One day I'll pick a standard format for these pictures. Bear with me.
If you have no clue what I'm talking about, I was lucky enough to go on another writing research trip to see where I set Casanova. My mom managed to get us cheap flights out to Dallas and back that fit in the weekend before exam week. I'd been asking to go to Dallas in order to do more in-depth research than Google Maps could give me, so I was amazed when it really did work out in my favor!
Why did I pick Arlington, Texas? Primarily because the songs that really brought Casanova together as a concrete story idea were country songs. Casanova is a collection of a couple different plot bunnies, and the song "American Kids" started to bring them together in my mind. My dad usually listens to country music when he's out in the garage and it was pure chance that I caught the songs I did. (I actually think I heard "American Kids" for the first time when I was heading to my high school for class one morning. That might've actually been with my mom. I don't remember.)
Anyway, "American Kids" gave me a really strong urge to set the story in Texas. The song never really mentions any specific place, but that was what my mind jumped to. My initial research focused around the Dallas area since we'd already been there and I was vaguely familiar with it. (Not as much as I thought, tbh.) I knew that I needed something close to a university because of Carter's backstory, and I think UTA was the first college I really looked at for the story. And settled on it since it worked out really well for what I needed. We also have an Arlington in our area, so the irony of that really cemented the decision for me.
So what did I learn?
First, I learned just how behind I was on technology. The HTC I've been using since March decided to fake a death on me the Wednesday before we left and I completely panicked. It refused to charge and I didn't know what my options were in such a short amount of time.
One of my friends found me the HTC Desire 626 for ~$200 including next-day shipping and I jumped on it. I ended up getting my old HTC to charge again, but I don't regret my decision to buy the Desire. It was so handy and now I've got a lot of app updates I wasn't able to get on the Incredible 2.
My favorite feature of the Desire is the map capabilities. (Go figure?) Google Maps let me download maps to have offline, which was super helpful to have while we were driving around. (Even though I almost put us on a toll road because of it. But that was my fault for not checking.) The Desire also has a GPS function that works even without WiFi or cell service, so Google was able to put together maps based on where I went and mapped out the photos I took! I was very ♥o♥ when I figured that out.
Anyway, on to the writing-related things I learned!
I learned that both character houses I picked had the house numbers painted on the curb like this. I have no idea why they're like this (the other one had a Texas flag, I think). We're almost never in residential areas when we're on vacation, so it was cool to see how theirs differed from what's around our area.
It's a really surreal feeling to experience an area you've studied on Google Maps. As a cartography student it's amazing to see the real-life versions of what I spend a bunch of time looking at. This trip enforced my dream of working with maps for a career c:
The park on Lake Arlington that I'd picked was open a lot later than I expected. I assumed all public parks closed at sunset no matter where you are (they do here, at least), so this works a lot better than I expected! This solves a problem regarding where to stargaze.
The park also has a little pavilion area with a lot of picnic tables, as well as a soda vending machine and a bathroom building. (The bathrooms aren't completely enclosed as a building, which is a little strange.) There's also a building with a large parking lot behind the pavilion.
The lake is big. Most of the reason I wanted to come to the park was to get a sense of scale. Seeing it on a map isn't the same as seeing it in person. It's a lot bigger than the lake Chris usually takes me to, and it's not enclosed within a park. It's also a great place to watch the sunset.
The UTA campus is really pretty. The trees still had a ton of fall colors on them. Walking around the east side of campus also made me grateful for how small my community college is. I don't think I could handle trekking across a campus this size.
The library has a gate system that you have to swipe through to get in and out. I would've liked to see more of the library, but it was probably for the best so I didn't get on the students' nerves while they were studying for exams. They had this really cool tree right near the lobby, though.
This wasn't necessarily something I "learned" per se, but I thought it was amusing. (Probably not to the kids who lost money to the machine.)
There was a vending machine in the campus center building with writing supplies and batteries. (And blank test booklets? I don't know what the bottom left stuff is.) We only have food vending machines at my college, and even at that they're not the easiest to track down.
We went to see a show at the campus planetarium, which was awesome. I learned that a group of stars I pay attention to is actually part of Orion's belt! I enjoyed learning about the night sky while being able to see it up overhead. The Christmas special we saw was really nice, though it apparently made my parents kind of motion sick.
(The cashier gave me a child's ticket even after my parents pointed out I was an adult. That was amusing.)
There are a lot of options for AHS upperclassmen if they want to go off-campus for lunch. Open lunch is a pretty novel concept for me, since my high school wasn't really around anything and we couldn't go anywhere and get back in 34 minutes. I wish I could've gone during the week to see how many kids actually bought lunch out, but Bethany Cafe was pretty crowded the Sunday we went. Surprisingly, a good number of restaurants in this shopping center were closed.
I learned that in addition to Bethany Cafe and Starbucks, there's also: Chipotle, Subway, pizza, sushi, two bakeries, Indian food, Sonic, and Super Chix all within immediate walking distance. All are closer than the off-campus food at my college. I'm very jealous.
We ate at Super Chix for lunch and holy cow is it good. Like, I can't decide whether this or In-N-Out is more of my favorite. The rosemary fries were really good.
They gave us a buzzer thing, which went off right as I was taking a picture of it. I can only think of one restaurant for sure that uses buzzers around home, and that's because it's super chaotic. Super Chix was really chill! It's on the corner of the shopping center it's in, so it has a lot of natural light. It also seems like a popular place to go to lunch after church services, since a lot of nicely dressed people showed up shortly after we did.
We got the bananas foster flavor since it was Sunday and it was probably the best custard I've ever had. (Not that I've had that much in the first place.) Writing this post has made me crave it ;o;
The Walmart Neighborhood Market near Toni has an aisle for alcohol. We have really strict alcohol vending laws in my county, so for me it's strange to go other places and find alcohol in grocery and convenience stores. The refrigerated section was new, though.
The Neighborhood Market in general was a new experience. We've only ever been to Super Walmarts, so I didn't know branches that were essentially just grocery stores were a thing. I found a display of Chapsticks and ended up buying three since they were flavors I'd never really seen at home.
The Parks at Arlington was something I was really looking forward to, and I have to thank my parents again for putting up with two pre-Christmas mall crowds for me ♥ The Parks was a really fun experience!
There was a merry-go-round inside! (In hindsight, it shouldn't be surprising, since one of the malls in our area has one, too.) I also learned they have a Sonic in their food court. I didn't expect that.
The Parks also had an ice skating rink! The Galleria in Addison had one, too, but theirs was more for figure skating, and this one had hockey lines and a scoreboard. There was a figure skating group performing when we were there. (Or maybe they were practicing. They looked cool either way.)
All in all, I had a great experience exploring some of the settings I'd picked for Casanova. There were definitely some things I learned that I probably could've known beforehand by doing enough research, but some things I never would've picked up without experiencing it. I'm so grateful that my parents were willing to endure another writing research trip. I'm hoping I can do it justice in Casanova.
Since this post was focused on Arlington, I'll probably upload another post with pictures from Saturday and Monday of the trip. I don't have a time frame on when it would go up, though :c
Thanks for reading! ♥ No matter what I tell myself on trips, I always come home with fewer pictures than I would've liked, but I'm really happy with what I brought back. I had a lot of great experiences and Casanova will definitely benefit from it. Both writing trips I've experienced so far have meant a lot to me and I'm super grateful that my parents are so supportive of a hobby I don't show them much evidence of ♥ One day, I swear!
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