I love Austin!

I love Austin! It is just a great city. It is very pedestrian friendly and safe. I have come to Austin many times and driven around, but I have never really walked the city. You just get a better feel for a town once you have walked around to scope it out. There aren't many cities that you can do this in, but Austin just happens to be one of those cities.

I had to come for a visit due to work. We are attending the National Hispanic College Fairs here in Austin and San Antonio. We had another counselor that was supposed to come, but it fell through and I was chosen to make the trip. I was totally ok with that because I was ready to get out of dodge for a little bit anyways.

So I got into town around 6:45pm and checked into the Embassy Suites south of Downtown. I always try to stay here when I come to Austin because they have a kick ass breakfast. They have ready to order omelettes and other goodies, and it is a nice property too.

After I dropped off my bag, I went exploring. I walked over to the Whole Foods on the corner of 5th and Lamar. It was about a mile walk and it was a good way to make myself hungry for dinner. As I was getting closer to the Whole Foods, I was encountering these new developments that I saw last time that I was in town. They were just steel structures, so I didn't really know what they were to become. Well, it turns out that they are lofts. And beautiful lofts they are! They are in a part of town called the "Warehouse district" and they really reflected that. They all had balconies and whatnot and I really envy the people who live there. I am sure that they pay a pretty penny for them and that I cannot afford it, but one can hope.

When I walked into Whole Foods, it was great. I have been inside before, so I knew what it looked like, but this time, I had a pedestrian perspective and could see what it was like shopping there as a local from the neighborhood. As I walked over to the cafe, I fit right in as a patron looking around for dinner. I ended up having the London Broil with mashed sweet potatoes and a squash mix. It was very good, and only $10. Not bad.

After the adventures in Whole Foods, I walked across the street to a new shopping center where there was a REI and a bookstore. The bookstore was the only thing open, so I went in and walked around. I purchased a magazine and started to make my way back to Congress Ave. and to the Hotel (or so I thought).

At this point, I was on 6th Street. I remembered the Dizzy Rooster from the Austin season of the Real World, so I went to find that. Many blocks later, I found it around the corner of 6th and Lavaca; only 3 or so blocks away from the Real World House. It was pretty small, but cool looking nonetheless. I wanted to go in for a drink, but I really didn't want to go in solo. It would just be weird.

After peeking into the Dizzy Rooster, I walked back towards Congress Ave. and when I got there, I decided that I would walk up to the Capitol. I was half way there, so I figured why not.

The Capitol is beautiful at night, all lit up. When I got there, I found that the gates were surprisingly still open, so I walked on through. As I walked up to the stairs leading to the door, I noticed a family walking around as well. This was comforting at 9:30pm on a Sunday night.

I made my way around the building and took some pictures and made my way once again back towards Congress Ave.

When I got to 11th and Congress, I noticed that I was near the KTBC (Fox 7) studios, so I went over and snapped a few shots of one of their live trucks and the cover over their front door. Its not everyday that you walk right past a TV station!

And from there I made my way back to the Hotel, about 11 blocks away. I stopped on the Congress Ave. bridge to see if I could see any bats (I did.. they were out looking for food) and then went back to the Hotel.

It was dark for most of my trip and I felt safe the entire 4.2 miles of my trip. Again, you could make a walking trip like this in every city. I enjoy the fact that Austin is a very young city and that UT and the young, working professionals keep this city young. They also care about the environment and are also very laid back. It would be great to live here and grow a family here. Austinites have the right attitude to do so. They are a medium sized city with the big town amenities and the small town charm. These are the perfect elements for a great city!

(Pictures will be uploaded when I get home)

Conversations with students

I went to a High School today to talk with students and this is the conversation that I had with one :

Me -"Hey what's up."

Student - "Yeah, I am here to see what majors you have."

Me - "We have many."

Student - "Yeah, but you don't have one for pimps and ho's."

