On The Road

Greetings from Arkansas!

So this is it, our time in Texasis over . Our house is packed and in a container on its way to Zurich. I am driving the car to Missouri whilst Emily took Bluet and Ilona on the plane this morning. Tomorrow I will join them at Emily's parent's house. We are looking forward to spending the next 3 weeks relaxing in Missouri, then finding out what life in Switzerland is really like. Here are some pictures of Bluet and Ilona from when the house was being packed up yesterday. Bluet spent most of the time watching Peppa pig and Ilona found time to catch 40 winks.

Improvised dinner chair

Ilona supervises, Bluet eats an apple

All our stuff came nowhere near to filling the shipping container. 

International Dress Like a Texan Day

Two Fridays ago, at the end of February, it was international dress like a texan day, or something similar, I don't quite recall. Anyway Bluet's daycare requested she wore her most Texan clothes. Now, Abatha had given us some cowboy boots the weekend before for Bluet, which was very serendipitous as we don't have any 10 gallon hats lying around the house. It was difficult to get Bluet to pose for pictures, but I hope you get the idea. I imagine they spent the day at school teaching them how to say 'Ye-Haw' and 'Ride em, cowboy', whilst practicing drilling for oil in the school playground using contraptions made of drinking straws, but I could be wrong.

 

Hotels

I don't know whether you have ever entertained a 1 year old in a hotel for a whole day by yourself. To be honest, I haven't either as it is only 15:13 and Bluet is on her afternoon nap. We are in Houston for 3 days - they (probably) say that you haven't lived until you've visited Houston. But we've done it now. Emily has a job interview at the MD Anderson Cancer Centre, which she is tending to right now. To make her time in Texas (where everything is bigger except the hotel rooms, apparently) more enjoyable, she wanted us to come too. So here we are. There is a limited amount one can do in a small hotel room, even if you are an inquisitive baby. So today we have already been swimming twice (which she really enjoys, especially when I disappear then reappear from under water), run around the lobby (Hotels have escalators, which are like stairs, but better because they are oh so dangerous; Bluet loves escalators; fortunately she found some Bluet safe stairs in the lobby which entertained her for a few minutes), had a nap (Bluet only, I am also trying to write a paper whilst she is out here during her naps, as you can see right now) and eaten a Chipotle burrito.

Asleep on the Plane

In Swimming Cossie

Being European, I thought it would be nice to go for a walk and see a bit of the city. There is a University nearby (Rice University), and the land around Universities is always nice and well appointed with entertaining facilites. The guide book that comes with the hotel room (they also have a Gideon's bible and a copy of the book of Mormon, which I intend to read before we leave) suggests that nearby there is "Rice Village", a popular destination for locals and visitors; that has got to be nice. They also suggest that you drive, but seeing as 1) It isn't very far (maybe 1 mile) and 2) I can't drive we walk. We get there. It is rubbish. We come back. If you lived in Houston it would be great as you could do your shopping, but why visitors from outside would go there is beyond me. Still, it was nice to go for a walk even if we were the only people on the pavement. Later I looked at the map and see that there might be a park in the opposite direction.


Tomorrow we are going to the Zoo.