Days 682-688! 3 months have flown by and it’s time to say see you later to Central America! But it’s time for a very fun adventure as I flew back to the US to spend time with family. This weekend, I landed in Florida to spend a week with my sister. Which, for some strange reason, is my first time visiting her! I’m looking forward to heading back to Central America… but I’m also very excited to spend time with the people I love!

My alarm went off at 5:45am. The day had finally arrived. After a solid month and a week of volunteering and surfing in Santa Teresa, it was finally time to move on. I had a bit of final packing to do, and a light breakfast to eat, then I was saying see you later to the night guard, Junior.

My friend Andre was actually on the same shuttle as me and we met in the lobby of the hostel before walking to the street corner to wait for our shuttle. There happened to be another hostel guest on a different shuttle, pretty much at the same time as us. So we all waited together. It was a very cloudy morning but the temperature outside was perfect.

Our shuttles showed up at the exact same time and we were off! I was surprised, Andre and my shuttle showed up only 3 minutes late… usually they’re terrible with timing here! There were four other travelers in the van already, but we were the last two to be picked up. Over the first hour or so of our journey, we made our way down windy roads past jungles covering up the beach. I chatted with Andre a little bit, but mostly just read on my kindle for the entire ride.

We arrived at the Paquera Ferry at 8am, where the shuttle driver dropped off four of us to head on to San Jose. We had about an hour wait until the ferry set off, and inside the ferry terminal there was a small convenience store/soda where I got myself a overpriced, but tasty, gallon pinto with a fried egg.

We still had some time to kill, so we went to see if we could board the ferry early, and we could! The other hostel guest arrived on her shuttle around this time and we all sat and chatted, waiting for the ferry to take us on our next leg of the adventure.

While sitting and waiting for the ferry to depart, another familiar face came up the steps near where I was sitting. Flynn, one of the Lost Boyz Hideout owners was on the ferry. I hadn’t seen him in couple of weeks, so I was glad to be able to thank him for having me at the hostel. He was headed to Guatemala for a few days. Pretty random we were on the same ferry!

The ferry set off around its scheduled time and we slowly chugged along across the Gulf of Nicoya. It was a pretty ride with plenty of greenery to look at. But overall, it was a very uneventful hour long boat ride.

When we arrived in Puntarenas, we made our way off our ferry and met up with the other two guys on our shuttle. It took us a second to locate our shuttle and when we did, I was the Spanish speaking representative of the group (how the entire trip to San Jose was). It turned out I was the only one staying in San Jose, the other three were heading straight to the airport. They all happened to be on the same flight too!

The next leg of the journey took us on highway roads that rose and fell through jungles and other towns along the way. It was interesting to see the towns… some of them felt like they were built up for tourism but then left alone with very few people in them. It reminded me a lot of Danang, Vietnam. A beach town that was thriving but a lot of the development was left unfinished or abandoned.

We got to the airport just after noon and I said my see you later to Andre and the other two English travelers. Andre invited me out to London to visit at some point, I’ll have to add him to my growing list of English friends I want to visit!

The driver and I continued on through heavy traffic and a now rainy day as we made our way to San Jose. We arrived to the Stray Cat Hostel around 1pm. At Lost Boyz I had to deal with two cats who were always meowing at you for food and wanting to eat your meal… you’d think I would’ve avoided a hostel with this name, but alas, it was the best rated hostel in San Jose by far. Also the three cats ended up being very cute and not super interested in me.

I had a very nice conversation in Spanish with the hostel’s receptionist, Jennifer, and then immediately set out for lunch to a restaurant nearby the hostel that she recommended. I continued meeting nice and helpful people as I entered Soda Chovi. There were a lot of options to choose from and I didn’t know the price of anything. So, I tried asking in Spanish what the price was and what he would recommend. But my level of Spanish didn’t suffice for the man behind the counter and he quickly found a friend outside who knew English and helped me out.

The local, Michael, explained what things were and gave me his recommendation, which turned out to be delicious. I had a classic rice, beans, and salad with a bowl of chicken that had been marinating in a broth for probably a longggg time. The meat was falling off the bone. There was also a little soup that came with it too and a small fruit juice. In total, the meal was 4000 colones (around $8). Cheaper than Santa Teresa, but still more than I’d like to pay for a meal. But after eating so cheaply and cooking for myself, it was nice to have a meal out and enjoy the local atmosphere.

