Students’ Views

Slide 1 -

Ah, yes. This is El Paso with snow. What’s that? Yes, it is in the middle of the desert. I actually lived here with my father for a year and a half of my high school years (a semester sophomore, and my senior year). No, it didn’t snow that year. In fact, I’m actually passing through El Paso at the time of this slide, coming back from a small town called Hatch, NM, about an hour away. I consider Hatch and the El Paso area kind of my ‘home’ or place of origin or what have you. So what I’m trying to say is, I’ve spent a lot of winter breaks in this area, and not once do I remember it snowing in El Paso. Hatch once upon a time, El Paso though- no. Sorry Dumbo, but you know you’ve seen everything when you see it snow in El Paso.

Slide 2 -

This is my mother, Teresa Ramos. As you could tell, she’s driving and not at all happy I’m taking a picture of her. She raised my older brother Alec and I on her own, a super single mom. Quite admirable. She thoroughly enjoyed our visit down to see family in Hatch this thanksgiving. One thing she didn’t enjoy though, was the trailer we stayed in. Not that she wanted something better for herself, we actually slept in the mobile home that my grandmother has (she’s been struggling since she got ’screwed over’ in the divorce my grandparents had a while back). In fact, Mom didn’t like the conditions my grandma was living in - leaking roof, broken plumbing, etc. - and now plans to put over a hundred grand into a new home for my grandma, Mema. That’s why it’s so late in the day in this picture, even though we’re still only in El Paso, a good ten hour drive away from our home here in Round Rock, TX. She stopped to sign some paperwork with a realtor. My aunts were making faces when my mother told them her plans. Apparently a mobile home is a bad investment. Oh well, can’t escape drama in my family.

Slide 3 -

Well, that’s the floor. In fact, it’s the space under the glove compartment where your feet are SUPPOSED to go in the Chevy Malibu we drove on this trip. I’ll start from the bottom left and work my way clockwise. That round plastic container is full of soy nuts, roasted and salted. Very tasty. The women in the family have a competition going to see who can lose the most weight. So far Mema has them all beat, she lost 40lbs with her Herbal Life whatchamakallit. Not sure what the program entails. Well, now nearly all my aunts (and my mother) are going to join up too and get a piece of the action (hence the healthy snack). Moving on, those are my sandals at the top left (did I mention I forgot to pack shoes and have been doubling up on socks and wearing sandals the entire break, in weather in the 40s and 50 degrees?). To the right of those is a plastic bag of goodness. My grandma put in about four burritos. Some are made of left-over carne asada we barbecued the day after thanksgiving, some with chile con carne (did I mention half my body weight is chile con carne now?). The bag also contains peanuts, some trash (wrappers, the foil left after the burritos are eaten), and a couple bottles of water. A little below the bag is my mother’s humongous purse. And what’s that below it? That is the case where I have a whole bunch of CDs in (did I mention for about 75% of the trip there are no radio stations?). Oh, what’re those? Those are just my feet. Comfortable? I think not.

Slide 4 -

This is a good slide. That’s a semi truck passing us on the left side of the road. As you can tell it’s night and it’s snowing (exactly 32 Degrees). I don’t think I’ve ever truly appreciated semis until this particular night (I’ve actually always hated them). This semi is on his way to the front of our mile long caravan of vehicles. He’s the only guy with the guts and the weight to drive on the left side of the road, which is full of snow and ice. He’ll make it to the front with no problem and ‘warm up’ the road for the rest of us with his eighteen tires. Texas isn’t equipped to make roads functional during snow. Hell, I don’t think it snows much on I-10, it’s pretty far south. All I can say is the hour and a half I drove after Van Horn I think I drove through the worst part (before the caravan formed) because the road wasn’t full of snow so much as it was full of ice on bridges and all over the left lane. Pretty scary stuff.

Slide 5 -

There are two things I want to talk about in this slide. The first is my mother, again. She’s on her cell (I’m driving). Can you guess with whom? La Quinta, in Ft. Stockton, about an hour (in normal weather, it ended up being three) away from the location this was taken. Thank goodness she kept calling back after she lost her signal until she got a confirmation number (she had to repeat the whole process at one time) or we wouldn’t have gotten a room when we arrived. The whole town of 7,000 people has 12 hotels and they were all full of travelers who were snowed off of I-10. They had to open up a shelter and everything. Now, if I may direct your attention to that little guy in the back seat. That is my little brother, Sebastian. He’s five. What’s he doing with those headphones, staring at the back of my mother’s head? He’s watching his Transformers DVD on the monitor we tied to the back of my mom’s headrest. He’s oblivious to the danger of the road and the high risk of accidents. Not a single worry in the world. Later he’ll get out of the car and yell, “Snow!” and proceed to throw snowballs at my mother and I while we’re unloading in six inches of snow (I will reiterate that I’m stuck with my sandals) until I yell at him (after the first he throws to me, of course). And boy was he glad to hear we were staying in a hotel. “I love hotels!” I think he had the trip of his life. It couldn’t get any better for him.

Well, those are all the slides I have. Nothing else happened on our way back. We got up in the morning and drove the rest of the way back from Ft. Stockton. The snow COMPLETELY disappeared after about an hour. Know what the difference in temp was? One degree. 33 Degrees F. Yeah, wow. Sorry I didn’t give any details about my actual break, but come on. if you’ve seen one family gathering, you’ve seen them all. Am I right or am I right?

El Paso

A sign, duh

The right lane of I -10

parking lot of La Quinta