Irving TX

Tuesday March 2

Today I found a great hostel in Irving right between Dallas and Fort Worth for $20/night. A guy named Carlos runs the joint and he is incredibly helpful and friendly.
The hostel has 4 rooms with a total of 20 beds and a nice common area. It's a remodeled house, full kitchen, backyard, parking, foosball table, free wireless, free washer/dryer + free detergent, and it's pretty close to just about everything in the area.
So far I've met a very good looking Belgian photographer, Bieke

you can check her award winning work @
www.biekedepoorter.be

a dude from Jersey moving to Vegas, a guy from far north New York who just graduated and is moving to Atlanta, an Aussie carpenter named Broderick on holiday for 4 months, a Chinese PHD economics student who studies at Columbia in Manhattan, a pair of Dutch dudes, and a guy from who the hell knows where.

Spent the day at a coffee shop in the super rich part of town just a couple miles north of downtown Dallas applying for positions.

Wednesday March 3

Today I got up at 8:00 and hit the internet hard and made some phone calls looking for work. There are actually quite a few positions here including some of the local utilities that are hiring for a couple entry level engineers as well as some IT and PC Support jobs. I also hit up a career placement center here in Irving and will be returning there tomorrow to meet with someone.
I'm feeling confident that something is just on the horizon and am not discouraged at all, mostly because it was in the mid 60's and beautifully sunny today!

When I finally land a job, I am in talks to sublet an efficiency apt. in the metroplex here for under $400/month and will finally be able to unload my van. For now, however I am doing what I have to to live cheap.

Texas is quite a different place but pretty close to what I expected. The people are (generally) very kind and there is a lot of diversity everywhere I've been down here which is a plus. The weather is warm, the entire area seems more spread out that what I imagined and it sort of seems like everything has been bleached by the sun over the years. There is a ton of construction and development everywhere due to the population influx, and seemingly plenty of opportunities to be had.

This weekend I plan on checking out some of the sites of the area like the baseball park, cowboy's stadium, some neat sculptures, a place they call the "stockyards" in Fort Worth and downtown Dallas so I'll keep you all up to date on what's going on here in Texas!