Hello!
Sorry for not writing sooner, its been a stupidly hectic week here though as you will soon discover!
Given that this blog is as much for my benefit as for you all to know what's been going on I really do want to include everything but I will still try to keep it shorter than last weeks I promise!
There have been a lot of crazy antics this week - a little bit of jumping in fountains for example which really should only be naturally expected from me by now and a little bit of bat-tastic adventure.
We went to South Congress bridge at sunset with a couple of friends from the Woo along with the leftovers from my birthday cake/thick chocolatey scrumptuous cheesecake and waited for the bats to fly out. There are literally thousands of them that live right under the bridge and at sunset every night they start swarming and people come to watch them as they make dust-like clouds across the sky. It was a little funny actually, we arrived to find they had already started and when they stopped me and Veema foolishly thought it was over but thankfully the guys were there with us and made us wait before leaving like a lot of the crowd did. You see, for some reason they fly out in waves, and I'd never seen so many bats in all my life - they could easily have been mistaken for starlings during migration.
We then got taken that same night to a place called Red Bud Isle which was actually just an access point to the Colorado River. We found a rope swing and were very tempted to start jumping in but we realised not only that we were in our work clothes still but also that the tide was moving way too fast to be safe - the drought is pretty much still ongoing and the river is seriously low.
Work this week has been pretty interesting, we've finished our research on Rage Killings now and have been assigned to write a motion relating to why elected judges should be excluded from Capital trials - this is great because I can use a lot of the same resources I did to write my human rights and the death penalty essay! We're also set to be assigned to a trial so will probably be working on jury selection sometime soon.
We're still trying to expand our friendship sphere at the moment and trying to keep up with all the people we've met so far. It's difficult of course because the novelty of our accents is starting to wear off a little but some people are still very keen to see that we have a good time. We hadn't much hoped to succeed but we aimed to top last weekend and to this end decided that our weekend would start on Thursday night. We didn't do very much, played some games with some neighbours and generally sat around chatting until the wee hours of the morning but we didn't have to go to work the next day so we wanted to make the most of it.
We spent the next day getting our social security cards and doing a little cheap shopping at a mall we finally found on the very outskirts of town. Most of the shops in town are stupidly expensive up and coming designers and so it had taken us quite a while to find anything reasonable. We struck gold though with this place - the food court was particularly nice, especially since they all give you tasters! - and I couldn't help indulging on a nice dress to go out salsa-ing in (though I'm pretty sure $20 doesn't count as indulgent).
We had planned that night to go to a salsa club with live music and a couple of guys we've been learning with but when we turned up we found out that the club on lets in under 21s on thursdays but it was ok because we discovered that one of the local gay clubs would let us in =D.
Saturday was spent at Barton Springs - a freshwater (and therefore apparently very cold) outdoor swimming pool. Veema froze and Shiraz thought it was freezing, but I just realised how they wouldn't be able to cope with the sea in Cornwall at Easter - pathetic both of them! Most people didn't go there to swim anyway actually, it was treated like a beach with grass instead of sand and it was quite late in the afternoon so thankfully people were starting to leave when we went. That night was karaoke - a truly asian phenomenon given that half of the songs the people we were with chose were sung in Korean!
We only managed about 4 hours sleep that night because Shiraz woke us up at 10am to invite us to Lake Travis. One of his friends was celebrating her birthday and he'd managed to get us spaces on the speed boat they were renting together. It was stupidly hot and despite my constant lathering with the factor 50 (which I got severely mocked for!) I still couldn't escape getting burned. Lake travis was completely worth it though, the guys knew what they were doing with the boat and we swam to shore from it when we came across a private beach festival - there was a live band playing Beatles songs and free food for everyone! The houses along the lake are rather large as well shall we say. Matthew McConoughey apparently owns one and Sandra Bullock comes to Austin quite frequently. The whole thing felt like living the life of the rich and famous for a day - the kind of thing you see in cheesy American movies!
We spent that evening pretty tired out and perhaps with a little bit of heat stroke watching the movie Finding Neverland and suddenly realising that Americans really do think we Brits still talk the way we did in the Victorian days - what a stereotype to have to try to overcome! Still, we persevere!
