Houston

I am so in love with this life!
Looking back what I experienced for the past 10 months leaves me speechless!

While writing this I am in the airplane flying back home to NYC after having spent 4 lovely days in Houston. My energy level is back to 100%! The first breath I took in Houston made me feel like I am on holidays since a week or so.
Houston belongs to the State of Texas. It really is close to Mexico and one can certainly feel it. There is mexican food or as they call it "texmex" everywhere. The weather was just perfect, people are so happy and friendly and there is latino music everywhere. Where in other parts of the US they say you guys or you all, in Texas you just say y'all! Very funny to hear it that often and not in a hilarious but serious way!
The reason why I went to Houston was because Annamarie got married. They organized an amazing wedding which lastet almost 18 hours. Even tough I was alone and basically only knew 5 people of more than 200 invitees, I felt like I knew these people all my life. The so called "Swissies" fraction was so nice and welcomed me with open arms as a new member of their group. All the mexicans and americans were really nice too and so much fun!
Annamarie looked so beautiful in her wedding dress that when she appeared in the church I could not help it but shed a few tears. The ceremony was not like something I have ever seen before, (despite maybe the Mexican wedding of Elio and Patricia, when a phone was ringing and after like 2 minutes, the priest figured out it was his own) the priest made one joke after the other; his best one was probably that he would like to meet all the single ladies after the ceremony because he is (obviously) still single himself.
His three advices to Annamarie and Chuy were the three following:
1. Communication
2. Forgiveness
3. Make babies

Even in his three recommendations for the marriage he could not stop being funny, he insisted that the newly weds start making babies as soon as possible. The whole crowd was laughing.
This funny start of the wedding guided us through the whole day.
The next part was: saddle up on your bikes and start pushing the pedals. Almost 70 bikers in total made a 30 minutes drive through the streets of Houston to A&C's home to the Apéro. The whole bike parade was accompanied by music, cars and lots of laughter.

At the Apéro they served Tacos and I finally learned the real difference between a taco and a burrito. It is just a size difference. If you can hold it in one hand it is a taco and if you need both hands it is a burrito. Voilà, now we know it!

After the Apéro was Siesta time, some of us were taking it literally and took a nap, others like me went for coffee.
At 6pm it was again time to go on our bikes. This time though it was a much longer ride than expected, the crowd sized down to about 30 people. We paddled along the "river" Bayou and embraced a beautiful scenery of Houston.
Arriving at Annamarie's aunts house, the party started. Lots of eating, dancing, drinking, talking, playing games etc. I felt so comfortable that I even showed my DJ skills that I practiced in a few bars in Florence back in the days and played some real Swiss German music. We had a blast until the police came to tell us to shut the music. But as Annamarie said: it ain't no good party without the police coming!
The party was still going on and a few of us even jumped in the pool. Guess who joined the group? ;-)

On Sunday I was the honoured one who was invited for Sunday Funday with only the close ones of Annamarie and Chuy. We reflected the whole wedding and laughed all over again. We ate craw fish which was originally eaten in Houston went over to Vietnam, where the spicy sauce was added and is now back in Houston where it is a traditional dish - still with all the spicy sauce added in Vietnam. It is super delicious but a ton of work until you opened it and can actually eat it.

Today I drove down south to the Galveston beach. I really enjoyed it and could reflect all the memories from the past 5 intense weeks.

Happy Tuesday everyone!

Love,
NinaRead more