boobs and explosions!
gotta love texas.
i'm not actually kidding.
dan has posted already about most of our texas experience and i trust him to do it justice. but i figured i'd talk a little bit about my take on all of it.
oddly enough texas (austin) reminds me of northern california (meaning sacramento and above), i think because of the weather. it's hot, hot, hot here, but it's the kind of hot where when you step out of the air conditioned house, it's actually NICE for a few seconds, a huge blast of warm, thick air like a blanket. and since it doesn't really cool down at night, you don't have to change your clothes, so you can keep hanging out in shorts (bermuda shorts, of course) and a tank top all night.
there are some very strange and significantly texan things here, though. for example, when we were listening to the radio on the way to the lake house, we heard a country cover of "i swear" by all4one. awesome. i could have died. also, they really do like their dr. pepper here.
part of my experience in texas (and new mexico too) has been the food. i'm getting all that stuff you can't get in california and some you can. so in NM i had the green chile chicken enchilada and sopapillas (mmm so good). and in TX i had queso (which is not just cheese - it's like nacho cheese with spices and peppers in it) and bluebonnet ice cream (which is delish). when we had a bbq at the lake house, we had baked beans and corn and there were ribs. the best thing, really, was the alamo draft house, where we got yummy pizza and beers while watching a movie - something that i'm honestly surprised hasn't caught on elsewhere because it's awesome.
my favorite new food, i have to say, and i realize this is a tangent, is sonic. called "america's drive-thru," i beg to differ because it doesn't exist in CA. such a shame. their slushies are like god. on saturday, when we had been hot all day and even after swimming in the cold barton springs we were hot and dry (hair dries in like 5 minutes here), slushies were the best thing i could possibly have asked for. sooooo tasty.
the whole foods, like dan said, was also a food treat. it was like window shopping in the bellagio shops, only with food, and you got to eat some of it at the end.
there's something about texas, though, i have to admit, that makes you feel really American. with a capital A. mostly because it IS all those sort of stereotypical things that you're supposed to do, and because it's the 4th. i'd never known that you could set off fireworks that look like professional shows in your OWN BACKYARD (somewhat dangerously). and the lake house was the ideal 4th of july - bbq, sun, water, fireworks. just the way it's supposed to be. sara's brother also had a spudgun, which was especially exciting to me because i'd heard about dad having a potatogun when he was a kid and it always seemed like one of those suburban american things that i didn't get to do as a kid.
the one kink in the whole day was my complete inability to waterski. i sucked at it, like i do at all outdoor activities with the possible exception of walking to class (and kayaking, which we did later in the day and which sort of reassured me). i tried, i swear, but i couldn't keep my legs parallel and i couldn't hang onto the handle and i fell over. and also my swimsuit fell off almost every time. after a little while i had to just stop humiliating myself. don't listen to sara or dan - they claim it was a valiant effort but i think it was purely embarrassing.
later on, we invented a great little game - capture the flag with kayaks. we hid the paddings to my bathing suit top (they always fall out and so i figured screw it) on opposite sides of a little island we'd rowed to and had to find them. sara and i most definitively beat dan, who by that point had sung the national anthem to send us off to start the game and who had christened the island "boob island."
boobs (and explosions) were the words of the day, really, because later on in the pitch black we went skinny-dipping. it was totally dark and we took our suits off underwater, so the point was not the sketchiness of seeing people naked, but rather the whole communing with nature bullshit. it was fun to swim around with the waves splashing and the stars up in the sky. you could see the milky way. now that's the american way, right?
i'm not actually kidding.
dan has posted already about most of our texas experience and i trust him to do it justice. but i figured i'd talk a little bit about my take on all of it.
oddly enough texas (austin) reminds me of northern california (meaning sacramento and above), i think because of the weather. it's hot, hot, hot here, but it's the kind of hot where when you step out of the air conditioned house, it's actually NICE for a few seconds, a huge blast of warm, thick air like a blanket. and since it doesn't really cool down at night, you don't have to change your clothes, so you can keep hanging out in shorts (bermuda shorts, of course) and a tank top all night.
