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Published: April 23rd 2015
So I realized I havent given a lot of detail on the purposes and reasons behind the trip. Neither have I explained much about myself, of who I am.
This entry will be dedicated towards those details of my life I've left out so far.
My name is Jose Luis, the middle name included at all times, it's how I prefer it. I am 22 years old, born in the small town of Beaumont texas but raised in the capital of Austin texas. My mother illegally swam across the rio grande south of texas while I was in her womb. She had married my father at the age of 18, my father was 34 at the time. Her mother had died when she was a teen, leaving my grandfather with eight orphan kids. My grandfather met and brought to their household a tough woman who was really harsh on the kids. They had a hard time adjusting to her and she beat them every time she wasnt pleased. At least thats the version I get from my mom and her younger siblings. So when she met my dad and fell for his charms of experienced traveler and what ever was that she saw in a much older man, she had really met the man who was going to take her away from an unwanted life and circumstance.
My dad was born in 1957, youngest of four brothers and fifth from the eldest, only and first sister, he left home in a small mountain town at the age of 15 for the big mexican cities. At only 17, he then migrated to the United states illegally. The man had lived and traveled far and wide around this nation, working from agriculture fields to smuggling people across the Mexican-American border when he finally realized he had to settle down. And for such affair he knew he had to get a young, inexperinced girl who needed to escape the rural life of Mexico. So a year or so before I was born, at the age of 34, he returned to his hometown as a dollar wealthy bachelor. (Because when one goes back to those towns after having migrated and having worked and lived in the states, people.. girls know you're IT... the man.) It wasn't the first time he had returned since he had left, but it was the last time he would return and come back to the states alone.
All that being explained, one can conlude I was already instilled with adventure since I had only been a mere thought. I won't go into much detail about my own life, but I will go into how I finally got frustrated with the day to day and how I finally knew what I wanted to do with my life. I had realized I wanted to travel when I was giving community college in Austin a try in the fall of 2013. I was going through a huge identity crisis at the time and college was an attempt to help me solve that. After a while i knew college was not for me, I just couldn't care less about studying for a life I knew it was going to satisfy my needs in years to come, but not satisfy my real needs. Those needs that only your soul can confess, needs that go beyond a good paying job, a nice car and house or even a pretty wife and maybe even a pretty mistress too, any guy's wild dream. One night, instead of studying I had been watching documentaries on travelers who travel bohemianly for the love of life, art and adventure. My attention- my heart had been caught that night. I had decided that before I died on this earth, i was gonna travel. I dint care how it was going to happen either. If it was gonna be five star stays and cruise ships, good, if it had to be a backpack and humble conditions, also good. My main concern was and still is to soak myself in culture and love for others, for this beautiful world we've inherited, and to enjoy it on different levels and contexts. Soon I started planning a trip to cuba, where i was planning on maybe meeting a pretty girl, maybe staying a while.. It was all going to start by flying to puerto vallarta, Mexico, where I would stay a couple months before finally leaving for Cuba. On March of 2014 I got my passport and was saving for the trip. A month later I bought an old 86 ford mustang that caught my eye in an old car lot as I drove home from work. I love american classics... especially older mustangs.... this one car, in the proces of fixing it up and all, left me with out any trip plans indefinitely. I ended staying in Austin for the rest of the year.
I love Austin. I was raised in Austin but didn't quite get ro really love it untill I went back in late 2013. I had left Austin right after highschool graduation in 2011 and worked in oil refineries and powerplants in southeast Texas and northern Mississippi untill late 2013, when I finally decided I wasn't happy working construction related jobs. I returned to Austin that fall and enrolled in college downtown. Downtown Austin has the best vibe you will find in this state. Austin in general is a mix of californisation, mexican and south western lifetyles. Now Austin is a huge college town and the university of Texas is right in the heart of downtown Austin. The city feels young and diversified, especially on the weekends and around the popular sixth street. In Austin I was able to find myself, I was able to open my mind to the possibilities of my artistic desires. I embraced my love for music and found out I was a singer, that I was good at something and it was singing. Maybe not the best nor a beast at it, but I found out in Austin that I could sing, and all because the city inspired me to try, to practice daily, to start out from a screechy voice and end up with a trained one. All because i loved music and decided it was worth it to try and learn to sing, because Austin made me ok with the "crazy" notions that were running through my mind at the time. Austin is the place where I fell in love for the first time in my life. A cute college girl three years younger than I. I fell like a real fool for this girl, I mean retarded! I failed in gaining her affection and after a while of putting up with personal disappointment and frustration with how things ended up, I decided to pick up a constuction job again around december of last year and save again for that cuba trip. But soon after I realized if I left to cuba, mexico or anywhere in latin America, that I was probably not coming back for a while, maybe for ever. For years i've felt in my heart that my place in this world is in the spanish speaking world. My heart longs for latin America even though I've been all my life in the unied states. So thats when i decided that traveling and living around the states for a while first would do me good. That tripping around my own nation first would better prepare me for second and third rate countries as well.
I will try to write another entry tomorrow about my insights towards New York. I also promised pictures in my last entry but it's been an exhausting week. I'll try to take some for next week.
Im tired..
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freespiritwithagypsysoul
Shawn
thanks for sharing your history, and thanks for reading my blog :) I hope someday that we will meet I love meeting fellow travellers.