I went back to the hostel, which was fairly empty still, and dove back into reading more of Mistborn. I was getting very close to finishing. As the day progressed more and more people started to show up to the hostel and I’d periodically chat with them in between reading. I met Guy, from Israel, who I chatted with for a bit. But eventually I got sucked further into the book and read up until dinner time.

I had a FaceTime interview the following day, so I asked the receptionist if she had any suggestions of where I should do it (all in Spanish). She said I could use one of the private rooms, but I was skeptical of how well the WiFi would work. She also suggested a café… I later tried FaceTiming my friend Maddie and my parents, two separate FaceTimes, and it seemed the WiFi held up well enough! So fingers crossed.

I met a traveler, Simon from Germany, who was wearing a scuba diving sweatshirt. I sparked a conversation with him about diving and it turned into us grabbing dinner together. We walked to a nearby chicken shop and enjoyed a 2400 colones meal of fried chicken, plantain chips, potatoes, and a soda. Simon is actually an air traffic controller in Germany! I honestly think the first one I have ever met. So I picked his brain about the job and his life style. Turns out, in Germany, air traffic controllers can’t work past 55. So once you’re that age, the company pays you 70% of your salary until you hit your pension age. A sweet deal!

It sounded like he really enjoyed his job. But we also chatted about hobbies, traveling, scuba diving, etc. It was a nice dinner and just another one of the wonderful examples of meeting cool people on the road!

When we got back to the hostel, we joined in on a game of Shithead with a few other travelers, two from England and one from the US. Guy eventually joined us too and we switched to playing cambio. It ended up being a very pleasant night at the new hostel and I had potential plans of hanging with the two British travelers the following day.

The hostel seems to be mainly a transit hostel of people just spending the night before their flight. But there’s a couple hanging around that I should get to hang out with a bit more!

I had a terrible night sleep. Not because of the hostel… but we had a very loud snorer in our dorm room. More specifically the bottom bed of my bunk. At one point I even politely woke her up and let her know (not something I like to do but it was affecting everyone in the room), but after a 45 minute break of quiet, it was back in full force the rest of the night.

Oh well… what can you do.

It just meant I was up early on Friday, November 14th. I had the hostel’s breakfast, which was one scrambled egg and a small portion of gallo pinto. Nothing to write home about, but a nice snack to start the day. The very chipper and friendly hostel receptionist, Jennifer, and I chatted for a bit in Spanish. She convinced me that, even though I had a phone call at noon, I should go on the free walking tour and just leave it early.

The tour started at 9am and I had just wrapped up breakfast at just past 8:30am. So I quickly finished getting ready and walked to the city center to the tour’s meeting point. This was my first look of San Jose during the day. It looked like most of the cities I had seen in Central America and south east Asia, bustling with people, sectors of different types of stores (the appliance section, the toy section, etc.). The city itself had plenty of sidewalk space to walk around, even if they were falling apart a bit.

Most of the walk was pleasant and without a hitch. I did however walk by a fair amount of homeless people, which as I’ve traveled I’ve seen more and more of, especially in cities. I also got catcalled by a couple of ladyboys, which I wasn’t expecting and hasn’t happened since Thailand. But this ‘dangerous’ city was so far, not so dangerous.

I got to the park where the tour was meeting and found an older Polish couple waiting. Soon after arriving, an older American couple (from California) joined us, and then not long after that two travelers I recognized from my hostel showed up too. The guide, Jorge, was a bit later than all of us, but we kicked off the tour and we were on our way meandering around the city.

The tour itself was nice, it wasn’t the most amazing walking tour I’ve been on. But I did really appreciate the new knowledge I learned about San Jose and Costa Rica as a whole.

Early in the tour we learned that Costa Rica abolished their military. Even their police have no military training. Later we learned this happened around the same time as the worker’s rights movement (1920s-1940s). The communist party and the worker’s unions banded together to protest against Chiquita banana and their plantations. Rafael Calderon became president around this time promising to regulate the working industry and promoted social justice. He apparently held up his end of the bargain setting a minimum wage, establishing cheap/free education, and universal healthcare (10.5% of a workers salary), among other things.

Jorge joked that it was the only time the communist party, the Catholic Church, and the Costa Rican government ever worked together.

