A Trip to Walmart

My grandma gave me a list of groceries, and my grandpa took Morgan, Kian, Asher, and myself to Super Walmart. It was fun to walk through the sliding doors for the first time in over four years. There was the familiar smell Walmart has and the same picture of mother and daughter up on the wall. I had definitely forgotten the variety and amount of products on each shelve though.

The first thing we were confronted with was all the fresh produce. There are many types of fruits and vegetables here in America that aren't in the jungles of Asia Pacific. Eating plums, peaches, kiwis, blueberries, strawberries, celery, broccoli, and many other fruits and vegetables is something I always look forward to when returning to the States. After buying lettuce and salsa, we went to get some chips.

Where we live in Asia Pacific, out on the coast in town, there are only two or three stores we get our groceries from. There is also only one or two brands for each item. We usually only buy singkong (cassava) chips because there aren't a lot of other options and because singkong chips taste like a potato chip and not like dried shrimp or seaweed.

So when we walked into the chip aisle at Walmart, we were a little overwhelmed at the variety. It probably took us five minutes to finally find the chips that grandma had wanted us to pick up.

Walking through the electronics section, I was impressed by how big the flat screen TV's are getting. I think I saw some that were around eighty to ninety inches wide. A little ways passed the televisions were the video games and movie section. Star Wars VII was everywhere, on every shelf and on every poster. There was even a huge Millennium Falcon and some other Star Wars space ships hanging from the ceiling. It seems to be a big hit. I personally wasn't super impressed by Star Wars VII—the Death Star scenario has happened too many times for my liking.

The toy aisles brought back some memories. Last furlough, any time we came to Walmart, Mom would get the groceries and Dad would take us to look at the toys.

Nerf guns are still on the shelf along with the Spider-Man gloves that shoot out web.

Other than that, all the toys were different. Big, bald wrestler action figures seem to be the fad, and water balloons are popular also.

What we really liked were the water balloons that are attached to little tubes that then attach to a funnel. The funnel can be screwed onto a hose, and once the hose is turned on, the water balloons all fill at the same time. Once the balloons hit their max they fall off and when they fall, they are already tied and are the perfect size. It is so quick and a lot easier than manually filling and tying each balloon.

Anyway, after looking at toys and water balloons, we started heading toward the area where we would pay for our groceries. I realized it had taken us around thirty minutes just to get the four items on Grandma's list. We had a lot of fun though! Anything can be fun if you haven't done it in four years, and having our grandpa with us made it that much more enjoyable!