NOW IM IN TEXAS

well i haven't updated this in a while. i'm done with my first year of lawschool, and i've started to get grades back in - not as good as i hoped, but i supposed with the amount of work i put in compared to other people, i can't really be surprised. i think i'm going to be losing my merit scholarship though... by .05 points. which really sucks a lot. but i guess if i'm in debt by a hundred thousand bucks by the time i'm out, another eight thousand won't kill me.

and now i'm in texas. what an adventure it was even to get here, let alone work here. like my new roommate just said, 'it's basically a foreign country.' but let me start at the beginning.

i was planning to start work the week after write-on was over - i didn't participate in write-on, i bought a packet but i didn't end up doing it, i had too much other stuff to work on. unfortunately, though, my NJClass loan for the summer didn't come through, because they didn't process it until later, and by that time the school year was out and they don't award loans after the close of the year. so i thought about my options, and john suggested that i get a credit card. that was the best option, so i did that, and i bought my plane ticket on it. then i spent all of the two weeks i had after finals just hanging out - spending time with my mom and with john, and i had a barbecue to which something like 20 people came. that was pretty awesome, except for the end of the night when everyone was stupid drunk and weirdness started up.

but anyway, i bought my plane ticket and i got here last tuesday, the 27th. today is saturday, the 31st of may, so i've been here 5 days. i've been working, and work is awesome. i signed a disclaimer not to say specifics about what i'm working on precisely, so i can't do that. however, i can link to some interesting articles about what the organization at which i'm working (South Texas Civil Rights Project) is doing, like this for example: http://www.texascivilrightsproject.org/newspub/clip_050629_protest_human_trafficking.html
so check that out if you're interested.

but anyway, down here is great! it's hot but not humid so i can totally deal with it. i'm living in a small dorm (way nicer than the dorms in newark) with another girl, genevieve, who is really awesome and sweet. she works for another organization on this compound, proyecto azteca, which builds low income housing like habitat for humanity. i also work with another intern named jayne who is extremely nice. and working at STCRP are corinna (the attorney), jaime, laura, and sr. moira. Abner, the previous attorney, is not going to be working there anymore, so i think they're hiring another attorney. the most interesting thing, in my opinion, that STCRP does is the VAWA stuff - violence against women act. it's really cool, but i don't really feel like typing about it.

what i do feel like typing about is the border wall! i went to a meeting about it recently and it was super informative - i don't know much about it before but i am learning! apparently there is corruption scandals going on, with the engineering firm they're hired to figure out the hyrdaulics, it has stolen money in the past and sent it to mexico where it disappeared in shell corporations! but the company is under investigation from the FBI because of bribing officials for construction contracts. and some of the problems with the border wall that i had never considered have to do with the engineering aspects - they want to build it right on top of (or replace) these old levees that desperately need to be repaired - hidalgo county is in danger of major flooding if a hurricane comes through. there are levees in place that are extremely old and it's been estimated that it would be something like $225 million to fix them, however DHS is allocating funding instead to building walls that they are calling 'levee walls,' which will mostly just reflect water back onto the mexican side, damaging and probably killing people over there, while not doing much over here to protect from flooding.

the wall also goes through a major wildlife preserve corridor and would probably ruin the eco-tourism that brings in millions of dollars in this part of texas, as well as screwing tons of people out of their property and funneling the drug traffic through cities and housing developments instead of through relatively unoccupied desert and rural areas, and then the obvious immigrants' rights issues, and finally, what i found most interesting, weirdly enough - the structural and engineering problems inherent in building a border wall that is also a levee, since this is part of an area that (at this point) would be victimized by major flooding if a hurricane came through.

there's going to be a forum on june 26th, flyering in public parks on july 4th, and on july 12th they're planning a huge ralley in a park near here called 'anchor park'. the leaders are also planning a possible bus trip to austin to demonstrate in front of the capital - even though it's a federal issue (they just want the media attention) and if that goes well, a possible trip up to washington. pretty exciting.

i took a lot of that information out of an email i wrote to toni, hahaha. but i really am enjoying it down here. last night genevieve and i watched 'coyote ugly' and we went to the mall and we went to a tacquieria and we ate ice cream and i bought a dress! (not in that order). then today genevieve went to help with construction - i didn't do that because i slept until 11:30. and since then i've been working on school stuff, like my resume and stuff. so i haven't even gone outside... but she is looking online now to find interesting stuff to do around here so maybe i'll be outside tomorrow. i really want to visit the frontiera audobon; that's where we had the meeting about the wall and it was beautiful. also there are big fucking jumping spiders living here, i've killed a bunch already.

and ... what else... there's wild dogs, and it's really beautiful here with the palm trees, and a guy named rogelio was here for a while but he left, and i think later a lot of high school girls are going to be living here so genevieve and i might have to find somewhere else to live, and genevieve wants to go salsa dancing so if she does that and i go i will get super drunk (and not dance), and i want to go to austin and visit gino and patrick, and i dont know what else but i'm having fun!!