Me - (blank stare)

Stats for Central Texas, San Antonio and Houston

Central Texas:

Miles Driven : 474

Gallons of Gas used : 20.189

Days gone : 5

Hotels stayed in : 3

Times eaten out : 2

San Antonio :

Miles Driven : 417

Gallons of Gas Used : 17.025

Days Gone : 5

Hotels Stayed in : 1

Times eaten out : 5

Houston :

Miles Driven : 554

Gallons of Gas Used : 24.463

Days Gone : 7

Hotels Stayed in : 1

Times eaten out : 5

Photo Credit

Travel Recaps

Ok... so this traveling thing takes up more time that I thought that it would. It has been forever since I have been on the treadmill and forever since I have been on blogger.

For the past 3-4 travel weeks, I have been to Central Texas, San Antonio and Houston. Next week, I will begin Fort Worth week of travel which will consist of programs outside of Tarrant County. Wichita Falls, Stephenville, Weatherford, Graham and others are eagerly anticipating my arrival. Just kidding...

Austin was fun. I always enjoy Central Texas. I had a bunch of good food, great barbecue and many students who were truly interested in attending North Texas. This week, I had a PT Cruiser, so it was a new car to the inventory of cars that I have driven. Austin Bergstrom International Airport is cool. Right as you get off of the plane, you encounter many stereotypical Texan murals. It was very colorful and bright and also seemed like they had some good restaurants inside the security area (or at least that is what my nose was telling me).

San Antonio was mediocre. I stayed at a Hampton Inn off of IH Loop 410 and they had some good food for breakfast. Also, I was next door to a Marie Calendars. In addition, I drove a Pontiac G-6, so that was pretty awesome. My first Pontiac experience. Those things were it about the good things. The traffic and construction sucked. It was worse than Houston. On every major interstate highway that I got on, there was construction. It was also freaking HOT! I went to 2 programs in a row where there was no air-conditioning in the room where they had the reps and it was ridiculous especially with the amount of people in the room. Needless to say, that day was one in which I had to go back and change my shirt and take a shower before my evening program. I had some good food here too. I also met some cool counselors too.

Houston this past week was good. I stayed in the Galleria area for the week. Before it started though, I got to spend time with my family. That was pretty cool. This week was a little messed up due to state testing (TAKS) so I had a bit of free time. I took that and walked a lot. I walked around the Galleria, contemplated Ice Skating at the Ice Rink but did not have appropriate socks for the job, and walked around Memorial Park, the infamous runners park of Houston. I also met up with a friend while I was down there, so that was pretty cool. The only thing that sucked about this week was that my flight was delayed on the way home, so I got home at 11pm. This week I drove a Pontiac Grand Prix and determined that I am not that fond of Pontiacs. They are nice cars, but their buttons and knobs for the windows are confusing. They do love to get up and go and I really do like that (it is especially needed in Houston).

This week is a little break. I am actually home and get to eat my own cooking for a change. Which is really good if I do say so myself :) I can actually sleep in my own bed and take a shower in my own tub. Who knew that such things were so valuable? This week, I am hosting kids on campus and visiting Irving tomorrow for a presentation to Seniors who are interested in UNT. This weekend will be one of relaxation and nothingness.

Have a good week!

Photo Credit

Panhandle Week Stats

Total Miles driven : 864.5

Total sit down meals eaten : 2

Total Fast Food meals eaten : 4

Total trips to Gas station for fuel : 4

Total Schools visited : 7

The Amarillo Wrap Up

Days 3 and 4 were busy ones. Obviously, I did not have too much access to Internet nor time to really do anything. On day 3, I did a little triangle drawing starting my day driving to Borger, TX to Frank Phillips College to do some recruiting. For those who do not know, Frank Phillips is the same Phillips of the Phillips 66 gasoline company. There were quite a bit of oil rigs and refineries in Borger, so knowing that Phillips was from this area helped make since of all of the oil machinery.

From Borger, I ran north to Perryton, TX. This is about 15 minutes from the Oklahoma Panhandle border. I met a girl (who happened to be my hostess) who was really interested in UNT. She really wanted to come join our Photojournalism program. That was really cool. In the past, we have had some great interest come from Perryton. From Perryton, I shot down SH 70 to Pampa. That was a beautiful drive because it went through a few canyons and I got to see the "Grand Canyon of Texas." It was beautiful. There were also so many colors too.. I wish that I had brought my camera so I could take some pictures, but next time though.

