Adventureland- Dallas edition

Dallas! You grew on me a bit!



sent to my sweet HP!



Even though I started off a little grumpy towards
the Lone star State, I ended up having an overall enjoyable experience. Yay!

Okay, if I could redo one part it might be the hotel- I almost got stuck on the one working elevator twice. When I mentioned it to the front desk they said "yeah, it's kind of funny". Yes. Yes it is.

I ended up really using the rental car, which I hadn't anticipated. Although I only drove 70 miles in the 3 days I was here I found it really helpful navigating around the complicated roads/trains/elevated onramps.

The West End area

I found some delicious meals. I ate breakfast for dinner at Ellen's Southern Kitchen, got chatted up (in a totally non-creepy way) by an ex-patriot from Japan, and walked around downtown Dallas.





Embarrassingly I was looking for the infamous 'grassy knoll' and well...it was right by my hotel. Not until I noticed a bunch of people walking through and around this monument did I actually read the placard.

That is one big memorial.













Opening Bell Coffee Concert

 I surprised myself by going to the yummy cafe, which I hit up in the morning, to grab a beer and listen to a guitar concert. The artist was from Lansing, how about that?

Little steps of bravery :)

So now I sit here at DFW airport waiting for my plane homeward. I plan to scoop up little HP immediately. It has been a long time apart for me. The longest I've ever been I think.

The good thing is, I have 3 weeks to stick around home base before heading out to NYC. Woohoo!

Jet setter (sort of)

I am on my first buisness trip that involved real travel (I guess I don't really count the driving trips?). But anyway, here I am in the huge city of Dallas. It's a blustery day but still really humid, maybe 60 degrees, a welcomed change from the snowy Grand Rapids tundra I left on Wednesday. I came here for a TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) Conference. It's an international organization so the draw is enormous. I couldn't tell you how many people are here by the number but it feels like I see them everywhere I've gone in this city.

I have this giant handbook they gave in our goody bag, outlining the 4 day conference in detail. In true teacher fashion I have circled and tabbed all the events and sessions I find interesting. As I was circling 'A Whole School Approach to Integrating K-12 English Language Learners' I kind of had a realization that this is quite a specialized field. And also, I am surrounded by a world of people all similarily interested in this particular corner of the educational world.

So, that being said, it's not likely that detailing these sessions here would be very interesting for many, so let's just say that on the whole the sessions have been really intetresting and engaging, along with one complete snooze fest.

I have 2 days left here to soak up some Dallas eats and sights. So far my eats are doing well, my sights not so much.

My view as I write this

I can tell you that I have enjoyed some delicious food yesterday, but you will not see any pictured evidence of it. Mainly due to the fact I have a secret annoyance of food pictures. Not truly the pictures themselves, but rather the act of taking the food pictures. While sitting at a lovely restaurant I do not want to pull out the phone regardless of how incognito I can be to snap a picture. I just can't do it. So use your imagination and know I ate like a queen.

Let me leave you with a list of things I've seen/learned/enjoyed/hated-
- I brought my reusable coffee mug (on my list of things to do this year was to use less disposable cups) and brought it to a Starbucks for a Skinny Cinnamon Dulce lattee, yum. The girl proceeded to write up my order on a paper cup saying she didn't have stickers to write the order. I got my drink in a paper cup sitting in my cup. Ridic!
-Upon arriving in Dallas, my hotel told me the only hot food around was McDonalds. What!? I spent a hungry night with chips and a cliff bar from 7-11.
-I discovered Yelp with the help of Jon, they led me to 3 wonderful food destinations
-I am so thankful for my gps on the Iphone. Period.
-Dallas has a parking structure on every block, it's like a giant parking lot.
-I got to wear a sleeveless shirt for 20 minutes at lunch basking in the sun before the clouds came back
-If I had to move to Dallas it would be to Highland Park. Lovely!
-I should have brought some flats, my feet are blistered like no ones buisness 

Hello...it's me Laura

I spoke about my little long lost blog yesterday and thought...why have I neglected it! Well, short answer is I've drained my creative and blogging reserves on a different project; my work blog. It's hard to love both of them equally, and although I can and am more candid and less like a suit here on this one, I find myself updating work once a week.

Bad and sad excuse. However, maybe the mood will strike like it did today and I'll pick up this worn out mac book to sit and reflect about me and my life, as opposed to my ever increasing work life. Which I love, don't get me wrong.

I am anticipating more me time as March moves along. Next week is the first week of travel-Laura. I'm headed over to the Detroit area for "work". Even though I'm eager to explain what it is I actually do, I think I'll just leave it ambiguous as I don't want to talk about it here, at least not a whole bunch. So, "work" brings me over near my Alma mater once again for 3 whole days. Me, a rental car and a 2 night stay at a hotel. That'll either be a relaxing me-cation or....well, not.

The week after that finds me in the great state of Texas for 3 days for more "work". I haven't been to Texas since....forever. I have memories of passing through it in my family's big brown van on our epic trip to Mexico. It was hot, and we were bored.

In April I get to re-live my glory days in NYC. I am so very excited about that, even though most (all) my actual work is located in Brooklyn and Queens you can bet I'll be staying in Manhattan. I'm already planning on visiting my favorite eats (if they haven't closed shop in the last 4 years!) and meeting up with my girls from the days of Teaching Fellows :)

And also I'm going to Ohio. Eh...

So. There it is. 2 months of tripping and surely I'll have to work on finding things to do in new cities by myself. Any suggestions welcomed :)