I have been late in updating the site with text but it has been a social marathon for us since arriving in Rockport. Joshua’s cousin Danielle got married this past Saturday (we didn’t even know until we arrived) and relatives have been materializing from everywhere and there were dinners and drinks and much visiting to do. Now that the wedding is over, things are quieting a little.

Choosing Texas as the reinsertion point after being out of the country for so long hasn’t exactly done any favors for our culture shock. Where there were Mexicans/Panamanians/Salvadorians/Cubans/Colombians/etc. before, there are now Texans, speaking Texan (e.g., “That y’allses truck out there?”). Texans with tattoos of the state of Texas that say “100% Texan”—we saw two of these in one day. Country music stations predominate and Miller Lite is drunk (the low-carb choice, I’m told).

I have managed to curb my slack-jawed staring at every new thing somewhat. I still can’t get over how nearly every person in this town drives an enormous, shiny new truck—the kind with four doors, a roomy back seat, and a built-in flight of stairs to help you get up to the cab. Many of these trucks have a burly rack over the grill, presumably so that one can go blasting cows or small volkswagons with immunity.

As with every new and exotic country we visit, the first sightseeing mission is always to the grocery store. One must eat and you never know what you might find. The Rockport HEB is brand new, easily the size of an IKEA and just about as difficult to navigate if you deviate in any way from the prescribed flow. I brought the camera.

The shredded cheese display is so massive that I had to climb back into the frozen meats trough to fit it all in one frame. Fortunately, HEB shoppers do not find strange foreign types frolicking in the meat freezer that odd and I didn’t get kicked out.

Here’s a close-up. White, yellow, mixed. Repeat unnecessarily.

We spent about an hour in HEB (enough time so that I was nearly crawling out of my own skin by the time we hit the checkout line)—mostly because we got lost a couple of times and had to navigate back to hit the frozen aisles, which is a labyrinth of seven-foot high freezers covering an area the size of a city block.

All the key ingredients you need to make a, uh, molded salad.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 14th, 2007 at 3:03 pm and is filed under doings, Texas, TimeMachine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.