Driving
Oh dear goodness! And that's the most positive word choice I can even say goes on inside my head as I drive around here. I've always been a driver who talks at the other drivers (Yes, I know they can't hear me, but I feel better when I tell them what I'm thinking). Now though, the boys are starting to pay attention, so I have to watch what and how I say things. For people who know me well, you KNOW this is definitely a stretch, but I do feel I'm getting better! I try to always explain possibilities in situations they ask about....maybe that will help later on????
Before I go any further, I ask you to do one thing: picture driving in Mexico. Remember that first time you were in a van from the airport going to Cancun or maybe just across the Texas/Mexico border (for us Texans)?? Remember how everyone parked willy-nilly everywhere and drove even crazier? Well, El Centro is about 15 miles from the CA/Mex border. The border town in Mexico is Mexicali (and interestingly enough the border town in CA is Calexico!---Guess they had a hard time coming up with new names!) I've heard El Centro be called "Norte Mexicali"--North Mexicali--because people just move slightly into the U.S. but keep the same traditions, culture, issues, etc. Needless to say, I feel like I'm driving in Mexico every day!
- Stop signs--These are just a suggestion. If you want to stop and let others go, then you're just being nice. Really though, if you have a CA or Baja license plate, they're really just for you to practice your shape identification. You know...stop sign...octagon.
- Stop lights--Oh. Dear. God. Help. Me. We live 5 miles from the boy's school and it takes about 20 minutes to get there due to what I call the "Mexico stop lights". One light turns green just as the next one you get to turns red. All. The. Way. Down. The. Two. Road. Options. You. Have. To. Get. Through. Town. H. E. L. P.
- Speed--Once again...just a suggestion! You can go faster or slower than the speed limit, but the main goal is to make as much traffic as possible in a small town. I won't go into more detail. Reread the previous bullets for my annoyance and it pretty much rings true here.
- Courtesy--There isn't much! Yes, people do let you in during traffic if needed, but the main courtesy I'm thinking of is when you've parked in a parking lot and are walking to the store. When I say that no one stops to let you walk in the crosswalk or even slows down as you're already walking safely across (and no one was coming)---I mean NO ONE!!! The boys are already trained to wait for me and hold hands sometimes, but here I make it mandatory because these drivers are crazy and don't slow down even if you're in the middle of crossing!
Schools
We send the boys to a church school for a few reasons:
- They work with our travel schedule. A public school would in NO WAY work with us leaving school for 2 days every 6 weeks. As a former teacher, I completely understand. As a mom, I definitely want our boys to experience everything we can while we are living this way for the next few years.
- The school we are zoned to is not in the better district in this area. If we lived in Imperial instead of El Centro, we would be in a better district. If we lived a few streets over we would be in a different "El Centro District". (The districting here is insane and per the usual "nothing's on the internet here" is VERY confusing to figure out.)
- We want to be involved in a church out here, but once again, churches here are different than what we've become accustomed to, so it's been very difficult to find a church home. Some churches have AWANA groups and one has Royal Rangers, which Jeff was involved in for a bit as a kid, so we're just trying to incorporate the 2 in order to become involved and help the boys get acclimated to everything here.
I've never paid attention to free/reduced lunch at any schools I've worked in because it was never anything I had to be involved in. I worked at all schools--low/mid/high income--and the only time we dealt with it was in the "first day of school" paperwork. I know that kids who got free/reduced breakfast ate in the cafeteria before school started. Here, as I sit at our zoned elementary school where Riley attends speech therapy twice a week, the entire class will go get breakfast, eat in their classroom, and come outside to throw away the trash. This is about 30-45 minutes after the school day starts.
My teacher thinking is: No wonder the CA schools are behind! They spend an extra 30 minutes of the already shorter school day doing breakfast! Now....this is only what I know from my spot sitting and waiting for Riley. This may not happen at every school. We all know that every school changes things as they see fit for their population. Once again...just noting differences in this blog post!
Internet
The good news is that we have it out here in the desert. The bad news is that NO ONE UTILIZES IT!!!
I found this out last fall as Jeff was already living here and I was trying to research churches, schools, activities, etc for us as we prepared to move. I found out more by driving around the town when we visited Jeff at Thanksgiving than I did in months of research. Locals will readily admit that no one uses the Internet here for anything. However, they also say that there are lots of things to do here if you know about them, Sound a little bit contradictory???? Welcome to life in the IV (Imperial Valley)!
Medical
We found out during our Thankgsiving 2016 visit to see Jeff that medical services were going to be nothing like what we had in our lovely Houston suburbs. Riley had busted the back of his head open and gotten 3 staples the week before Thanksgiving and had to have them taken out while we visited Jeff. The one "urgent care" had a visiting doc from San Diego and he wouldn't see patients younger than 10. The other "urgent care" facilities in the area either had horrible reviews (since that's basically all they use the Internet for here) or wasn't open yet and was 30 miles away. Needless to say, I drove to the ER and got his staples out. We got lucky and were in and out within 45 minutes, but I've heard horrible things about the hospitals here too. I grew up in a teeny town and know that Urgent Care facilities are not the norm, so having urgent care facilities about every 5-10 miles in Houston definitely spoils you! :(
Homeless Population
We noticed this when we visited Jeff during Thanksgiving 2016, but nothing is more prevalent than when you live directly in it. We've always lived in the Houston suburbs, where you see some of this, but not to this extent. To give you an idea of the Imperial Valley, picture 3 Houston suburbs--one directly after the other. That is basically where we live. The Mexico border is 15 miles away. On "the 8"--AKA Interstate 8--lies El Centro. Directly over the railroad tracks (which is my official city switch location) is Imperial. About 8 miles away is Brawley. Due to our RV park's proximity to "the 8", we have a larger amount of homeless people that live near us. They do not come into the park, so we feel safe and have only had one issue of our car being looked into for money (which, as usual, I never have cash...).
This situation has brought about NUMEROUS conversations with the boys about why someone might be homeless, what they do every day, why they have grocery carts, strollers, bikes, etc. to carry their belongings, why they are still homeless and don't have a job/money, etc. Basically this is more of a conversation than I ever thought I'd have, but hopefully this will begin to instill some compassion for others and how we can help, pray for them, etc. That is...until you see one of them decide to go to the bathroom on a tree directly across the intersection from you. That, my friends, is when you shake your head and join your children in gagging!
