Mi Primera Semana

Hola! The title means my first week for the non Spanish speaking folk.

Anyway, it's the end of my first week in Mexico. It has flown by. I did spend 4 days in Virginia before this for a wedding. I may add an entry later to cover that.

Right where to start?

This trip has been my first exposure to a desert and as these things go hand in hand, I've also been exposed to the accompanying climate. Have you ever had your face too close to the oven when you've been cooking and opened it? That's what it's like here all the time. Flying into El Paso I noticed that the entire landscape was a mix of brown and every imaginable shade of brown. Completely different to the green at home. After we got outside the airport, that's when I was acquainted with Mr. Sun and his friend 5% relative humidity. If I've done it right there should be a display on the left showing the current weather if where we are.

Isabel's friend Pablo picked us up and brought us to meet some more friends at a nice little restaurant in the center of Juarez. Not before we went to this little market so I could buy a real cowboy hat. We were the only people there so everyone was after our business. I think I added a pic to the blog of Isabel wearing it.

As you can tell from that previous information we are now in Juarez. Juarez is the Mexican half of the whole that is made up with El Paso. It's the same city, just separated by the mostly dry Rio Grande. Of course there is also the heavily patrolled border between the two nations. We drove straight in from the US side. It's the other direction that can take longer/be more difficult. Apparently the queues can be up to 3hours either direction though. It's also quite common for people from ElPaso to work in Juarez and vice versa.

So the little market was my first exposure to Juarez, a city famed for it's violence and danger. After being here for a week thankfully it's no longer as bad as it was (not because of the week i was here or anything). There are still a huge number of police on the streets, but no more army. The city is returning to the way it was, whereby it is still dangerous in areas, but the majority of the people are able to carry on about their lives. I'm grateful to have Isabel as a guide. She can even see a huge difference between now and a year ago. We even read that there has already been 10000 jobs created here already this year. The dynamics of an industrial city sitting directly on the border with the united states are quite interesting. Hopefully I'll get some time to touch on it more during my entries.

Where was I before that tangent. Lunch with Isabel's friends, which leads me onto an extremely important topic...food.

The food here is amazing. I will definitely be talking about food a lot more over the next few weeks. My favorite so far had been a burrito with barbacoa. It's shredded lamb cooked in an oven in the ground. Hmmm, that wasn't a very good description. For all you food lovers

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbacoa . Small known fact burritos first came from Juarez.

For the first week we've just been staying with Isabel's family, visiting friends and stating out of the sun during the hours between 11 and about 6. I have a factor 60 sun cream so I can keep my pasty white complexion. I also met Isabel's aunts. One of them is married to a real cowboy. I told him I wanted to get real cowboy boots with spurs. He offered me one piece of advice: "Make sure to take of your spurs off you want to squat down" :-/ Still haven't picked up any boots yet. Did find some made from exotic creatures for about €150. Wouldn't be able to take them home or through an airport though.

My Spanish is coming on in leaps and bounds. I've successfully ordered in Spanish...at least as many times as I haven't been successful. I'm getting there though.

We're off to spend the day in El Paso tomorrow, so I'll have plenty more to say on that. We've also been on a day trip to a massive cavern in New Mexico so I can fill you in on that too.

Right now it's getting late and the sun wakes us up at 7 every morning. I'll leave it there. By the way I'm using my phone to post, so apologies for any spelling corrections or auto corrects :)

Ro