go to Puerto Rico

Well I had about $1200 spending money, half was earned working and half was as a Christmas gift from my uncle. I love the Mayaguez Mall because I haven’t seen the stores before like Hot Potato, which is one of my favorite restaurants now. I’ve picked up a book to try to perfect my Spanish grammar a bit more, and I’ve bought many Puerto Rican magazines and a couple books in Spanish and it’s awesome that I can understand a lot of what is going on in the books. But spoken Spanish here is a lot different than written Spanish and people here talk really fast and kinda mush their words together so it’s a lot more difficult to understand than I thought it would be.
New Years was cool here, everyone loves to celebrate the holidays in PR with lights and fireworks. At one point I saw about 8 different houses with fireworks, out of the 8th story window of Alex’s building.
Unfortunately Three Kings/Wise Men Day was terrible for Alex and I because his mom’s boyfriend dragged us to a couple crappy “parties” and we stayed there for hours.
It was worth it to come here because I felt I had to see what it was like, the place where my boyfriend has lived all his life, and I felt I needed to meet his family before he comes to Canada with me to live there. (It was nice to escape the cold for a month too) I do feel somewhat out of place and not part of the family but oh well. It will be nice to get back to Canada in a week.

My boyfriend lives in Puerto Rico, and he’s coming back with me to Canada to live with me at the end of my visit there. I’ll be there for 28 days! I need to go before he comes to live here because his family hasn’t met me and he has visited me twice here in Canada (for 2 months each time) since we started going out last year. It will be WONDERFUL to leave Winnipeg in late December when it is minus 20-something and to stay for a month in the Caribbean! It’s good that I know enough Spanish to have small conversations with his family, not just “how are you?” and stuff but real conversations. I can’t wait til the trip… It will be my first time in 6 years traveling (by plane at least) It’s been 3 years since I went anywhere that I’d even call a vacation. I saved up money for flights and now I’m trying to save minimum $500 for spending money.