And by that I mean I’m still (and probably always will be) awful at updating so let’s aim for like…12 posts this year. One a month. But don’t count on it.
Anyways. Happy 2019! What a year 2018 was. Definitely wasn’t expecting that at all, but hey – we can’t always dictate how we want life to turn out eh. Spent far more time in Singers than I have in a long while, what with recovering from my appendicitis and then helping look after my mum while she recovered from her shoulder surgery, but it was lovely getting to spend more time with the fam, particularly the nieces who are growing up to be such little firecrackers. ❤ Travel-wise, Borneo was pretty much the highlight of the year, and I guess December was the start of a new chapter but more on that in a second.
All things considered, I’m not mad about anything that happened because … well I’m happy right now, and I wouldn’t be here if any / all of those other things hadn’t happened. So it’s all cool.
So December. Start of my new adventure! So my friend Sean invited me to spend Christmas in Denver with him and his family, and experience my first “real” winter. It was pretty fun – really nice to get away from the madness and chaos of Singapore where something is always happening, and just chill out and decompress for a bit.
I basically slept all of the first week away – I take a really long time to get over jetlag (15hr difference!) and it was friggin’ cold (by my standards) so there was a lot of vegging out and doing nothing that I really enjoyed haha. We did also get out some days to check out some of beautiful Colorado, and it was absolutely lovely spending Christmas with Sean’s family. I didn’t get my much anticipated snow days or white Christmas though, so that was slightly disappointing.
The plan after Christmas was to drive down to Mexico and spend New Year’s there, and then pretty much roadtrip all around Mexico and possibly the rest of Central America BUT as anyone who has ever traveled at all knows – things almost never go according to plan. We packed up all the shit and loaded up the car and drove 14hrs from Denver to the Mexican border in Del Rio, Texas – we started out at 1.30pm, so we were driving through the night (and a random freak snow storm in Texas) to arrive at the crack of dawn at the border. Took a nap for a couple of hours then tried to cross the border and everything seemed to be going really well, except Mexico decided not to approve the Temporary Import Permit (TIP) for the car – basically a permit that allows you to drive the car in Mexico.
It was all pretty dumb, because it was on a small technicality that they rejected the permit. Apparently the car had been in an accident a couple of years ago, and the insurance company had declared it a Total Loss Vehicle probably cause it’s old (so it’s not worth anything but salvage/ scrap) BUT it actually works fine. But in any case, they said we couldn’t get the car in, so we drove back across the border to try to sort this thing out with the DMV / car insurance people / customs people / mechanics but ofc it was a Saturday, and almost NYE so it was a huge hassle and in the end, after asking around and researching and everything we figured we couldn’t do to change the “status” of the vehicle. So we tried to get through the border again (cause Mexico – so maybe a different official would be more lenient or who knows) but were rejected a second time and there’s really nothing that could be done so … we drove back to Denver again.
Shout out to Sean who was an absolute champ and drove the entire way from Denver to Del Rio and back again.
And that’s where I’m at right now. Special thank you to Sean’s sister, Michelle, for letting us crash at her place till we figure out what to do with our lives (okay I’m being dramatic). I guess it was all meant to be. We had a super chill NYE and New Year’s and I got my SNOW DAY and made snow angels and shoveled snow (I know it’s not exciting to people who have to do it all the time, but I was psyched). It’s just been a time of regrouping since then and figuring out the next step.
Which is going to be … flying to Cancun in a couple of days! Yay! Hopefully we won’t get rejected again and I can finally get on with exploring Mexico!
And that’s been my 2019 so far. Exciting times to come, I hope *fingers crossed* Stay tuned for updates from Mexico and beyond! Hope you guys have an absolutely smashing 2019 too!
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