August 21-26, 2019. My parents wanted to send me off for my grad studies and joined the trip to Paris. Only that they also took that as an opportunity, more like a nice excuse, to fly through the U.S. and spend time together us three, and to also see some relatives and some of their friends. People of their generation really have an amazing penchant for America that a trip to Europe could become an excuse to have a side trip over there, even if it meant passing by the other way around the world. Of course, I did not mind. I would be gone for a year and I loved to have spent time with them before saying goodbye.
We landed at the Los Angeles airport on Wednesday (August 21) after a long-haul flight from Manila (with a layover at the Taipei airport in Taiwan). We were picked up by Tita Gigi from the airport in L.A. and we drove straight off to St. George, Utah where we spent the night before making a day trip the next day (August 22) to Lower Antelope Canyon in Arizona.
My parents are not big fans of walking and the heat of the desert but they enjoyed the amazing views below the ‘canyon’ with amazing ‘out-of-this-world’ red rock formations. It was desktop-screensaver beautiful! We made a brief stop-over at the Glen Canyon dam traversing the Colorado River.
We drove that same afternoon all the way back to Las Vegas, passing through Zion National Park, taking a few photo stops along the way. In Las Vegas, we stayed with the family of one of my mom’s hometown childhood friends who have since immigrated and settled in Nevada.
The next day (August 23), my parents wanted to stop by outlet stores, so we spent almost half a day in one of these gigantic American outlets in the middle of the desert before continuing our drive back to Los Angeles area. We stayed the night at Tita Gigi’s place in Anaheim.
The day after (August 24), after spending the morning with my folks, I was picked up by one of my fraternity brods who lived in the area, and we drove off to meet the rest of my brods who live in Southern California. I hadn’t planned to be in America and didn’t really expect it, but incidentally that day they were having a get-together at another brod’s home in Chatsworth with most of everyone’s families. It was a great way to spend the rest of the day with the familiarity of fraternal fellowship. It’s amazing how eager they are welcoming brods who are visiting from the Philippines. After the party, my brod and I drove that night to see some sights along Rodeo Drive on the way back to Anaheim.
The penultimate day of our side trip to the U.S. was spent as most Pinoys would–shopping for pasalubong and things “State-side” that my parents wanted to ship back to the Philippines (of course, they didn’t want to carry everything to Paris before it ends up in Manila).
The next day, we took our flight to Paris, which passed by for a lay-over in Calgary, Canada. So, yes, you could say I went halfway around the other side of the planet to get to France, packing up a few extra kilos in baggage and body weight along the way thanks to America.