there are some very strange and significantly texan things here, though. for example, when we were listening to the radio on the way to the lake house, we heard a country cover of "i swear" by all4one. awesome. i could have died. also, they really do like their dr. pepper here.
part of my experience in texas (and new mexico too) has been the food. i'm getting all that stuff you can't get in california and some you can. so in NM i had the green chile chicken enchilada and sopapillas (mmm so good). and in TX i had queso (which is not just cheese - it's like nacho cheese with spices and peppers in it) and bluebonnet ice cream (which is delish). when we had a bbq at the lake house, we had baked beans and corn and there were ribs. the best thing, really, was the alamo draft house, where we got yummy pizza and beers while watching a movie - something that i'm honestly surprised hasn't caught on elsewhere because it's awesome.
my favorite new food, i have to say, and i realize this is a tangent, is sonic. called "america's drive-thru," i beg to differ because it doesn't exist in CA. such a shame. their slushies are like god. on saturday, when we had been hot all day and even after swimming in the cold barton springs we were hot and dry (hair dries in like 5 minutes here), slushies were the best thing i could possibly have asked for. sooooo tasty.
the whole foods, like dan said, was also a food treat. it was like window shopping in the bellagio shops, only with food, and you got to eat some of it at the end.
there's something about texas, though, i have to admit, that makes you feel really American. with a capital A. mostly because it IS all those sort of stereotypical things that you're supposed to do, and because it's the 4th. i'd never known that you could set off fireworks that look like professional shows in your OWN BACKYARD (somewhat dangerously). and the lake house was the ideal 4th of july - bbq, sun, water, fireworks. just the way it's supposed to be. sara's brother also had a spudgun, which was especially exciting to me because i'd heard about dad having a potatogun when he was a kid and it always seemed like one of those suburban american things that i didn't get to do as a kid.
the one kink in the whole day was my complete inability to waterski. i sucked at it, like i do at all outdoor activities with the possible exception of walking to class (and kayaking, which we did later in the day and which sort of reassured me). i tried, i swear, but i couldn't keep my legs parallel and i couldn't hang onto the handle and i fell over. and also my swimsuit fell off almost every time. after a little while i had to just stop humiliating myself. don't listen to sara or dan - they claim it was a valiant effort but i think it was purely embarrassing.
later on, we invented a great little game - capture the flag with kayaks. we hid the paddings to my bathing suit top (they always fall out and so i figured screw it) on opposite sides of a little island we'd rowed to and had to find them. sara and i most definitively beat dan, who by that point had sung the national anthem to send us off to start the game and who had christened the island "boob island."
boobs (and explosions) were the words of the day, really, because later on in the pitch black we went skinny-dipping. it was totally dark and we took our suits off underwater, so the point was not the sketchiness of seeing people naked, but rather the whole communing with nature bullshit. it was fun to swim around with the waves splashing and the stars up in the sky. you could see the milky way. now that's the american way, right?
posted by Emily @ 2:30 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
did "night swimming" play?
actually it DID on the way home!!! sara and i were very excited.
actually it's not a cover of "I swear," it's the original. I mean listen to the lyrics. It could only be a country song.
we do have sonics in LA. There is one by my house, but i've never been because i dont' like to go to places like sonic and wal mart where i end up feeling like white trash.
Em, I've waterskiied twice, once on Bead Lake in Idaho, where I actually did it, and the second time, two days later, on Lake Shasta, which was the longest fresh water douche I've ever had...couldn't get my ass up. Anyway, my friends tried to tell me it has more to do with the boat and the driver than the skiier but I know better...
xox - C
wow cristina you're a wealth of information. however i think i disagree - sonic is not white trash. it's delicious.
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