Fullerton, USA

Well, I am finally done with the warm up trip and am now preparing for Egypt. On December 30 we took a cab to the Monterrey airport and on the way there saw a billboard supporting the reinstatement of the death penalty in Mexico. The terminal for VivaAerobus, Monterrey’s new low cost airline, was nice and remodeled in a funky, unfinished kind of way. Security was low-key – no need to remove ones shoes. In the States I would always take my belt off, but I decided to keep it on to see what would happen. I did set off the metal detector, but they just wanded me a little and then let me go. I looked out the window and admired all of their new aircraft. No jetways at this terminal. When we finally got on the 737, however, it was old and shitty on the inside. They just gave it a good paint job. Although the plane was old, the flight attendants were not. They were gorgeous. Announcements were made in Spanish and very bad, incomprehensible English. I was surprised at how nice the Tijuana airport was. I saw a few jetways, but we did not use one. The situation was a little unusual since this is a border zone. Although it was a domestic flight, we were directed to go through what was signed as “passport control.” “Passport control” actually consisted of nothing more than a few immigration officers (Mexican ones, that is) standing around a desk. They did flag us down, but we just handed them our FMTs, which they took from us. No passport check. Then after baggage claim everyone’s luggage was x-rayed. We took a taxi to the border, but when he dropped us off I got a little nervous because I did not recognize the area. I thought that he had taken us to the Otay Mesa border crossing instead of the San Ysidro one. Turns out that the line at San Ysidro was just backed up so far it started in a neighborhood I had never seen before. After a few minutes the line inexplicably started moving very fast and before we knew it we were inside the immigration building. They now have a turnstile heading north positioned just a little ahead of the actual border, but they were just letting everybody through an open gate with an officer standing by. Thankfully we were not asked any stupid questions, only “how was your trip?” Then our luggage was x-rayed for the third time that day. I spent New Years with Alec in San Diego and took the Amtrak back to Fullerton yesterday. When I feel like it maybe I’ll post some photos.