Blogs from Texas, United States, North America - page 259

Crazy/ out of my right mind...probably. Adventurous and courageous... I hope so. These are just a few of the words that I'm sure my family and friends will use when I actually leave on my dream trip around the world. Right now I'm sure they think I am just "talking to hear myself make a noise" (as good old Mom likes to say). Likely a lot of people would think that. I mean what do you think about a 31 year old single woman with 4 year old son to look after who has decided she is going to somehow make this dream a reality? Now it's not going to happen next week or even next year, mind you, but I have narrowed the departure date down to sometime between June 2009 and June 2019. 2019 ... read more

31 degrees this morning….Farenheit not Celsius. -1 in other words and raining. It is a little cold here this morning. I slept in, a little bit by accident but I didn’t have any appointments this morning so it is fine and I feel good. I missed breakfast though at the hotel so I had to get some on campus. Food here is to say the least a tricky thing for me. There is intrinsically a great deal of Fat involved. So I’ve been eating waffles, fruit and coffee with fake creamer (therefore no milk….some advantages for the lactose intolerant like me). The breakfast hostess Vivian is this amazing woman. Her husband was in special forces and her daughter just finished law school at University of Texas. Her grandmothers house used to be where Truett Seminary now ... read more

0650h: I'm excited, wired, nervous and tired all at the same time. I am listening to a radio station called Lonestar 94 Country. A local texan country radio station. It's definitely an insight into loval culture. Very lighthearted. "Every day you're walking around is a day more before you die...." whatever that means. It was really cold outside - about 0. The day My first impression of the university was the wide buvelard streets lined with footpaths, trees, and buildings. Large stretches of grass ... though the grass is a little white because it has been so cold. The building are all Brick and georgian in style. Very large and impressive. Quite beautiful. The people at the hotel had told me it was a long way to the building where i was to have my first ... read more

I decided to visit the San Antonio Missions Historical Park on my home to Laredo, TX for Thanksgiving. There are 4 missions in total, Mission Concepcion (1731), Mission San Jose (1720), Mission San Juan (1731), and Mission Espada (1731). All are located in San Antonio and all were built by Spain to help convert the local Native American population to Catholicism in the 1700's. South Texas has a big Catholic population so I guess it worked to an extent. The missions are in pretty good shape for being so old. Upkeep has been great and they aren't too crowded so picture taking was excellent. All the missions are connected via roads and road markers making it easy to go from one to the other. All drives were about 5 minutes or less. The first mission I ... read more

We crossed into Texas and spent the morning exploring the old historic area of El Paso, before driving on through places such as Valentine and Mafra in order to arrive late and set up camp in the awesome Big Bend National Park. Here we had to deal with black bears (all food and toiletries had to be locked in the van or in the large bear boxes provided), ate curry and had one of our spoons stolen by a skunk! The next morning we were up early and hiked up Emory Peak (7832ft) before driving to a lookout point on the Rio Grande where we could see Mexico across the river. Someone claimed we were a "stone's throw" away but all five blokes in the group failed to actually get a stone to land on the ... read more