kaitou | Belated

The internet at my new job is not fond of Semagic. Sometimes it posts, and sometimes it just times out. So I just realized that the post I wrote up after coming back from Mexico never actually posted. Time to party like it's March 14th!

So Wednesday I was up bright and early for our flight (had to wake up at 2:30 am) and it was off to Mexico with two of my coworkers. We flew from Dayton into Houston and from there to El Paso. There was a family with small children sitting behind me on the plane to Houston and as we were touching down the littlest asks, "Where's Texas? I can't see it!" And I thought that that was unbearably cute.

From Houston we went to El Paso where we met a few other people and drove into Juarez, Mexico. There is the biggest Mexican flag just over the border, the biggest flag I've ever seen. It was incredibly cool.

The whole immigration procedure was unbelievably complicated...actually, it's not so much that it was complicated as that I couldn't see that it was explained anywhere what you were supposed to do, even in Spanish. We drove over the border, made a right and pulled over to the immigration buildings. First we went to one building, filled out our immigration paperwork and got our passport stamped. Then we had to go over to another building and pay for the paperwork. This would let us go back and forth in Mexico for the next six months, and we would have to turn it back in on our last visit. If you didn't turn it in, and came back to Mexico, say, a year later, they would charge you every day over six months you hadn't returned. Yikes!

We drove from there to the plant through what frankly, was pretty scary territory. The plant itself was behind a huge fence and had security guards. I knew that Juarez was 2 time zones away from Ohio, but what I didn't realize was that their Daylight Savings Time is different, so there was actually three hours difference and we were way early for our meeting.

Once we were inside I felt like we'd stepped onto the set as the stock characters on a Telenovela. Both the Plant Manager and the Quality Manager were drop dead gorgeous women with shirts cut down to there, massive amounts of jewelry and stiletto heels. I was glad that I'd at least dressed a little better than normal, though I still felt like a dowdy-fat-american. At least I earned points for speaking Japanese.

The meeting was ok, neither particularly good nor particularly bad. And then it was back to Texas. The people we drove in with were staying, so the company had a driver take us back. One of the other people at the meeting was staying at a hotel in Juarez so we went to drop off him first. I was glad to at least get a little better look at Mexico.

Juarez reminded me a little of Beijing, only with more adobe and fewer bicycles. There was wealth and poverty shoved right up against each other. I really loved a lot of the architecture, adobe lets you build with more interesting shapes than you see in Ohio, and I loved all the bright colors everything was painted. On the other hand the pollution was enough to make my eyes water if we stood outside too long. And it was really sad when we were driving back over the border, all the people standing in traffic trying to sell things or wash your windows.

Back in the hotel it was only 4:30 Texas time, but we were exhausted. We decided to meet for dinner at 7:30, and I like an idiot, kept playing Professor Layton instead of taking a nap. I thought I was going to fall asleep in my broccoli. I hit the hotel store on the way back to my room. And, hotels across the word, I have a piece of advice for you. While I am happy beyond all belief that you sell pads, I would suggest that you carry 'overnight' pads, as that's when I'm actually in the hotel. You know, overnight?

Then the next morning it was back to Ohio where there was still a little bit of snow on the ground.