Love you all
Em xxx
Tuesday 28 July 2009
Tuesday 21 July 2009
Birthday Weekend
Ok well where to start! I guess Friday night would seem a little too obvious.
Well we got a little group together and headed off down 6th street to a place called Aces Lounge which lets in under 21s even if they do embarrass you by using a big black pen to put crosses on both of your hands! Its really hard to describe just how bad this place really was. The music was all really old hip-hop like the original Justin Timberlake songs from when I was still in year 9 and secondly nobody was dancing when we arrived. There were a lot of people on the dancefloor very surreptitiously shifting their weight about a bit but nobody actually dancing so when me and Veema got onto the dance floor we put a stop to all of that and got quite a few strange looks - apparently a little confidence is very shocking in Austin!
That was how it started anyway. It was quite helpful that we'd gone with a group of guys because we could dance without being harrassed so long as they were around but as for the rest of the people there, well lets put it this way, after about an hour literally everybody except us and the guys we were with had paired off with people they didn't know and lets just leave it at that. There was just nowhere safe to look! Apparently thats pretty usual for any club in the US so we've concluded that we're not especially big fans of their club scene!
Saturday was our first touristy day out really, we went to the State Capital and took plenty of pictures but haven't yet made it to the UT tower because it's only open certain days of the week. After we'd nearly run out of battery on our cameras we took a wander into town and happened to walk past a classic cinema. I think my eyes literally popped out when I saw what was showing and me and Veema literally started jumping up and down with excitement - The Godfather was showing on Saturday night! It was literally amazing and Marlon Brando was born for the big screen. The theatre itself was fantastic, i think it was an old opera house - really elaborately decorated. I tried to get some pictures without the flash but I think they've come out pretty blurry, there are however some lovely ones of the women's toilets which could just have easily been a woman's dressing-room. Although the film was obviously 3 hours long (which they played without an interval!) it wasn't even 11 when we got back to our dorm room. We therefore decided that we couldn't possible end a Saturday night like that so we got in touch with a friend called Jeddy who we'd met the week before to see what he was up to. He had plans to go to a party at about 12 and invited us along.
The party didn't exactly last very long because a fight broke out which tends to happen quite frequently apparently but we met a friend of his called Shiraz and all went back to his apartment for some Shisha afterwards. We also went out onto the roof of his building to look out over the city which was beautiful. It was literally almost dawn when we got home but at least the next day was Sunday and it didn't especially matter if we slept through most of it :)
We had also discovered an amazing coincidence though - that me and Jeddy would both be turning 20 on the 20th. He suggested we go out for a big meal on Sunday and organised it all. About 14 of us went to this all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse (poor Veema doesn't eat beef but thankfully they also served other meat!) which gave amazing to-the-table service with as much meat and salad as you could possibly imagine. It was an added bonus that Shiraz drove us top-down in his BMW convertible - although he had been worried we'd mess up our hair when he hit 100mph!! What a buzz!
Us two birthday people also got complimentary deserts (I had keylime pie!) which they put candles in and decorated them with Happy Birthday written in syrup! After the meal we headed out to a karaoke bar - it wasn't anything like I expected though. You rent a room for your friends and don't have to sing in front of strangers so despite our protests me and Veema did end up singing nearly every song :)
Yesterday was our actual birthday and though Jeddy went back to Houston to see his family for a couple of days Shiraz took us salsa dancing. Now I've never salsa danced before so we went early and he taught me a couple of steps before the class started which was completely free by the way - just a class for people to show up and dance on the university campus. I swear I looked like a pro by the end (well alright not quite but I was doing better than a lot of people who'd been for several weeks!) and so Shiraz is going to take us to a salsa club on Friday that under 21s can go to and show off all their newly learned skills - really can't wait! Am definitely thinking about salsa dancing when I get back to Warwick although apparently guys at Warwick haven't quite got the memo yet - here there were more guys than girls at the class because they've realised here that dancing is a good way to meet girls, UK men clearly haven't noticed this yet!