Costa Rica had a civil war in 1948 fueled by a presidential election where the building where the votes were being counted burned down. Calderon, who was looking to win the election again, was made to look weak by Don Pepe, a democratic socialist, thus leading to civil unrest and a 44 day civil war. The end result being Don Pepe becoming the next president of Costa Rica. Funnily enough, Don Pepe disbanded the military that he just used to essentially take over the government.

Some other interesting tidbits, the political parties that want to make a bid for the presidency need to have at least 50% women in their party. The government changes every 5 years causing constant changes to infrastructure laws in the city. Historical buildings are left to rot since the owners can’t afford to redo them and lots of office buildings are left empty after the corporations found cheaper areas to work that weren’t in the city.

The biggest bombshell was that the Costa Rican phrase “Pura Vida” meaning pure life, isn’t from Costa Rica at all! It’s actually from Mexico and was adopted by the Costa Rican hippy movement in the 60s/70s. This phrase is used by pretty much everyone. It’s a hello, a goodbye, and even a “how’s it going?”

As we neared the time for me to split from the tour and run back to the hostel for my phone interview, we started hearing a loud crowd. It turns out, Costa Rica’s current president is very similar to the current president in the US… he was being called into a meeting with the Costa Rican congress and encouraged his supporters to come to a political rally outside of the building to, in Jorge’s words, “praise him.”

We didn’t get any closer than the pictures, but there was a lot of patriotism and commotion surrounding the streets. There was also loud chanting and cheers as the president spoke to his supporters. I had no clue what was going on but it was pretty interesting to be randomly so close to it and be so close to the country’s president.

I couldn’t hang around to investigate further as I split off from the group and sped walked back to the hostel.

Turns out I didn’t need to, because when I got back to the hostel and had internet, I had an email that said the owner of the surf school needed to reschedule to the following week. This worked out well for me though, as I was very hungry and my new friend Guy was wanting to grab lunch as well. We immediately set out into the city and headed towards the direction I had just come from.

We arrived at the central market and walked through the labyrinth of the hectic market. We had heard there was cheap food here and were determined to find the cheapest traditional Costa Rican meal we could. After checking menu after menu, we found a meal for 2000 colones! We were the only non-Costa Rican’s at the little restaurant so we knew we hit the right spot.

We continued walking around the market and the surrounding streets after lunch. The central part of town was a buzz with locals and tourists, shopping, eating, and enjoying the beautiful sunny day. I was on the hunt for something sweet, and after looking into multiple bakeries and stores, I found a fairly cheap and delicious pastry filled with dulce de leche. I didn’t think too much of this at the time, but I used, pretty much, the last of my colones purchasing this (remember that for later).

I was pretty tired from the heat and the walking. So we made our way back to the hostel where I read, napped, and then read some more. I chatted with Guy and an American traveler, Megan, pretty much all the way till dinner. We all went out together to a nearby Nicaraguan restaurant that Guy had been to the day before.

The food definitely rivaled the pollo asado I got from El Ancla in El Tránsito (but more expensive as it was 4000 colones/$8 not the $5 from El Ancla). The owner of the restaurant was an energetic and loud Nicaraguan, named Patricia. She was very happy to see Guy again and was happy that he brought his friends. So much so, she recorded a tiktok of us saying how much we enjoyed the food. It was very funny and very cute. It definitely reminded me of my time in Nicaragua and had me excited that I’d be heading back there after the few weeks in the US.

As the sun went down, the rain came, and on our rainy walk back we stopped at a convenience store for a couple beers. We spent the rest of the evening chatting with other hostel goers. Megan and I were actually heading to the airport around the same time the following day. So we made plans to head to the bus station together.

I had a much quieter nights sleep, as the snorer had checked out. But my body woke me up around 6am… I think I wanted to go for a surf. Unfortunately there was no surf to be had today and I just got ready for my travel day early. I had breakfast, finished packing, and sat reading in the lobby as I waited for Megan.

I told her I’d need to stop at the ATM on the way, since I was out of colones and didn’t have the 800 ($1.60) for the bus. But she immediately offered to pay it for me so I wouldn’t need to pull so little out of the ATM. Very nice of her!

We set out around 9am and made our way through the city to the bus terminal that would take us to the airport. The whole process was super easy, a lot easier and smoother than I was expecting. We found the bus station with ease and then immediately got on a bus which left a few minutes after that. Megan and I sat chatting as the bus made its way towards the airport. It only stopped 2 or 3 times on the way and within 40 minutes we had arrived at the airport.

