Houston Day 28

After really good conversations with both Lucas and Sherese I am feeling better about things.  Sherese is such a mum, although she's not really old enough to be my mum, and she asked me some really honest questions and helped me think about homesickness, and friends, and boredom, and career, and talking to her and Lucas has really helped me underst

Houston Day 25

Really stuck in a negative rut right now.  This just keeps getting harder and harder.  It's been really nice to hear from some other people I know who've been through the same thing and know that this is normal.  I know that this too shall pass, but most of the time that's pretty hard to hold on to.
Today I felt for the first time a really strong desire to just give up and go back to Melbourne.  It was in Pilates class.  Not that Pilates would be any easier in Melbourne.  Although maybe it would be, because I wouldn't be feeling so lonely.  I sobbed through most of the class.
But after Pilates I went out for coffee with some of my new friends, which was great.  It was really refreshing to have some people with whom I can talk about things that matter, and not just be superficially friendly with.  BUT they wanted to talk about career  and that's doing my head in right now.
.....Just took a break from blogging and had a really good convo with Lucas...am feeling a bit better and think I have a plan-ish...

Houston Day 22

We're thinking about taking a weekend trip over the Fourth of July weekend which is coming up.  We're just googling different places around here, seeing where the good visiting spots are and how far away they all are.  El Paso is nearly twelve hours drive.  We will not be going there for a weekend.  I zoomed out of the map a little bit trying to orient myself to the geography, and I found myself staring at the google map centred on Texas for about five minutes.  I'm in Texas.  This is where I live.  If I want to drive for six hours I can go visit New Orleans.  If I want to drive in a different direction I can go visit Mexico, where I don't even speak the language.  That's really quite bizarre.
It helps that we have a house! We signed a lease on Saturday for our house in the Heights! We move in on June 21st.
It was a  pretty up-and-down weekend.  Friday afternoon I failed my driving test for my Texas drivers licence, then got lost driving home, couldn't make head nor tail of how to get onto the freeway nor why all of a sudden it seemed like I was driving on the left-hand side of the road coming up to a roundabout (which don't usually exist here), ran up onto the kerb and got a flat tyre.  Lucas and Maggie were driving home from work and came to rescue me, which was lovely.  We took Maggie out for a beer to say thanks, and then went to - shock horror - a social engagement! We had an invite to a party! One of Lucas' workmates had his housewarming.  It was brilliant to meet some people, most of whom are our age and also new to Houston.
Saturday we signed the lease, and drove around running some errands and checking out some shops (it's fun to start looking at furniture and appliances!) Saturday evening we went out for Thai food and saw the XMen movie.  (It's pretty good.  There's a surprise cameo which is really funny and I won't tell you who it is in case you want to see it.)  Sunday we joined Costco.  Yay, I'm a real American.  We bought food in bulk.  The most frightening thing was the twin pack of enormous peanut butter jars.

Sunday afternoon I rehearsed with the Dance Circle.  But the best news of the weekend was that I got a callback for a play! Yippee skippy! Won't go to the effort of talking about it in case I don't get the gig.
I'm really struggling though.  Friday was the first day I really felt so sick of being in a new place and knowing so few people all I wanted to do was hide.  I sometimes don't understand people's colloquialisms and their accents, and they don't understand mine, or they laugh at them.  Tiny things like buying petrol are completely foreign and take half an hour.  And I'm feeling totally lost in terms of my career path.  I have some leads to follow, but the gigs I'm getting invited to audition for or participate in are the kind of gigs for people who perform as a serious hobby, not for their career.  I am beginning to feel like I've missed the boat.  I didn't do enough serious training early enough, and I'm too old to have a CV as short as I do.  Not really sure if this is just homesickness talking, or if it's just the case that I have a serious hobby but no serious career path, or if I just hang in there it'll pick up and I'll get my dream job. 

Houston Day what are we up to? - Dance School day 3

The third day, the pain.  And Sherese deliberately went easy on the airconditioner today so that we all "really understand that it's a dance INTENSIVE; it's good for y'all to sweat".
Ballet.
Modern.
Hip hop.  (I must have jinxed the universe.  He made us freestyle.  However, I didn't cry, and I was kind of able to have fun with it.)
Mock auditions.
And tonight I've been invited to take class with the Dance Circle, who are one of the performance groups associated with the school.  Yay!

