Houston Day 70

We had our first Melbourne guests staying with us this weekend.  Mel and Doreen, who are both dancers I met through Stone Soup/Christian Artists' Factory people, are in Houston for a week to do a dance intensive with another company here and they stayed with us Friday night.  I took them out shopping for cheap dancewear and ran into Lauren ("the black ballerina" as she calls herself) and also Isabelle from City Dance.
Mel and Dory also helped me shop for our housewarming party.  It was incredibly stressful.  I didn't notice how much I shop by feel until I came to a place where everything is different and what I think is an intuitive way to lay out a store is actually not, and you can't find chocolate mousse.
The housewarming was fun.  Mostly it was people Lucas works with, and Sherese and Stephanie from City Dance came, and Dan and Shani.  Rebekah couldn't come :( coz she's playing host to Nick's family who are in town for a week.  We're becoming friends with so many cool people, which is making me happy, but I miss being around people who know me on a deep soul level.  Mel helpfully reminded me that this takes time, and to just keep investing in friendships and it'll happen.

Houston Day 66

Yesterday morning I had to skip the first class of the day at the dance studio to take the car (her name is Matilda) to the mechanic.  Turns out all those warning lights were because I didn't screw the fuel cap on tightly enough.
Made it in to the studio for the rest of the day.  It's the last week of the Intensive and a smaller group this week, so we're all in together and not split up into different groups like all the previous weeks have been.  We had Modern with a teacher I hadn't had before, Janette, then Tap with Stephanie from the Dance Circle.  That was an insane class - in a good way.  Very challenging.  I love tap, especially with my new shoes that actually let me do toe stands.  Then we were supposed to have Improv with Sherese but she could see we were exhausted from Tap so we just hung out and talked about dangerous animals (Stephanie has a pet snake, so I think that was the starting point for that conversation).  I got to drive home, which was nicer and shorter than catching the bus which is what happens when Lucas doesn't carpool with Maggie or Christine (another new Exxon employee who lives in the Heights).
Then I had an audition for Masquerade Theatre, one of the best musical theatre companies in town.  I totally messed it up.  It was like my body betrayed me, and I was shaking and cracking all over the place.  Lucas and I went out for dinner at a restaurant in the Heights (we've got a list of recommendations from our landlords we're working our way through) but we made a pretty speedy exit coz I started crying.  The audition process can really get you down.
Slept pretty badly last night (still feeling stressed out) so I slept in and missed this morning's classes.  I've got a doctor's appointment soon to address my achillles injury, and maybe I'll make it in to the studio after that.  Then it's head down, bum up, and lots more audition prep so I can feel a little more in control at my next audition, which is next week.  There is at best a miniscule chance that I will get in to this one, and that's even if I don't screw it up.  It's the best company in Houston.  They've already cast all the leads, and they're also auditioning in LA and New York.  Sigh.  Still, every audition is a learning experience, so I'll go and see if I can't manage my nerves better.  Any tips on how to deal with nerves are appreciated :) Are you supposed to jump up and down and walk around to consume all that excess adrenaline, or are you supposed to be still and breathing and meditative so you don't create more adrenaline?

Houston Day 62 - a little Texas history and general updates

So the trip to San Antonio last weekend was lovely.  We learnt much about Texas history, which I will share with you as I tell you about our weekend!




First a broad view.  As most of these stories begin, the place was populated with native tribes before Europeans decided to take over, in this case, the Spanish.  Texas was a part of the Spanish colonies in the Americas for a few hundred years.  Then Mexico won their independence from the Spanish, and Texas was a state of Mexico.  It was pretty sparsely populated, and a bunch of people immigrated from the U.S. as part of a plan to build it up.  Then in the 1830s people of both Mexican and U.S. heritage living in Texas decided they didn't like the way the Mexican government was going, and they fought to win independence.  This they did, and the Republic of Texas lasted for about ten years before they joined the United States.  (Not much mention is made of why the Republic was unviable.  Many Texans would prefer to pretend that Texas is still its own country, and consider themselves "on loan" to the United States.)  Then they left the Union to fight with the Confederacy in the Civil War, and then they lost the Civil War and became part of the States again.  Hilariously, or tragically, or both, the last battle of the Civil War was fought - and won - in Texas after the Confederacy had already surrendered; the news just hadn't made it to Texas yet.

We arrived in San Antonio on Friday evening and stayed in the St Anthony hotel.  We got there Friday evening and went out for a drink on the Riverwalk.  The San Antonio River goes right through downtown and for most of it there are shops, restaurants and bars right on the riverfront - but this is all below street level, so you take stairs down from the street to get to the Riverwalk.  We also had breakfast there on Saturday morning.

