Adventures in Houston

I wrote this post on the plane on the way home from Houston last weekend, but the week got away from me and I never got it posted. But here it is now.

I’ve never been to Houston or even Texas for that matter. I also have gotten very used to living in smaller towns. The only reason I get on the interstate in Missouri is if I am going out of town. Traffic is rare on the routes I travel, and it never takes more than 10 minutes to get anywhere.

Houston is a very different story. I drove the rental car (a cute little Nissan Versa I really enjoyed driving), and Katherine helped translate the GPS for me. I really think the hotel was less than two miles from the church where the conference was, but we never figured out what the direct route was.

We were constantly getting on various interstates and then immediately getting off. My GPS never really seemed to catch on to where we actually were. But we survived even with the traffic and only turned the wrong way down a one-way street once. Thank goodness the license plates on the car said we were from New York.

We got to explore one of the biggest malls I’ve ever been to that had stores I had never seen. 

 (If you haven't been to a Charming Charlie before, I highly recommend it.)

We spent a couple of hours in Ikea dreaming of decorating houses.

I got to have lunch with Kindra, a good friend from college. We laughed that we went three years without seeing each other and have now seen each other twice in just a few months.

We also drove north of Houston to see a friend of mine that lived next door to me in my freshman dorm. She transferred after that year, so it had been a long time since we had seen each other. She is married and has an adorable four-month-old baby boy. It was so fun to see her as a mom.

And before we knew it we were headed to our separate airports and back home. It all went too quick, but I had so much fun.