Tuesday, September 17, 2013

A Musical and Nature in Downtown Houston :: The Book of Mormon and Tranquillity Park

Hello everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!!

David was in LA for a wedding for 23 hours (well, he spent 23 hours in LA, but of course, it was more like 2 days with traveling) so I logged some quality girl-bonding time with a few of my girlfriends both near and far!  I'm not the greatest at doing long distance of any sort, whether it's friendship or a romantic relationship, but one friend who has always been there--through growing up together to now going on 8 years of long distance friend-ing--is Linda!  (You can see a couple of posts of when she came out to visit me in Seattle here.)  so we did about 3 hours of Skyping one night, catching up and bonding over our shared terror of roaches...  aha ha.. ha...  eep.  unfortunately, we both live in areas at the moment where roaches roam freely, like they own the whole city!   Anyway, that aside, it was so nice to get to catch up, and I can't wait for our next Skype date!  =D 

Then, the next day, I spent the afternoon shopping with Lijia!  I know, such a girl thing to do.  But you know, sometimes retail therapy is necessary, especially when it includes thrifting!!  I have always found thrifting to be much more interesting than,, say, going to a mall. I mean, if I specifically need something on short notice, I will head to the mall, but when I'm just in the mood for retail therapy (when it's ok to just window shop and not get anything), then I much prefer thrifting..  perhaps because there's the sense of surprise? like a feeling of having found a treasure when you do get that amazing silk blouse or that amazing pair of leather boots because you weren't really going into the experience expecting to find something?  and of course, the usually lower price tag is an added plus  ;)

Anyway, having thoroughly enjoyed the girl time, I was happy to have David back on Sunday!  =p  It was pretty intense actually, because he had gotten the tickets to go see The Book of Mormon on Sunday at 2 pm back in March. Since the wedding was on Saturday, he had to fly back on a red-eye flight after the wedding on Saturday, and land in Houston around 6:30 am on Sunday, take a quick nap, and then go to the show!  poor guy..  lol but he handled it like a champ.  See? can't even tell he's sleep deprived in the photo!  haha  =p

and the show?  TOTALLY worth it!!
It was so good!!  the actors/singers/dancers were amazing, the music was incredibly catchy, and the story line was really funny. we highly recommend it.  However, if you are easily offended, this may not be the show for you..  I mean, it wasn't terribly raunchy or anything, and even I understood all of the jokes (I'm usually the one who has to ask 'wait, what's so funny..?' whenever a dirty jokes come up...  I pull out the Asian card for those instances, I didn't grow up here!  hmph  haha)

When we got to the theater, they had these binoculars in the front, and we got them just in case we would have difficulty seeing the stage from our seats (we had never been to the Hobby Center, so we weren't sure how everything would be set up)  and proceeded to play with them until the show started..  haha

However, the binoculars were completely unnecessary!  Because David got the tickets so early, our seats were amazing!!  We were on the second row of the balcony, right in the center!

Having thoroughly enjoyed our selves at the show, we headed back out into the Houston heat.  I hear all of my friends in other places starting to break out their fall outfits, beginning to enjoy the crisper weather, etc etc.  but in Houston, it's still 98 degrees.  People here seem to keep all indoor places at about 60 degrees though, so we have to dress like it's fall anyway when we go to these shows (or class.. Shepherd is always freezing too), and then suffer the consequences when you walk back to your car/home, etc  haha

On our way back to our parking garage, we stumbled upon this little park, right in front of the Hobby Center, called the Tranquillity Park.  Yes, it's actually spelled with two 'L's, and it's in honor of the first Moon landing!  you know, the first words transmitted from the Moon by Neil Armstrong was "Houston, Tranquillity Base here.  The Eagle has landed."  Since 'Houston' is in there and everything, the city of Houston had to have a park to commemorate the event  ;)


When we went, the fountain was dry (maybe they were cleaning) but we still had fun walking around the park and enjoying the greenery in the middle of the downtown.







While we were strolling around the park, we found this cluster of trees, so I went to see if I could be like Momo.  Momo is a border collie who is amazing at playing 'where's Waldo'. In my opinion, it's a much better version of 'where's Waldo' because Momo is soo darn cute!!  you can subscribe to Momo on Instagram here if you want a daily feed of puppy cuteness mixed with 'where's Waldo' ness.

Anyway, back to my attempt at being 'Waldo'. or is it 'Walda'? doesn't Waldo have a girlfriend of that name or something?  
hmmmm,,, as you can see, it didn't work very well.  something about those neon pink pants...   haha   
^^^ me admitting defeat and abandoning my attempt to be like Walda, or Momo...  

Oh, and look at that interesting temple looking building poking out in between all of the sky scrapers! =D  anyone know what it is?  We wanted to walk over there and check it out when we noticed it, but we didn't have enough time..  =/
We resumed walking around the park afterwards, and noticed these cylindrical pillars are everywhere!  Later, we learned that they are supposed to represent Apollo's rocket boosters!


It's a charming little park with a lot of trees (which seems to be a rarity in Houston), so we enjoyed as much of it as we could before heading back home for one of my rehearsals...  a musician's work is never done!! 


a better(?) attempt at 'where's Waldo' ing.

ahh.. so green.. and peaceful..

some more interesting architecture spotted on our way back to our car...

We have never really explored downtown Houston because the city of Houston is quite spread out, and the part Rice is located is not very close to downtown, but we're looking forward doing some more exploring as we go see more shows in the theater district  =)

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful rest of the week!
--Janny

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