The Big City

This weekend I went on a mini-road trip to Houston, TX. One of my friends works for a ministry that helps the women get out of the sex slave trade in Thailand and a Houston non-profit (House of Hope?) was sponsoring, as part of Anti-Trafficking Week, an event that included a speaker and booths set up to buy items made by individuals transitioning out of the sex slave trade. It was really fun, and I was an impromptu spokesperson for the ministry because I was standing behind the table! I love meeting people at such events, and we were there far after the event was over, chatting with customers and attendees.

We stayed with her sister, who lives there. Our purpose was to attend the event and then "see" Houston, as I had never been before. As I was preparing for the weekend and telling people about it, it became apparent to me that Houston may not be such an exciting destination as I thought it would be. First of all, it is all city. There are but 2 parks in the whole city limits, and as we found out on Saturday, they are crammed full with people because that's all they got!

I returned extremely grateful for Austin and it's notoriety for being an "outdoor" city, where a hike, swim, kayak, or mountain bike trail is literally only 5 minutes away from anything. And I also came away appreciative of the fact that Austin is, in proportion to Houston, "small."

Let me tell you how big Houston is. It's GINORMOUS. On our way in, the freeway widened to over 12 lanes. TWELVE LANES!!! I guess they need that much room to put all 2.5 million people who live there. Fortunately, all of our activities were within 15 minutes of each other, which apparently is a rare occurrence. The other thing was HUGE about Houston was our church service today. My friend's sister goes to First Baptist of Houston, and there was easily 5000 people in this auditorium at our service. The young adult ministry has 100s of members. It's just huge!

I am understanding more and more that I don't like cities. I will visit them, and fly to them, and spend a few days in them, but I would prefer to live in a more rural area. Not necessarily in the country, but either in a smaller town or just on the outskirts of town. I need my space. I need some air. And I don't need a traffic jam making Mo-Pac turn into a parking lot.

Where's my Texas cowboy rancher when I need him? :)