Happy Belated Fourth Everyone!

Fourth of July Tales from Austin and San Antonio

So, the REU kids decided to take an independence day roadtrip to visit the Texas state capitol and swing by the Alamo! What a fantastic idea and what perfect weather for it! Though the car ride was pretty long and as always there was some disagreement about where to eat dinner, we made it there and back without incident and everyone had a fun time! Unfortunately, the summer program is winding down, so I've been too busy to write about it! But I think that the pictures speak for themselves (with the help of my captions of course!). Suffice it to say that it was a blast and a half and the best fourth of July I can remember! Here are some pictures to sum up the experience:

THE CAPITOL:

Our first stop in Austin (after our hotel room) was the capitol. It was about as impressive as any other capitol building... they all kind of look the same to me. Inside the walls were all covered with paintings of the former governors including George W. and a ton of guys with incredible/hilarious facial hair. It's amazing what was once thought to be appropriate in terms of facial hair. There was also an assembly of old canons on the capitol grounds which of course fascinated the boys. The most exciting part of the capitol building were the statues of Sam Houston and Davy Crockett in the front hall, and the really really scary view down to the ground floor from the 3rd floor with a railing that was thigh high. Apparently I am slightly afraid of heights when I am surrounded by boys pretending to be about to push people over the edge of a completely inadequate railing. Funny how that works :)

AUSTIN (in short):

Surprisingly, I loved Austin. It seemed much more my type of town than Houston is, but maybe it was just because our hotel was in the middle of the downtown area where everything is within walking distance! There was a ton of art and murals (like the awesome "hi how are you" alien frog mural! It looks like a perfect album cover for a totally awesome and huge band!) and vintage stores and coffee shops. Above is a picture of me, Rhys, and Kristin drinking hibiscus tea at a really cool coffee shop in Austin called the Spider House. I recommend it to anyone who is ever remotely near that part of the state. We checked out the UT campus (very nice!) and we also played in a giant spaghetti monster (see the baby-sitter's club-esque picture at the beginning of this post) and spent a lot of time dressing up in ridiculous vintage clothes and taking pictures of how funny we all looked. After a full day of fun and adventure we headed back to the hotel for a quick dip in the pool (or nap, depending on your taste) and then we set back out to a park on the river to watch the fireworks for the fourth. On the way, we saw the famous Austin bats that live under the bridge. Apparently it takes something like a half hour for all of the bats to vacate the bridge every night. They looked like a cloud of locusts or a plague or something. We found a place in the park to watch the fireworks and the Texas symphony orchestra was playing fireworks-y songs. It was really an awesome fireworks display, it may have been the best that I have ever seen even! Not to say that lovely Excelsior doesn't have good fireworks, but I guess that I have never seen the capitol city fireworks before! Not something to be missed in the future! Oooooooh! Aahhhhhhh!



SAN ANTONIO:

The next day we ended up in San Antonio in the early afternoon. We walked up and down the riverwalk before giving in to our extreme hunger and finding a place to eat (Mexican food! Finally!). Our food was really good and we were able to eat outside with a beautiful view of the less-than-beautiful but still strangely nice river. After lunch, we wandered through this mall to get to the Alamo--the main attraction in little San Antonio-- and ran into a girl with a snake! She worked for one of the restaurants and got paid to stand outside with the little python and let people take pictures with it. After a couple of the other students posed with it, I had to try too. The pictures people took of me are really funny, in most of them I look terrified! This one I was trying to look like Britney Spears a la I'm a Slave for You, but I think I just look scared and silly. Harsh (in the background) thought my fear was hilarious. Oh well, good attempt at becoming a parseltongue, right?!

THE ALAMO:
The Alamo was smaller than expected but still really cool to see. Has no one besides the BAtzli family ever seen Pee Wee's Big Adventure? Apparently not, because no one seemed to get the jokes I was making about the basement of the Alamo, but it was the first thing that both Dad and Mara mentioned when I talked to them about it. This picture is of the girls in front of the Alamo: Corlisa, me, Mariana, Eleanor, and Kristin. There were a bunch of guys there dressed in period costumes who were talking about various aspects of the Alamo's history: the weapons, the food and trade at the time. It was really neat and I found out that the tea that was dumped into Boston harbor was in brick form! Who knew?

Research continues to be fascinating and awesome as usual! I am sad that there are only a couple of weeks left!