When I decided to sign up for The Blogcademy last month, I was thrilled beyond belief. It almost seemed impossible to be any more excited about meeting one of my idols, and having her and her wonderful friends teach me the ins and outs of blogging. But then I realized that I wasn’t going to be far from my penpal, Suzie.
Suzie was probably the person in the world who I was closest to without ever meeting in person. In the world of snail mail, I’ve developed many relationships with people through letters, postcards, texts, and e-mails before I ever actually met them in person. Some of those people have become my closest friends in the world. So I was really ready to finally meet Suzie in person because I was fairly certain it would be just as good as it was on paper.
I was right! Suzie was as wonderful as I expected, as was her boyfriend, Tom, and her cats, Rosie and Maya. The showed me as much of Houston as they could in our time together.
Over the course of our day, we ate Mexican food, got good news about Rosie (who had been dealing with some health issues), and attempted two trips to Blockbuster.
We had a great time at an art opening (which was actually done by two Baltimore based artists, believe it or not), I was treated to one of their favorite local donuts, and we headed off to Miller Outdoor Theater, where we saw the Robert Glasper Experiment. Pretty lights, huh?
The next day, I got in my rental car and drove to Austin. Houston definitely has a lot of art and culture, but I definitely preferred the aesthetics of Austin. All the food trucks and public art made me feel like I was in the right place. When I wasn’t in the beautiful space The Blogcademy was held in (more to come), I got to see some of the fun Austin has to offer.
There was a pretty fantastic costume store, “Lucy In Disguise With Diamonds“, extremely cute food trucks, and a great city skyline.
I’m glad I got to experience a new state, meet a penpal, and attend an extremely relevant workshop. I had a fantastic time and I’m grateful for the opportunities I was given, including the opportunity to learn that calves can, indeed, sweat! No one’s kidding about the heat.
