Internet: Part 2

Today the installation people said, "Tomorrow," once again but after yet another trip to the internet company, we convinced them to install it today. So, now I'm sitting in my own apartment writing this blog. Life is good.

~A

Just Around the Corner

After many bus, taxi, and bike rides, and after more coffees, smoothies, and bad background music songs than we would care to count we will be accessing the world wide web from home again. Tomorrow the Internet installation guy will be at our home to allow us to surf without having to brush our teeth, shave, get dressed, fight the traffic, and buy a latte I didn't really want in the first place, just to read my mail! But wait, he said that yesterday and here I sit, listening to the espresso maker and bad background music songs, sipping a tall-iced-caramel-thingamajig just before bed. Yesterday he said he was coming today, today he said he was coming in the afternoon, in the afternoon he said he was coming at 6:30, at 7:30 he said he was coming tomorrow. At any rate, HOPEFULLY, it is just around the corner.

-L

Question:

Have you ever had a pizza made with ketchup instead of tomato sauce?

-L

The Beast

"For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." I don't know who first said this, but it explains the umbrella I bought yesterday. On our recent vacation, we mentioned an almost Valentine's Day gone awry in which rain was a major contributing factor. Had I been sitting on a back porch in a swing watching the precipitaion fall with my arm around my bride, I would have described this particular rainfall event as a light, pleasant shower. However, walking down one of the streets in the world fighting $2 dollar umbrellas gave us a different perspective, mainly because the umbrellas were winning. As a hurricane-like two mile per hour gust of wind breezed past, my fold-out shelter folded...the wrong way. A's, flailing wildly, lost control and smacked her in the face, leaving her with the impression that a chunk of her ear was missing (later, upon inspection we found it still intact). And the last straw, already wet, I threw mine down in digust, just at the moment a passerby decided to rid himself of the saliva in his mouth. This present lovingly presented by the stranger, I'm sure without intent, landed squarely between my shoulder blades.

Since that night I've been on a mission. Now realizing that when it comes to umbrellas you get what you pay for, and that it rains twice as much here as it does in Texas, I was not going to be outmatched. It took a little time in this country where everything from clothes to cars to Big Macs are tiny, but I found my solution in a "golf-size" red and blue tent with a thick erganomic black handle and reinforced metal underpinnings. Though you could find one this size at any Texas high-school football game, if it was any bigger in this country it might require a license to carry. Feeling all too much like a proud, wealthy materialist, I gave my new shiny Cadillac a name: "The Beast." Come on thunderclouds, do your worst!

-L

Happy New Year

Are we in a war zone? Asia is celebrating the New Year this week and I think that we are about to go deaf from the millions of fireworks that have been and continue to go off. If you think Independence Day in Texas is a show, you haven't seen anything! I inquired today and for only $12.50 you can set off 8 firecrackers the same size and caliber that municipalities in Texas shoot off over large bodies of water, except here you can light these in the middle of any street you choose. For the same price you can buy a string of 10,ooo black-cats to fire off all at once in the middle of a busy pedestrian sidewalk. Good thing it has been raining lately (which reminds me of another blog we'll post soon).

A has a tentative job offer from a university that is close to L's school and will go there on Friday when people start coming back from holiday to learn more about this position. Please pray with us that they will provide a furnished apartment close to L's school or that we will have peace about the apartment we are currently in.

Until then, we are exploring the city, keeping our heads low so as to dodge the celebratory bombs, firecrackers, sparklers, etc. whizzing by our heads (we aren't really in harm's way, just being melodramatic).

-L (& A)

Heaven Tastes Like Texas BBQ

Today, the first full day of our vacation, we pulled out a tourist guide, flipped to the restaurant section, and perused for a taste of home (large cities have a much better selection than smaller ones). Once, in another city we were impressed to find Tex-Mex that had paraphernalia from home and a Texas map. It was decent Tex-Mex for being on the other side of the globe, better than other knock-offs we had gone out of our way to be disappointed by, but for frequent consumers and finicky connoisseurs (if you know me at all you’ll identify me with both), it was weighed, measured, and found lacking. Bottom line-it would have gone belly-up in any small Texas town.

