Firstly, I'm sorry that I have not been keeping up with the blog. It is hard to keep up with it when my days are so full of driving or other activities and the last thing I would want to do is be anti-social and blog when I'm staying with such interesting hosts. If I were blogging the whole time then I wouldn't have anything to blog about...
FOOD:
Hole in the wall....
Thats exactly where I like to eat. Usually good food and low prices, both of which are important to me. The later more so than the former but still... Mark took us to a couple places we for sure would not have found on our own. The first place we went to was this authentic Mexican place, for breakfast. It was in a little shop right next to a cleaners and a drive through liquor store. No, I can't remember the name of it... that's because it was in Spanish. The head chef and owner used to be a pastry chef at a very high end country club which was easy to guess because the bread used for the meals was incredible. He talked to every customer who came in with a huge smile on his face, not one of those fake hostess smiles, but a genuine ear to ear grin that only comes from something real. It sounds corny but I don't really know how else to describe it. You could tell that this little place was his pride and joy. The other place we went to was a bar-b-que place called Beavers. Why can I remember the name of this place and not the Mexican place? Well first of all, it is English. Secondly, the owners are a lesbian couple which makes the name, Beavers, significant. If you don't understand the significance, ask a friend or go to urbandictionary.com... warning, it is not PG. And thirdly, there were pictures, paintings, and sculptures of beavers (the animal) everywhere! So it was kinda hard to forget. Mark and I both got burgers... but not just any burger. These had bacon inside the massive beef patties. Carla somehow always finds a way to out do us... She got a chickwich, a pulled bbq chicken sandwich that was taller than her face. I took a picture of her, eyes wide, next to the tower of a meal and sent it to a few mutual friends at 12:12pm. I took a picture of her, with a pained look on her face, next to the empty plate and sent it at 12:22pm. Yup. 10 minutes. You can see from the pictures that Carla is not a big person. Correction. Carla is a tiny person. Her eating skills are a mystery to everyone.
PEOPLE:
Houston is the first place we stayed without knowing our host prior to visiting. We contacted a classmate in the area but he was out of the country so he connected us to Mark, who is an officer in the Houston Alumni Association. He graduated in 2003, concentrated in history, was a varsity swimmer, and a fellow Cap and Gown member from Minnesota. He was nice enough to let the 3 of us share his huge bed while he slept on the futon for the two nights we were there. He moved to Houston after living and famously working in Singapore as a reality TV host. He went to Singapore after graduating as part of the Princeton in Asia program and while he was on a bus, a man went up to him and asked if he had ever done any television or acting, gave him his card, and then he became the host of a reality show similar to the Batchelorette. He hosted reality TV and did some acting for six years. To his disliking, I enjoyed comparing him to Ryan Seacrest. Mark had the life of a superstar in Singapore but he wanted something different. He wanted to eventually raise kids in America, work and live in America, be in America. He was embarrassed to say but also quick to say that he moved to Houston for a girl. A girl he met in Singapore who was doing graduate studies at Rice University. They are no longer together. He found a good job in Houston working for a tutoring company that was actually founded by Princeton grads from the 80s. He was good at his job but there were a couple things he did not like. He worked nights and weekends, opposite hours of the rest of the world including his ex-girlfriend. He could have done without the weird hours but he had a deeper, moral problem with his work. He felt that he was expanding the inequality in higher education opportunities. He tutored kids in SAT and ACT tests for a crazy high fee. With his services, students could essentially pay for higher standard test scores. He was the problem of unequal resource availability that leads to unequal higher education opportunities. His company would volunteer at lower income schools but he said it was never enough. So he quit. He started his new job on July 5th, from the bottom, as an intern in finance.
We hung out with a group of 30 year old single people. Yup. People who are not settled with kids (yet). People who are still switching jobs because they want to. Ashley switched between a few law firms because she wanted to do more trial law. She had a good paying, steady job at this one firm but she wanted something different and now she actually enjoys working. Andrew was a Geology major, now lives in Houston and as he puts it, looks for oil all day. These people outgoing, fun, interesting, and optimistic about the future. Their enjoyment of life was contagious. It was great to meet them because they were proof that life after college will be different but not worse, that being a social sciences concentrator doesn't completely limit my options, that I don't have to worry about having spent all my college summers playing golf, going to asia, and working waitress jobs.
Next stop.. AUSTIN (well, more like Lakeway).
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