Roads to you Tour 2nd Stop - Houston, Texas

After a series of workshops and concerts in Washington D.C for the past 2 weeks, we finally moved on to Houston, Texas. Weather was the first observation made upon touch down. The warmth and humidity of this state greeted us, along with this stop's organizer, Dr Jill Carroll from the Rice University. Time of arrival: 5:30pm, I think.

Organization here was fabulous. The Rice University campus became our meeting point for any event or meeting. Then from the campus, 3 vans, driven by Jill, Cal, and Teb are allocated to fetch us to respective locations. Those who doesn't have any activities on that day can walk to the nearest Metro or just shop round the area, cos the university itself is walking distance from downtown.

Here, the Brazilian/Latin group finally found time to practice, 3 hours before our actual performance at one house concert. It was not great, but presentable. This group consist of Evan, Guc, Sofia, Charlotte and myself. Didn't really had time to take pictures the first 3 days in Houston, no mood... the weather is just too good, and kinda makes my drowsy too...

I'm now living with a single hispanic lady, Francisca Leal, with Charlotte as my roommate this stop. So far things have gone very well. Francis and I just clicked so quickly that we started talking about almost anything under the sun. On the very next day in Houston, the Brazilian group had our first performance at 7pm.

No matter how perfect a plan may be, there's always hiccups and obstacles that tests our patience everywhere we go. We were supposed to return home after the house concert. But when we arrive home, the lock of our home couldn't be opened with our newly made keys. Francis was at a wedding about 1.5 hours away from home, and the Celtic group was supposed to be at our performance location by 7am the following morning. The time then was about 10pm. So we hopped back into Jill's van and picked up the rest of the Celtic group. By 11:30pm, Francis was still not home, and so we had to put up a night at Jill's place. By the time I touched the bed, the time was 1:30am. We woke up at 4:30am cos we had to pick up the rest of the group who are living about 30 minutes from Jill's place.

The next day, we played for the Trinity Episcopal Church for the homeless. The gig was alright. Though there weren't really any cultural exchange, we did find time to help serve breakfast for the homeless after service. It was a refreshing experience.
Then we spent some time at the park, relaxing, 'sun-bathing' while listening to Lily and Cal take turns to read Queen Noor's article to us. hehe...

All went well and came home at about 1pm. We rested for a while and went out to catch the Da Vinci Code movie. I find that the storyline was pretty interesting, not in a way that waivers my faith in Christianity, but in motivating me to learn more about the Christian and Catholic history and faith.

As I normally like to say "The more I know, the more I don't know".

It's 12:30am now. I've another performance Texas Children's Hospital with the Brazilian group tomorrow. Looking forward to it and hope to take a few pictures there...

Talk to you soon...