Anyway clearly I had a really great birthday that I've been told is set to carry on well into the next couple of weeks. It was really sweet at work yesterday as well actually - Kelly gave me some really beautiful flowers and surprised me with a card signed by everyone in the office and a birthday cake with my name on which was lit with candles and everyone came to sing to me. Veema acted as a very convincing decoy when they had to sneak the cake past my desk at one point!
Its really amazing here, everyone seems like they genuinely care and are making every effort to make sure we don't have a moment to get bored. Even this guy in our dorm brought his little kitten round so we could play with it and later gave us a personalised tour of their campus after we dragged him along to salsa - he's definitely not allowed a cat in the dorm but nobody really notices very much around here... or anything in fact!
Anyway, that was a stupidly long blog - sorry! but theres so much going on I want to write it down before I forget a single thing!
Love to you all
Em xxxx
Well we got a little group together and headed off down 6th street to a place called Aces Lounge which lets in under 21s even if they do embarrass you by using a big black pen to put crosses on both of your hands! Its really hard to describe just how bad this place really was. The music was all really old hip-hop like the original Justin Timberlake songs from when I was still in year 9 and secondly nobody was dancing when we arrived. There were a lot of people on the dancefloor very surreptitiously shifting their weight about a bit but nobody actually dancing so when me and Veema got onto the dance floor we put a stop to all of that and got quite a few strange looks - apparently a little confidence is very shocking in Austin!
That was how it started anyway. It was quite helpful that we'd gone with a group of guys because we could dance without being harrassed so long as they were around but as for the rest of the people there, well lets put it this way, after about an hour literally everybody except us and the guys we were with had paired off with people they didn't know and lets just leave it at that. There was just nowhere safe to look! Apparently thats pretty usual for any club in the US so we've concluded that we're not especially big fans of their club scene!
Saturday was our first touristy day out really, we went to the State Capital and took plenty of pictures but haven't yet made it to the UT tower because it's only open certain days of the week. After we'd nearly run out of battery on our cameras we took a wander into town and happened to walk past a classic cinema. I think my eyes literally popped out when I saw what was showing and me and Veema literally started jumping up and down with excitement - The Godfather was showing on Saturday night! It was literally amazing and Marlon Brando was born for the big screen. The theatre itself was fantastic, i think it was an old opera house - really elaborately decorated. I tried to get some pictures without the flash but I think they've come out pretty blurry, there are however some lovely ones of the women's toilets which could just have easily been a woman's dressing-room. Although the film was obviously 3 hours long (which they played without an interval!) it wasn't even 11 when we got back to our dorm room. We therefore decided that we couldn't possible end a Saturday night like that so we got in touch with a friend called Jeddy who we'd met the week before to see what he was up to. He had plans to go to a party at about 12 and invited us along.
The party didn't exactly last very long because a fight broke out which tends to happen quite frequently apparently but we met a friend of his called Shiraz and all went back to his apartment for some Shisha afterwards. We also went out onto the roof of his building to look out over the city which was beautiful. It was literally almost dawn when we got home but at least the next day was Sunday and it didn't especially matter if we slept through most of it :)
We had also discovered an amazing coincidence though - that me and Jeddy would both be turning 20 on the 20th. He suggested we go out for a big meal on Sunday and organised it all. About 14 of us went to this all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse (poor Veema doesn't eat beef but thankfully they also served other meat!) which gave amazing to-the-table service with as much meat and salad as you could possibly imagine. It was an added bonus that Shiraz drove us top-down in his BMW convertible - although he had been worried we'd mess up our hair when he hit 100mph!! What a buzz!
Us two birthday people also got complimentary deserts (I had keylime pie!) which they put candles in and decorated them with Happy Birthday written in syrup! After the meal we headed out to a karaoke bar - it wasn't anything like I expected though. You rent a room for your friends and don't have to sing in front of strangers so despite our protests me and Veema did end up singing nearly every song :)
Yesterday was our actual birthday and though Jeddy went back to Houston to see his family for a couple of days Shiraz took us salsa dancing. Now I've never salsa danced before so we went early and he taught me a couple of steps before the class started which was completely free by the way - just a class for people to show up and dance on the university campus. I swear I looked like a pro by the end (well alright not quite but I was doing better than a lot of people who'd been for several weeks!) and so Shiraz is going to take us to a salsa club on Friday that under 21s can go to and show off all their newly learned skills - really can't wait! Am definitely thinking about salsa dancing when I get back to Warwick although apparently guys at Warwick haven't quite got the memo yet - here there were more guys than girls at the class because they've realised here that dancing is a good way to meet girls, UK men clearly haven't noticed this yet!
