The World of Stuff .com

Going south

And now, as previously promised, kittens.

So it was two days after Christmas, and my aunt was taking Kate and me around Gainesville to see and do stuff. Before lunch, she took us to her work at No More Homeless Pets, which shares a facility with a couple of similar organizations. We passed by a room with some kittens in cages.

I would have been content with just looking at the kittens, but Kate wanted to go into the room with them. So, we went into the room. Then she wanted to hold one of the kittens, so my aunt opened one of the cages and let her pick one. Then she wanted to hold all of the kittens, so she picked up each one in turn. Also, I ended up holding some of them.

Later, we went to the bat houses on the UF campus to watch the bats fly out at dusk. Except we were really early for that, so we first checked out the nearby Baughman Center and watched the gators swimming around in Lake Alice. We also took a brief detour to my old apartment building because Kate wanted to see it. Having visited me there during her first three trips to the US, she had a rosier overall image of the place than I did. When she wasn’t there, I would spend most of my time avoiding strange roommates, eating pizza by myself, killing fleas, and not cleaning anything.

The next day, we set off for South Florida. My dad took the day off from work to drive us to Lakeland, and we took Amtrak the rest of the way. I had only taken Amtrak once before—namely, the express service between DC and Orlando for you and your car—so I didn’t have much of an impression of how it was. I knew that in Europe, you get assigned a seat when you buy a ticket. In the USA, or at least in Lakeland, they tell you where to sit when you get on the train, and they group you together by destination. They also write your destination on a piece of paper and stick it above your seat. It’s shameful.

It was time for a late lunch, so Kate and I went to the dining car. We lingered there for quite a while, and when we came back, some other people had been given our seats, so we had to find some other seats that were empty (though maybe they belonged to someone who was in the lounge car or whatever). Finally, we arrived in familiar old South Florida. I hadn’t been there in almost a year and a half.

Since none of my friends nor anyone on CouchSurfing could put us up, we fell back on the Passport Service. Count that as a perk of being an Esperantist; I was this close to dropping $400 on a hotel. So this Esperantist picked us up from the station and introduced us to his husband. We spoke Esperanto with each other, even as we went out for dinner at a pizza place. I hadn’t spoken it in a while, but it came rather easily.

The following day, Kate and I had a late lunch with my friends Nick and TJ. We went to this place on the beach that Kate had a Groupon for. It was nice to catch up with them. I wanted to spend more time with them, but they had to split because they both had to work that night. So Kate and I hung out on the beach for a little while, and then I called up my friend Kevin and asked if he wanted to hang out. He picked us up, and we went to take a stroll in downtown Fort Lauderdale.

None of us had ever been on the Water Taxi before, so flagged down one of their boats from the banks of the New River and rode the entire route, down the river, up the Intracoastal, and back. On the way, we got to see a lot of rich people’s huge houses, still decorated for Christmas, and unfamiliar views of familiar bridges and buildings. I’m very glad that we did it. It stops near some convenient places, like Las Olas Boulevard, and once you have a ticket, you can use it to get on and off for the rest of the day. Protip: tickets are $10 per person after 5 PM.

Possibly related link: Why Do Russians Smile So Seldom? For what it’s worth, I think Kate is smilier than the average Russian.