I thanked Megan again for paying for my bus fare and headed to check in. There was no line to drop off my checked bag and I quickly continued on to the security line, which also was super quick. I was at my gate with plenty of time. I’d much rather that than miss my flight, but I was still impressed with how quickly the whole process went.

I sat at my gate working on my blog a bit and reading as I waited for my flight to Orlando, Florida!

I finally started boarding just around noon. I had a window seat and was sitting next to a very friendly woman from Cuba who lived in Orlando. We had a really nice chat in Spanish as we waited for the flight to take off. We talked about our time in Costa Rica, her kids, traveling, etc.

The flight itself had some incredible views of Costa Rica, the surrounding countries, and the islands in between the US and Central America.

I spent the first two thirds of the flight reading. I just started the second book of the skyward series by Brandon Sanderson, Starsight. I would’ve read the entire time, but exhaustion overtook me and I took a nap for the rest of the flight. Thankfully, since the flight was completely full we had the middle seat open and I was able to stretch out a bit. Since I was flying Spirit, the seats weren’t as comfortable, there wasn’t a lot of leg room, and there were no free snacks.

I was pretty hungry when I finally landed in Orlando! I went through a very quick customs, which didn’t even require me to take out my passport. They only needed my face… which is pretty crazy! I got my checked bag and then made my way from the terminal I was at to the main terminal to wait for my sister and her partner to come pick me up.

After being picked up, we headed to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. There was a beautiful sunset on our drive, welcoming me to the city.

I was very happy to be with both of them! I’ve been itching for some family time and these next couple of weeks are going to be chock full of it!

We caught up over dinner and chatted about more topics than I could write about in the blog. We made our way to their house after dinner and Sophie and I FaceTimed our grandparents. It was nice being able to chat with them both while we were in the same location! I’ll get to see them for Thanksgiving which I’m very excited and happy about. We spent the rest of the evening chatting, playing MarioKart, and eventually passing out since we had an earlier morning ahead of us!

Let the Orlando, Florida adventures begin!

Sunday, November 16th was a special day. Not only was I beginning my week with my sister, but I was heading to Universal Studios! Sophie, Paige, and I got up early and after breakfast, headed out to the theme park.

I let Sophie and Paige do the planning of the day, I was along for the ride (pun intended). Universal Studios is huge and there’s tons of rides and attractions. It had been years since I had been here last and last time was with my sister as well. Probably around 10 years ago, so lots had changed… but also lots was still the same!

We arrived at the park not long after the park had opened. It was a beautiful crisp morning, with the sun shining. We made our way to our first ride, The Mummy.

This is one of the classic Universal Studio rides. The combination of rollercoaster and immersive simulator, is a staple of the theme parks rides and the more and more we road, the better and more high tech they got. Since it was so early in the morning, we were on and off the ride in no time and on to the next!

Our next stop was the wizarding world of Harry Potter! Universal has some incredible areas at the theme park, but one of my favorites is the Harry Potter world. The level of detail in the buildings and rides is so cool. The Diagon Alley portion contains the Escape from Gringots ride, which is what we rode next!

Still, so far, we really hadn’t had much of a wait. It was shaping up to be a fantastic day.

We made our way through Universal Studios riding the Men In Black ride, followed by the Simpsons simulator ride. After both of these, we went to our first show of the day, the horror makeup show. This show was hosted by two actors posing as Hollywood makeup artists, one of which my sister actually knew and had worked with on another project. The show was all about the history of Hollywood makeup from different horror movies, how it was made, and some of the secrets to the trade. It was an interesting and cute show!

Our next ride was one of nostalgia, the ET ride. I’ve been to Universal a couple times before this trip, but when I was a lot younger. I have a vivid memory of this ride and it was a trip down memory lane while riding it again. I also just have a very specific memory of my mother losing her sunglasses on this ride… not sure why I remember that!

There’s a kids section for a lot of the Dreamworks animations, that we hit up next. We got our picture with the trolls from The Trolls movie (a pretty great picture if you ask me), saw Shrek and Donkey chatting with some kids, and checked out Po’s training dojo (from Kung Fu Panda).

We had a bit of time to kill before the next show we wanted to see. So we went on the Transformers ride, where just before getting on I caught a glimpse of Megatron. He’s the evil villain from the transformers movie and has some hilarious moments captured on TikTok’s. When we got out of the ride, Bumble Bee and Optimus Prime were coming out to talk to people, but we didn’t stop to say hello.

