I AM NOT ASLEEP!! I AM TALKING!!

My sisters were just here for a few days and now they're gone and I can't remember what I did before...

I picked them up from the airport on Monday and after Erin dropped their suitcase on her toe, drawing blood and creating a big ugly bruise, took them and their luggage back to my apartment. The girls managed to bring me some housewarming presents (I LOVE presents!!!) with them on the plane. 2 sets of gorgeous wine glasses and a really lovely canister to hold some kitchen utensils that my Mom got me from Pier 1. There's a lot less space in the kitchen I have here than there was in my old apartment so I'm trying to be creative with where to put everything and the canister is so fun and fits my style and now that I have wine glasses, and 2 bottles of wine, I might have to get something fun for those!

After hanging out for a bit we drove down the street to get some lunch before going on our big El Paso Adventure. We drove down to the mall that's down the street from my place and ate at Sonic. So when we were ready to go aka Kelly was ready to die of heat stroke and we HAD to get the AC going, I drove down a direction I hadn't been before. Why not right? We were just seeing the city.

Not 10 minutes later and we passed a sign that reads, "Welcome to New Mexico!" So we drove into New Mexico for a few minutes before finding a place to flip a U and made our way back to Texas.

I live on the border. To all places apparently. I knew Mexico Mexico was within spitting distance and that New Mexico wasn't too far, but when I look out my window I'm looking at New Mexico, not El Paso. I'm learning so much.

So back in Texas, I drive back towards the University. A place I've visited already (getting my financial aid has been an insane hassle!!!) and know sort of what's around that way. So we wander around there and as we drive Erin's pointing out all these signs that lead to historic districts with the gorgeous old houses, and I miss every single turn off. But we wind our way around, look at the gorgeous old brick, the beautiful neighborhoods; El Paso has a lot of charm, it really does, and yes, I am surprised.

I'm a big city snob. I LOVE Phoenix, I hate that I'm not there. But I like El Paso. I do. I'm not surprised, but I am surprised that it's independent of being in school and working. I really thought that would be why I like this city. Because I like what I'm doing. Not yet anyway.

So we drive through the University campus and I accidentally locate the Psychology building so the girls see where I'll be living for the next 4-6 years and we make our way back out to the road.

There are a lot of hills as you drive through the city, it reminds me of what I've seen of San Francisco on t.v. but there's a huge mountain range that splits the city in half. This I know. I don't know what side I'm on, but apparently it's how you identify yourself to other people who live here. I'll have someone tell me once I start talking to someones...

...but I'm telling my sisters as we're driving towards this mountain through another historic district that when I came to the open house at UTEP in March, the girl I stayed with took us on a drive through the mountains, at night, on a road where you can see the city. I'm telling the girls that we can do that if they want I'll just have to look up online where the road actually is as we start driving on it. I recognized it from March, I just didn't realize we were there until we were there. I had also just finished telling them that it freaked me out back in March and I couldn't look out the window because I was so scared of how high up we were and Erin offered to drive when we drove through it. But I did fine. It is a nice view. We didn't have a camera so we didn't get out and stop but decided to come back and take some pictures later.

After Scenic Drive we found our way to Downtown El Paso where City Hall is located, some really cute looking streets with shopping, outdoor vendors and food, and a pretty decent Arts district which has a few museums, including a Holocaust Museum. Guess what we did Tuesday.

But more on that later.

We continued to drive through Downtown and the state of our surroundings started to decline a bit and then we saw people walking in the same direction as we were driving carrying suitcases. Everyone headed to the border, leaving town. It was bizarre!! Erin had traveled through El Paso with the Academy and had stayed in a high school right near the border and one night the school was locked so they had to stay in a Colosseum instead. She doesn't have very nice things to say about her time in El Paso. While we were driving we saw a structure ahead that she thought might be the Colosseum but as we got closer we realized it was the bridge over the Rio Grande into Juarez.

I haven't been that close to the border/Mexico since we had to drive to Nogales to get our visas renewed. There's a sign on the highway that the girls noticed on the way from the airport that directs you towards an off exit "Gateway to Juarez Mexico" and above it is a no guns sign which I find amusing, in a sad and dark comedy kind of way.

We drove around for a couple of hours and made a plan for the night: rent Little Miss Sunshine and watch it, get pizza and drinks, relax and hang out. And that's what we did.

Tuesday:

We got up "late" and I made waffles. We left around 11ish and as soon as we got in the car Erin split her pants. It wasn't noticeable though so we went over to Scenic Drive again to take some pictures, but the directions I had to get there were incorrect so we practically drove to Mexico again before deciding to turn around. I got creative and decided to wing it and picked the right street and back to Scenic Drive we drove. We took some fun pictures, saw the city, stayed for a bit, but it was hot up there so we got back in the car to continue our day.

