Today is it a bit overcast and around 69 degrees which is cool and normal for this time of the year. The natives or Houstonians say that the period from September to June is wonderful and they love living here. The summer is terrible and no one defends it. What surprised me was all the trees and green foliage my initial thinking that Texas is desert country. A friend wrote an email asking me if there was a lot of cowboys with cowboy hats running around and I had to report in the negative. What also is interesting is the cosmopolitan speech accent which could almost be any city in the country and decidedly very few with a "Bush" style twang. I would have trouble placing peoples accents here as to where they come from. I met a local gal, a Houstonian, who is a singer and has very little accent. I did not know that she was from the area. Enough of accents!
I have been rehearsing mostly in the late afternoons to evenings as a lot of the staff, chorus, etc. have day jobs and only on the weekends can we have full rehearsal days. I am being hosted by a "friend" of the opera who has given the upper floor of her house over to my use and we share the upstairs kitchen. The street I am living on is Bayland Ave and this part is lined with live oaks on each side which spread their leafy arms over the street creating a type of bower. The houses are typical south coast southern types, many being "shot gun houses" (rooms running from front to rear with no wings, something my father in law use to call "railroad houses") found as well in New Orleans, Lousiana in general. A Louisana native told me he felt right at home here in Houston.
