Oops.

Yeah, so I just deleted my entire blog by mistake.

How exactly did that happen? Well...everything in Blogger was in Spanish, because it sees my IP address as being from Mexico, so it defaults to Spanish. I decided to keep it that way, instead of changing the language, because hey, I speak Spanish. So it shouldn't be a problem.

Well, I don't think the problem turned out to be Spanish, but rather, sheer stupidity. I clicked the button to delete the blog, thinking it was the "Publish" button, and just was too lazy to read the warning.

Now I'm going to have to reconstruct all my posts from the Facebook feed I was using. The moral of the story? Keep your web pages in your native language. And if you don't, don't be lazy.

Pacific Standard Time

So you know the whole thing with daylight savings time beginning earlier and starting later this year? That may be true in the States – but it isn't here in Mexico. So tonight, the clocks roll back, same as always.

This means that for about a week or so, we're going to be an hour behind San Diego, and four hours behind the East Coast. We're picking up a group at San Diego International at 4 PM on Tuesday, and after pick-up, we'll probably arrive back in Tijuana at 3:30 PM.

Gilberto says that it's actually good, because it staggers the traffic rush hours at the border, making crossing a lot easier. I guess we'll see -- but it's definitely going to keep looking at the clock a little more interesting during the next week.

Wildfires

I woke up yesterday to the Santa Ana winds, which blow into the area during the fall and winter months. It was pretty cool at first -- and great for doing laundry, because with the warm wind, my clothes dried on the clothesline in no time.

That's about where the good part ends. At around 1 PM yesterday, I started smelling smoke. I just thought it was the neighbors burning something -- which happens fairly often -- but then it didn't go away. By 3 PM, the skies were yellow, visibility dropped drastically, ash was raining from the skies, and it started looking like the apocalypse outside.

As it turns out, there are wildfires in California, spanning from San Diego all the way up north of LA. The Santa Anas are making the fires worse, and blowing all the smoke down here. You can't really go outside without your eyes stinging from the ash, everything smells like smoke, and there's ash everywhere.

It's better today, at least here. Yesterday you couldn't see any blue in the sky, and it was lousy outside -- today at least you can venture out for a little while, although I'm staying inside as much as possible. I'd rather not have smoke in my lungs. But it's pretty bad north of the border. I took this panorama today by taking a series of pictures and stitching them together -- the shot is looking northeast from my apartment.

It's pretty crazy, but the winds are supposed to die down tomorrow, at least a little bit. There aren't too many fires south of the border, it's concentrated mostly in California, so hopefully they'll get it under control. For now, though, the winds are howling, the smoke is blowing, and Tijuana is looking like a bit of an ashtray.

Flickr

Originally uploaded by dcipjr I decided to bite the bullet and get myself a year's subscription to Flickr. I was using Picasa Web Albums, and it was pretty good, but I was already starting to run through my gig of space, even with the quality scaled down to 2 megapixels. Now I have unlimited room, plus Flickr lets me better-organize my photos. And it's just so damned cool with it's Web 2.0 goodness.

My old Picasa Web Albums site (http://picasaweb.google.com/dan.cipolla) will continue to remain active, but new photos will be added to Flickr instead.

You can see all of my photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcipjr/

I'm Back

So for those of you who don't know, I'm in Philadelphia, visiting for the next week or so. I would have posted something earlier, but I wanted to surprise my family -- so I didn't want anything on the Internet.

I got in on Thursday, and went to my family reunion in Wildwood over the weekend -- which is always a good time. This week, I'll be visiting the different schools in the Philly area that come down to Los Niños. So it's a nice mix of work and vacation.

I have a somewhat busy schedule because of my meetings, but if you want to get together, by all means let me know. I'll be at Nova's homecoming this weekend, so hopefully I'll see many of you there.

Monday, October 8th, is when I head back to Tijuana.

This week and Christmas are going to be the only times I'm home during the year. So make sure you get in touch

Downtime

This job is interesting in that it has two extremes – having tons of stuff to do, and having next to nothing to do. When the groups are down, we pull 12-hour days and are constantly busy. When they aren't, though, there's really not that much going on.

Right now, there aren't any groups here. That's basically because it's September – school has just started, so not as many groups are going to come down. That leaves me with a lot of downtime.

