Texas Tour - El Paso Take 2

Michael and I are not "road trip" people in the slightest way. Put me on a 14 hour plane flight to Tokyo and I have no problems. Put me in a car for 2 hours to get from Lubbock to Amarillo, and by the end of it, I'm about ready to start clawing my way out of the car. When we decided to drive ourselves around Texas rather than fly, I was a bit scared. Seriously, we both hate car trips. And if you know how gigantic Texas is, and know the locations we had to visit, you might be scared too. Michael kinda ditched me emotionally. He was for once, very excited about our "road trip" across Mighty Texas. I don't know why. Maybe because its been about 10 months since he last drove a car?

After our Austin venture our next step was to tackle the "BIG" Drive. Thats right Ladies and Gentleman, we were going to be CRAZY and drive from Dallas to El Paso. Dallas to El Paso? Yes, Dallas to El Paso. That's 10 long hours, squeezed in a car across Texas. In case you have ever wondered, yes, Dallas to El Paso is indeed a LONG drive! But, the insane thing was, this drive was actually GREAT and passed soooo fast. We got out of Dallas about 7:45am and arrived on my moms doorstep at about 5:30pm! The last hour and a half was a little long, but I think it was more the anticipation of being almost there than we wanted it to be over.

Long Haul Across Texas Scenery

My Texas Mountains starting to get bigger and bigger as we get closer to El Paso.

To be honest, I'm a bit blogged out right now from all the "travelogue-ing" I've been doing from Rome, Florence, Uzzano, Dallas and Austin. So my El Paso and Lubbock sections are going to be FAR from as detailed. Actually, by the time we got to Lubbock I barely took any pictures!

El Paso was spent catching up with family and a few friends. The few friends I got to see were kind enough to not even meet up with us till about 10pm and they all had work in the mornings. Those are good friends. I got some time with 3 of my 5 siblings, but sadly missed the other 2. I missed ALL of my nieces and nephews except for two of them.

Mi Familia

Me and my buddy Ian.

Back in 8th-11th grade he was one of my best friends in the whole world. I could count on this guy for ANYTHING and vise versa. He even took me to homecoming our Junior Year. In the past 11 years, my brother stole him from me and now, he is one of Joe's best friends in the whole world. I'm cool with that though. As long as he stays in Joe's life, he will stay in mine too.

There is a new bowling ally in El Paso close to Sunland Park Mall. On Tuesday there is a really cool special. You go, pay 10 dollars for bowling and they give you a 10 dollar gift card back to use at the bar!! SWEET! Free bowling and lots of pitchers of beer. So we went with some friends and Joe LATE at night, but they are so cool that they stayed up.

Joe checking how shiny Michaels head is.

Michael ready to bowl and showing off his big arm

Joe, Michael, Jeremy and Dlane
My OLD OLD friend Chris bowled with us too. Him, Joe and I have known each other since our "Western Hills" days!! (elementary school)

I requested lobster one night. So my sweet mom, made us lobster one night, and it was delicious.

Michael, Sharon and my mom ready to dig in

Our last night, we played Guitar Hero. It is just as cool as everyone says.

The weather in El Paso was a very welcome change from the snow we had in Dallas. It was HOT (70 something degrees) and SUNNY and BEAUTIFUL. It was exactly what I was hoping for from Texas. While most El Pasoeans would say it wasn't hot, just a little warm, to my Danish adjusted body, it was HOT. I wore tank tops, shorts, and skirts and loved every moment of it.

I've also updated the post below with captions to the few pictures on there. :)

Texas Tour - El Paso.... kind of

Oh my gosh. We've been having fun and in turn we have been SO busy!
I started to write this blog post, and uploaded a couple pictures. And now, I just learned that I'm about to leave. So, this is my blog post!
Enjoy these 5 pictures!

The weather in El Paso was BEAUTIFUL!
I was torn, I wanted to climb a tree but I had on a skirt....the tree won and I climbed it skirt and all!

Goofing around

This is Camille. She use to live "down the hill" from us while we were growing up. I hadn't seen her since we were somewhere between probably 4 and 8 years old.

Michael and Jeremy.
Jeremy is one of mine and Joe's dearest friends ever from high school.
Him and Michael are good buds too.

My sweet not so little nieces

Graduation Anniversary!

Today I was in my normal online routine. Check my AOL mail, check my Gmail, check out other blogs, and check out myspace. While I was on myspace I saw something posted by one of my high school friends with the title, "Graduation Anniversary!" I thought, ok, this is just something about when she graduated from college or she just graduated and is having an anniversary. So, I opened the post and low and behold this is what it said: "Congrats and Happy 9th Anniversary of our high school Graduation to all my Class of '98 CHS friends! I hope I see all of you next year at the reunion."

What a lovely thing to see. I can't believe it has been 9 years to the day that I graduated from high school!!!! 9 YEARS!! I knew this, but seeing that it was 9 years today just kinda stirred up a bunch of "whoa" emotions in me. I know most of the people that keep up this this blog have been out of high school longer then I have been but it is just kinda hitting me now that this next year will be 10 years that I was living my senior year.

Anyways all this made me think about all my wonderful high school friends and how I am soooo lucky that I still keep in touch with so many of them. There are very very very few people out there that I wonder what happened to them simply because, the most important people in my life at the time, somehow are still in my life. Will I go to my 10 year? I think if I don't, my husband will kill me. He is looking forward to mine more then his own because he knows so many of the people I graduated with so well. He actually may show up without me if I don't go.

So, here I am. Exactly 9 years ago after graduation with my two sweet nieces.
Cheers to the Class of '98!!!

