Albu-quirky

One thing that the spouse and I had a major hard time when we first came here is getting out of the bubble of America that the consulate community provides here in Juarez. It's only going to be natural to  invite people in a similar situation out for dinner or a drink after work. And that could, in turn, stretch to  an activity for the rest of the evening (watching movies, starting a group based on a 8 year old Korean drama, crossfit, etc.).  And all that hanging out with your coworkers and their families sometimes leads to a feeling of being trapped under the weight of office gossip and shop talk. There's only so many times one can discuss how immigration reform may or may not affect our jobs, and at this point we've pretty much exhausted all but the most extreme visa interview stories. So about two or three months after arriving here, the spouse and I made a pact to devote a portion of our salary specifically to get us out of the area and satisfy our itch to travel (a small part of why we joined the Foreign Service to begin with).

With the security situation being what it is, we're pretty limited in where we can go in Mexico. Basically, if we want to go anywhere outside of Juarez, we have to fly. But wait, you say, isn't El Paso right across the border? So in theory shouldn't you have flights to both countries and endless possibilities? Two cities mean twice the fun, right!? Survey says: not so much. If El Paso and Juarez could merge their populations and fully integrate their economies (more than they already are) perhaps there could be one large airport that could serve as a hub for both countries and drive down flight costs. In reality, each city is an isolated outpost pretty much in the middle of nowhere in both countries. So flight options are limited and much, much more expensive than we thought before coming here. As a consequence of this we've tended to alternate our flying adventures with more targeted driving long weekends to various parts of the Southwestern U.S. But we typically wait for long weekends as, once again, El Paso is REALLY isolated. For instance, the nearest town of any size outside of the Juarez/El Paso/Las Cruces, NM area is Albuquerque - more than 5 hours of driving away. Coming from the East Coast, where one could drive from DC to NY in less than 4 hours (and hit Baltimore and Philadelphia, not to mention numerous beaches, our friends and family in NJ, and issue-specific locations like Atlantic City on the way), this isolation is a bit disheartening. 

Side note, this issue may veer into a special sub-category of problems that the spouse and I label "diplomat problems." Little things that make us un-empathetic that crop up in conversations, because the only people that understand are the people who work with us. "Problems" like  "oh the maid that I'm paying to clean my government-provided house that is too big for me to clean by myself is drinking all of my orange juice" or "the waiters at the VIP movie theater that most people here can't afford take SOOO long to bring my drinks to my lazy-boy during the movie (that I'm seeing before people in the U.S. because international releases!)." In a way, the spouse and I feel a bit chagrined to complain about our lives here. Many are not as blessed as we are. We can afford to get out of town once a month. We can hire a maid to clean our free house (which is why we can afford to do these things...) that is realistically too big for us to maintain, not in a location we would choose on our own, and completely not in keeping with our pre-Foreign Service lifestyle. Et cetera, et cetera. 

But even though these problems are not the same as those that people living paycheck to paycheck have, they still have a real effect on our mental health. And so, to stay sane, the spouse and I go on vacations where we can experience things that we really, really can't in the CJ/El Paso area. Things like walkable city streets, museums, humidity, shopping (really, we once drove 3 hours out of our way while on a trip to Tucson to go to the Ikea in Tempe), mass transportation, biking, and so forth. So spouse and I headed to Albuquerque last weekend to celebrate Mexican Mother's Day (a friday holiday here) by walking around the town, going suit shopping for the upcoming A-100, going to museums, and generally celebrating the fact that we were not in Juarez. Highlights of the trip included seeing the Adam West Batmobile, walking to brunch(es), and  reading about the history of dinosaurs, computers, and El Camino Real (which sounds like the Casino Royal... but is NOT). Also, attending/mocking the concert of a one-woman synthesizer hipster "band" with swaying scowling apathetic hipsters who were pretending to hate the Enya and Radiohead monstrosity of "music" being produced but in reality loving every second of it. Albuquerque is unashamedly quirky, and for that we love it.