When I have all this free time, what do I do with it? Sometimes (like this week), I actually have Los Niños-related work to do. I've been contacting schools, writing up site descriptions, etc. – mainly administrative stuff. When I don't have Los Niños-related work to do, though, I like to spend some time at the orphanage.

Most people wouldn't think of an orphanage as a fun place to go. But really, it can be. This particular orphanage is named "Refugio del Niño Jesus", and there are some really great kids there. A lot of them actually are orphans, but some of them still do have parents – they just can't live with them for one reason or another. Usually in those cases, there's been a history of abuse, drug use or alcoholism in the family, neglect, or just plain not being able to take care of the kids.

The kids themselves, though, are really great. We spend our time playing games – I just taught them paper football the other day – or just hanging out. I try to help out there when I can; last Saturday their soccer teams had a couple of games, so I went around to the games with them and watched some of the kids. It really was a lot of fun. Not to mention that these kids can really play.

So I've been spending a good deal of time there. Next week I'll have some other things to keep me busy, but hopefully I'll still be able to work in a visit there

"What would you say you do here?"

Yes, it's a famous Office Space quote, but it's also a common question that I get asked by friends and family back in the States. What kind of work am I doing in Mexico?

Los Niños, the organization that I work for, has been working in Tijuana for many years. The organization has a number of different branches, which would take a lot of time to fully describe in detail, so let me describe what I'm working on – we can save the other branches for a later post.

I'm a year-long volunteer with the service learning program of Los Niños. What we do is we bring groups of students from the United States down to Tijuana, and these groups typically stay here for anywhere from 5 up to 12 days. "Service learning" is an apt description for what they do during their stay – they work with the communities here on service projects, while also learning about the Mexican culture and people. In short, my job is to work with these groups.

That's a deceptively simple summary, because the work itself entails a lot more than being a glorified tour guide. When the groups are here, I'm not just supervising and giving talks – I'm working alongside the groups in the projects that we do here. The projects usually involve working to improve the schools in Tijuana. Three miles from the United States border exists some of the most profound poverty that you could ever experience – and education is key to breaking that cycle of poverty. Therefore, it's important that the kids in the schools get to go to school as much as possible, so they can learn. One of the obstacles to that is rain – although it doesn't rain here often, it can be a real mess when it does. Any unpaved surfaces here (and there are lots of those) turn to mud when it rains, and a lot of the schoolyards here are unpaved. So if it rains, the kids can't go to school for a few days, until the mud dries. Most of the time, our projects involve paving the school yards – that way, the kids can go to school as much as possible.

A lot of people ask me if it's like Habitat for Humanity, but really, it's not. What Los Niños does isn't charity – our mission is not to do work for the people, but rather to work with the people. We're facilitators – the students that come here and the communities here in Tijuana actually do the work and benefit from the work. The Mexicans are more than capable of doing work to improve their communities – but they just need people to help organize these work projects, and that's where we come in. We start out helping them organize these projects, but eventually, the communities start doing them on their own. And in a nutshell, that's our mission – community development. The communities here learn to come together, work to improve their lives, and develop themselves at the same time. It really is great to be a part of.

That said, it's also a lot of work. To pave the schoolyards, you need concrete, and that means we have to mix it – so it's a good amount of manual labor. We also have to make sure everyone is mixing it correctly, drinking enough water, and mingling enough amongst themselves. The idea isn't to have a bunch of Mexicans working together and a bunch of Americans working together, it's to have everyone work together. The culture mixing is every bit as important as the concrete mixing.

In the end, everybody benefits. The Mexican schools are improved, the communities come together, the students who come down here learn, and it's just a great experience in general. It's a lot of work, but to be honest, I wouldn't want to spend this year doing anything else.

The Facebook Connection

I knew it was going to happen. I started this blog, and became bad about keeping it updated. But I'm going to give it another go. I even hooked it up to Facebook so you can read about it through the Notes section of my profile. Will it keep me motivated to write? Who knows – but I'll give it a shot anyway.

Speaking of Facebook, I've been constantly irritated by "Zombie Requests", "Vampire Requests", "Hot Potato Requests" (wtf?!), and "Pirate Requests". To quote Jerry Seinfeld, "I don't wanna be a pirate!"