 After our lovely weekend breakfast buffet on the river, we headed to the Alamo, and then went to the cinema to see a movie about the Alamo.  The Alamo was a Christian mission in the days of the Spanish colonisation, but then became a military base for the Mexicans.  In the Texas War of Independence the Texans took the Alamo from the Mexicans, who then laid siege to it.  The thirteen-day siege became increasingly desperate for the Texans inside the Alamo, whose requests for help from the main body of the Texan Army were refused.  They pretty much realised they were going to be slaughtered.  On the thirteenth day the Mexicans stormed in at about 5am and killed pretty much everyone there, sparing a handful of women and children.  We actually saw the room that these women and children hid in during the battle - pretty chilling to think of being in their shoes.  Some days or months later General Sam Houston led the Texans in the Battle of San Jacinto against the Mexicans, where Texas finally won its independence.  His pep talk to his troops, and their battle-cry, was "Remember the Alamo".
Texans are incredibly proud of this heroism in their history.  Think about the way Aussies feel about the ANZACs at Gallipoli and the Battle of the Nek, and then imagine if it were a war for our own land and not just a battle we were fighting on Britain's behalf; remember also that overt patriotism is cool here in a way that it definitely is not in Australia, and you'll have some idea about the cultural significance of this building.

Later Saturday evening we headed back to the Riverwalk for dinner.  Before we left Australia Joff and Amber gave us some U.S. currency to be used only for a nice dinner, so we went to a classy Mexican place on the river.  We also took a guided cruise along the river and found out all kinds of interesting historical tidbits.  For example, the Marriott Riverwalk Hotel sits on the site that used to be occupied by the three-storey Fairmount Hotel.  Because the Fairmount is heritage-listed, Marriott couldn't knock it down, so instead they mounted the whole thing on wheels and drove it three blocks down the street and around a corner.  They had to drain the river and reinforce one of the bridges to do it.  It's still operating today, and is in the Guinness Book of Records for the largest object to be moved on pneumatic tyres.  We also drove under a band playing on a bridge for some couples dancing on one of the banks, which was kinda fun.

On Sunday we went to Hemisfair Park, site of the 1968 World Fair.  I think the theme of the Fair was the celebration of the contributions various countries from the Eastern and Western Hemispheres have made to American cultures.  The highlight is the Tower of the Americas, the second-tallest freestanding building in the U.S.  We had a gorgeous lunch at the revolving restaurant at the top of the Tower before driving back to Houston. 
This week at dance school was an improvement on last week.  The desperation and sadness have surfaced less emphatically and for shorter periods of time, meaning I made it to about three-quarters of the classes, as opposed to less than half the classes last week.  I have developed a stress injury in my achilles, though, which meant that for some of the time I was at class, I had to sit out anyway.  Frustrating.
We were intending to go and see one of my friends from dance school play the lead in Oklahoma last night, but then we went to the theater company's headquarters instead of the theater they were actually performing at, and by the time we realised our mistake it was too late to make it to the show.  So other than my audition for Houston Family Arts Center this morning (don't forget you can check out the "Auditions" page to see my progress at cracking into the theater scene here!) we've had a lovely weekend so far of just tooling around the house and doing nothing terribly important.  Tonight we are having dinner at Nick and Rebekah's, and tomorrow we're going to see Harry Potter.

Houston Day 53

Doorways are smaller here, despite the fact that people, and more to the point, the furniture they sit on, are in general larger.  Just one of the many little discoveries I make every day.
I was feeling debilitatingly sad and purposeless and crap at life yesterday, so Lucas took the day off work to get me through the day.  We went out to see Kung Fu Panda 2 at the cinema, and had Mexican food for lunch.  It was in a part of town where the majority of the people are Latino so I didn't understand half the menu.  Kind of like some Chinese restaurants in Melbourne.  It's fun to be slightly surprised at what the dish actually turns out to be.  And in a Mexican restaurant, it's safe enough to assume that some combination of tortilla, meat and cheese is going to land on your plate.  Unlike in a Chinese restaurant where it may be some kind of scary sea creature on rice.  Had a Skype date with my sister and her gorgeous daughter and then went out for dinner at Chili's.  We're eating out a lot.  I feel some kind of obscure guilt about that.
In an effort to lower expectations on myself and prevent the kind of meltdown that led to the debilitating sadness, today I slept in until I felt like it, made it in to the studio for the second class of the day, then felt tired so drove home.  Spoke to my dad on the phone, organised my music and keyboard on my new desk (which is in a corner of the loungeroom I have claimed as my workspace/rehearsal corner) and did some singing practice.

