I'm a travelin' man ...

... goin through places, bags in hand.

even before we got to belize, this trip was getting exciting. for those of you who know my mom, you know she stresses ... a LOT. it's what she does (i obviously got my genes in this area from my dad). we get to the airport around 10, and when she finds out that shawn is still in van nuys (about 30 min from lax), naturally, she starts worrying. let me get one thing straight first, our flight is at 1210. it's still only 10ish. even if shawn gets here in 30 minutes, it's still more than an hour before our flight. yeah, we're going to belize, which is international, but the flight is a domestic one, since we have to go through dallas and miami first. nevertheless, mom is freaking out. of course, shawn gets to the airport with plenty of time to spare, and mom can finally rest easy (well as easy as she ever does). shawn and i make our way to the security line with about an hour left before our flight is scheduled to leave. and guess who's in line behind us ... vivica fox. shawn tries to get a video of her using his phone, but she's facing the other way, and he only manages to get a clip of her from the back (which is fine by me because she has a nice ass). in shawn's words, "i hope she's going where we're going." unfortunately, we're not that lucky. actually our luck got worse ... flight's delayed. like i said before, we have to go through dallas and miami before getting to belize, and our connection time in dallas was tight to begin with. if we miss the connection in dallas, we'll easily miss our flight out of miami too. i'm thinking, "i've already missed one flight this week, i don't want to miss two (maybe three)." it turns out that there were about 20-30 other people in the same boat (plane?) as us. we ended up making our connection in dallas (and consequently, in miami); although, it was pretty close. picture 20-30 people filing out of one plane and then rushing to the gate where our other plane was departing out of. in the end, we got to belize on time and with no real problems. let the vacation begin!! our trip was broken up into three segments. we spent three nights in each of ambergris caye, san ignacio, and caye caulker. i'll probably blog separately for each, but a few words about belize in general first. great place. shawn and i had a really good time. the three places we stayed were each very different from the other two. from talking to other tourists and other people that have been to belize, it sounded like most people (especially americans) only visit ambergris caye. after visiting san ignacio, i think those people missed out on a good picture of the rest of belize. too bad for them. belizeans, on a whole, were very friendly and helpful. their currency has been tied to ours for awhile now ($1 of ours = $2 of theirs), and you could use US money everywhere. i actually didn't exchange any money (did have to hit up their atm a few times though). we also met a good amount of interesting people (locals and other tourists). it was cool talking with random people and hearing everyone's story. like i said, we had a really good time, and i would definitely recommend a visit to belize to anyone based on my experiences there.

posts on each of the three areas will be coming shortly (and may even be here by the time you read this), but until then check out these pictures from the trip