top ten things I did/learned in Texas

Jay had to go to Dallas to take his oral board exam. I decided to join him so that we could see my law school roommate, Jen, who lives in Dallas with her boyfriend, Bill, and my good high school friend, Christina, who lives three hours south in Austin with her boyfriend, Andrew.

1. In Austin, every night, 1.5 million bats fly out from the main bridge in the city around dusk. People line the streets and nearby parks to watch. It takes about 10 minutes for them to all get out because they fly out in a stream rather than in a huge blob. But the stream is pretty big too. It seemed like there were a lot more than 1.5 million of them.


2. People refer to Tex-Mex as a type of food in Texas. It is different from Mexican food in that what we all eat outside of Texas is what is really considered Tex-Mex in Texas. I don't quite know the difference because we only ate Tex-Mex while we were here and never Mexican. But according to Andrew, the difference between Tex-Mex and Mexican is like the difference between Greek and Italian.

3. Pretty much any place that serves Tex-Mex will be outstanding. For instance, we were in Wylie, TX for a few hours, a small city forty-five minutes outside of Dallas, and I was hungry so I picked a random restaurant in a strip mall that really didn't look that good, but it was amazing. Every bite was amazing. And every bite deserved a comment that it was amazing. And I think Jay was getting annoyed. He had already eaten so was just watching me.

4. Traditional Texas barbecue is typically a lunch food. It's hard to find a barbecue place that is open for dinner. At least in Dallas. This rule is apparently more relaxed in Austin, but of course, Austin is weird.

5. Texas barbecue is served with the sauce on the side. It is not slathered on. The meat comes pretty bare and then there is a container of barbecue sauce you can squirt onto your plate. But if it's really good barbecue, it's not supposed to need the sauce.

6. We want a dog still. We loved Christina and Andrew's dog. Though we also recognized that it is best to have one when you have a screened-in backyard.

7. There are not a lot of cowboy hat-wearing folk in Dallas or Austin. While we spent the first two days in Dallas, we did not witness a cowboy hat until we had barbecue for lunch in Austin and there was only one man wearing a cowboy hat. According to Jen, the more typical thing is to see men wearing cowboy boots, to work, with dress pants. We didn't see any of those but we didn't look for them either.

8. We spent a little time in the Dallas Arboretum. It was a special place. They had a lot of little houses for kids to play in, but they are fun for adults too. They also had a pumpkin theme going on and there were tons of pumpkins everywhere. It was depressing to think what a waste of pumpkins but I imagine there's no shortage of pumpkins so maybe it's not a big deal. But they made for quite a sight.




9. Paleontologists study and dig for animal bones (all animals, not just dinosaurs, though some specialize in dinosaurs). Archaeologists study and dig for human-made objects. And physical anthropologists study and dig for human bones. The latter is what Andrew is getting his PhD in at UT.

10. We went to Barton Springs. It is a fresh water spring that is 72 degrees year round and looks like a giant swimming pool except the bottom is not concrete and the water is of course fresh. It is also a special place.