Sunday, June 14, 2009

The Less Exciting Part of Traveling

Traveling is not all fun and games.

Although every post I have written is about the joyful experience that is traveling, this one is meant to show the other side to keep in line with one of my values: honesty. (One of my goals in life is to not be the type of person who is always “great” when you ask her how she is doing. Although sometimes I take the honesty thing too far and am just blunt.)

The less exciting part of traveling, reason one: Weather
It is extremely hot here with intense humidity. It is consistently in the eighties. I often ponder the purpose of taking a shower because two minutes later one feels as if they have not showered in days. It is nothing compared to the Tandoori oven of a house in rural Nepal where Matt and I lived with a family for a week. Still, fans have become my new favorite invention.

There are only two times I have felt refreshed this entire trip: 1) On a field trip with our school, we went swimming in Laguna de Apoyo, which is a body of water in an old volcano crater. The water was the perfect temperature of refreshingly cool, but not cold enough to turn my lips purple. 2) When we got a hotel in Leon with air conditioning and a warm water shower. A warm shower and then an air conditioned room? Yes, please.

Our shower here only has cold water, which is brilliant because it is never cold enough outside to even think about the possibility of wanting a warm water shower, which for me to say is quite astonishing.

Our field trip to Laguna de Apoyo:


The less exciting part of traveling, reason two: Theft

Matt got pick-pocketed our second day here. His whole wallet, including credit card, debit card, and driver’s license is gone. At first, we thought we were screwed and that we would have no way to get money, because we share all of our bank accounts. Luckily, my debit card is a different number than Matt’s though, so we still have one, and after two phone calls to the bank, it is functioning. And our bank will overturn the random gas station charges that were placed on our credit card. A crisis averted?

The less exciting part of traveling, reason three: Lagers
Latin American countries only have weak, non-flavorful beer. Enough said.

The less exciting part of traveling, reason four: Unemployment
Because I don’t have a job and I am a student until the end of August, I have had to apply for jobs while I am here and do a little schoolwork. On Monday, I spent a good four hours on the computer looking for and filling out job applications. Applying for jobs when you are anywhere sucks, but it especially sucks if you are kind of on vacation.

The end. The rest of traveling is pretty exciting.

Our other field trip to Las Isletas:



3 comments:

  1. traveling does have it's challenges. sad about your wallet. happy you are still able to get cash. you are loved and prayed for. hugs,

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