done traveling…for a couple weeks, anyway. after our fantastic trip to texas last weekend, i came home for a few days before heading off to kansas city, mo to meet up with my bff, kara. we spent one night there before completing what may be considered an excessive amount of shopping and then making the trek through the flint hills of kansas back to her house in wichita. the flint hills are crazy - its the most rural area i’ve ever seen. there no houses or buildings or people or exits or lights or even trees. for like an hour. but its very pretty. also, comical when set to the right soundtrack…

once in wichita, we had quite the relaxing weekend of sitting around, eating a lot, catching up (since it had been over 2 years!) and watching a gigantic tv, which was pretty fantastic. we discovered our common love for mike rowe, bear grylls, clinton kelly and bret and jemaine. we watched so much flight of the conchords that i feel like i left wichita with a little bit of a new zealand accent. on the to-do list - see FOTC live. if you’re not familiar, watch this -

(0:48-0:52 - that’s just for you, kbs. enjoy.)

we also took quite a few stupid photos, some of which can be viewed here and some of which have been destroyed.

all in all, the past week or so has been the most fun i’ve had in a really long time.

three in five days. is that some kind of record? the one in kansas city has only been open since monday and was full on a thursday night - big selection, too. not a single plate on the wall yet (besides the ones for decoration) and they’ve got booths and big windows that they open like the one in nashville. winner.

went to houston last weekend. we ate a lot of food in houston. in addition to john’s mom cooking us awesome indian food for breakfast, lunch and dinner (you can have spicy stuff for breakfast?! who knew?!) we hit a lot of restaurants:

-luling city market provided me with my first taste of brisket. YUM.

-as if we didn’t have enough meat already, we went to fogo de chao which is basically just a buffet of meat that they bring to you at the table. its pricey, but worth it for those who love to eat meat.

-we hit freebirds for burritos. nicely wrapped and assembled, i must admit. i wore a white shirt and ended up wearing none of my burrito.

-mai’s restaurant got us our fix of vietnamese food

-finally, for dinner on cinco de mayo, we visited guadalajara’s for fajitas.

most surprising thing about texas: i began counting the number of things in the shape of texas that were not maps as soon as we landed at the airport. i only got to 27, i expected to get much higher. who knew that the number of servings of meat that i consumed over the weekend would surpass the number of things shaped like texas that weren’t maps? i was surprised, to say the least.

best thing to say to texans you’ve just met: “i’ve been to texas once before, but i went to {insert name of rival texas city} before, so that doesn’t count, right?” you’ll be instantly popular.

good to know about texas: you can actually get sunburned while sitting in the shade. not like “oh i’m a little pinkish” sunburn. more like the painful kind of sunburn that you know just took a few years off your life. yikes.

idea i had in texas: pictures are so boring when everyone is happy. thus the birth of the we hate cinco de mayo photo series, in which we appeared to be angry in a majority of the pictures for dramatic effect. i think i see the making of christmas card 2008 for the forths here…

learning about friends in texas: just in general, its a good to get to know your friends’ families so they can share helpful information with you that your friend might be too embarrassed to share with you themselves. like, maybe if a person was prone to or had a history of freaking out or panicking and as a result passing out, i mean, that would be good info for friends to have. but an individual might be too ashamed to share that info with you. so, yeah, meeting your friends’ families is always good and insightful, as a general rule.