Houston, we have a visitor!
The second leg of my whirlwind trip led me to the other side of the Lone Star state: Houston. Two more of my high school friends, John and Linda, are currently living and working there. I got in around 2:30, and went hiking at a local park with John. Then it was back to his place to wait for Linda, who came when she got off work. We had Mexican for dinner, although I ordered quail to mix it up a bit since I eat Mexican all the time. Don't see that very often, if ever, but it was delicious! We walked off dinner by paying a visit to the Waugh Bridge bat colony. The bridge is (unintentionally) the perfect habitat for a certain species of bat, and they take to the skies every evening at sundown!
The black patches in the sunset are bats flying off in search of food!
Me touching a stingray!
Hi! I'm peeking through the bubble window that lets you see the underside of all the creatures as they swim over top of you.
I'm a scuba diver!
I am not sure why there were white tigers at an aquarium, but they are rare (1 in 10,000) and gorgeous animals.
Linda and I kept marveling over how their mannerisms are EXACTLY like a housecat's, only much, MUCH bigger.
Feeding time!
We rode a little train that took us inside a building with one of those glassed-in tunnel tanks, with all sharks inside. These are nurse sharks--bottom dwellers.
This one is a sawfish, which is actually a type of stingray, not a shark.
The train paused for a few minutes so the tour guides could give a short talk, and the whole time one of the sawfish was directly above where we were sitting!
The rest of the afternoon, I helped Linda organize her classroom (she is a preschool teacher), and then organize her apartment! We stopped at the grocery store in between her school and her apartment because we decided that we were going to make John dinner (spinach salad with berries and feta, apple pork chops, sauteed zucchini, brown rice, and Blue Bell ice cream). That was the main motivation behind the apartment organization: we needed to be able to use (see, for that matter!) the table. Linda had just moved a few weeks prior and was grateful to have some company while unpacking. We emptied probably a dozen or so boxes, and dinner was delicious!
Sunday morning I went to John and Linda's church, Memorial Lutheran. They are both in the choir so I got to hear them sing. After Bible class we went to lunch, then walked around the Galleria (high end shopping mall) for awhile to kill time before my flight. We spent the longest in Borders, where everything was 90% off. I got to the airport 2 hours early since it was the 10th anniversary of 9/11, but didn't encounter any holdups at all. Oh well, better safe than sorry. I got back to El Paso around 8. I miss all the friends I saw along the way already, but I should get to see most, if not all, of them at Christmastime!
Until next time, blessings!
P.S. I have a Skype interview with CPH tomorrow for the position of (Bilingual) Marketing Assistant/Sales Representative. Pray that God's will would become clear to me as I further investigate all of my potential job offers!
The black patches in the sunset are bats flying off in search of food!The bridge isn't very far from John's apartment, so we spent the rest of our evening there--playing cards, reminiscing about high school (we watched our senior class video that includes all of us introducing ourselves at freshman orientation!), and singing hymns! It was blissful. I love how even though we haven't seen each other for months or even years, any time any part of my high school gang gets together it's like we were never apart. We were talking about that too--how maybe, hopefully, we're past a certain threshold of losing touch with each other. We've all been through college and are scattered all over the country now, but we're as close as ever, and I hope we stay that way. John had plans to go to a football game the next day, so Linda and I were all set to go to the Blue Bell Creamery until we Googled it and saw that they don't have weekend tours. Lame! But we went to an aquarium instead, which was very cool!
Me touching a stingray!
Hi! I'm peeking through the bubble window that lets you see the underside of all the creatures as they swim over top of you.
I'm a scuba diver!
I am not sure why there were white tigers at an aquarium, but they are rare (1 in 10,000) and gorgeous animals.
Linda and I kept marveling over how their mannerisms are EXACTLY like a housecat's, only much, MUCH bigger.
Feeding time!
We rode a little train that took us inside a building with one of those glassed-in tunnel tanks, with all sharks inside. These are nurse sharks--bottom dwellers.
This one is a sawfish, which is actually a type of stingray, not a shark.
The train paused for a few minutes so the tour guides could give a short talk, and the whole time one of the sawfish was directly above where we were sitting!Sunday morning I went to John and Linda's church, Memorial Lutheran. They are both in the choir so I got to hear them sing. After Bible class we went to lunch, then walked around the Galleria (high end shopping mall) for awhile to kill time before my flight. We spent the longest in Borders, where everything was 90% off. I got to the airport 2 hours early since it was the 10th anniversary of 9/11, but didn't encounter any holdups at all. Oh well, better safe than sorry. I got back to El Paso around 8. I miss all the friends I saw along the way already, but I should get to see most, if not all, of them at Christmastime!
Until next time, blessings!
P.S. I have a Skype interview with CPH tomorrow for the position of (Bilingual) Marketing Assistant/Sales Representative. Pray that God's will would become clear to me as I further investigate all of my potential job offers!
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