Day 1: AWB El Paso meets Border Patrol unexpectedly

Dearest Blog readers of AWB El Paso 2009,

Right now it is actually 6pm Mountain time on Friday, so we've been here for a little over two days now, and so far, it's been a lot of fun. As you all can imagine, the landscape is very different here. We can see the Franklin mountains from pretty much anywhere, and there are cacti and palm trees all over the place. One thing that really surprised me, though, is that there is hardly ANYONE walking around on the streets. I personally have seen maybe 10 people total since arriving, including people living in the hostel (which we have pretty much taken over by the way...we are 16 girls,and we've grocery shopped every day and filled up a refrigerator and a half of the two available).

The hostel itself is old and interesting; the elevator is an old one where you pull open a large door, then fold back and metal screen, and then enter the elevator, and then close both doors, and THEN actually move up or down.

Now for what we've actually done in the community. On Thursday morning, we were ready to go bright and early at 8:30 am on our hike along the Rio Grande River, which was supposed to start about 15 minutes away from the hostel, but upon arrival, we found no trail, but rather a "NO Trespassing" sign, and keep in mind that we are 16 girls piled into one 12-passenger white sketchy van, trailed by one 7-passenger van, and at this point we were on a one-way dirt road with nowhere to go, and when we checked our rear-view mirrors to back up, we realized there were two border patrol jeeps behind us. Luckily, the border patrol were patient with us while we did three-point turns and made our way back to the main road and simply asked us, once our van had pulled up next to their jeeps, what we were doing. We explained that we were looking for the hiking trail and did they know where to find it, and they said they didn't, so we decided to go to the Franklin mountains and hike there, which was a lot of fun. On our Franklin mountain hike, we hiked up to a cave-type rock which is called the "Window", where we did some ice breakers and snacked. After hiking back down the mountains, we ate lunch and then went to the Border Network for Human Rights, a nonprofit organization which prides itself on community organizing and teaching fellow community members, whether documented or undocumented, what their rights are as residents of the United States.

Favorite Quote of the day:
Man at the front desk of the hostel says to Mara and Aimee: "A lot of things are legal in Texas, as long as you don't get caught." Hahahahah

-Cristina