The pioneer

The telephone wakes me from deep sleep ..it’s Laura’s voice on the other end and I’m instantly wide-awake. She’s in Austin Texas ..scouting the housing market, the job market and schools for her and Karla. Yesterday she was in San Antonio ..but says she prefers Austin ..where there seems to be a lot more going on ..economically and culturally. I agree, although I’ve never been there ..I used to watch ‘Austin City Limits’ ..so I tell her it’s the ‘capital’ of country music. She doesn’t sound impressed. She tells me she had to drive through a brutal storm to get there ..and the wind and rain made her pull off the road several times. Today, however, it is clear and she’s OK ..which makes me feel greatly relieved (Later on, I find out that parts of Texas were flooded ..and the Dallas airport closed). In Austin, she actually made contact with a couple of Architects ..one through the paper ..and the other one outside an OfficeMax ..which was next to a HomeDepot ..which was next to the Starbucks where she was having coffee. Sounds promising. Later on, she drove by the high school ..where she says even the ‘gothies’ look busy ..reading ..or working on their laptop ..not scary .. traveling in gangs ..or anything like that ..making her feel less anxious about Karla’s safety. She’s driving back to Monterrey Mexico now ..five more hours to go. I’m impressed with how tuned-in she is to American culture ..it’s very different than Mexico ..where her sister ..and most of her girlfriends still lead traditional lives as wives and homemakers. She says she had to laugh ..her sister thought ‘Juno’ was a great movie .. but the ending made her cry.