A visit from my father

This past weekend my father came to Los Angeles and spent the weekend with me. I had not seen him for more than 5 years, and so I was feeling a mix of excitement and anxiety. I wanted to make sure it would be special for him.
Dad was coming from, Abu Dhabi, UAE (United Arab Emirates), same place where my friend Abdulla is from, and as he was having a connection in Los Angeles in the way back to Rio, he decided to stay the weekend. That was all on very short notice and I didn’t have much time to prepare…
Julio and I went to pick him up on Friday afternoon. He described how difficult was to him to go through the immigration, specially because he couldn’t find the address I gave to him, so basically he told the people on Immigration he didn’t know where he was going…Suspicious, huh??? A guy coming from an Arab country with no destination…
From there we went to the car rental and then directly to some tour around. First thing we went to the Farmer’s Market and The Grove. My father enjoyed both places a lot. He really liked the Gumbo ya ya he ate at the Farmer’s Market and I explained to him that was a very southern kind of food. At The Grove we took some pictures and ended up at Victoria Secret’s store to buy Mother’s Day presents… After that I drove by Hancock Park and showed the big houses with their beautiful yards and flowers. I knew my father would like that cause he is very much into architecture and gardening. Then to Off Broadway, that huge shoe store in Hollywood (Sunset /Orange). My brother had asked for tennis shoes, either Asics or Mizuno. My father was impressed with absurd size of the store and the amount of shoes. On another note: It is amazing the difference of prices between US and Brasil. Even though the currency in there is almost 3 times the dollar, shopping here is a very good deal. We kept calculating how much would cost things in Brasil and most of them were at least 20% less after the exchange…
Back to Off Broadway Store, since nothing caught our eye, I told my father we should go to Sport Challet. Again he was impressed with that store and all the different kinds of sport accessories that was offered. We got the shoes.
In the way home, I decided to take Dad to check Amoeba Records, in my opinion one of the most interesting records store, not only for the amount of CDs and DVDs the have but also for the interesting and diverse types of people who go there. We didn’t buy anything but my father liked the experience.
On Saturday we woke up and went to the Central Market (Hill / 3rd). Julio joined us. The Central market is another interesting place to go in LA, specially if you want to eat legitimate Mexican food. The place itself is interesting. It is bright and colorful, noisy and has wood shavings all over the floor, kind of gives the sense of being in the country side… The tent where we ate is always full of people. The food is delicious and cheap. I ate a “gordita di lengua”… Hum, my favorite! And my father asked for a “Burrito di Carnitas”. He loved it! I had warned him earlier that would be heavy food and we would not be hungry till late night. We dropped Julio at home and went to Old Pasadena for a walk, then down to Burbank. I wanted to take my father on Fry’s. He is a big electronics lover so I knew he would have a great time just looking around what was new in the market, plus he need to buy a digital camera and a mother board for his computer. After checking Fry’s we went to Best Buy, where we found all the same things for a better price. Who knows my father knows that he would not go back home from a trip without presents to everyone, specially when there are kids in the family, so we passed by Toys ’R’ Us and got toys for all the kids. It was getting late and we decided to go home.
The next day, Sunday, it was a beautiful sunny day with blue skies. I had to take him to the beach and nothing better than Venice Beach for a good walk and people watch. It was pleasant. The weather was just perfect. We walked and talked about many things while appreciated the hippie, grundgy, sporty scenes. On the way back, I decided to drive by Sunset Blvd, passing by the palms of harbor Santa Monica, the gorgeous campus of UCLA and the infinite green area of Beverly hills and Bel Air. My father was very impressed and agreed that was the most beautiful part of LA. Back to Best Buy, dad bought all the things he had looked at the day before which included: a digital camera, two play station games, a DVR-R, I-pod Shuffle, a DVD-R and a mother board. As we were both tired we went back home for a nap. Dad was exhausted and he slept for 2 hours. When he woke up, we went for a drive at night, passing by Hollywood & Highland, the Sunset Strip, ending at the Grand Luxor (Beverly/ La Cienega) where we stop for dinner.
On Monday we woke up early and my father left to the airport. I got very emotional while watching him leaving. It made me think of when I would be seeing him or any of my relatives again…It made me think if I was doing the right thing staying here. It made me want to fight to stay in this country with the right to come and go whenever I feel like.That was the weekend with my father. I had the best time with him. Growing up we were not very close because, somehow, we had very different mind sets back then. We probably still do, but we both accept and love each other the way we are. That must be natural. That must be part of growing up and becoming an adult.