Category: Mexico

Life on the Border: 10 Times When Heading ‘Across Town’ Can Be More Than You Bargained For

by pennypostcard • November 28, 2021 • 4 Comments

Serving at U.S. Consulate General Ciudad Juárez as a Foreign Service posting has had the unique benefit of proximity to the United States: El Paso, Texas is less than five miles away. Ciudad Juárez and El Paso in many regards feel like one city. If you read about the history of this area and in particular the resolution of the Chamizal dispute in the 1960s over 600 acres of disputed border territory, you will start to see how the geographical, historical, social, and economic ties in the second-largest U.S. border community (behind San Diego and Tijuana) have been tightly interwoven over hundreds of years. And despite the border closure to non-essential travel between March 21, 2020 and November 8, 2021, those ties remain strong.

However, proximity doesn’t always equal easy or convenient access, even for the most privileged of us. FSOs could be forgiven for being lulled into complacency routinely traveling back and forth between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso when it feels like a run across town, only to be slapped with the reality of it actually technically being diplomatic travel to and from your country of assignment across an international border. This is highlighted only when something goes wrong and you realize, this would have been a lot easier were I only driving across town. Here are 10 examples (plus one bonus) of times going across town was more than I bargained for during the last year and a half.

Foreign Service, Mexico, U.S.

It’s Not Over Yet

by pennypostcard • September 30, 2021 • 7 Comments

It may seem from my recent lack of posts that I am losing interest in writing for the blog. It has been more a matter of having too much to say and too little time to write it out, or maybe too little brainpower to discern what is appropriate to publish, or both. I have multiple posts drafted but none through editing. I haven’t even managed to answer messages in the inbox for some months. There are good reasons for all of this, primarily around how much I am working and how many struggles I have unfortunately been having with my health. For now, as September comes to a close, I didn’t want to miss a month without posting and ruin my perfect record of seven and a half years.

Foreign Service, Mexico, Travel, U.S.

Go West

by pennypostcard • August 25, 2021 • 7 Comments

Since I was old enough to drive, I have always taken road trips. It was not unusual for me even at the age of 17 to drive for five hours between my mom’s and my dad’s houses, either alone or with my younger brother in tow. I later went to college in San Diego eight hours away, and when I didn’t fly home for holiday breaks, I would drive overnight, alert as an owl, burning up the road north after going to class all day and working all evening. I’ve maintained this affinity for driving throughout my adult life, taking any opportunity possible to get behind the wheel. Unlike friends and acquaintances who prefer to snooze the miles away and let their partner do the driving, there is little tedious about driving to me; I love every minute, every technicality, the precision of every operational movement.

So when I decided to take my first real vacation since summer 2019 to see my family in California and celebrate my brother’s 40th birthday, and did not want to expose myself to airports and air travel during COVID-19, the idea of driving the 21+ hours and nearly 1,300 miles alone did not faze me. It actually sounded like a welcome chance to get away and clear my mind from what has been a difficult period for most people, and particularly for those juggling the pandemic against health challenges and demanding on-call work.

Foreign Service, Mexico, U.S.

Nepenthe

by pennypostcard • July 24, 2021 • 1 Comment

Over the last couple of months as spring has turned into summer, I have found solace spending time outdoors. While I have deferred real hiking in well-known places, the dry heat and flat desert-like walks over the border in El Paso have provided me with a number of things I need: the mood-lifting and weight loss benefits of exercise, continued healing from spinal surgery, arthritis relief, fresh air, and safety and solitude away from others.

Foreign Service, Mexico, U.S.

Suckerpunch

by pennypostcard • July 18, 2021 • 8 Comments

The last several weeks have been among the most difficult in my Foreign Service career. From my perspective, life has been worse overall these past two months than during the prior 14 months of the pandemic put together. This might be hard to understand and even a little hard to believe, given how many people – at least in the U.S. – seemingly feel their lives are finally returning to some sense of normalcy. But it isn’t hyperbole. As an immunocompromised person who has been living with autoimmune disease since my late 20s, and who is currently slipping into the public policy and social chasm between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, I truly feel left behind and isolated during this stage of the pandemic. Although I continue to be employed, meet my weight loss goals, and heal from back surgery, the rest of my life has become a slow rolling nightmare I never anticipated. I’m surrounded by a society that feels ignorant and selfish at best and eugenicist at worst, and rocketing towards a future where COVID-19 is endemic and those of us with compromised immune function face never getting our normal lives back, as everyone unapologetically eats cake right in front of us that we once talked about eating together.

Foreign Service, Mexico, Travel, U.S.

Testing Limits and Healing in Las Cruces

by pennypostcard • July 3, 2021 • 2 Comments

Back in early May, my husband V flew to North Carolina to see his eldest daughter A graduate from college. Being less than seven weeks beyond major spinal surgery where healing of my bone fusion was critical, I was sadly unable to navigate a trip like that to attend. Each member of her graduating class only had a couple of tickets to share with friends and family, anyway, and she was unable to invite to the ceremony many people I’m sure she would have loved to share that important life milestone with. I attended virtually from Mexico, cheering from a hard-backed chair.