Instead we went on another “ride” Villain Con Minion Blast. Which… was probably my least favorite of the entire day. It was one of the “shooter” style rides where you stand on a moving platform as it takes you through a number of different rooms of giant TV screens. I honestly had no clue what was going on or the objective and it was a stimulation overload. We all agreed, it wasn’t worth the time.

But it gave us something to do as 1pm rolled around and it was time for the next show, Bourne Stuntacular. This was a pretty cool show based on the Bourne movies. We watched stunt performers simulate the spy Bourne being spotted and hunted down by the CIA. The show made use of a giant screen as a background, which made the characters appear to be in a movie while moving around on stage. There were car chases, people dangling from helicopters, and even some minor explosions. It was a cool experience!

After the show, there was a Wicked experience set up where you could see the costumes from the new movies. Unfortunately, they were all just replicas. But, it was still cool to see up close.

We had finished up all that we wanted to do at Universal Studios and we were starting to get hungry. It was now time for us to venture back into Harry Potter land. We headed to platform 9 3/4 and waited in line to hop on the Hogwarts Express which would take us to Adventure Island.

I remembered this attraction from the last time I was in Orlando. It’s a nice little ride simulating heading to Hogwarts. The windows are all screens and the ride immerses you into the world of Harry Potter, it’s very neat!

We arrived at Hogsmeade and meandered through the town. Unfortunately the ride inside Hogwarts was closed, but we were on the hunt for food anyways. We went into Jurassic Park and found a restaurant for lunch.

When I think of amusement park food, I don’t think very highly of the quality. But this was actually a really tasty meal. We feasted on pterodactyl… just kidding… we ate some high quality chicken, I had some delicious barbecue chicken wings with rice and beans (can’t get away from them), while we watched the ginormous splashes of Jurassic Park River Adventure.

Which happened to be our next ride.

Now… there’s a bit of a backstory with me and this ride. A long time ago, back to the first time I came to Universal Studios, I was with my family and we were passing this ride. My mother asked me if I wanted to ride, but I was too scared, so we started walking past it… but just before we were too far away I was like, ‘wait, I want to ride it’ but my mother said ‘nope it’s too late.’ And then I probably threw a tantrum of some sort like all the kids you see at amusement parks who don’t understand how expensive the trip really is.

I’ll reemphasize, this is my memory of how this played out. I’m sure my mother has a different memory of it.

This time though… I wasn’t backing out. I wasn’t a scared little child anymore. HECK! I motorbiked across two countries. I’ve jumped out of airplanes, dove 40m below the ocean, and surfed waves bigger than I ever thought I could ride. It was time to finally ride Jurassic Park River Adventure and satisfy this (probably) 20 year memory!

We wound through the animatronic dinosaurs, flowing down the river and then we took the “wrong turn” taking us into the velociraptors exhibit… and then we made the plunge into darkness, as the T-Rex almost got us. Then, WOOSH! We had created a huge splash in the river but just narrowly escaped. I didn’t actually get very wet. Unfortunately for the guy in the back left of our cart… he was soaked. Sophie got a bit soaked on her arm, but for the most part, we came out alright.

I was very happy to have finally checked that ride off of my amusement park bucket list.

Next up on our adventure was the ride Paige was looking forward to the most, Jurassic Park’s Velocicoaster. This ride was by far the most exhilarating rollercoaster of the park. It had multiple loops, a lot of airtime out of your seat, and even a few moments where you were suspended upside down. All while going incredibly fast!

We were near the front of the carts during the ride and it was a really fun experience. The ride pulls around 5 Gs too, crazy!

Just around the corner from this ride was another simulation coaster, King Kong’s Skull Island. This ride had an impressive King Kong animatronic, definitely the highlight of the ride. Afterwards we made our way through the cartoon town and through the marvel section to ride Spider-Man and the Hulk.

Spider-Man was very similar to the Transformers ride, but definitely a better version. It even included a couple appearances from Stan Lee! I used to love spotting his cameos in marvel movies before he passed away. The Hulk was another rollercoaster… and for some reason made me start to “gray out” at the beginning of the ride. Something with the speed and the turns made both Paige and I have a similar experience that even Velocicoaster didn’t do. Outside of that, we had a beautiful sunset and another thrilling rollercoaster checked off the list.

