So on Wednesday night I hopped on the Greyhound (with a bunch of ex convicts, it turns out!) to make the LOOOOOOONG journey to Dallas, Texas! The bus was FULL. Not an empty seat anywhere. Not even a window seat for moi :( as can be expected, I found it impossible to sleep as I had nowhere to lean against (the ex convict next to me, whose distinctive tattoos identified him as part of a very prominent prison gang, did not look very cuddly...) I had read almost an entire book by the time we got to Memphis at 2am and was not too excited to learn we had to sit in the terminal for an hour while the bus was cleaned and refueled. It turned out there was news to watch and it was then that I learned about the Washington DC shooting that happened recently. Terribly sad :( anyway, after waiting just under two hours, we finally boarded the bus again and were on our merry way! Luckily loads of people switched buses in Memphis so I got a window seat with an empty seat next to me and settled in for a long sleep. Being short has definitely got advantages :) after a sixteen hour slog, we finally arrived in Dallas where Nicolette met me and took me to her beautiful home just outside the city.
On Friday, I spent the day wandering through a mall near where Nicolette and her husband Carl work. It was a lovely day. I found an awesome pair of jeans to go with my boots at Old Navy (what an awesome shop! Something between Mr Price and Jay Jays), explored the vastness of Nordstrom (HUGE Stuttafords/Edgars type store! Every girl would die to see it!), bought myself a few little trinkets and basically just shopped the day away! It was grand :) In the evening, I got to go and see the Suzuki Music Institute of Dallas where Nicolette and Carl work. It is fantastic! I would love to work there! My favourite part was a huge collage of her old South African students, featuring yours truly and my dear little brother with his Twinkler certificate (lolsies!) and all my old violin friends from the early days! Such a blast from the past :) Saturday was a huge treat, we went to watch the Dallas Symphony Orchestra at their concert hall performing Mahler and Tchaikovsky. The Mahler piece featured a brilliant singer with an incredible voice and the Tchaikovsky piece was orchestral but even more fantastic... The performances by the various solo instruments were PHENOMENAL!!! These artists played their instruments like I have never heard in my life. It absolutely nourished my soul :)
Sunday is the day I've been dying to share and you'll die when you read it... We went to a Korean spa! Much to my (well concealed!) initial horror, if you wanted to use the pool or sauna facilities, nakedness was very much the order of the day. Luckily the men and women had separate facilities! But still... Anywho, I had to overcome my fears and bite the bullet, and very soon was frolicking nude in the pools with the other naked nymphs. Although, to be honest there was not a lot of nymphness... It was more Narwhal than nymph for the most part. But it seems nobody even notices nakedness when everybody's doing it! Weird. There were super hot and super cold pools, a heated sauna room and many rooms with various properties of healing in them. The healing rooms were all for general use and we were gifted a very sexy (sarcasm!) "uniform" to wear out in the general spa areas. Orange for women, grey for men, huge shorts and t-shirts. Yum. The rooms were amazing though, they had an ice room, a few salt rooms, an infrared room, a crystal room (all these rooms had different purposes and healing properties) and three hot rooms heated to different temperatures with degrees varying from "pretty damn hot", to "ok, struggling to inhale", to "which corner belongs to Satan??". I avoided the Satan room... My body already hated me... This also because I had a one and a half hour Swedish/Accupressure massage. It involved a lot of stretching and pulling in awkward directions and punching my sore spots. I basically paid for a little Korean lady to beat me up for an hour and a half. Very effectively, but ow! What a day though!
Later, we went for a nice walk and jog around a creek in the neighbourhood Nicolette used to live in, before heading into the VERY wealthy suburbs (as in the abodes in this area should come standard with a moat!) for dinner with friends of theirs. FUNNIEST COUPLE EVER!!! I felt like Alice in Wonderland. Old as the hills, she is a typical ditzy old Southern belle (obsessed with dolls and strawberries so their house is basically a life sized, strawberry themed dollhouse, complete with upside down tea sets and china stuck up all over their kitchen roof!) and he is a typical old Southern farmer. Impatient as all hell, blunt as anything and straightforward to the point where we were all in stitches every time he opened his mouth.
Today I am running around exploring downtown Dallas. I have stood in the exact spot where JFK was assassinated (creepy!), visited his memorial in Dealey Plaza, finally got round to finding a Diners, Drive-ins and Dives restaurant (just for you, dad!) and had the most amazing burger I've ever tasted, and now I'm off to explore a little more before heading back tonight to meet Nicolette and Carl for our very own Braai Day Braai with pap en wors! Woohoo :) Happy Heritage and Braai Day everybody!
And as always... Stay classy c",)
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