Down a dusty road in Tijuana

I work in Tijuana, Mexico. I wonder if I have ever mentioned that. Every day I leave my nice little neighborhood in San Diego and enter the absolute choas of a third world country.

I was thinking this morning, as I was walking my dog past all the lovely little craftsmen houses, that I once too had a house. I used to live in Palmdale, which is about 3 hours from San Diego. I moved there with my parents when I was 6.

Palmdale was this small little town that just felt so safe ( I have no idea why right now, since it's crime rate is higher then San Diego's ). Granted there wasn't a lot to do there- but Los Angeles was only an hour away. Soeren ( this is dh name, I'm going to start using it now and not refer to him as dh anymore ) and I moved back after we got married. We eloped, so my parents used the money that we would have used on a wedding as a downpayment on a house.

God, I loved our house. We had the cutest backyard, we had a fireplace, we had a big living room AND family room, we had three bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. I loved it.

Best of all, it was 10 minutes away from our shop.

Then California came with it's new laws. I hate California sometimes. Without a single one of our workers getting injured, our worksman compensation went from $3,000 to $24,000 a month. This happened to a lot of other businesses too, and suprise suprise, businesses started leaving California.

We didn't have a lot of choices where to go. We needed to stay close to Los Angeles ( mainly Beverly Hills ) because that is where most of our business comes from. We couldn't move to Arizona because the heat in the summer would literally kill our forgers. We couldn't move to Las Vegas because of the heat and the fact that welders are in too high of a demand over there.

So we ended up in Mexico.

Sometimes I really like Mexico, basically because it's so differant then the U.S. I love the grocery stores, and I love the way everything just comes alive at night.

Sometimes I hate it though. Like this morning a cop trailed me all the way to my shop, just waiting for me to mess up.Really he could have pulled me over even if I did nothing wrong. In Mexico, you don't get a ticket, your expected to pay the cops off. They can go as far as arresting you and taking your car if they want to. Thats rare, but you do always have to have cash. To date, my dad has been pulled over 3 times, and Soeren as been to jail once.

It freaks me out a little how you can pay off everyone in Mexico. My foreman says you can pay off everything but death ( meaning you can't stay immortal ) he had to clarify that because even murder can easily be paid off.

It's weird.

A lot of times you drive along the street and men with huge guns stop every car and ask questions. I never know what they ask as I don't speak a word of Spanish. When I started driving by myself down there I was worried about getting lost. See, there aren't any numbers like we have here, and streets go on forever. Plus cell phones don't work down there. My dad told me to come to Tijuana every day with a full tank of gas and just keep going north if I got lost.

And, to top everthing off, Mexican men do not like following the orders of a woman. When I try to disipline them they run off to my dad. In Mexico, you can't fire people as easily as you can in the states, and they know that, so they act on it. I have gotten a lot tougher though, and have figured out my own legal way to disipline them. Now when they run to my dad , he sends them back to me.

I don't know why I decided to write so much about Mexico. I guess I've just been thinking about my life, and Mexico is a huge part of it. I love living in San Diego, but sometimes I really miss the safety of Palmdale and our shop that was only 10 minutes away.