Fortunately, I've figured out how to make it all go away. You have to click the "Privacy" link, then the "Applications" link, then the "Other Applications" link, then select the "Do not share any information about me through the Facebook API" button. That button is grayed-out until you remove all your authorized and third-party applications. So Facebook doesn't exactly make it easy, but after you jump through these hoops, third-party applications won't be able to access your information – or even see that you exist.

Not only does this make your privacy way more secure, it also means that your "friends" can't spam you with SuperWalls, Free Gifts, or other mindless crap. Welcome back to the good old days of Facebook.

Montezuma's Revenge

OK, I've been really bad at keeping this updated, but I have an excuse. We've had groups here for the last 20 or so days, and I just haven't had a chance to do much writing. Amidst 9 days of concrete mixing.

Anyway, a few days ago, I started coming down with a nice case of Montezuma's Revenge. The first day got pretty crappy in the afternoon, the second day I just felt pretty lousy the entire day, and the third day I still kept getting these waves of nausea.

Today I'm feeling better, but I have the feeling it's not completely out of my system yet.
Before you ask me if I drank the water, I didn't drink the water. I know that you can't do that by now. No, the whole sickness thing comes from the different diet that you have when you're down here. When you eat stuff that's different than what your body is used to, eventually it catches up with you. Some people it takes a couple days, some weeks, some months. For me, I made it through six weeks without getting sick, and I think that's pretty damned good.

I'll spare you the details about the revenge itself. Just suffice it to say that although I haven't thrown up once, I've made many a trip to the bathroom, and my stomach has been giving me plenty of cramps and sweeping waves of nausea.

Hopefully, by the end of the day, I'll be feeling more or less back to normal

Crossing the Border

When you're living south of the border, one of the things you learn to deal with is the border itself. I cross the border pretty frequently -- usually about once a week or so. And I get a lot of questions about this, so let me explain how it works.

When I want to cross the border, I don't go hop a fence or anything. I cross at the Tijuana-San Ysidro border crossing station, which is about 10 minutes away from my apartment here in Tijuana.

Getting from the United States into Tijuana is pretty easy. If you want to cross by car, you take Interstate 5 all the way to its southern terminus, at the Mexican border. You get all sorts of signs on the road, like "International Border / Frontera Internacional", with the distances both in miles and kilometers (since we're metric here in Mexico). Then, as long as you have nothing to declare, you get into the proper lane, go through a set of booths like a toll plaza, and you're in. If a little red light flashes going through the booths, you have to pull over and get asked a couple questions, but otherwise you don't even have to stop. I-5 turns into Mexican Highway 1, which I believe takes you all the way to Cabo at the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula. And yes, there is a yellow line on the road at the actual border line.

Crossing on foot is a little more interesting. San Diego's trolley has a Blue Line which takes you directly to the border. The station is named "San Ysidro / Tijuana", and it's the end of the line, so it's hard to miss. Once you're out of the trolley, you simply walk to the entrance of the border crossing station. Once you're in, you walk up a series of ramps to a bridge that crosses the street. You cross the bridge, go down another series of ramps, and make a right, and walk through a set of turnstiles. These turnstiles are noisy. You hear them clacking as soon as you cross the bridge. Anyway, once you're through them, the line is right there -- complete with a marker that denotes the limit of Mexico and the limit of the United States.

Incidentally, once you cross that line, there's a little gate off to the side. Sometimes, you'll see a bus parked outside the gate, dropping off people deported from the United States.

And that's it. Once you cross that line, you're in Mexico. Simple as that. You needn't have identification, or anything at all.

It's not so simple to cross back into the United States. You need two things: identification, and lots of time on your hands. Like coming into Mexico, you can cross either by car or on foot, although it's usually faster to cross on foot. If you're crossing by car, you follow the signs for San Diego, and then get in line. The huge traffic jam is pretty hard to miss. Likewise, walking, you follow the signs for the USA, and get in line.

Once you're in line, you wait. And wait. And wait some more. Usually there are street vendors selling all sorts of weird stuff, from bottled water to churros to huge ceramic turtles. Yes, huge ceramic turtles -- there is evidently a demand for them among people crossing the border. On an average day, you'll wait an hour or so, maybe an hour and a half. My fastest crossing time so far was a Monday morning in the foot line -- I got through in under 5 minutes. My slowest time was on a Sunday night in the car line, when it took four and a half hours, and that was unpleasant.

