Say the word COLLEGE to any 17 year old and you may not get the best response. Junior year is the hardest year. Hands down. When they told us that, they were not joking. A few weeks ago I was walking into a random classroom at school and saw this written on the board, “pain is temporary, GPA is forever”. Needless to say when it is 1am and I’m about done with all the homework and studying those are the words that are coming out of my mouth.
College Touring can be seen in two ways. Stressful and depressing or exciting and fullfilling. Stressful because that decision is in the back of our minds constantly at this stage in many of our lives but exciting when you find that one school you absolutely fall in love with. That happened to me this trip to Texas;). A lot else happened too though.
We stayed in Downtown Austin which is one of the cutest cities I have ever see. Like if you can get into UT, GO. Our first night here we spend hours walking around trying to find a cute place to eat because I mean come on if you go to like a subway when in a new city you’ve never been too your not doing it right. My mom and I ended up going to this little Vietnamese French Cafe called Elizabeth’s and OH MY GOSH.
Austin is filled with all these little food trucks and restaurants that are all super unique and trendy, I about died. Next we walked around more in town for a place for actual dinner. We walked for too long and I got hangry as hell. I feel bad for my mom. But Swifts Attic was so worth it. This dark restaurant in the attic of a building had the best cheese and bread (there was some kind of fancy name for it but I forget what it was). We sat next to stock brokers talking about there time shares in Miami haha. Interesting stuff. Austin is unique. Literally there was never anyone on the streets my mom and I kept asking each other like where is everyone?! We never ended up finding whee everyone hung out but im guessing it was more near UT.
The next day I experienced a thunderstorm. Like legit thunder lightning pouring rain on my visit at Texas State. It was straight pouring walking around campus and here is me in my cut off jean shorts and strappy sandals practically soaked. We bought two umbrellas at target in San Marcos before going to the visit. But to shorten this traumatic yet hilarious story I will just kind of list what happened.
1. Both unbrellas broke leaving us to get 100% drenched. I had never laughed so hard at my mom in my entire life.
2. We had a flash flood warning while we were still on campus so we were stuck there for a while. I ended up getting out of there with matching Texas State T- Shirts with my mom because everything we owned was wet.
3. We got in our cute red rental car with the Oklahoma license plate and were on our way. That was until we got the tornado warning:))).
4. So to end it all off we drove around a flooding San Marcos while my mom freaked out that were were going to get stuck in our car and I was the calm one. Eventually, we found our way to a great resturant called AquaBrew and waited for the storm to pass.
Dont Beleive me? Look up San Marcos Texas State University flooding and you will see.
What do you do to get over almost being in a flood? We shopped:) the Tanker Outlets near San Marcos are bomb.
Wednesday, we drove to Texas A&M and back for about 4 hours all together. When we got back we ate at this cool Italian place called Italic. The pizza was so so good but our appetizer was better haha. Before we got our pizza we decided to order the meat and cheese plate expecting to get like some yummy salami and cheese. Nope. We got some weird meat that tasted like bologna. It had chunks of fat in it and I completely forget what it was called. It was some fancy stuff from Italy. I’m someone who tries those type of things but if your like my sister or some of my friends who are all weird about texture with food you would have died of disgust lol. Then I went to Voodoo donuts! Lets just say the place is totally worth the hype.
Thursday morning we said goodbye to Austin and headed to Fort Worth to see TCU. After the tour we went and checked into our hotel. It was a brand new hotel. The decore was to die for. My moms friend from kindergarten lives in Texas and drove two hours with her husband just to have dinner with us in Fort Worth! How sweet is that? They took us to Billy Bobs which apparently is the biggest Honkytonk in the U.S. It was so cute. They had dancing and bull riding all the southern bar things you would expect to see and needless to say all the things I hope to go back to. Imagine The Longest Ride Nicholas Sparks movie mixed with the updated Footloose movie. (If you haven’t seen either of those movies you need to.)
We got home to the hotel and sat at the bar where my mom got a glass of wine and we both had a warm chocolate cookie with salt on the top it was melted to perfection. The bar tender was the coolest person! I talked to him with my mom and the adorable couple next to us for like two hours. The bar tender was telling me the low down on all the bars and places everyone goes in the Dallas Fort Worth area since he was a student at another smaller college in Dallas. He played pro soccer in Milan and a little city in Portugal. He also had lived in California for a while but grew up as a total hill billy in a tiny town in Texas. Those people you meet in life are so under appreciated. Sometimes I forget that everyone has their own story and own adventures. It is so interesting and inspiring to know so much opportunity is out there. There is a word for this; I’m pretty sure it’s called sonder.
Anyway, Texas you were great! Hope to be back soon;)
All my love, T
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