Asian backpacker

After traveling around for 2 months in unknown territory in South America. It was time to go back to a more familiar place, US of A. My stay in the States is a short one. I’m just staying a bit more than 2 weeks total, visiting friends mainly. So I haven’t even bought a book or done any research. There were only a couple of things I wanted to do during my stay: watch an NBA game and meet up with some long time friends. And that’s exactly what I did.

Colorado springs

Not really a big touristic spot to go to during this time of year. It was cold and windy and most of the touristic hotspots are outside. Only thing I know that was worth seeing were the orange colored rocks and rock formations. To this day, I still don’t know if that’s what the rocky mountains are…. so I’m just going to post some of the pictures :p

We also went to some of the nearby towns and they took me to a small town with an arcade filled with old arcade games. Not Asian games, but good old American games. A whole bunch of rifle shooter games and some old pinball machines. They even had a baseball one where the ball shoots out from the middle and you have to score a homerun. Imagine a simplified version of the classic pinball game. Just one lever and several images you can hit. Fun to see!

Later that week we visited a snow sculpture festival more up north I think. Myeah I know, I’m bad with names unless I organised or prepared the trip. I have no excuse… lol…. Anyway, we went to the snowy ski-resort town to witness the snow sculpture festival and MAN IT WAS FREEZING COLD. For some reason we didn’t come prepared at all. We were walking around in our thin jackets (I didn’t even have one) and thin sweatshirt and what not and to top it off, me and Adria were wearing freakin Converse shoes. Not the best shoes to walk around in snow and to keep the cold out. So after a quick stroll around the sculptures we made our way to a warmer place to heat up our frozen toes. Immediately after that we looked for a store that sold some warm socks and made our feet happy again. Note to self: it’s cold at a snow sculpture festival.

The NBA experience

Like I said before, I really wanted to see a live NBA game and since my friends Matt and Adria have never been to one either, we decided to pop that cherry together. We drove down to Denver to see the Nuggets-Clippers game. I’m not going to give play by play report of the game, but it was quite impressive to go to the big stadium and see all the hardcore fans. For some reason, sports in the States is a really important part of their culture. Not just for the guys, but even girls/women were coming to watch the game without being dragged their by their partners. It’s not just a game, it’s more like an event.

The Nuggets ended up losing the game though by 2 points, but we had fun. You can’t help but get dragged along the whole atmosphere in the stadium. It doesn’t matter if you are a true fan or not, just sit back and enjoy the ride.

The fastfood

It’s really true, there’s fastfood joints everywhere! Even on the first day we went to Wendy’s to get a quick dinner. Funny thing though, the small size cup is like our normal size cup back in Belgium. We had a chat with the people who were taking our order and they told us they just changed the size of their cups. The old medium size is now the small, the old large is now the normal and so on. I don’t know how people can finish their drinks like that. That’s just too much for one person! Anyhow, eventhough I know it’s unhealthy… It. Just. Tastes. So. Gooooooooooood. I’m sure that if I actually lived in the US, I’d be a fat bastard. We did cook at home too though, Adria is just an awesome cook! I had my first taco and I don’t think any other taco can beat that. There’s just nothing better than a nice home cooked meal. I kinda felt weird though towards the end of my stay with them. I didn’t really do much at all. Most of the days we would just go drive around to a tourist place and come back right after dinner. Kinda reminded me of a “normal” life, I actually almost forgot that I’m traveling for a year and that I still have about 9 months to go. But to be honest, it did feel good to have a place that you can call “home” for a short time. You can unpack your bag and watch some TV, not having to look for your next hostel to stay at or your next way to get to the next location. Just…. being lazy and hang out with people you’ve known for years. Oh yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that I’ve known them for almost 7 years without ever meeting them in real life. Kinda weird maybe for some, but eventhough I’ve only talked to them online all this time, I’ve considered them my real friends all this time. To finally meet them after all these years, meant a lot to me. Anyway, to end the emotional crap. I hope I can come back and meet up with them again and I truely wish them the very best. They’re another power couple that I’ve learned a lot from and can be jealous of.