Anyway clearly I had a really great birthday that I've been told is set to carry on well into the next couple of weeks. It was really sweet at work yesterday as well actually - Kelly gave me some really beautiful flowers and surprised me with a card signed by everyone in the office and a birthday cake with my name on which was lit with candles and everyone came to sing to me. Veema acted as a very convincing decoy when they had to sneak the cake past my desk at one point!
Its really amazing here, everyone seems like they genuinely care and are making every effort to make sure we don't have a moment to get bored. Even this guy in our dorm brought his little kitten round so we could play with it and later gave us a personalised tour of their campus after we dragged him along to salsa - he's definitely not allowed a cat in the dorm but nobody really notices very much around here... or anything in fact!
Anyway, that was a stupidly long blog - sorry! but theres so much going on I want to write it down before I forget a single thing!
Love to you all
Em xxxx
Friday 17 July 2009
Work Work Work!
Hello again!
Well it definitely looks so far like I didn't draw the short straw. So far this week we're on our 3rd assignment -we've sorted through jury questionnaires, summarised a trial and appeal transcript for a very interesting case and we have now been set a research task (looking up and summarising scholarly articles relating to carers who kill the children in their care).
Its been really interesting and we really feel like the work we do is genuinely valued. We're working in the Trial Project department of the Texas Defenders Service as opposed to the Post-Conviction Department but then there are other interns here working on that too so its possible that when they leave in about 3 weeks we may get moved around a bit. Apparently there are a group of Oxbridge students who come here every year for about 4 weeks late in the summer as well so it looks like we'll be seeing some more British people around in a bit.
The Trial Project has a lot of work for interns to do, they train capital defence lawyers and give them advice and generally act as a resource for whatever kinds of research and cases they might be doing. Our job therefore is to fill in the gaps - when somebody requests something that TDS don't have, its set aside as a project for the summer interns who then research and create the necessary resource so that next time it comes up in a case anywhere in Texas, its there for them to use. So it looks like thats what its going to be for the next few weeks, and I'm really looking forward to it!
Some of you know that I nearly ended up in Norfolk, Virginia. Thank god i didn't! It really sounds like the interns up there do nothing but photocopy, they've not been given research or cases to look at and they've already been there for 2 and a bit weeks. Looks like I made a lucky escape because they are both completely bored and are wishing they hadn't bothered.
Birthday celebrations are beginning tonight - we're off to some 18-21 clubs in 6th street (the big party place in Austin) and we've got quite a crowd going with us who are all surprisingly eager to dance :) can't wait! Tomorrow there's a party somewhere on the University Campus which we've been told we have to go to even though we're not entirely sure we'll know anybody, I think the plan is that we will by the time we leave. We're also planning to do some more touristy things this weekend - we're heading to the State Capital building (which reminds me of a miniature version of the white house) that we go past on the bus everyday to work and we're also going up the UT (University of Texas) tower which supposedly has a gory history. I think the plan for Sunday is to go kayaking or canoeing on the very beautiful river that runs through Austin and at some point next week we're going to catch the sunset river tour which will take us bat watching!
Very exciting!
The students here have all been to San Antonio and Houston and they don't rave about them especially, we're still planning on going but may not make too many trips unless we get especially bored - there's a lot still to do around here! Loving Austin!
Em xxxx
Well it definitely looks so far like I didn't draw the short straw. So far this week we're on our 3rd assignment -we've sorted through jury questionnaires, summarised a trial and appeal transcript for a very interesting case and we have now been set a research task (looking up and summarising scholarly articles relating to carers who kill the children in their care).
Its been really interesting and we really feel like the work we do is genuinely valued. We're working in the Trial Project department of the Texas Defenders Service as opposed to the Post-Conviction Department but then there are other interns here working on that too so its possible that when they leave in about 3 weeks we may get moved around a bit. Apparently there are a group of Oxbridge students who come here every year for about 4 weeks late in the summer as well so it looks like we'll be seeing some more British people around in a bit.