Pampa was a slow program due to church and "Saw you at the pole" activities (this is what the program's host called it, but it is actually "See you at the pole".

I then drove through the rain from Pampa to Childress, stopping in between at this odd gas station to devour a sandwich at the obscure Subway shop inside. The lady inside peered all through my cup to make sure that it did not have a hole in it. Fortunately it did not have a hole, but it did pick up a few germs as she put the cup open side down on her counter that she probably hadn't wiped down in a few hours.

I continued on to Childress where I was hit with the powerful mixture of smells of cow patties and petroleum. It was AWESOME! I stayed in a podunk Best Western who has a history of screwing people (they charged me for a stay before I even made it to Childress) and left immediately first thing in the morning.

After my Childress program where the TX Army National Guard guys held a concert playing the rock music so loud that I had to yell to talk to students, I made a pit stop at a Kettle restaurant, ate me some vegetable soup and Salisbury steak and drove the 4 hours back to the Metroplex.

The Panhandle was a good trip. It was pretty cool because it was my first long term (more than just driving through) trip to this region of Texas. There was a lot of cool scenery. I definitely want to go visit the Palo Duro Canyon State Park sometime so I can see more of this beautiful scenery.

Photo Credit: This is a picture from Palo Duro State Park.. A small sample of what I saw while driving around the Panhandle.

Day 2: "More Cattle per capita than people"

Today I visited Hereford, TX, the county seat of Deaf Smith County. It was a cool little country town, lots of farm land, they actually had a few restaurants, and a Wal-Mart. Oh, and they have cows. And LOTS of COWS. As the title says, more cattle than people. On the farm lands, there were lots of cows. There were even cows on the "Welcome to Hereford" signs.. Nice.. And the sign for the water system.. It was "Acceptable". In most North Texas and Gulf Coast cities, this sign usually says "Superior". This means that the public water system meets certain requirements based on the TCEQ or the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality states. Needless to say, I tried to stay clear of their water and ice. I guess I shouldn't have had that slushie after all.. Oops.. The most likely reason that the water system was not up to par probably stems from the cows and the run off that they produce. All of that ammonia and fecal matter that they produce, including all of the medicines that the cows ingest from their meal to keep them strong and ready to eat that do not automatically disappear like everybody seems to think.

Upon returning from Hereford, I tried to eat at this Health Food store / restaurant that Nathan suggested to me from his cross country trio, but by time I drove around the block 5 times trying to find it, the lady told me that the restaurant closed at 4pm (I got there at 4:15) and that all they had left over was sandwiches. That made me a little frustrated. I was curious about this place and what they served because they are a specialty health food place, but I guess that I will never know. Instead, I ate at Whataburger out of frustration of not finding any place else that I could sit down and eat at.... I should have waited like I really wanted to because upon arriving at the Civic Center for the next program, I found out that they had food.. It was sandwiches, but they still smelled good..

My night time program was at the Amarillo Civic Center and it went well. It was actually more busy than I anticipated. After talking to the citizenry here, there are a lot of cousins, brothers and sisters that attend North Texas from the Panhandle region than I thought.

Tomorrow, I will be doing a northern tour of the panhandle with stops in Borger (with the hard "g" like bor-guh-er, not bor-g-er as I have been pronouncing it all this time), Perryton (about 10 minutes away from the OK border) and Pampa. From Pampa, I will be making my final pit stop in Childress where I will stay the night, do my program Thursday morning and head back to DFW Thursday afternoon..

Now it is time to code cards and do reports.. YAY!! :)

P.S. Hereford has a population of 14,531 as of 2006, so it is not like it is a really small town or something like that...

P.S.S. WTAMU, has an awesome college radio station that totally gets me.. They tout themselves at the "Station for your generation" and it totally fits. They play alternative music and good stuff like Oasis, Chelsea Dagger and Kaisers and so much more.. It is now my #1 favorite Amarillo/Canyon station!

Adventures in recruiting : Panhandle Day 1

Well it all started out with a delayed flight. I was supposed to leave DFW at 815, but we did not end up leaving until 9. And the plane was really cramped... This will teach me to fly a regional jet with American Eagle. It was literally a sardine can.