Tonight there is a lecture on at the Museum of Fine Arts by a music historian about Cole Porter.  If Lucas makes it home from work in time we will go together.  Otherwise I will have to find my way there myself.  Sigh.  Driving and navigating are getting a lot more intuitive but it's still easier to let Lucas do it.  He knows his way around so well already it's astonishing.  So he drives most of the time! Maggie assured me that when she and Scott lived in Melbourne she always made Scott drive.  Makes me feel better!
When everything is ten times harder than I expect it to be, taking off a few layers of stress helps me get through each day.  People keep asking how long we're going to live here, whether we'll find a church, whether I'll get a job, whether we'll have kids some day.  I can sometimes, but not always, tell you what I'm doing tonight.  If I'm really lucky, I have some idea about the next day, or the next week.  Beyond the end of this month I definitely can't see much.  Have never lived so day-to-day before.  It's kinda cool.
I can tell you what we're doing this weekend.  We're taking a weekend trip to San Antonio, where I will finally learn what the hell the Alamo is.  Next blog, lessons in Texas history.

Houston Day 49 - a quiet Sunday morning

We are sitting in the breakfast nook.  I have the laptop, and wireless internet at last.  Lucas has Dostoevsky.  We share the use of the Lone Star table we bought last weekend at the Antiques Gallery.  Crumpets are in the new toaster, and air-conditioning allows us to pretend that it's not obscenely hot and muggy.

The new house is getting set up and is beginning to feel a bit like home.  I left my new shoes in our new toilet for the first time last night, which Lucas is taking as a good sign :) Last Friday I had some friends from dancing - Rachel, the twins and Rebekah - come over and help us shelve CDs, books, DVDs and videos.  I thought about Monica back in Melbourne and her amazingly fast sort-through of the CDs before we packed them - it definitely helped on this end Moni! I miss you!

Mackenzie and Morgan in front of their work

Rachel in the middle of her work!

Most weekends are taken up with furniture shopping.  It's mostly fun (Houston has some great antiques stores) but sometimes a bit overwhelming and stressful.  I've had a few auditions, including one yesterday that was really quite embarrassing.  Sometimes I don't feel stressed, I just notice that I must be because my behaviour is not quite right, and I do things like turning up to an audition without reading the brief properly and only had one song to present instead of two.  :( Reminds me of one of my favourite "Friends" quotes: Chandler and Monica are hiding out in Chandler & Joey's apartment (it's when they're still being secretive about their relationship).  Joey comes home.
Chandler: What are you doing here? I thought you had an audition!
Joey: Well, I'm sorry for not being a middle-aged black woman.   And I'm also sorry if sometimes I happen to go to the wrong audition.
If you'd like to keep up with my audition progress, I'm keeping a tally on the page entitled "Auditions".
Yesterday afternoon after auditioning and shopping for a desk (and being unsuccessful at both), we were invited by Scott and Maggie to a pub in the Heights called the Tall Texan. It was my first experience of what I had assumed to be a typical Texan pub.  The bartender asked us for our IDs because she hadn't seen us before, until Maggie and her friend Shani arrived I was one of only three women in the place including the bartender, and I was wondering if Lucas was going to get shot if he ordered me an appletini.  Scott bought the rounds, and for three Lone Star beers in margarita glasses, a chardonnay in a beer mug (the only non-beer option), and two packets of peanuts, paid the grand total of $8.  After Scott and Maggie left to go meet someone else for dinner, we stayed talking to Shani and her partner (husband???) Dan, who lived in Melbourne for two years, were ordered by Exxon to come back unexpectedly early, and miss it like crazy.
Then Lucas and I went to Katz' Never Kloses, a New-York style Jewish deli and met up with Rebekah.  Bekah is one of the teachers at City Dance Studio, and she and her husband Nick are originally from Virginia but have just moved to Houston from Costa Rica.  Nick works for an online poker company.  He was away in Vegas with some poker buddies this week and Bekah couldn't go coz she had an audition in Houston so she was all on her own! She came back to our place for appletinis after dinner and was our first overnight guest. 

Nick & Rebekah at their place

Lucas and Rebekah and the appletini he made her!

 

 

Houston Day 46 - Internet at last!

We finally have internet in our new house! Hurrah! Can't blog much now as am heading out to Rebekah's for a movie night (Rebekah is a new friend who I will tell you all about next time)! Will update soon!