So, now armed with my cynicism, we pointed to the address and our taxi driver sped away towards Bubba’s Texas Style Bar-B-Que and Saloon. I had guacamole “style” dip in this country once that the jar disclosed had 1% avocados, so I wasn’t overly impressed by the name. It could be that some hombre had stopped through Texas once, had a sloppy joe at a Seven Eleven and thought he knew something about BBQ, or worse, went to a Yankee “Texas Style” cook-out and had hamburgers and hotdogs.

Upon arrival, forty minutes to opening time (cynicism meets desperation), we found an imported Texas smoker almost identical to the one in my dad’s backyard, and about four cords of split wood lining a wooden fence. We decided to walk around the neighborhood until it opened. When we returned at 10:58, we were greeted at the door by Willie Nelson blaring on the speakers and a black bumper-sticker on the front door that read “Keep Austin Weird.” My heart softened just a little. Only someone who knows the Hill Country, the heartland of Texas Bar-B-Que, would know that this bumper-sticker, as well as the Dixie Chicken sticker above the bar belongs in such an establishment. As a matter of fact, now fully inside, I could be in any Bar-B-Que joint between Abilene and Austin! “What is this place?” I now wondered to myself, half out loud. It was as if I had clicked my golden boots together 3 times and was back in the land of the free and the home of women who drive doolies with loud pipes and confederate flags in the back window!

I was now so hungry for home and nostalgia I could have eaten the greasy menu itself. I refrained and decided to order the ribs with potato salad and pinto beans. It may not seem so spectacular to you, but here, even a taste of home usually has some foreign wang to it, be it ever so subtly, so when I say that it tasted like home, I mean: IT TASTED JUST LIKE HOME!!! The pinto beans even had just a little too much black pepper…just like home (which made them perfect)! And came with free cornbread! And did I mention free refills?! The ribs had been cooked over a real wood fire, “low and slow,” and the mustard potato salad tasted just like Hard 8’s in Stephenville.

I was absolutely elated for a while. Then I went just a little too far. I closed my eyes with a mouth full of ribs, listening to Alan Jackson, and imagined my ’70 Ford pickup just outside on a gravel parking lot. All of a sudden I was 90 minutes from home…and I lost it.

-L

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! We have been celebrating for two days now because I got confused about the date. So, on February 13th, we started off by celebrating with a short cruise on the river and then went to see a movie that was coming out on the 14th. When the ticket salesclerk told us that it wouldn't be showing until tomorrow, we nicely informed him that his signs were wrong because they were left over from yesterday. We finally just got out of line and L checked our train tickets which we knew were for Wednesday. When we realized our mistake we could hardly stop laughing.

Things went downhill from there. The rest of our evening involved a large amount of rain, zero available taxis, the largest jazz band rip-off in history, a counterfeit bill, our subway shutting down two stops before our destination, an hour long line, and a person spitting on L's back. Needless to say, we're glad to have a second chance at Valentine's Day.

~A

We're Here!

How did we accumulate all this stuff in the last six months? We ended up taking 12 bags on the train! Thankfully, six people came to the train station to help us load everything. I don’t know how we could have managed without their help. The pictures above are from our train ride. As you can see we had to buy a whole bed for our bags!

The overnight train trip to the new city was very relaxing. When we reached the station the next morning someone from L’s school was there to pick us up and take us to our apartment (provided by L’s school). The apartment is very nice and is in a great location but it is not furnished, so we are waiting to see what my job provides in the way of housing before we decide where we are going to live this year. Usually teaching jobs here provide furnished housing, so we think that may be a better option. One of L’s professors has set up a job interview for me to teach English at a nearby university so hopefully we will know something soon. Until we know where we are going to permanently live we are not going to go through the hassle of getting internet in the apartment we are now staying in.

The only thing we have bought for the apartment is a heater. No buildings in this city have heating so we needed one ASAP. We keep it in the bedroom with the door shut and try to stay in there as much as possible! With the heater the temperature in the bedroom is almost comfortable but the rest of the house is pretty cold. We think that the summers here are going to be a lot like those in Texas so we probably won’t need the heater for long!

Our first impressions of the city are very good. There are lots of trees here and it is a lot less crowded than the first city we lived in. It seems very easy to get around and we are close to many good restaurants and shops. We even found a library that is within walking distance. It is new so they said that the books are still at the old library but it looks like the second floor will house foreign books so we are hopeful about that prospect.

Please continue to keep us in your thoughts. We need an incredible amount of wisdom and direction as we look for a job for me and decide where to permanently live.

~A