Austin, J-choc's view, day three. last but not least...

Aiight yo, this is day three. The final frontier. (no, I don’t like Star Trek)

Whew, are you tired of reading yet? It’s pretty hefty.

Today was Quan’s day and man was it cool. Our surprise for Quan kinda died before it began, he only kinda liked his batman shirt, and the karaoke place we wanted to go to was closed, but that didn’t stop us! We all had super hero shirts: me, Sam, Anh and Cheryl were the teenage mutant ninja turtles (turtles in a half-shell, TURTLE POWER!!), Kristen was Captain America (freedom, justice and the American way, baby!), Bich and Peter were Superwoman/man, Quan was Batman, and Brian was Spiderman (although his shirt had many a character, so maybe he can be the entire Justice League haha). We set out in our respective cars, got really really lost, tried to buy a map (didn’t happen, the first time around), saw Peter get honked at and almost die in his car, made it to Round Rock (?!?!?!), TX Walmart for Quan’s scavenger hunt. He had clues on little green posties which he had a hard time deciphering, but then this really cool lady who worked there pretty much helped him on all of them. She and Quan got a picture together. As soon as the rest of the group came back to check on his progress, she was outta there to keep her “help” a secret. That was funny. So, it turns out that tough part about Quan’s scavenger hunt was not actually getting all the clues, but shopping through Walmart with a list. =) We had to help him out a bit when he started looking for chocolate in the sporting goods section…

He got all the items and came up with…ingredients for s’mores!!! Woohoo! We’re going out outdoors recreational style! We looped back to past our hotel, past parts of downtown, past a nude man on a bike…, and towards a wonderful park! We had a grand old time finding parking, setting up camp and playing football!!! The KGB versus…the KGB plus (we came up with it first! Haha) It was me, Cheryl, Bich, Brian vs. Anh, Peter, Kristen, and Sam—with Quan as the interchangeable quarterback. More hilarity ensued. At random times we actually caught the ball. There were some impressive moves by Anh who caught many a touchdown, Bich “the steamroller” whose defense was unstoppable, Sam who can play pretty darn well, and all the rest of us eager beavers who did the best we could while the guys tried to make plays out of our antics. Once again, it was fun! =) after that, I performed surgery on Cheryl’s foot using Mcdonalds’ napkins and duct tape. (all on camera, of course). after that was tree time!!! We all gingerly climbed the branches of an old, hoary tree and took pictures of our cautious positions on each branch. Now getting off was the problem. It took the efforts of many, but we all got off without any scrapes or broken bones. Very awesome.

Ahh canoeing aka kayaking (could be either). That was awesomeness defined. After picking our places in each boat, we began to test the waters coordinating our paddles to actually get somewhere. We raced, we crashed (several times), we floated lazily on the waters. Never once did we tip! The funniest and best part was when we hooked our boats together and floated and almost ran into some turtles. We’re such a group we can’t let water part us! Hehe apparently some rowers were practicing so we were always on the lookout for their uniform strokes. We freaked out a couple of times. Anh was ready to jump if need be! But she didn’t. Instead she accidentally hit Sam in the face with the paddle. I saw the aftermath: the profuse apologies, the laughter, the screams, the disorientation. It was a sight to see. A lot of us got whacked with paddles—including me, twice Haha. But it was so funny. I wish we could’ve taped the whole thing. Quan was so funny, he started texting and talking on the phone while we were floating together. It was a classic picture of our modern era. Cheryl, the “clubbing monster” tried to pull us all back to shore with her bare hands and she did pretty well, but we gave her a break which I’m sure she enjoyed. =) I loved it and I wish we could do this all again.

Last but certainly not least we DID do karaoke! Silhouette (remember that because YOU should go there) was perfect. The sushi, the atmosphere, the beautiful bathrooms (I’m being serious here, it was an amazing little potty room!) and of course, classic Michael Jackson made the place like a whiff of heaven. We got our food and took it to this really cool upstairs area where this really chill, long-haired, awesome dude set us up in our karaoke room.

We sang Circle of Life, Hound Dog, Beauty and the Beast, Lady Marmalade, Sunday Bloody Sunday (which Bich is listening to as I type right now), and some awesome Vietnamese songs which we kinda sang along to. We non-viets got one word in a war song that Quan sang (can you guess?): Vietnam. Quan had a seriously good time. And we did too. Filled with soy sauce and darn good seaweed, we sang as loud as we could not caring how well we did or who sang along. It was a perfect experience with which to end Spring Break. After pictures in front of the capitol building, we split up sadly and drove on home. Some of us stuck it out in Austin and some hung out on campus before leaving today, and some us are just staying, but one thing that’ll always be around is the crazy memories that we created in the past 72 hours. I wouldn’t trade these people for the world. =)