We had a nice chill couple of rides after that brain scrambling Hulk ride as we made our way to Dr. Seuss land. This is a very cute part of the park full of Dr. Seuss books brought to life. We rode the Cat in the Hat ride, a very trippy rendition of the story. Honestly, it could easily be turned into a horror ride. We also rode the “High in the Sky Seuss Trolly Train Ride!” which gave us a nice view of the park and took us through all of Seuss land.

The fun was coming close to an end, but not quite yet! We had a bit more time before the park closed. We decided to hop into the single rider line at Velocicoaster, to make it through a quicker line, and rode it one more time. Sophie was back near the front of the coaster and funnily even though we were in the single rider line, Paige and I were sitting next to each other, almost in the back, of the same ride as Sophie.

The second time around was even better! Being in the back of the coaster usually means faster drops since the cart has more time to build up speed by the time you go down it. We all agreed it was one of our favorites of the day. But the ride to contest it as our favorite was up next.

For our last ride of the day, we decided to wait in line for Hagrid’s Magical Creature Motorbike Adventure. We’d been keeping an eye on the wait time all day, but decided to save it for the end since we could stay in the park post closing time if we were already in the queue. When we arrived the estimated wait time was 105 minutes… just over triple our longest wait time of the day. We wound our way past Hagrid’s house, through the forbidden forest and its ruins, and deep into tunnels below the forest floor.

And after a very accurately estimated queue time, we finally arrived at the rollercoaster after the hour and forty five minutes of waiting. The ride had a motorcycle and a sidecar as the seats. Sophie and Paige rode together in the front and then I was riding the motorcycle with a random from another odd numbered group in the sidecar.

Was the ride worth the wait? I’m not sure any ride is really worth an almost multi-hour wait. But it was really cool and very fun. It included riding backwards, high speeds, slow downs to see the cool beasts, and even a drop through the floor that came out of nowhere!

We were all happy we waited but while walking back to the park entrance, we all had sore legs and were ready for dinner.

Sophie and Paige frequent the restaurants near the parks entrance and had found a pizza place they really enjoyed! So for dinner we went there. After eating, we trudged back to the parking lot and made our way home for some much needed sleep!

I had an amazing time at Universal, it was such a fun way to spend a day with Sophie and Paige. We did find a funny “trope” of Universal though. Something I didn’t bring up about the day was just about every ride liked to sprits you with water… I’m not sure which designer thought it would add to the immersion, but literally, just about every ride we rode today had some effect that made the ride through water at you… EVEN the Bourne show. Kind of silly, but it was a beautiful day out and we’d usually dry off quickly.

When I woke up on Monday November 17th, Sophie was already off to work and Paige was just heading out. So it was just me and their cat Gizmo hanging out for the day! Well… Gizmo hanging out elsewhere in the house, not with me. He hasn’t warmed up to me yet.

I made myself breakfast and then immediately dove into my to do list for the day. The first thing was applying for a new job. Sophie sent me an audition for Crush the sea turtle in one of Disney’s attractions. So I thought, I know surfer talk pretty well, why not throw my hat into the ring for the role. I put on my best surfer turtle voice, took a video of me reading the script provided, and sent it in. We’ll see if anything comes from it! Even if not, it was fun to practice the voice and film the video.

I then started looking into health insurance and some other “mundane” todos. I had a later lunch and then it was time for a job interview! I applied to a position with a YMCA camp in San Diego for the spring and summer. I was chatting with the camps director today and ended up having a really great interview. So good, that they offered me a position! I didn’t have to respond on the spot since I have other interviews coming up, but I was stoked to have an offer already. Especially one that I think I’d really enjoy.

If I took the position, I’d be an outdoor program instructor. This would include everything from teaching kids about the ocean to helping with the rock climbing wall, to teaching kids how to surf! It’d also include housing, food, and be paid. It sounds like a great gig. But, I’ll think on it and see how the other job applications and interviews go! It sounds like I’ll be going to San Diego though!!

I spent the rest of the afternoon working on my blog post and reading as I waited for Paige and Sophie to head home from work.

Not long after they got back home, we decided to head to EPCOT, one of Disney World’s theme parks. There’s a Guardian of the Galaxy ride, Cosmic Rewind, that Sophie and Paige said was awesome, so we went straight to it when we got there. There’s line time was 85 minutes, so we decided to go to the Spaceship Earth ride first, which is inside of the geodesic sphere of EPCOT. It’s a nice, slow ride going through earths technological progression.