Houston Day 16- Dance School Day 2

Day two at school was pretty fun, although it's a harder slog when you're tired from the day before.  Started off with ballet again, but with a slightly different bunch of people than yesterday.  I don't quite understand the logic of who gets put in what class, but Sherese just kind of tells everyone where to go in between classes.  Ballet was followed by capoiera...I've never done capoiera before (it's a Brazilian martial art) but I've heard about it.  It seems like a cool tradition, and seems to form cool communities and have a great history and philosophy, but maybe I'd be more fascinated if someone else was doing it, not me.... After lunch (which was a trip to a nearby Turkish deli for the best sandwich I think I've ever had), I had Pilates, which was a truly special time.  The teacher was Eboni, who also taught us for Modern yesterday.  She's cool.  She seems to be able to fit in any context - she's all organic and spiritual about things when she's teaching, and yet she's been working as a backup dancer in Vegas for over four years, which from all reports is the least organic place on earth! Apparently she got that gig a whole year after she auditioned for it.  I can't even remember what I was auditioning for this time last year! Anyway, before we did this one exercise she only half-jokingly suggested we pray to whoever we pray to so we could have the strength to get through it, and we all did.  And just taking that little moment of connecting with my source of life actually gave me a strength and endurance that surprised me.  I am so pleased by how much mentally stronger I am these days.  It was an amazing class.  I was pushing myself to my very limits and wasn't too scared about it, I was not afraid of being in pain or getting tired.  The last class was improv, also facilitated by Eboni.  She started by just whispering to some people to go and copy some other people, and soon we had random groups all over the room playing in different ways while she put on the music.  I love ending the day with improv, and contemporary-style improv, not that awful commercial freestyling I had to do at Dance Factory that never failed to make me cry.  Although who knows? Maybe the new stronger me could get through one of those freestyling experiences unscathed.

Houston Day 15 - At last, I get to do things

Hooray! Yesterday I had my first Houston audition, and today I started at dance school here.  The audition was mostly good.  No one's called yet though :( ...although it is barely 24 hours since auditions finished.  It's a relief to have it over and not have preparation hanging over my head all the time.
Dance school was great (I even drove there by myself).  Started off with ballet with someone who used to dance with the Houston Ballet.  She was the first African-American ballerina ever to dance in a principal role.  She's pretty harsh as a teacher (I guess you don't get her credentials without a certain amount of steely toughness), but I'm getting better at this whole mental game of performing arts.  I'm able to just focus on becoming a better performer without taking anything a teacher says personally, no matter how personal the language is that they use.  Then there was a modern class (pretty similar to what I have danced and called contemporary....maybe just a continental thing about what term is used?), and after lunch had hip hop.  I usually find hip hop pretty fun.  I just love the attitude, and coz I know it's pretty unlikely hip hop is going to form any part of my career, I just have fun with it.  We finished off the day with half an hour of improv work in partners.  My partner was really cool and we had fun together.  It was a really good day! I'm older than most of the other students, but it didn't bother me too much today.  Hopefully I'll still make some friends!

Editor's Comment [Day 12]

Just to clarify a few things.

1.  I was talking about hurricanes in "Day 8 - a Day Trip to Galveston" and got some of my facts wrong.  There was, in fact, a devastating hurricane in Galveston in 1900, but I think that was before they started naming storms.  The reason everyone remembers Hurricane Ike is because the storm with that name was in 2008!  By the way, the official start to the hurricane season was yesterday.  There are warnings around, and Lucas got a talk at work in the quarterly safety meeting (Exxon's obsessed with safety - I'm not complaining!) about how to protect yourself in a storm.  If you're interested in the history of hurricanes check out this website by the National Hurricane Center which also has links to other things about storms.
2.  I woke up with the horrible feeling this morning that some of my dear friends and readers may think I was calling them "narrow-minded" in "Day 11".  Deepest apologies if I've offended anyone.  What I was trying to say is that while it is tempting for some Christians and, as Spong so beautifully puts it, "members of the church alumni association" to use labels like that against more orthodox Christians, on a closer look those labels may not fit that well.  Again, sorry if you felt like anything pejorative was aimed at you.  It wasn't.

Today our relocation consultant is taking me to apply for my Social Security Number, and I will do lots of work on my audition preparation before Lucas and I meet our potential landlord this evening.  I will not watch America's Next Top Model.

Houston day 11

Lucas has started work and I'm BORED.  It's not that I don't have things to do.  I have an audition in three days that could do with some more prep.  There are a great gym and pool in our apartment complex.  There is a lot more exploring to do outside.  I have people to call and email.  But I always get this way whenever I have unscheduled time and I'm home alone.  I eat crap and watch telly.  And there's a station that runs America's Next Top Model nonstop.  So guess how I've spent most of today.  Although, I did do a little singing practice and go to the gym.  But, I confess, there's a TV in the gym so I watched more Top Model while I was stepping away on the stepping machine.  (Brief digression: I love exercise.  I love going to the gym.  Man, if my teenaged self could hear me now I would accuse myself of being a traitor to the "I believe that everyone who runs secretly hates it as much as I do" school.  You've just got to do some exercise and hate it for a while first before you get fitter and actually start enjoying it.) Ooh, I also read a bit.  I've finished Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley, which is a brilliant novel, and I've started Why Christianity Must Change or Die by Bishop Spong.  Haven't read much Spong but I think he might be my kind of guy.  Made me think: he says that "I speak to those who have been taught that to engage in worship requires that they never raise questions".  Funny thing is, I don't know any Christians who have actually been taught that in so many words.  Before I started questioning my way out of Christianity I believed that I was a thinking believer.  Part of the reason why it's so horrible to try and describe the difference between my new and old selves (which is a slightly artificial dichotomy, I know), and between my Christian friends and me, is that I/they genuinely believe/d that labels like "unquestioning" and "narrow-minded" didn't/don't apply.  It's just that the questions hadn't led to a certain place yet (how exactly do you describe that place?), and for some people they never will.  Discuss.  And please see "Editor's Comment [Day 12]".
Anyway, there you go.  Trash TV, binge eating and spiritual reflection.  The glamourous world of international travel.