La Frontera

So it seems that moving half-way across the country can cause a person to become slightly neglectful of previous responsibilities. I'm really sorry. In my defense, I have been pretty busy these past few weeks. I've also been thinking about what exactly I want to write about, because I can think of several experiences that would all make excellent posts. However, seeing as how decision-making is not my greatest skill, I think what I'll do instead is take bits and pieces from all of that and put it into one post. If my thoughts seem disjointed, it's because they are.

I suppose one of the first things that I noticed about Tucson, was, obviously the climate. For a girl from Michigan, moving to the desert is quite difficult. It’s very hot here, and I find myself missing the humidity. Now, tanner than ever, and slightly sunburned, I feel that I’m starting to become adjusted to the intense (for me) heat. The desert is surreal and sublime. I can look out my window and see cacti. It’s very odd…I wouldn’t have thought that it could be so beautiful here. I always thought that a desert was lifeless, but that was before I saw the flowers and the fruit of the cacti. Before I got here, I hadn’t ever seen the sun set over the mountains, or for that matter, even seen mountains up close. Tucson is so different from everything I know and love, and at times I feel as if I were living on a different planet. A different, but very beautiful planet where everything is strange and weird and wonderful. Of course, I have more than just the physical environment to adjust to. There is the social environment as well. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the large size of the University of Arizona’s campus didn’t terrify me when I first saw it. As a student of a tiny college, I’m not used to be surrounded by so many people. Standing alone in a crowd of thousands of people, staring at a map, desperately trying to figure out how to get to the library, I have never missed my home campus so much. I took for granted the tiny campus of Albion, where a five minute walk could take me from one end of campus to the opposite. So I’ve been adjusting. I’ve been puzzling over a bus map, trying to figure out how to get around.

But I haven’t only been in Tucson; I’ve been on the border, learning about the policies that have made it into what it is today. It’s very hard for me not to go into a very long, very angry political rant right now. I probably will go into one at some point, but I’d like to avoid it for the time being, at least until I feel like I know enough that I can actually be eloquent instead of just angry. For now, however, I will just say that seeing that long green wall for the first time was one of the hardest and most emotional experiences of my life. It was one of the many times that I’ve realized that my perception of reality, and actual reality were different. And just like all of those other times, I’ve learned from the discomfort and I’ve grown from it. I promise that I will write much, much more about the Border, and about immigration policy, and about the all of the people that I’ve already met who are suffering because of it. But before I can do that, I need some time to process what I’ve seen and experienced. But look for that sometime soon.