We ate dinner at one of the many food courts in EPCOT, waiting for the queue timer to go down. But it still wasn’t, so we checked out the ride Soarin’ Around the World. This was another cool ride that was more of a simulator based ride showing off spectacular panoramic videos of the world. It made you feel like you were flying over the beautiful sites.

The park was very close to closing after this ride. We did the same strategy as at universal of getting into the longest ride queue right before close. Because the fast passes would be done by around the close time, the line would move a lot faster than the estimated time. It only took around an hour to make it through the queue and get to the ride itself. But the details to make you feel like you were immersed in the Guardians of the Galaxy world were unreal!

Paige said we had to experience the ride in row 9, so we waited a few minutes longer to get on the ride because of this request… but she wasn’t lying. I don’t want to spoil the ride for anyone, but it’s worth it, trust me!

The ride was insanely fun and I would love to ride it again at some point! Maybe I’ll get the chance to later this week.

When we got back home, I gave a treat to their cat Gizmo and he finally let me pet him! Even a bit afterwards he was coming over to me to let me pet him… he even wanted to play for a little bit. But then the love wore off not long after. We’re making strides though!

The week is flying by and it’s already Tuesday, November 18th. Soon enough it’ll be December… crazy! I woke up, had breakfast, and then plopped down on the couch to finish up the book I’ve been reading. After a day and a half of romping around theme parks, today was going to be a chill day.

I’ve been chugging along through Starsight by Brandon Sanders (the second book of his Skyward series). I spent the entire morning finishing the last part of the book. I really enjoyed it! The first book was definitely better, but if you like sci-fi and a combination of Enders Game, Top Gun, and Star Wars, you’d definitely like this series.

After lunch I worked on a minor to do of updating my LinkedIn profile. I then worked on a more major to do of figuring out healthcare for 2026. It was a bit of a headache to figure out the right websites and how to apply for what I needed… but I believe I got it all figured out in the end.

Sophie and Paige got home around the same time. We spent the initial bit after they got home sitting on the couch chatting about each other’s day. And then while eating leftover pizza, we watched the Boy and the Heron. This is the newest, and potentially last, movie by Studio Ghibli. It’s been on my watch list for a while now, so I was excited to finally watch it.

It was a beautiful film, but I was definitely confused for the majority of it. It was a very artsy film which sparked some nice discussion afterwards about what we thought it was about.

Then it was time for bed! As I said, a very chilled out day.

It was another lazy day on Wednesday, November 19th. To wrap up the week, I spent the day diving head first into a new book! I started reading Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins. It’s the newest Hunger Games book and I’ve been trying to get my hands on it for quite some time now. Thanks to Libby, I finally have the chance to read it.

I ended up devouring 50% of the book today… which pretty much was my whole day. I might’ve gotten close to finishing the book, but my sister and I had plans for the evening.

My sister works as a creative writer and her company was putting on a bowling networking event. There was a big convention in town for themed entertainment, so the event was filled with members of her company and others from all over the US.

I obviously am not in this industry, but as Sophie’s plus one, I got the in to the night of bowling, food, and drinks. I did my fair share of shmoozing and meeting new people (mainly her coworkers and friends). And, as most of you know, I love meeting new people and have been doing it fairly constantly for the past two years! So this was a plus for me.

I had some very pleasant conversations with people about everything from themed entertainment to my travels. We also played a fair amount of bowling too. I also enjoy chatting to people about what they’re passionate about and I was in a room full of people passionate about the entertainment industry (in various capacities). My sister is one of those people! Overall, it was a very nice way to spend the evening.

When we got home, Paige was wrapping up a Wicked part one watch party with some of her friends, so we watched the rest with them. We’re seeing the second part this weekend, and we are all very excited for it! After the movie ended, we called it a night.

It’s pretty crazy how fast the weeks fly by. Literally just a handful of days ago I was in Central America surfing waves… and now I’m in Florida hanging out with Sophie and Paige and going to theme parks. Which is fitting, because my life is a rollercoaster. Next week’s post will wrap up my time here in Florida and continue on until the beginning of the Thanksgiving festivities! Lots to look forward to in the coming weeks!!

But you’ll find out what goes on pretty much when I do!

See you then!

– Elie