And Miami it was!

Day 11

On a fairly uneventful day, sometimes is hard to think of a topic to write about I did get a couple of suggestions, but just like yesterday I will continue with the hobbies.

One big passion of mine nowadays is travel and that was particularly triggered by a job I had but I'll leave that story for another day.  Today I want to focus on my first memories of travelling abroad and thankfully I am able to remember most of it since the opportunities were few and far between.

My first travel outside the Dominican Republic was to Miami, FL in 1993.  I was 8 years old, and I bet my ass that the ones pushing for the trip were mostly two of my older brothers, I never complain and won't complain now because well, I got to go to Disney World then.

In Miami I do have an aunt and her family, and we stayed with them, but please start the count: My aunt, her then husband and 4 cousins, my mom, my 3 brothers, 2 other cousins (were all traveling together) and me.  We were at 13 people in a 3-bedroom house, can't recall for how long we stayed but I bet that my aunt was relieved when we all left.

The trip itself was nice, we got to go to Orlando and visiting Magic Kingdom and MGM Studios (now Disney's Hollywood Studio) was an experience like no other.  I remember vividly watching the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular! and how, well, spectacular it was, how many tears I cried when I didn't want to get into Space Mountain, was forced to, and didn't open my eyes during the whole ride.

Other memories are Splash Mountain (still have nightmares about the spikes at the bottom of the fall) and how my little brother was so stubborn that they didn't let him on, you see, you have to be of certain height to get in, and even though he was tall enough, he would stand correctly at the measurement bar, I still remember all of us yelling at him to stand straight but he just wouldn't.  The Haunted Mansion was a very cool experience too and you can already imagine how scared I was.  

My older brothers and cousins had a better time than me for sure, not that I had a bad experience, just that I wasn't enjoying them as much as I should have.  You see, growing up then I was a "pendejito", everything scared me, nothing made me feel safe and so on.  I also couldn't understand then why my dad didn't join on the trip since he was the one paying for everything, you see dad is a workaholic and he was always worried about his patients (he is a doctor) and he would rarely (even until this day) take any vacations.

Is a thing that still pisses me off to be honest, and in retrospect, the fact that he didn't travel with us then (or after) did have something to do with me not studying medicine and I could spend hours typing about that.

Random facts I remember:

- Miami International Airport is the first place I recall of using the public restroom to take a dump.  Plane landed - mom I need to use the restroom - and did it.  After that, I rarely if ever used a public restroom for #2.  I actually started doing it "as usual" after I moved to Miami (weird shit if you ask me).

- Dinner and breakfast: honey nut cheerios for the few days we were in Orlando

- My little brother, as usual, mom's favorite, got his Mickey ears and his Mickey Ice Cream (and there are pictures to prove it). 

- The tour guide doing really bad jokes about Juan Luis Guerra (the most awarded Dominican artist ever).  I even remember the joke: "Why Juan Luis Guerra named his band 440? - because he only wrote 4 songs and played them 40 times" (yes, that lame, but I'm worse that almost 30 years later still remember it).

- Pick up/drop off from tour bus being the Marriot Hotel by Miami International Airport.  Hotel still there, and every time I pass by, I remember it.

- Did fight my older brother to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time on my cousin's SNES.

- Got to speak English for the first time by myself, to buy a Snicker bar.  Once a fatty, always a fatty.

- Me and my brothers discovered the Eggos, and it was all we wanted to eat.

- We went to the beach once (that I remember) - My aunt had a van but not enough seats for all of us, guess were all the kids fit.

But the one thing, that still gives me nightmares until this day, that 30 years later I haven't been able to get out of my head has to be the "It's a small world" attraction in Magic Kingdom, and all comes down to the song.  I joke that it gives me nightmares, but is a love hate relationship with the song itself, because the song is a BIG earworm, you hear it once, especially in the attraction and you won't ever forget it for good or bad.  My love of the song is that I get nostalgic because of this particular trip.

There are many other anecdotes from this trip, but I'll leave it here for now.

After Miami, the next few trips were Puerto Rico in 1994 and then NYC in 2001, but those are stories for another day.

In the picture: Mom, Tio Rafelito, my brothers Armando and Cristian, my cousins Haronid and Karina and myself.  Missing in the picture, my brother Gabriel.  I guess he took the picture.



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