IKEA and Houston

Howdy,

I went to Houston on Tuesday. One of the Aussies (Matt) had his passport and visa stolen, poor thing, and it has been a total nightmare for him to get sorted. He even has to leave the country to get a new J-1 visa even though he's already been approved once and is in the system on a registered program! Has to go through the whole application process AGAIN! Taught the rest of us not to carry our passports anywhere unless you absolutely have to (even though we're supposed to have them on us at all times). Anyhow, Matt had to go to the Australian consulate to get a new passport and IKEA was on the was so I went with him for the drive, and to do a little shopping ;)

Turned out to be a brilliant idea. The drive was fine, bit over 3 hours but we had a good run with traffic. I hear it can be dreadful. The roads were super straight and because it's so flat there wasn't much to see. We passed a gorgeous river that was milky blue due to all the limestone round here. I think it was the Guadalupe. Lots of gorgeous wildflowers too, blue and red and huge white ones. Not much else to look at. Huge plains of farmland and loads of motorhome (RV) shops along the way, out in the middle of nowhere. Mum and Dad, you would have been amazed by these things! They even had these little retro bullet shaped ones!

The outskirts of Houston looked just like San Antonio, except the roads were even scarier, and the buildings were newer. Not sure what the city center looked like, didn't go in the far. Ikea was just near the Australian Consulate, on the main highway in, so that worked out really well. The store was huge, even bigger than Melbourne (everything is bigger in Texas). I had already picked out my shopping list online and worked out my budget, which was probably the best thing to have done because otherwise I would either have panicked and run screaming or gone totally overboard. In the end I picked out one of the basic bentwood chairs with the natural coloured cover (I wanted black, just for cleaning, but they were out, but now I think the cream one is better). I also got a beanbag and a little $5 green stool that can be a table or help me get to the top cupboards. I picked up two small tables, one for a bedside ($7) and one funky square one in the same birch finish as the chair. Other than that, I found a cushion, a couple of lamps and some kitchen stuff including 6 red wine glasses for $5! All up it came to just under $250, which was pretty amazing. Biggest cost was the chair but it'll be worth it (mmm...playstation). I had lots of fun, and got to try the most amazing Swedish chocolate that had a crispy toffee centre covered in a thin layer of really creamy chocolate. It was amazing! Worth a trip to Houston just for that stuff.

Have a great Easter. I miss you all. Much love ^_^