The Trial Project has a lot of work for interns to do, they train capital defence lawyers and give them advice and generally act as a resource for whatever kinds of research and cases they might be doing. Our job therefore is to fill in the gaps - when somebody requests something that TDS don't have, its set aside as a project for the summer interns who then research and create the necessary resource so that next time it comes up in a case anywhere in Texas, its there for them to use. So it looks like thats what its going to be for the next few weeks, and I'm really looking forward to it!
Some of you know that I nearly ended up in Norfolk, Virginia. Thank god i didn't! It really sounds like the interns up there do nothing but photocopy, they've not been given research or cases to look at and they've already been there for 2 and a bit weeks. Looks like I made a lucky escape because they are both completely bored and are wishing they hadn't bothered.
Birthday celebrations are beginning tonight - we're off to some 18-21 clubs in 6th street (the big party place in Austin) and we've got quite a crowd going with us who are all surprisingly eager to dance :) can't wait! Tomorrow there's a party somewhere on the University Campus which we've been told we have to go to even though we're not entirely sure we'll know anybody, I think the plan is that we will by the time we leave. We're also planning to do some more touristy things this weekend - we're heading to the State Capital building (which reminds me of a miniature version of the white house) that we go past on the bus everyday to work and we're also going up the UT (University of Texas) tower which supposedly has a gory history. I think the plan for Sunday is to go kayaking or canoeing on the very beautiful river that runs through Austin and at some point next week we're going to catch the sunset river tour which will take us bat watching!
Very exciting!
The students here have all been to San Antonio and Houston and they don't rave about them especially, we're still planning on going but may not make too many trips unless we get especially bored - there's a lot still to do around here! Loving Austin!
Em xxxx
Monday 13 July 2009
Making Friends and First Day of Work
Ok well leaving off from my last post, we went out for dinner at some Mediterranean place - very nice pizza! - but we ran into a couple of people from the halls we're staying at (loving called The Woo!) on the way back who were on the way to the arcade. Being slightly curious about American arcades we tagged along when they offered and after an hour or so of that we also tagged along when they headed off to a party. It turned out to be a pool party which we definitely weren't dressed for! It was a shame really but we surprisingly didn't decide to join those clearly just wearing their underwear. It was a really good night anyway, we got to meet a lot of really nice people who all invited us to another party the next night as well.
Not wanting to waste anytime in Austin we clearly decided to go along to this as well. It was quite a way though so one of the guys we'd only met the night before drove us there. It wasn't a very big party but they are really nice people and it felt like we'd all been friends for years. At about 5am when we thought we were going home we actually detoured to 'The Waffle House' and all had amazing waffles with hot maple syrup before actually going home - the perfect end to the night.
On Sunday we clearly got up late but still managed to go swimming in the Uni pool which despite the temperature still for some reason has a hot tub... I have absolutely no idea why although it does make the outside temperature at 110 F seem relatively cool...
We had been invited to a boat party that night as well but given that we had work the next day we gave it a miss begrudgingly. Hopefully there'll be another boat party whilst we're here, apparently it takes a trip around the lake and everything!
Anyway first day of work today was really great! We got set the task of sifting through Jury Questionnaires for an upcoming case - its scary what some people have put! - to determine which would be most in favour and most against the death penalty. It was really interesting and it feels like we're really helping - the office need as much help as they can get and they really do rely on their interns so I think its going to be a very busy summer.
I think thats all my news for now, I'll post again when I have anything exciting to share
Em xxx
Not wanting to waste anytime in Austin we clearly decided to go along to this as well. It was quite a way though so one of the guys we'd only met the night before drove us there. It wasn't a very big party but they are really nice people and it felt like we'd all been friends for years. At about 5am when we thought we were going home we actually detoured to 'The Waffle House' and all had amazing waffles with hot maple syrup before actually going home - the perfect end to the night.
On Sunday we clearly got up late but still managed to go swimming in the Uni pool which despite the temperature still for some reason has a hot tub... I have absolutely no idea why although it does make the outside temperature at 110 F seem relatively cool...
