Into the land of the dead; I mean, debaters...

As I'm sure you know (if you don't know, you will know, why, I don't know), last Sunday I (we) headed down south to Texas to debate at the NCFCA National Tournament. I had actually never been on a plane before, doing bellyflops into the pool off the high jumping-board into a pool was the closest I had ever come to flying. Well then, actually that's not right. As a small child, I once was pushed off the viewing deck of the World Trade Tower (One 110 story) and fell all the way to the 30 floor before a helicopter piloted by Bill Clinton and Bill Gates snatched me from the air and saved me from sure death. But that's a long story, and it's classified anyways. Anyhow, the flight down to Texas went well with no problems and very few delays. In fact we arrived four hours earlier then we were expecting.

As soon as we landed in Austin and set foot outside of the airport terminal, I knew right away that we really were in Texas. The mild 190 degree temperatures plus the smell of cooked rattlesnake easily gave it away. And to make a long story shorter, over the next few days we had a lot of fun debating, playing Ultimate Frisbee, basketball, football, and just meeting debate and speech people from across America (my favorite group was region seven - great debaters, great Ultimate Frisbee players). We ended up not breaking to the outrounds in debate even though I thought we did pretty good in all six rounds. We could have easily won two of the ones that we ended up losing but things like that happen. All I know is we did our best job and things just didn't work out in our favor. Sometimes you get unlucky (some debate touny's come down to a coin-flip, or a judge can vote on a non existent stock issue) and we just happened to be the unlucky ones this time. Regardless of all that, every single round that we debated in was very fun and I really enjoyed it.

(debate pictures - none of us) (general nationals photos)

Saturday, while on our way back to the airport, we decided to stop in Austin for a hour to see the state capitol building. It turned out that just at the same time as we arrived there was a protest on illegal immigration going on outside and on the steps the capitol building. There were speakers shouting into microphones about the evils of illegals and just a little bit removed from the main protest group, counter - pro illegal's protesters screaming about the raciest anti illegal immigration protesters. I really wish I had brought the video camera...

(pictures of the protest) (pictures of the capitol)

And by the way. Why does the Texas flag bear so much of a resemblance to the French flag?