Welcome to the Borderland

I should be sleeping, but I'm feeling sort of homesick and not able to right now. So I realized I could lay in bed feeling sorry for myself, or get up and use that awake time to write about a bunch of the reasons I have to be happy. I decided to try out the second one. :)

Living in El Paso has it's perks. Before I committed to going here for the year, I'd been thinking pretty seriously about trying to spend this first after-college year somewhere abroad. Kenya was the plan for a little bit, but when that fell through, I was looking around elsewhere too. I'm really happy with my decision to do this program in particular (I still haven't figured out if it's professional to name it, though you probably know anyway...), and one of the coolest things is being in this completely bi-cultural community. When people back home ask about Texas, I need to explain that it's more of a Mexico place than cowboys and cacti- although I have actually seen both of those as well!

This Saturday I ventured in Ciudad Juarez, the Mexican sister-city to El Paso. Depending on who you ask, they're really one big city with a pesky international border down the middle, or at least it used to be that way. About 30% of the students in the school where I work cross the border daily from home to class, which is a piece of cake going from the US to Mexico, we didn't need to show any documentation or speak to anyone at all. Coming back home way way slower, I was uncomfortably reminded of crossing the border into Palestine; it was tense and tedious, and much harder without an American passport. 

For the day in Mexico, I proudly wore my Neighbor to Neighbor t-shirt in the spirit of some sort of symbolic good neighbor vibes, which turned out to be a sort of stupid idea because it was dark in color and surprisingly hot for a t-shirt. It's pretty warm around here.

And the coolest thing is that I can still say 'around here' and mean both El Paso and Juarez. It took us about a 10 minute drive to get into Mexico, and I'm thinking pretty seriously about walking across one of these days. Although you could tell a difference between the two countries, in terms of infrastructure, the default language, and (surprisingly) the amount of foliage, there was also so much more in common. Right along the border in downtown El Paso is an area called Segundo Barrio, which is pretty much exclusively Mexican and Spanish-speaking, even more than the rest of town. This morning one of the Brothers brought me to an all-Spanish mass at one of the parishes there, which was a little hard to follow, but absolutely exuberant and full of life. They had so much music, and everyone acted like part of a family.

My rusty Spanish skills definitely got a tune up while I was across the border, and I certainly hope to practice more in the future. I had the very best tacos in my life, cordon-bleu themed sushi, and aguas frescas, which deserve a whole separate post but are basically fresh fruit juices that taste like heaven. Available in tons of flavors, yesterday I had both cantaloupe and cucumber! There were also spicy candies, pretty pastries, a knockoff IHOP, edible cacti, and a surprise giraffe in central park. 

We passed by the best university in the country, took pictures with a couple monuments, toured an interactive museum with a 3D video about space all in Spanish, and crossed an item off of my personal Mexico bucket list: visited La Equis. 

'The X' is a giant red metal X towering over the border. I've seen it every day here, often from afar but sometimes from just across the fence, and decided from my site visit that I wanted to get there before I left a year later. So I did- I just never thought it would happen so soon! I touched the base, and learned that there was a planned restaurant in the middle (you can see the space for it), but it never got completed because the whole thing gets way too hot and insulating it costs too much money. I spent a lot of our time there trying to get a good selfie with the structure, since it was my big landmark, but I failed pretty miserably, so my profile picture is instead a fake pyramid. 

No worries, I'm planning to hit up the real ones outside Mexico City sometime soon. I didn't get to see absolutely everything of Juarez yesterday, of course, but I know I'll be able to get back again in the future. It's the beauty of living right here! So yes, I have lots to be grateful for, and this whole year experience is a big one. 

Thank you for reading, and as always, comments are loved. ❤