Texas = Spanos and Mexican

We actually did it; the UB Policy debate team managed to fly itself down to Texas, and back again with minimal difficulty. The flight down was rough, much delays and bad lazy airport workers making our connection from Chicago to Texas almost much longer then planned. Despite the mass amounts of tape and care that went into packing my 48.5 and 47 pound tubs, they tumbled into Fort Lauderdale four hours after Jeff and I did, with various amounts of cracks and weird bruises which probably effected their whole performance at the Texas Swing. Yesss, I'll blame our losses on the airports of the United States.

We were leeches to the grand and wonderful University of Rochester once again, and they put us up in some pretty swanky hotels that blow our previous accommodations out of the water. Anyone remember the 'Knight Motel' in Ohio??? Oh good shady times. We're lucky a stray bullet didn't hit us.

There was certainly no stray bullets zooming around these hotels, with beds I had to jump to get into, Starbucks coffee, two showerheads, and a phone next to the toilet. Whoa, they think of everything. And cable TV. I want it sooo bad. I got to watch what all the cool kids watch all last week. It's amazing what fun a TV can be when it had more then 1 and a half channels. I'm also very pro to this thing called a "hospitality suite", which is stocked with literally every liquid you could possibly desire, no questions asked.

I managed to fail totally at the whole taking pictures thing, and my camera that was given to me over break lays still in my bookbag unwrapped. It of course, continues the problem with film and gelatin, but as I am way to poor to buy a digital camera, and as of yet, each one has been given to me, I can't be totally evil, right?Or is it? Oh dear, I'm a goner. All I wanted was some southern memories. It doesn't even matter though, because I was way too distracted with cutting down cards, making blocks, debating, and TV to process that I had no pictures. So all my pictures I will have to, once again, leech off of Rochester. And Katie has them up already! Score! Why do I always have a backpack on? I think it might be connected to me....

The first tournament was in Denton, and went down without much troubles. We lost a few rough ones, but there was this magical time between Denton and Dallas that blocks were made and cards appeared. It was like having a redo. A redo where we won the same amount of rounds we did the tournament before without the blocks and extra cards. Honestly? Only we could pull that one off. Dallas, which was named "fear and loathing", ended up living up to it's name when pairings went crazy, out rounds didn't have tables to flow on, and judges vote on arguments in cross x... or rather, because of this alternate use situation, on stuff that went down during the other teams prep time...

Everyone who was negative had apparently lost all their folders, and ended up having to go with this community argument that must have been handed out to everyone at the tournament but us, called Spanos. I'm not really pro it at all, the only satisfaction I got was in Dallas when we finally beat it. It took us a tournament though. A very long tournament of trying to run some sort of threat kon/otherization/Orientalism combination of answers that made us forget to pound the case outweighs cards that we've memorized by now. We are suuuch failures. Everyone down there also had a weird affiliation to Mexican foods and at least one car went to one every night. I don't trust Texas' beans. There was this mushroom and spinach masterpiece though that is tied for first with a stir-fry place that had tofu and totally rocked.

It was also confirmed that nobody in Dallas reads. It took an amazing time to try and find a bookstore, and was only accomplished with very sketchy directions Jeff had badgered out from a poor gas station attendant that probably never saw him coming.

All and all, it was an amazing time, and although my ears still haven't popped from the plane and so I can't hear, I'm unbelievably ecstatic about the time down there and can't wait to take home the next tournament we manage to muddle over to. And I really can't wait to drive to North Carolina in 12 hours, a place where my plane landed 16 hours ago in for a lay-over. If I had money- I would so be in a hotel next to the airport in North Carolina already waiting for mock trial to drive all the way down. But unfortunately, I'm broke, and apparently going to have to be bottled up in a van in the very near future with two new parts I just found out about. Fan-tastic.