Texas, etc.

We have been in Texas since mid-November, and can you believe it, I haven't taken any photos?! I took maybe 2 verry random, not very representative photos with my phone's camera. I admit, I have kinda been burned out and ready for Holiday break. I can't wait to have a 3 week break so I can regenerate. I'm still not fully recovered from working all summer long, I think :)

Anyways, Texas has been interesting, to say the least. We started out before Thanksgiving in Houston, then went to San Antonio. After Thanksgiving, we traveled to Austin area, Houston (again), and now we are in "The Valley", ie just North of the Border :) We have been in the cities of Brownsville, Harlingen and now McAllen. All of the places we've been to have had similar aspects, but have been very different from each other as well.

Honestly though, "The Valley" is a little out-of-this-world, or at least, out of this country. It feels like Little Mexico. We are really close to the border- in fact, apparently there was some crazy shoot out at the Mexic0-Brownsville border yesterday morning. The Mexicans were shooting at people on the bridge or something. Insanity, I tell you. Unfortunately a lot of the area is run down and unkempt, and Brownsville happens to be the most impoverished city in the U.S., a fact that is evident when simply driving down the street.

And, may I say, the people of Texas- sigh. They are very friendly, that's for sure. But if you want to know why, after everything, they still love George W. Bush, it's probably because they see a lot of themselves in him. A couple comments we've gotten MULTIPLE times in our presentations here:

-Trent always asks, "how many hours of direct sunlight do you think we get in Alaska in on the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year" and for some reason, I always hear someone saying "two!" or "five!"

....I am having a hard time understanding how it could even be summer up there if were only 2 hours of sunlight a day, and why would anyone wanna go up there if they couldn't even see anything? :P

-We hand out Holland America pens to everyone at the end- they are long stemmed with a bear or whale design at the top. We announce that they need to grab a pen on the way out, and for some reason, there's always at least one who says "ooh, what's this? A margarita stirrer?"

....uhh....'nuf said.

Anyways, I will do my best to take some photos and have some tourism ops before I leave Texas. We are doing a Holiday Parade this weekend, so I'll probably have fun to report on that.

I haven't forgotten my New Orleans trip, I just really need to load those pics on here!

AND, a bonus, since I suck at photo taking, here's a map of all the states I've been to.



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We will most likely knock out Montana, North Dakota, Arkansas and who knows what else before we're done, though probably not Hawaii or New Hampshire...this time :)