However, when we got to Amarillo, the weather made up for it because it was nice and crisp which is something that I cannot say about the weather in the Metroplex.

I picked up my car from the rental company and it was a Kia Rondo. It wasn't quite what I had envisioned, but it works. I didn't think that Enterprise would carry foreign cars (although Kia's are pretty cheap which may be the reason that they have it). So after getting my car, I went to the OTHER Hampton Inn in town because I had inadvertently given the front office staff the wrong address to ship my materials to. I had to wait in line for 10 minutes to get my stuff because the receptionist was booking some major party or event of some kind.

After I grabbed my 8 boxes of stuff, I headed to the big town of Dalhart. This is in the northern part of the TX Panhandle and it approximately 15 minutes away from New Mexico. (Side note : I totally wanted to go to NM, but I told the dude at the car place that I would not take the car out of state and I only got about 2 hours of sleep last night, so I figured that I would go back to my hotel so I can just relax because this will be the only day like this that I will get to hangout for the night and not have any night programs.)

On the way to Dalhart I encountered a lot of hills and red dirt. Supposedly this area is hilly and contains plateaus... It was very nice.. Very picturesque of a desert. I think that I did more 'sightseeing' than actual road watching.

There were 3 schools in attendance at the program. The genius staff at Dalhart High School, the host school, thought that it would be a 'good idea' to have their kids have the recruiters sign a piece of paper saying that the student 'visited' with a recruiter and gained some knowledge about the college admissions process. Well they were wrong. Students just came up to me and said, "Would you sign this?" I replied with "Do you have any questions about UNT that I can help you with?" and they replied, "I don't know" or "No." This was frustrating because it was waisting my time and the time of the other recruiters who were talking with students who really cared about college and weren't just "trying to get the grade."

So after I left the program, I decided to take a different way back to Amarillo to see some other places and I got to drive through Dumas. This is a small to medium size town and it actually had stoplights. It was the only one that I encountered besides Amarillo with stop lights. It was cool seeing Dumas because my roommate for Orientation at UNT was from Dumas and now I have an appreciation of where he was coming from.

Upon arriving back to my hotel, I watched the local NBC station's 5 PM newscast. It was definitely different than a large market newscast. They did the whole weather cast within the first 5 minutes of the show, whereas others will save it for 15 minutes in the show. And the weatherperson had no flow. She was about as bad as me when it comes to speaking. She kept stumbling across her words and would loose track of what she was trying to convey. **There is going to be a cold front coming through tonight so it will get even cooler. Tomorrow, it is not supposed to get any warmer than the low 80's and will be in the high 50's at night time!! Can you say "sweater weather?"

Following the newscast, I went over to Cracker Barrel by myself for dinner. It was tasty. I had meat loaf. It just kinda sucked because I didn't have anybody to talk to, but I don't know the other recruiters here and I haven't seen any of my friends from last week, but maybe I will run into somebody tomorrow.

I then checked out the local grocery store. Here they are called United. It is a locally owned chain similar to HEB. I bought some "Dr. U" and some Root Beer. I just had a root beer and it was pretty good. Not as good as HEB, but it can have a spot up there.. It is cool to go into a grocery store because it can tell you a lot about a community. It tells who lives in the area and what the income range is. This store had a lot of Hispanic fares which I did not expect from this area because it is so far away from the border. They also had good prices on produce. A head of cabbage was $0.49 a pound, whereas that would be $1.69 a pound in the Metroplex. Milk prices were comparable to the Metroplex, $3.89 a gallon. I think that will be a constant trend as milk prices everywhere are expected to rise.

Tonight I will do my report and probably go to bed after the News at 10 to try to catch up on some lost sleep.

Tomorrow, I will be heading south to Hereford and I have to run by Amarillo College and then hangout at the Amarillo Conference Center for another program tomorrow night.

Off to the ironing board.. Literally, I have to iron my clothes for tomorrow.. :)

Photo Credit: This is from the Cadillac Ranch to the West of town. I passed this today on my way to Dalhart.. It was pretty cool. Just random cars sticking out from the ground.