Texas recap part 3-a camping trip

June 20, 2012

In case you are just joining me today I am doing a recap of my first few months in Texas. I moved to Austin nearly 4 years ago and now am moving on. I’m excited for what’s ahead but I thought it would be fun to take a look back first.

In an effort to discover more about Texas and meet new friends we decided to go on a university organized camping trip to the Davis Mountains over Thanksgiving weekend. The entire thing was planned for us we just had to show up with our gear, hop in a van with strangers, and get driven out to west Texas. Not so bad. It was a long ride so we did get to know a little bit more about our fellow campers. It was fun having company and it made being away from home for Thanksgiving a lot easier.

We camped for a few days and we took a few hikes through the state park. It was really cool getting to see this part of Texas for the first time.

Some fellow campers.

Katie and I with the Davis Mountains in the background.

Our Thanksgiving camping meal. From what I remember it tasted way better than it looks.

This is my serious hiking face.

Group shot!

This one makes me laugh. The nights were super cold and being from Michigan we thought oh how cold could it get? So we brought along sleeping bags that should really only be used in the summer. We slept terribly because we were so cold. On the last night we were both up and we kept checking the time to see if it was close enough to an appropriate wake up time. It wasn’t but we decided to wake up anyhow in the pitch dark. We’d rather be up and about being cold than lying completely still on the ground. We walked to the end of a bluff and waited for the sun to come up. It was beautiful so in a way I should be glad I was so cold. After the sun was up we headed back to camp, packed up, and were on our way back to Austin. We didn’t make any lasting friendships but we met a few interesting people and overall we had a good time.

Texas recap part 2

June 19, 2012

As I mentioned in my last post I am sharing a bit of my past with you all. When I moved to Austin nearly 4 years ago I wasn’t blogging at the time and my life was so different. I just thought it would be fun to take a look back before moving forward and out of Texas.

Once Katie and I were settled (by settle I mean having found an apartment and unpacked our few belongings) we needed to find things to do to occupy our time. We didn’t have any friends yet and we didn’t know much about the city at all. Luckily I had purchased my very first laptop and I would search the internet for free things to do in Austin. This occupied our time, entertained us, and helped us to get a feel for the city. Between finding free things to do in Austin and being generally silly we stayed pretty busy which kept us from feeling too homesick.

We volunteered for the human race run handing out race packets. We got free shirts and got to go to a free concert downtown. Of course the concert ended after the last bus so we walked the 5 miles home. Fun.

The Austin Ballet had a free day of dance. We learned to hula and made some attempts at a few other dance styles.

Oh yes free museum day. We toured around the city visiting various museums and learning a bit more about Texas and our new city.

Just being silly after one of our nightly swims.

Some sort of Indian festival on campus that was free. We learned how to do this dance with sticks and had so much fun. I remember having so much fun that night.

Death of a bean bag…

WOO FLOORS! Hahahahha!

We were still active couchsurfers when we moved here so we hosted a few interesting people. These 2 fellas were touring around the US from Germany.

All dressed up for a concert downtown.  A Ben Kweller concert that is. Maybe I need a post just about Ben. We’ll see.

Ben Kweller.

Being silly at home.

Texas recap part 1

June 18, 2012

I mentioned at the end of last week that I was going to do a Texas recap since I will be leaving soon and I wasn’t blogging at the time. I will miss Austin a ton so maybe this will be good for me.

Maybe I should start by explaining why I came to Austin in the first place. My very best friend Katie and I met at community college in Michigan. We then went to universities that were hours apart and had to keep in touch by email and phone cards (before we had cell phones). When she was choosing grad schools I said you know what I’ll just come with you wherever you go and it will be an adventure.

So here we are on moving day. We took what would fit in this car collectively and headed out from my dad’s house. Little to no tears were had because we were too excited. It still baffles me how calm we both were that day.

Heading out of Michigan with the car full!

We drove for 3 days and stopped 2 times. Our second stop was made in Greenville, TX the birthplace of Ben Kweller. He was and maybe still is my favorite musician and it turned out he moved to Austin from Brooklyn just a month or 2 before we did.

Again I’m not sure how we were so calm about things. We were headed to a place we’ve never been, we had no apartment, Katie drove her car over a curb when we arrived in town and wrecked the muffler, and I had no job. We had this hostel booked for 4 nights while we looked at places to live. It was our first Texas home.

We made ourselves pretty comfortable and entertained ourselves singing out loud and dancing on the beds.

We explored the city and sought out air conditioning where we could. We were so not used to the heat and we moved here in August.

There was a pool at the hostel and we swam every night. We carried this tradition once we moved into our apartment with a pool. We swam every night until well into November when the water was just a tiny bit too cold.

Success! We found a place to live and this was our first real Austin home.

This was about as fancy as it got for awhile. We came with very little and no way to get much more. We both slept on the floor for a few months.

We made the most of it and used newspaper as our “table”, “couch”, and “tv”.

Oh yes I knew better than to put dish soap in the dishwasher. It was pretty funny though.

We tried to keep our spirits up since we were in a new place with no friends and missing home. It was difficult at times but at least we had each other and we did our best to keep entertained. I remember those pool nights too. It was something we started and just kept on doing. It turned into an almost therapeutic time where we would talk about how we were feeling and what we were sad or happy about. I even remember one time I was feeling really ill and perhaps had some sort of food poising but we hadn’t swam that day and we had to go even  though I was feeling really ill and it was difficult to walk there. Once I was in the water I started feeling so much better! The pool fixed everything it seemed we would both emerge feeling a lot better about everything.