I'm sitting at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport getting ready to head to Houston for my next tour stop, and I'm thinking back to what a great time I had last night during my first tour stop! I was welcomed by Toni Loftin, a PhD student at UT Dallas in Richardson and President of the Organization of Latin American Studies there. My appearance was the group's very first event, so Toni and her staff worked very hard to put this event together. And what a success it was!

But before all that, she and some of the faculty and OLAS members took me out to a wonderful dinner at a local restaurant. I got to chat with professor and author Monica Rankin, as well as Courtney, Amanda, and Peter...a real treat to talk to a fellow huge RUSH fan! After dinner we headed over to Jonsson Performance Hall to set up.

Folks slowly trickled in, and Toni told me they were expecting somewhere around 40-50 people. However, they did a lot of local promotion and I've been on local radio shows and all over Facebook and Twitter to get the word out...we didn't really know what to expect. Well, by the time I took the stage to give my presentation, there were 180 people in the audience! They were interested, attentive, and laughed at all the right times :). Several audience members also asked some great questions at the end.

The book signing afterwards totally made me feel like a rock star! I think I signed around 20-25 books, and people LOVED the "Border Wars" bookmarks that NatGeo Channel made for my tour! People had more questions for me, some took photos with me...I even had one very enthusiastic and kind gentleman give me a gift of a rosary and a DVD of a movie he made himself about the drug trade. That was unique! I was just so happy that people liked what I had to say, and that word is getting out about "Cartel" in the Dallas area.

I got back to my hotel room around 10:30pm, and I was exhausted! I didn't sleep much the night before from all the anxiety over the trip, so it was nice to be able to sleep in a little bit and take my time this morning with a big breakfast. Now I'm headed to Houston for my next stop, so I'll write another post about my presentation at the Houston World Affairs Council in a day or so!