America: Land of the
free. Home of crazy Republicans.
I had not been to the USA in 3.5 years so I was a bit
overdue for a visit. There really isn’t
all too much to report as my main activities were visiting friends and family
and eating more food than you can possibly imagine. There are no major highlights, but here’s a
quick rundown of my time in the USA, just so you all don’t think that I just
skipped a month of the blog.
Florida:
Coral Springs, Florida – in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale metropolitan
area – is my hometown and there is absolutely nothing to do there. It’s a big, boring suburb. I have two friends from high school who remained
in the area and I caught up with them.
Aside from that, I did a bit of shopping, saw my mother, sister, and a
few other family members, and spent an inordinate amount of time cleaning up my
old room. There was so much shit in
there. I saw a few friends’ mums and
went to my favourite pizza place and my favourite ice cream place from when I
was a kid (and the owners of Larry’s Ice Cream still remember me!) The only new thing I did was pay a visit to
the Green Cay Nature Center & Wetlands – a bit north of my hometown – with
some family that wanted to go. I saw a
crocodile and some swamp birds. Typical
Florida.
Austin:
I flew to Austin, Texas from Florida to visit a good mate of
mine who moved there from Australia. We
did a few nice walks through some parks but most of the activities revolved
around food, like going to Chuy’s – my favourite Tex-Mex restaurant. There were also tacos for breakfast and
burgers on doughnut buns. Because
America. And Texas.
Houston:
From Austin, we drove to Houston to visit my old university
stomping grounds. There was BBQ. There was my favourite brunch spot. And there were lots of visits with friends
from my university who still live there.
Fort Worth:
From Houston, I travelled north to Fort Worth, Texas. As flights were prohibitively expensive for
no apparent reason, I had another first experience on my gap year: a Greyhound
bus. The bus ride itself wasn’t too
terrible, but the Greyhound station in Houston was terrifying. It was way dodgier than any of the bus
stations I went to in Laos or Vietnam. I
got approached by a homeless man asking for money to help get him back to
Louisiana. I was eating breakfast at the
time. It made my yoghurt taste bad. Our bus stopped halfway at a gas
station/Dairy Queen combo in some quintessentially redneck town. There were Christians with bibles awaiting
our arrival in the gas station parking lot.
Oh, and I also got yelled at by the bitchy driver on my second Greyhound
bus for boarding before she told me to board – though mostly everyone else had
already boarded. I guess I’d be a
complete bitch too if I was a Greyhound driver.
And yes, I had to change buses in Dallas, like on an airplane. Except it would have been the world’s
shittiest airplane. Like a box with
wings.
In Fort Worth, I ate more Mexican food and more BBQ with my
grandmother and a bunch of other family members. I was also reminded of why
America can be so terrible at times:
Republicans. It was local
election season and there were signs everywhere and flyers touting politicians’
accomplishments on anti-gay measures, anti-abortion measures, and pro-gun
measures. These “courageous
conservatives” were a solid reminder of why I moved to Australia.
I had had enough of the USA for a while and I was itching to
get back on the road and scope out thirteen Latin American countries before
returning to visit a few other parts of the US in July. But first, let me take a selfie.
Me with Bobby and Cade at Hermann Park in Houston.
No comments:
Post a Comment