The Oregon Trail is much shorter here. Y'know, cause everything else is bigger.
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So we’ve both been working full time for over 2 weeks now, and it feels fantasmic. I’m learning the always applicable art of auto insurance and KS has been earning his stripes as a night shift nurse. We both feel extremely lucky and fortunate to be gainfully employed in jobs we can say we still love even at the end of 4 12-hour shifts.
RP has settled in pretty well. He pants (ha, just like his NAME) a lot and drinks extra bowls of water on the regular, but there are dog parks like they’re sent from heaven and one of us is usually home to spend time with him during the day/night.
We miss our Oregon friends and family quite a lot, and I’ll be the first to admit that I sometimes sit around listening to NPR, drinking organic coffee and imagining rain falling outside. But we have some wonderful biffles close by in Austin, and we try to get up to visit those lovelies whenever possible. Also the weather…let’s be honest: it’s pretty kickass.
THE ALAMO (yeah, you’re going to want to click that link)
Yup, we went there.
And the thing about it isn’t that it’s small (which is what everyone says and is entirely true), it’s that it’s SMACK DAB in the middle of the city! We were walking past a row of oddity museums (Ripley’s, a wax museum, the Tomb Rider) on one side, and a bevy of snow cone dealers on the other, and all of a sudden, KS points and says, “There it is!” And I wouldn’t even have believed him if I hadn’t thought, “Wow, that looks like all the picture on every credit union, car dealership, and piece of currency in this city.” (Oh yes, Texas has it’s own form of currency. The Texas dollar is worth 3 euros, 10,000 yen, and a few pesos thrown in. Good luck with that whole failing economy thing, rest of America.)
I thought the Alamo was pretty cool. Having history right in the middle of a major metropolitan city is cool (albeit a bit surprising, as I’ve already noted). We saw a history of the Bowie knife, a list of people who survived (I confirmed that Davy Crockett was not among them), and got an overall education of what the war was all about. No, I’m not going to tell you, because really I’m still just a little confused. Go learn it for yourself.
We also wandered around downtown to the River Walk (el Paseo del Rio) and to the Tower of the Americas, which is basically a smaller space needle complete with a rotating restaurant and overpriced tickets.
The Torch of Friendship is a symbol of Mexico and America working together in harmony. After that whole Alamo thing, anyway.
Yep, pretty much the space needle.
An overhead view of the fountains by the Tower.
It was even prom night. Girls were navigating this terrain in heels!
This water wall made us feel right at home.
Para ti, senorita KK.
KS bonded with the natives.
PDX to SA 