Item

Milestone Year

Title (Dublin Core)

Milestone Year

Disclaimer (Dublin Core)

DISCLAIMER: This item may have been submitted in response to a school assignment prompt. See Linked Data.

Description (Dublin Core)

To get to this story, I have to go back a few years first.

I'm an immigrant from El Salvador. I came to the U.S. as a teenager in 1994, and never went back. I was in my 30s when I decided it was finally time to visit the grandmother I'd been missing for so long. I started to save and plan. Then she died.

It took several years before I finally took my first trip back in November of 2019. I spent the time vacationing on the coast. I avoided my grandmother's house, my friends, and my family. I wasn't ready. But I decided that for my 40th birthday, in 2020, I'd return for a longer stay and visit my childhood home and all the friends and family left behind.

Then there was a pandemic.

The trip was cancelled, but it was the least of that year's problems. I lost my job and went back to school to start a new career. Our dog got cancer and died. My partner had a friend in El Salvador who died of COVID. I can never reschedule that same trip. Too much has changed.

I'm planning to return this summer. This time with a firmer grasp on life's impermanence. I want to visit the white sand beaches at Playa Mango before it gets turned into a "surf city" tourist trap. I want to visit all the important cultural landmarks, especially those from which I can learn about my ancestors. More importantly, I will not avoid friends and family. On the contrary, I want to cherish the time I will have with them as if the next day isn't guaranteed. I plan to take dozens of photographs, portraits of everyone I see, I want to write down their stories in my journal, I want to record every visit, every meal, every experience possible in my journal. I plan to say "see you later," but not leave anything unsaid. Just in case.

Date (Dublin Core)

June 22, 2020

Creator (Dublin Core)

self

Contributor (Dublin Core)

Rebecca Joyce

Event Identifier (Dublin Core)

HST643

Partner (Dublin Core)

Arizona State University

Type (Dublin Core)

Text Story

Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)

English Biography
English Travel
English Emotion
English Home & Family Life
English Immigration
English Environment & Landscape

Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)

El Salvador
immigrant
death
family
loss
culture
document
memory

Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)

Arizona State University
ASU
HST643
history of tourism
El Salvador

Collection (Dublin Core)

Deathways
Latino(a/x) Voices

Linked Data (Dublin Core)

Tourism story for the COVID-19 Archive

Date Submitted (Dublin Core)

02/02/2023

Date Modified (Dublin Core)

02/16/2023

Date Created (Dublin Core)

02/02/2023

Item sets

Covid 19

This item was submitted on February 2, 2023 by Rebecca Joyce using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: https://covid-19archive.org/s/archive

Click here to view the collected data.

New Tags

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