‘Show me the way to Amarillo’
They say everything is bigger in Texas…we were not to be disappointed. Arriving in Amarillo via Dallas-Forth Worth (a huge airy airport) we found ourselves in picture book Texas. Stunning blue skies, flat land, steak houses and pickup trucks aplenty. West Texas A&M is actually in Canyon a small university town about 20 minutes drive south of Amarillo. We were taken for a taco dinner on our first night at the house of one of the WT Professors where we got a chance to meet some of the faculty and the speech and debate team. Alex also enjoyed bouncing around on the family trampoline, but he was rather shown-up by an energetic routine performed by the Professor’s 5 year old son…
On Friday we took part in a lunchtime debate in front of a sizable audience. We were each paired with one Texan to debate the motion ‘THW scrap the Olympics’ – the debate was good-natured and a lot of fun. The audience, which included a sizable number of high school kids, voted to keep the Olympics and agree with Alex. After the debater we were taken by Jessica (who teaches at West Texas) to the Paulo Duro (sp.) Canyon about ten miles from the town of canyon – it is the second largest canyon in the USA after the Grand Canyon. We drove down into it and strolled around, took pictures and looked at the cacti, with their beautiful flowers. It was fun to be out in the out doors rather than in a hotel room or debate round and the panoramic views were truly stunning.
That evening we went to see the school performance of Cabaret in the school theatre. The theatre itself is about a year old and is a testament to the fund raising power of even a relatively small/medium size university in the US. The show was an interesting choice for a fairly conservative town and the showgirls/cross-dressing/Nazi/abortion themes may not have suited every west Texan. Indeed several older couples left during act one… We enjoyed the show – although technical theatre Ali might have had some issues with the lighting. Afterwards we drove back to Amarillo to sample the nightlife and played some very competitive frames of pool and air-hockey. The car ride back to Canyon was memorable for our hosts as we sang our way through The Beatle’s back catalogue. We felt that on balance John was rather glad to drop us off at our hotel…
Saturday was a day off and John and Erin (who had taken us to Cabaret on Friday) took us for lunch at a local Buffalo Wings restaurant where we watched 12 different college football games simultaneously on around 35 different screens. Alex then got really excited when he worked out that some screens were running an interactive quiz. We were brought bright blue keypads and could compete in the quiz against the rest of the restaurant. Alex managed to win two straight games in a row before doing a jig of glory. After that excitement we went to an art installation called Cadillac Ranch – built in the 1970s (check). It had been described to us as something of a modern day Stonehenge and consists of ten Cadillac cars buried in a line in the middle of a field, which is about 20 minutes out of town. Being a public art installation the public are encouraged to spray paint the cars and we all took up the challenge arriving armed with several cans of spray paint recently purchased at Wal Mart. Although the pictures might not show this, spray painting in a 30mph wind is really hard and we may not have been artistic as possible but we did manage to leave our mark. That evening the debate team took us out bowling and to play pool. It was an all-American Saturday night and can be summed up by the following song…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weFbpmupZeI
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