Next stop. The El Paso Holocaust Museum. My sister can sniff out anything German related in any city! As we were walking up to the building she said, "I hope it's actually about the Germany Holocaust and not about...something else" to which I replied, "Yeah I hope it's not about one of the the other Holocausts?" Silly.

We had looked it up online the night before and there is no admission so we decided to have a look. I love museums, Erin loves the Holocaust (in a strictly academic fashion) and Kelly was along for the ride. I was really surprised to see a Holocaust museum here. Not because it didn't effect everyone in the world, because it most certainly does, I just feel like Texas and El Paso, Mexico especially, are so different, so removed from that part of the world that there wouldn't be an effect larger than service men who fought for the U.S. in WWII. And that was how they spun it definitely. There were plenty of soldiers from El Paso who fought in the war, but a lot of survivors or descendants have settled down in El Paso. It was a pretty decent museum. AND true to El Paso fashion all the signs were in English AND Spanish. In the museums in New York the labels were all in English, if you wanted to know what it said in a different language you had to get a headset.

After the museum we drove to find a lunch spot. We had picked a place where Erin and I could get sushi and Kelly could get cooked meat and found a restaurant online that had good reviews. The directions I had weren't right, they told us to turn in one street to soon but we found it after driving around for a bit. It was ok food but it was one of those places where you feel like you're inconveniencing the people who work there and try to get out as fast possible. But Erin and I have been trying to eat sushi for months so it was good for us to do it.

Next we went to the mall where Erin bought a new pair of jeans and the girls helped me pick a new pair of frames. I got a new prescription so I'm getting new glasses. More grown up glasses. Hopefully. I want to start looking like a professional and my glasses are a good start.

We only had a few minutes to walk around the mall before the movie started. We saw "The Other Guys" which was decent. We love Will Ferrell and I'm pretty sure we've seen all of his movies, but it was fun to do something familiar.

We then were treated to El Paso traffic on the frontage road since every on ramp was closed for some unknown reason since there was no actual construction going on. And El Paso drivers showed their true colors when we got to a part of the road where everyone lost their mind. We watched from our spot in line as at least 3 cars and a motorcycle ignored the "ramp closed" sign and drove over the barrier to get onto the freeway and found that the line was so long because people were ignoring the traffic cones and driving in lanes that were roped off, but had signs in the way on the other side of the light and were forcing their way over. Classy El Paso. Classy.

And that was day 2 for the most part. We ate leftover pizza, had more pop, watched The United States of Tara, our new favorite show!, and went to bed.

This morning:

I got everyone up at 7:30 to pack and get ready for breakfast. When my parents were here my Mom had mentioned seeing a bakery that she thought we should try but we didn't so me and the girls decided that would be breakfast. We looked at the reviews though, just in case it was a horrible idea, but there seemed to be some really positive ones so we thought why not? It was a cute place, bakery & deli combo, where you can sit down and have a pastry and some coffee. I might try studying there sometime. The girl behind the counter was (hopefully) new, because she told us she didn't know how to make the drinks and vaguely pointed at the guy who was filling about 30 boxes with pastry for a lady, and when Kelly ordered a latte and asked what flavored shots they had she said she didn't know and that was the end of that. So great!

The pastry's were good, we had to wait for the guy to finish boxing up and helping the lady to her car with all her thousands of boxes and he had to make the drinks individually, but they were pretty good and for all 3 of us it was about $13 so unless the girl at the register doesn't know how to work the register too, that's a really good deal.

We had time to kill before going to the airport so we drove through some historic districts again and got the airport by 11. I sobbed like a little girl, again. But I had a great time and I'm so glad they came to visit! It's the most I've seen of the city and the most fun I've had since I moved here.

Things to look forward to:

Orientation at UTEP is next week.
School starts the week after that.
Getting my loan money so I can actually go shopping!

A few of my favorite pictures:

We drank those. In the last 3 days. They're each 3 liters. Yes, you can buy 3 liters of pop here. HUGE bottles!!!


Trying out the new oven on Funfetti cookies. Some were burned to a nice charcoal crisp on the bottom but were still beverage-y on the top. Just like Mom used to make.






"Howdy y'all?"




Hey Pharmacy!










My lovely new glasses AND the gorgeous new canister and 3 new spatulas!! I LOVE kitchen stuff!!!


*the blog title is a direct quote from Kelly who used those exact words the first night when she was awake on the couch but we kept talking about her like she wasn't. Good times.