This weekend I made my way to Austin for a long awaited trip to see my good friend Christie. I was so excited to see her and the city I had moved from. It was fun but exhausting trip as there was so much to do with the little time that I had there. But the trip held something I wasn't expecting to get.... closure.

I remember when I lived in San Antonio I thought that all my problems would be solved if I could just get to Austin. To me Austin was the coolest place in the world to live and I thought that it was just a dream that I would ever live there. I remember the day that it came a reality, I thought that my all prayers were answered. God really has a good sense of humor sometimes because my prayers were answered just not in the way I had imagined.

I was expecting my social life to explode when I got to Austin because Kami was there and I imagined all the awesome things we were going to get to do especially since we lived within 3 minutes of each other. About a month of me living there she called me with the news, she was engaged and moving to Houston. I still remember the hollow ringing in my ears when she told me and how I sadly tried to fake my excitement, I was losing my only friend. It was hard not to be selfish about the entire deal.

After that I really tried to like Austin. I became good friends with my boss Christie and we got involved in all sorts of things but it was all in vain, I wasn't happy. Getting older made me long for the small town life I was used to but with a small town you lose some of the career advantages that you have in a big city. I gave Austin 2 years of effort and in fact I was looking for other options (back to SA? Uvalde even!?) when I met Chad.

Being back in a small town is like a breath of fresh air for me. I believe now that it wasn't Austin, it was the city life. I was ok with SA because I was in college and wanted the excitement that a city can offer, it was also easier because so many other friends from Uvalde were there. But older life has brought out the "country mouse" in me. We live on a street where we know every neighbor whereas I didn't know one person in my apartment building in Austin. For the first time since I left Uvalde I feel a sense of community again. And even though Austin showed up #3 on a list by US News as the best place to live in the United States, I know deep inside they somehow overlooked Nacogdoches!