Hometown Trip

I visited my home town about a month ago, and I figured I should document my visit with a little write-up before too much more time passes. I apologize if any of this is boring. I'm trying not to leave out anything that's important to me, so I can read back on this in the future and remember things I may possibly forget.

It had been a few years since I had spent any significant time in my home town, and I was very much due for a trip. I scheduled visits with several of my best friends from home, and I had a week full of fun and nostalgia with them.

Note: The timestamps on all of the photos are wrong. Just clearing that up now!

The one that I stayed with has been one of my best friends since I was in high school. It was really nice to spend some quality time with him again after not having much contact for the last few years. One of the first things he had me do when I arrived was sit down and play through the entirety of Octodad. At 2 in the morning. What a game...

Anyway, I also enjoyed hanging out with his girlfriend, who I've known for a few years and have gone to Disney with several times. I'm typically such a geeky tomboy, and I'm really not used to spending "girl time" doing girly stuff such as clothing shopping and dying hair, but it was fun for a change of pace. Here's a photo of us:

You may recognize her, she's been in a few of my Disney videos.

Those two and I ended up visiting a place that was very dear to me in my childhood. It's called Sugar Sand Park, and my mom brought me there many times as a kid. It's a park with a rather large wooden playground, which includes a fun water area and many scientific contraptions set up for children to play with while being educated! So of course, us three full-grown adults decided to run around amongst the children on this playground. That's just how we roll. I was very happy to go down the large slide that I used to be obsessed with as a kid. Here's a photo of one of the more memorable landmarks of this park:

Hello again, old friend.

And now for something completely different... I got drunk for the first time. Yep, I'm finally a teenager at age 23! One day, they invited a couple of our good friends over and we had a little party. Now, I hate the taste of alcohol and am not much of a drinker at all. I've only been tipsy a couple times. However, I figured I would try it just once, since I really trust these friends and I knew they would take care of me if anything went wrong. Sure enough, they took good care of me, because I ended up doing a poor job of pacing myself. I dozed off and ended up throwing up all over myself. I barely remember anything since I was so out of it, but my friends helped me into the bathroom and they washed my clothes for me. Although the experience wasn't super unpleasant or anything, I feel like I've had my fill of drinking, and I don't really care to do it ever again (mainly because of the flavor, YUUUCK).

I also went to the Boca Raton Museum of Art with them, which was really cool to me since I'm an artfag. They had some very awesome exhibits.

The last cool place I visited with them was the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens. I've been there several times throughout my life, but it had been a long time since I last went, so I was very happy to go there again. We had a delicious lunch at the restaurant, and then we took a nice stroll around the gardens. We spotted some very cool things, such as this cute little baby boa in the water:

We also spotted a huge iguana swimming in the Koi pond, which was awesome. South Florida is overrun with iguanas, but Orlando doesn't have them, so I miss seeing them all over the place. One hilarious thing that we saw was an egret following two old ladies around! He looked like a little dog. Even when he would get scared off by other people getting close, he would end up finding his old ladies again and resume following them. Cutest thing ever.

Here's my friend and I at the Morikami:

He likes to call me his second girlfriend.

I drove by my childhood home to see how it looks now. My family hasn't owned it since I graduated from high school, and yet it still looks exactly the same. Oh how I miss it.

I saw a few of my other dear friends, and I had lovely visits with all of them. It was wonderful to catch up and spend quality time with them. I regret allowing so much time pass between visits. This trip was just what I needed, and I plan to visit my friends more often from now on.