Day 1: Travel from Houston to San Francisco

We all met at McMurtry College around 7 in the morning with our luggage packed full of sleeping bags and a week’s worth of clothing. After gathering everyone together and making sure we had everything we needed, we loaded up into the super shuttle and went on our way. We arrived to the airport, not yet truly realizing spring break had really started and our trip would begin. We got on the plane; together we were 11 sleepy college students settled into our seats and ready to nap on the four-hour flight! Davinia, our trip driver, found us at the airport when we arrived in San Francisco as she came in on her later flight. Now that we had safely arrived, our next step was to get on the road. This would prove to be a little more of a challenge than anticipated. It was only after moving ourselves (and all of our gear) through three vans that we were satisfied. (The first two were lacking in enough functional seat-belts). We took in the city as we passed by unfamiliar houses and buildings, and it finally started to hit us that we were no longer in Houston, but instead a new city full of different challenges. We made it to St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, where we met Tina, our host for the next two nights. She gave us a tour of the building and we started settling in.

We spoke with Tina about her daily life and how the neighborhood has responded to the drought conditions. She told us what measures she takes to conserves water in her own life, and how others have been dealing with the dwindling water sources. We were surprised to find that she had a packet explaining ways to conserve drinking/tap water on hand, just going to show how much an average citizens' daily lives have been impacted. She also discussed how water has been affecting the homeless population in the area, a sub-topic we hadn’t heard much about before and found very interesting. We took notes and she wished us good luck on our travels.

After unpacking a little, we were off to find a nearby grocery store. Our grocery list consisted of canned foods, snacks, milk, cereal, bowls and utensils, and toiletries. We wanted to both learn and live our topic of water, so while making shopping decisions, we practiced being as conscious as possible about how much water it took to prepare the food we were going to eat, where it had come from, and how it had been adapted. Specifically, we all agreed upon a vegetarian diet for the week after discussing the large water-footprint of meat. Following our shopping adventure, we discussed the events of the day and what we thought of them; specifically what kinds of expectations we had for the trip, and anything we had already found that either supported or surprised us about those expectations. We all looked forward greatly to this trip considering the large amount of work we had all already put into it, and how much we knew we would learn from it.