Thread: What is your country like?

Assuming your country is small you could probably do the whole thing, but if it's not or you just don't want to, state/province or city would be cool too.

I was really curious when someone posted on here "My dreams have block cities, like the ones in America." "What other kinds of cities are there?" was my reaction, and I felt woefully ignorant.

I've been to Canada, Mexico, Belize, and Jamaica, and have traveled around a ton of the US, but nothing compares to the view of someone who actually lives there.

Texas: (if anyone wants more pictures, I can post some. It really is beautiful here. Max 5 images per post though.)

I realize Texas is not a country, but the place is so huge and diverse there is no way I could go into the rest of the US (which I'm not even that familiar with, having just passed through a lot of places.) And I can't even do all of Texas, I've never been up in the panhandle. And if anyone lives in these varying areas and I've screwed up somewhere, let me know, I've only been in some of these places less than a week.

Texas is beautiful, whatever your tastes. Now bear in mind that I've only lived in central Texas, so if anyone wants to add anything that'd be great, and these are massive generalizations. There are a lot more regions, you can see a list here.

East Texas has tons of pine forests, (It's called Piney Woods, yay creativity). It's really green, so anyone who tells you Texas is all desert is lying their ass off.

Spoiler for Piney Woods:

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Then you've got West Texas. West Texas is extremely dry, and parts of it are like a desert. There are plateaus and stuff there. Before you get to the desert areas though, there are farms and wind farms, if I remember correctly (it's been a while.)

Spoiler for West Texas:

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There's the Hill Country, which is one of my favorite areas. It is very hilly (again, creativity), and usually has lots and lots of trees.

Spoiler for Hill Country:

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I shall neglect South Texas because I haven't really been there apart from Padre Island to go to the beach, or San Antonio which is at the very northern part.

Now I live in the Edwards Plateau area, which includes Austin. Lots of cities and suburbs around here. We do have trees, but they are not tall and pretty like East Texas. Don't really get a lot of rain (sometimes a month or two can pass without it). It's usually kind of humid and hot, around 100 F in the summer and 40-50 F in the winter. I've only seen snow maybe 7 times in my life, 6 of those where I live, only 3 of those have actually landed on the ground, and only 2 of them I can remember. My snowman was more like a mudman, and I had to take all of my neighbor's snow to do it. Freezing is much more common, usually happens in February.

Austin: Austin is weird. That's their slogan: Keep Austin Weird. I haven't lived there but I've been there plenty of times, traffic is a bitch. To me the whole place seems a bit dirty their school system is not the greatest, and they have lots of homeless people, but one thing Austin does have is fun. It is full of wacky artistic people, musicians, oddballs, those kinds of people. It has tons of interesting places to visit, tons of live music, interesting parties, and the like. Some of these include Austin City Limits, Eeyore's Birthday Party, SXSW, and also hosts Lollapalooza. And you have 6th Street, which is like party central. There's a street near UT (I forget) that has tons of vendors selling handmade items, street artists, and the like. Very cool stuff.

Spoiler for Austin:

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And you have suburbs scattered around. Very tight spaces. I'd like to post examples of houses, but don't have enough images remaining for this post Typical brick stuff, ranging from nice to shabby, and you get some really nice stuff around the rich part of Austin. I went to a house that was huge, had a secret room, marble floors, I think marble countertops, a pool, a hot tub, and a private boat dock onto Lake Travis o_o

People are usually very nice, and we do have the whole "Texas Pride" thing going. I'm not sure why that is, it's more of a cultural thing than any pride in say, the Texas government or anything like that. We do have a lot of Texas history courses, Texas government, etc. Also if you know anything about Texas history, it's cultivated a lot of rugged people with rugged individualism. I think the very most part of why we have Texas pride is because other people take notice. No offense to anyone, but no one really seems to care if you're from Ohio. People do care if you say you're from Texas. They have an assumption that we will have a shitton of pride and while we do have some, we just fill that role.

So yes, I do say that I'm a Texan before I say I'm an American. It was an amusing conversation with one of my friends that moved here from Virginia, she said "So you consider yourself a Texan?" and I said "Yep. So you're still a Virginian?" and she frowned at me and said "No. I'm an American."

And we don't have tons of rodeos, at least not in this area. I don't know why everyone thinks rodeos are huge here. I have been to some before, but that's not the point. They are fun. In fact, my uncle moonlights as a trick roper. But again, not the point.