Once you get to the front of the car line (there are usually 10 or so lanes open) you show your passports or identification to the officer. You sometimes get asked questions, but I've only gotten asked anything once. Usually they'll just look at your passport and be like, OK, go ahead. The walking line is pretty much the same deal -- you get to the front, choose a line, and show your ID. Then you're in.

You can get in with a number of forms of identification. Driver's license, passport, birth certificate -- for now. In next January, supposedly they're going to make you use your passport. But whether that'll actually happen or not -- it's already been pushed back, due to the huge passport demand -- remains to be seen.

Really, after waiting so much time, it's pretty anticlimactic when you get to the front of the line and the guy looks at your passport and says, OK, you can go. Border wait times have been longer too, more recently, because of heightened terror alerts -- ironic, considering the 9/11 attackers got in legally. But that's pretty much what you have to do. The return trip isn't nearly as scenic as the trip in. There is a marker and line on the Mexico side leading back into the United States, but it's been crossed so often that the line is worn away, and it's easy to miss.

But, in a nutshell, that's how it works. Bottom line: easy getting into Mexico, hard getting into the United States.

Skype

If you're wondering how to get in touch with me -- because face it, you miss me -- it's pretty easy. The usual methods still apply: I have AIM, my email address, and my cell phone. Yes, my cell phone actually works down here, but it only picks up AT&T;'s network in my apartment, so if I'm out, odds are that I don't have it on me.

Really, the easy way to get in touch with me is Skype. What's that, you ask? I'll spare you the computer engineer's explanation of how it works, and give you the simple version: it's a way to do free voice and video chatting over the Internet. You download the program, and make calls. Simple as that, really. You can optionally pay to use it to call landlines, but I don't bother with that -- the Internet calling works well enough for me.

If you want to give it a try, my username is dcipjr. You can also search for me by name or by email address. I've been using it these past few weeks, and it really is pretty cool. I do have a video camera, since it's built-in for MacBooks, but all you really need is a microphone (which many computers include or have built-in).

So, give it a shot and see what you think.

City of Car Alarms

If you like things quiet, you aren't going to last long in Tijuana, because this is a city of a lot of different noises.

Case in point: car alarms. Everyone's got 'em. And they're the kind that goes through all the different sounds. There are variations on a theme, too: some of the cars honk while going through the different sounds, some of the cars have the sounds at a higher or lower pitch, or do them in a different order. But they all essentially sound the same. How this helps stop car thieves, I don't know – it obviously didn't stop the guys who stole our truck a couple weeks ago (but that's subject matter for another post).

People are constantly setting these alarms off, too. An hour rarely goes by here where I don't hear at least one car alarm. But after almost four weeks of hearing them, I've pretty much been able to tune them out -- I guess it's like the train going by.

The Bane of my Existence

Someone once told me that it wasn't buggy down here. This person was a liar.

The fact is, there are mosquitos down here, and there are lots of them. They also happen to like biting me. I'll be amazed if I don't contract West Nile by the end of the summer.

I've gotten good at keeping them at bay, but they usually get in when I'm doing the laundry, and it takes a couple days to get rid of them all. Usually, just when I think I've purged them my apartment, one will fly past my face. I can practically hear it laughing.

Just seeing one of these little bastards makes me itch. I've gotten better at killing them, but occasionally I'll find one that's more elusive. I bring my hands together to smite it, clap as hard as I can, open them up, and lo, and behold -- they're empty. How that damned thing escaped, I have no idea.

Right now, there's one in here, but I can't find it, and I'm getting tired. And if I don't find it, I know this thing is gonna eat me alive during the night.

A-ha! Got it. Now I can rest, if the dogs don't howl all night. More on that later.

Back in Business

Here I am, spending a year in Tijuana, Mexico. It occurred to me tonight that I probably should be writing all this stuff down, since I'm never going to remember it all, and since people are probably wondering what I'm up to down here.

So this blog is now back in action.

I'm going to do my best to keep it updated -- really, this time. In the past, whenever I've tried to keep a blog, I've never seemed to have anything to write about. I'd sit down, stare at the text entry field, and think....OK, I got nothing here. But this time, seriously, I'm going give you something to read. You're about to get a taste of what life south of the border is really like.

Enjoy.