sort of family reunion so I'm looking forward to meeting family I've never met before. My coworker told me to watch Spanish novellas to brush up on my Spanish.

Even if I don't get a chance to watch any I'm sure I'll do fine. I remember a little bit of Spanish, and I was able to converse with my great grandmother when she came here to visit years ago despite her not speaking English. I'm looking forward to doing all the touristy stuff, and seeing as much as I can see. My parents and I are going with about 7 other family members including my sister, and a cousin I've met from Colorado who's about my age. Needless to say I plan on enjoying my vacation, and making the most of it.

In other news I watched Season 1 of the new Castlevania series on Netflix yesterday, and it's really good! I really like the animation, and the plot is really good so far. I'm also a fan of the games so this was right up my ally. Here's a trailer.

Watch on YouTube

Also I got a email yesterday about Hulu acquiring HBO which is cool. I'm considering buying the service with my Hulu account, but only after I come back from the trip. Apparently the first month is free so that's why I'm waiting until after I get back from the trip to decide if I want to do it or not.

Current Mood: tired

So my day was okay. It got off to a somewhat stressful start cause some person ran a stop sign, and ran in front of my car. Luckily "I" was paying attention because they sure as hell weren't. People here drive so horribly, I can't.

Most of the news media keeps talking about the inauguration tomorrow, and I'm pretty much just avoiding reading anything about it. I've been in good spirits lately, and I won't let anything spoil it if I can help it.

My parents, and I have been getting ready for our trip to Panama in the summer. We have to get our passports, get our money together, and some other stuff. I found out that we're actually having a family reunion there, which I wasn't aware of. Apparently we get to stay at a resort on a private island so that's pretty awesome. I'm actually really excited about going since it will be my first time out of the country.

As for gaming things I've been playing lots of Bloodborne, and Uncharted 4. Both games are really fun, but I have to say Bloodborne is super difficult. It's not one of those games where your character moves from place to place, but more like your trying to figure out how to make your way through a town full of weird looking dead people, and creepy henchmen without getting killed. It's easier said than done I've realized so far. That aside I'm progressing rather well in Uncharted so far. I was sad when his brother got killed. Also I bought a Gameboy Advance (it looks like this) cause I've always wanted a gameboy. I've also really been into retro games lately. I never got to play a lot of the older gameboy titles, and some Nintendo titles even though I had an NES as a kid. I mostly had really crappy games, and the first 3 Mario games...lol. I really want to check out Pokemon titles, Metroid, Castlevania (which it comes with), and a bunch of the more well known Nintendo titles like Mario, Kirby, and Donky Kong. I can't wait to get it.

Next Tuesday I have to go to Jury Duty, which I'm not looking forward to. I really just hate all the waiting around for several hours, because who likes doing that anyway? Either way I'll take it in stride and hope that things move along quickly, ~~and that they don't pick me.~~

Current Mood: tired
Crossposts: http://illusionismine.livejournal.com/75970.html

My friend and I initially had plans to just hang out on Monday, but I called her and she asked me If I wanted to go on a road trip to see Charika. Charika is my best friend who moved away shortly after we graduated high-school. I said sure since I hadn't seen her in a long time. So we jumped in my car and embarked on a road trip down to South Texas towards Goliad. It was a long drive. It took us about 5 hours to get there, but we had lots of fun sight seeing on the way. We ended up taking my car since it's new, and I needed to put some miles on it. If you guys have never been to Texas it is truly like another country compared other places in the United States. The part we visited was mostly full of corn fields, livestock, oil rigs, and other things people probably associate with Texas.

On the way there we saw this gigantic gas station called "Buck-ees" or something, and it was what I dubbed "The Six Flags of gas stations" I kid you not. I was much too apprehensive to actually go in there lmao. My friend told me about a few incidents her family had in that gas station while traveling. Apparently there's always a ton of people in there, and I wasn't about to trigger my social anxiety by trying to fight through a sea of people.( Read more... )

After that we went back to Charika's job to tell her goodbye, but apparently her supervisor let her leave work early so we took her home. We sat in her room, and hung out and talked for a while. Around 2pm we decided we needed to start heading back since it was going to be a long drive. I had a ton of fun with my friend on my first real road trip. We'll probably do it again in a couple of years or so to visit her. I do promise to post some pics of the trip since I took quite a few of them. My phone is being annoying right now, and doesn't want to transfer the pictures. Once I get that figured out the next post will be mostly pictures of the places we visited.

Current Mood: happy
Crossposts: http://illusionismine.livejournal.com/66793.html

Entries tagged with vacation

Panama trip summary in bullet points

Pictures from the trip to Panama

I'm back from my trip!

Finally going on vacation

Panama trip coming up soon!

First day back to work...

Road trip!

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