Thank you everyone for getting your students to the airport on Sunday. We have a great trip to San Diego.
After grabbing lunch, we crossed the border to Tijuana Playas. Driving across the border from San Diego to Tijuana is quite a sudden change. The road we travel goes west along the border wall. As the border wall is literally 20 feet from the road. You are able to see the skyline of San Diego to the north and the rundown houses of Tijuana to the south. Students had a lot of feedback about this sudden change. They noticed the colors being brighter in Mexico, yet more trash, and houses half-built. We may not realize it but there are reasons for a lot of this.
One thing we talked about was the privilege we have to be able to throw our trash away and it is taken to a landfill. For most of Mexico, they cannot afford this service or there is no service at all. So the trash on the hillside is not necessarily the result that Mexicans don’t care about, but there is literally no place for their garbage.
We stopped at the border wall. Right next to the wall is an old bull ring. Surprising to us, there was a bull fight Sunday. We didn’t go, but there was interest by some of the students to attend.
The border wall is quite the experience if you have never been. The wall has human ramifications to it as there are people who this wall affects, families that are divided, deported vets, immigrants/refugees seeking asylum in the U.S. We spent some time considering what life would be like for your family if this wall divided you.
We then headed to the orphanage where we settled down for the night after a great dinner and team time.
This morning we divided into three workgroups. As we go along this week I will describe the significance of each workgroup and the work we are doing. But today it has been hot and the students worked the best they could given the heat. We keep reminding them to drink plenty of water and apply (reapply) sunscreen.
We are doing our best to get photos of every student on the google slides. As groups come back from the worksite I will gather photos and post them.
In the future, our blogs will be around dinner time. We weren’t sure of our internet access until we go here. The best time for us to post will be around dinner.
Until tomorrow…