We had been invited to a boat party that night as well but given that we had work the next day we gave it a miss begrudgingly. Hopefully there'll be another boat party whilst we're here, apparently it takes a trip around the lake and everything!
Anyway first day of work today was really great! We got set the task of sifting through Jury Questionnaires for an upcoming case - its scary what some people have put! - to determine which would be most in favour and most against the death penalty. It was really interesting and it feels like we're really helping - the office need as much help as they can get and they really do rely on their interns so I think its going to be a very busy summer.
I think thats all my news for now, I'll post again when I have anything exciting to share
Em xxx
Friday 10 July 2009
First Impressions
I'm here!
It was a really long flight with nothing to lean on to sleep but I got here! For the second flight from Charlotte I did have window seat though and it was incredible.
As we started to come into land I couldn't see Austin at all from my window, all I could see was miles and miles of prairie and forest so to me it looked like we were going to land in a field and then the plane banked and there was Austin - a city in the middle of nowhere!
We caught a taxi to where we're staying in student halls, its nice enough though a little on the grungy side with only one kitchen to the whole block (8 floors with 2 people per room - can't imagine how busy its gonna be come august when they all start back at uni!). The rooms are air conditioned and also have a ceiling fan thankfully and it actually got pretty chilly in there last night.
We haven't unpacked properly yet but we nipped out to the nearest food place last night, shamefully a McDonalds before collapsing after what was for me more than 24 hours travelling.
Today we got up quite early to go exploring before it got too hot - the minute you step out of the air conditioning it just hits you like a blanket of hot air but the morning was pretty bearable and we caught a bus into town to hunt for blueberry pancakes with maple syrup!
Its pretty multi-cultural in Austin, a lot of asian and italian restaurants and very few normal shops that we found - we were probably looking in the wrong place mind you because the only clothes shops we found were extortionate so we're hoping we'll hook up with a nice student for the weekend to show us where to go.
Well I think thats about all for now.
Email me!
Em xxx
It was a really long flight with nothing to lean on to sleep but I got here! For the second flight from Charlotte I did have window seat though and it was incredible.
As we started to come into land I couldn't see Austin at all from my window, all I could see was miles and miles of prairie and forest so to me it looked like we were going to land in a field and then the plane banked and there was Austin - a city in the middle of nowhere!
We caught a taxi to where we're staying in student halls, its nice enough though a little on the grungy side with only one kitchen to the whole block (8 floors with 2 people per room - can't imagine how busy its gonna be come august when they all start back at uni!). The rooms are air conditioned and also have a ceiling fan thankfully and it actually got pretty chilly in there last night.
We haven't unpacked properly yet but we nipped out to the nearest food place last night, shamefully a McDonalds before collapsing after what was for me more than 24 hours travelling.
Today we got up quite early to go exploring before it got too hot - the minute you step out of the air conditioning it just hits you like a blanket of hot air but the morning was pretty bearable and we caught a bus into town to hunt for blueberry pancakes with maple syrup!
Its pretty multi-cultural in Austin, a lot of asian and italian restaurants and very few normal shops that we found - we were probably looking in the wrong place mind you because the only clothes shops we found were extortionate so we're hoping we'll hook up with a nice student for the weekend to show us where to go.
Well I think thats about all for now.
Email me!
Em xxx
Monday 6 July 2009
Just about to leave!
Ok so its Monday and on Thursday at 2am I will be driven to the airport by Dad to head off to Austin, Texas for the whole Summer! Very exciting stuff! Whilst there I'll be volunteering with the Texas Defender's Service to help defend death row cases. I won't be allowed to give any kind of details from the cases for obvious reasons but I will at least be able to let you know what I'm going through and will definitely tell you lots about Austin and my weekend trips to places like San Antonio and (*fingers crossed*) Houston!
I'm already packed and ready to go, I've checked my documents a million times but knowing me I'll still manage to leave without my passport... (kidding mum!) Anyway I'll try and post at least once a week :)
See you in 8 weeks!
Em xxx
I'm already packed and ready to go, I've checked my documents a million times but knowing me I'll still manage to leave without my passport... (kidding mum!) Anyway I'll try and post at least once a week :)
See you in 8 weeks!
Em xxx
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