Dallas Smallas

So...apparently I don't really like Dallas as previously thought.
I suppose I just enjoyed a few things here. The gym and Tai Chi and the few acquaintances we had, just made it bearable. Since I have been here I have felt my energy (I know, that sounds all hippy and wierd) just sink south and it feels familiar. Simply sitting in the car my energy seems to become tainted. It's the same feeling I had been having here in Dallas around the time we moved and I was becoming happy about Dallas and sad to be moving. It has made me wonder how horrible I must have been feeling before I got to that "good"place if the "good" place now seems bad. It made me realize how being gone for the past 5 months my spirits have lifted incredibly and that life became life again and I am not just dealing with the cards dealt. So, needless to say, I'm glad we moved and I LOVE LOVE LOVE living in Denmark.

While I was in El Paso Michael had told me he really was missing home and he was really anxious to get back to his small office, morning rolls,walking to work, and spending weekends enjoying the sun on our balcony. El Paso was a blast for me. I loved being with and catching up with family and friends. but now that I'm in Dallas, I'm about ready to head back across the pond too. Dallas is humid, my hair isn't a fan and makeup just melts off my face. The traffic is ridiculous and the city is soooooo huge! Finally we found how important friends are. In Dallas, with the exception of Mary and Jason, and Chris and Fayne, we just had lots of acquaintances. In Denmark we actually have a really great handful of friends who actually enjoy the same stuff we do and who, for the most part, really "get us". It's settling to have the confirmation that yes, we were, without a doubt, meant to be in Copenhagen at this time in our lives and the things we had to give up, were worth it to have the Danish experience again. We have only been there about 5 months, but already it's so much more then our first time and we still have months and months and months to go. How did we ever get so lucky?

Whew, busy busybusy.

What a busy busy week I have had back here in Texas!! El Paso was fun, but short. Saw lots of family, saw lots of friends. It was hard to cram everyone in because during the days everyone was busy and in the evenings I had to get to as many people as I could. Thank goodness that my older brother Mark was able to skip away for lunch on Tuesday and that on Wednesday and Thursday my good friend Robert was able to babysit me. Without them I would have been bored out of my mind during the days. Friday I spent the morning and afternoon packing and cleaning and going to the airport. The week went by fast but I got to see a decent amount of my brother Joe, and My sis and her fam, and even got to spend a little time with my nephew who will be 21 in a couple months! YIKES. Of course I got to see tons of my mom and Sharon too :) I kept my dinners open to spend with them and we had lots of yummy food.

I got back Friday night and Michael and I pretty much crashed after dinner. We both had a busy week. World Tai Chi and Qigong day was on Saturday and I had a really good time there. Despite the fact that it made me really miss the Tai Chi Community here. This morning I had a lesson with Master Chen Bing who was visiting from China. He is absolutely gorgeous while doing his form work, and it was amazing to be able to train with him. He was genuinely nice as well. As you all should know, Tai Chi is really slow movements, but while training with him I was dripping with sweat. It was intense, but I certainly got a lot of great stuff from the lesson.

Michaels mom and step dad came to see us on Saturday and we spend the afternoon and evening with them as well as Sunday afternoon. It was great to see them and we were so glad that they made the drive to see us. We even got to see our old Blazer which was fun :)

Back in Texas

Hey, remember me? I use to blog here.
So where have I (we) been lately? Outside enjoying the Danish weather. The springtime is such a lovely time in Denmark. The beautiful colorful tulips and lilies all started and the trees are starting to turn green. For a while the highs were in the lower to mid 60's and we were able to walk around in shorts/skirts and short sleeve shirts. As long as the sun didn't disappear behind a cloud the weather had been perfect. The last few days we were there it started to turn cold again, but it forced us to not waste away days sitting outside drinking beer. For some reason if there is sun, there is beer flowing everywhere you look, so now, when we have a perfect sunny day, we both start to crave a nice cold Danish brew.

We left Denmark on Sunday. Woke up at the horribly early hour of 4am. I hopped in a cab and headed to the airport. My flights were both good. I landed at DFW at 6:30pm where Mary and Jason were waiting for me. They babysat me while we waited for Michael to land 4 hours later. I finally got to see Mary's new starbucks store. When we got there Mary told one of her employees behind the counter that I just came in from Denmark and to speak slowly to be because I didn't speak much English. The girl took her seriously, but the three of us started laughing before she could talk to me. Then we headed to the Olive Garden for dinner and Subway to pick something up for Michael when he got in and back to the airport to wait for Mr. Pate. Sorry did I say Mr. I meant Dr. (don't tell him I messed up) They did a great job keeping me awake though I was fading at several points. After Michael landed we drove in circles to find the front of the rental car place and finally got to the hotel at about midnight. We got up at 6 Monday morning and Michael put me in a Limousine Service to get me to the airport and Michael headed to a meeting at TI. I got to El Paso about 11:30AM and was exhausted. I was fine in the morning, but the plane ride sucked all the energy and life out of me for the entire day. My good pal Jeremy picked me up and took me to see my bro, to the store and then home where I was going to take a nap, but thinking about Michael at work with the exact amount of sleep as me in the past few days made me feel a bit guilty so I managed to stay awake all day and finally put my very tired head on my pillow at 9pm. Thank goodness I got a good night sleep last night.

So, to make that long story short, we both made it safe, sound and sleep deprived. It is a strange feeling being back in the states and knowing we don't have our home here. My ears had to get adjusted to hearing English everywhere. The first day of travelling I was surprised when people would automatically start speaking English to me. A few people I actually had to say, "I'm sorry can you repeat that" because it caught me so off guard. Isn't that ridiculous? I think I am better now though.