For me in early May, I was moving fairly slowly, had some difficulty getting up and down, and was not permitted to lift more than five lbs. I had been back at work since mid-April and in physical therapy since the end of April though, and the mental and physical haze of weeks of bed rest and the shock of the operation were beginning to lift. After spending a long work week in the office and coming home to an empty house night after night, I was ready to be somewhere else. I decided to take a Mother’s Day trip to Las Cruces, New Mexico; at about an hour and 40 minutes away from Ciudad Juárez, Las Cruces promised fresh air and a chance to change the scene while making some use of my new and fragile body. In other words, to feel like me again.

Foreign Service, Mexico

Unmasked

by pennypostcard • May 31, 2021 • 3 Comments

My last post was a round-up of reader questions to the blog inbox, but in the last several weeks since I’ve written a ‘real’ update, so much has happened. The world’s eagerness to get back to life as we knew it pre-pandemic is progressing quickly. Although only about 41% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated as of May 29, I’m seeing an awful lot of the lower halves of people’s faces.

Foreign Service, Mexico

Seven Years in Blogging + Recovery Continues

by pennypostcard • April 21, 2021 • 2 Comments

Last week marked seven years (lucky seven!) since I launched the Collecting Postcards Blog, and my (virtual) return to work following spinal surgery.

Foreign Service, Mexico, U.S.

Rest, Now

by pennypostcard • April 4, 2021 • 8 Comments

The week before last I went into the hospital in El Paso, TX for spinal fusion surgery. It seems like much longer ago. The operation was something I had wanted and pursued for months: finding a neurosurgeon, consulting on different treatment options, and even getting a second opinion. Had it not been for the pandemic I would have acted sooner, because the pain and left leg/foot numbness that started within a year of my 2018 back surgery was becoming unbearable.

By all accounts the procedure went well, although letting the fusion heal successfully over the coming weeks and months will be key. Although proximity and access to U.S. medical care has been a major plus for us at this post, the hospital “care” experience for me from start to finish was less than I expected and a rude re-introduction to many aspects of the U.S. healthcare system (especially after Australia!). Less than two weeks later, the whole thing already feels like a surreal dream.

Foreign Service, Leadership & Work Culture, Mexico

Tumbleweeds

by pennypostcard • March 21, 2021 • 4 Comments

For the last several weeks, I have been filled with ideas for blog posts, but have been working so many hours that I have deferred them to a future, calmer time. In preparation for a long-awaited spinal fusion surgery this coming week, I have been trying hard to clear the decks at work and at home. I don’t know if I have been succeeding, but one thing has become increasingly clear: I would not have been able to put the recent amount of hours on the clock I have without crashing and burning, were it not for the protective bubble of pandemic-related health and safety protocols around me. For the first time in my adult life, I have now passed 13 consecutive months with zero viral illnesses.

Foreign Service, Mexico, U.S.

…Vaccinated

by pennypostcard • February 28, 2021 • 2 Comments

This month brought us a tremendous gift: the opportunity to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Foreign Service, Mexico

Fingers (Cautiously) Crossed

by pennypostcard • December 27, 2020 • 7 Comments

As 2020 comes to an end at last this week, my husband V and I celebrate 14 years since our first date in Georgetown and reflect on hopes for next year.

Foreign Service, Mexico, U.S.

Ingratitude, and In Gratitude

by pennypostcard • December 22, 2020 • 0 Comments

I always know it has been too long between blog posts when too many half-developed ideas jumble together in my mind, clamoring to get out before they morph into something else with the passage of time. I try to think through my ideas, make them distinct, articulable, frame a coherent narrative from which I can draw conclusions. But sometimes it is not until I just release the words to the page, as it were, that the cross-currents of thoughts begin to flow in one direction and I understand what it is I want to say better than I could when I left it in my own mind. It is almost as if writing is my process of thinking; whether and to what extent I succeed in making a point is another matter.

This isn’t everything, but it’s all true.

Foreign Service, Mexico, U.S.

Trying Not to Pick Things Up By the Lid

by pennypostcard • November 23, 2020 • 2 Comments

Since our terrific socially-distanced trip to New Mexico six weeks ago for my birthday, V and I have been settling in to life in Ciudad Juárez together. It has been both great, and tedious, and prolonged, kind of like 2020.

Foreign Service, Mexico, Travel, U.S.

The Land of Enchantment

by pennypostcard • October 24, 2020 • 6 Comments

Two weekends ago, V returned after an eight-week work trip to Washington, DC to help me celebrate my birthday. As if that weren’t great enough, the Columbus Day holiday also made it a three-day weekend. Longtime readers know what that means – a road trip out of town. But socially distanced and in the great outdoors, given the current situation.

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