Week 1 was action packed, but I got into the swing of things by the time Week 2 rolled around. It sure takes a lot to get used to this city, but I think I started to get the hang of it after being on my own for a few days.

Well, at least I got a hang of the subway system…

WEEK 2

After a week of orientation, the interns were finally put to work. On Monday, I got some additional training for Features Design, which involved learning Times style as well as getting (re)acquainted to the design software (mostly Adobe programs). I also learned that I would be working in the Home section for a few weeks before switching around to other sections throughout the summer.

I worked on inside Home pages on Tuesday and Wednesday. I even made the target that appeared on this photo illustration on the section front. A small contribution, but it was worth it.

The section closes on Wednesday nights, so I got to experience deadline crunch time early on.

The copy editing interns arrived earlier in the week. Over lunch, the entire group of 2008 interns (minus a few who were coming later in the summer) spoke with some of the past interns who were recently hired to continue working for the Times.

On Thursday, I flew back to Michigan for a day to see my sister’s high school graduation. Turns out that a scratchy throat I developed the night before was a viral infection, which of course made for a great flight home at 6:00 AM.

I made sure to pick up a copy of the Times at LaGuardia before liftoff. It was so exciting to hold the finished product. Sure, my name wasn’t actually credited to the work I had done, but I was proud to know that I had been a part of the paper’s production.

I ended up going to the graduation with a fever and sore throat, but with enough a ton of Ibuprofen, it was bearable.

I came back to the city Friday afternoon feeling slightly less miserable and decided to relax for the rest of the weekend. But not before coming to the Times for a few hours on Friday to help plan the next week’s Home section.

WEEK 3

My third week in New York City kicked off with an unbearably hot Sunday. In fact, the temperature nearly hit 100 degrees.

On my way to church that afternoon, I got stuck in the Puerto Rican independence parade on 5th Avenue. The street was absolutely packed, so much so that just getting across the street took at least 15 minutes. Add that to a temperature in the high 90s, and it was absolutely awful.

The high temperatures continued to make New Yorkers uncomfortable throughout the week.

In my third week at the Times, I continued to work on inside pages for the Home section. I got to design some of the jump pages for a story about a family who owns a puzzle house. We ended up devoting a whole page to a graphic that tries to explain how to solve the mystery. The multimedia piece attached to the web version of the story breaks down the chart we made into an easier format. And let me tell you, sifting through all those photos — that’s including ones we didn’t even use — was very time consuming. But fun.

Additional sidenotes from Weeks 2 and 3: Aside from work, flying to Michigan and back, packing, unpacking and packing again, I took some time to meet some more of the people on my floor at the NYU dorms. As I mentioned earlier, most of them are interns at other publications, making our hall the “journalism floor.” I also explored the city and went shopping a few times. And for the first time in 2 years, I decided NOT to boycott the NBA finals just because the Pistons weren’t in it (though I was thoroughly depressed for a week after they lost).

Speaking of finals, the Detroit Red Wings (my hometown Hockey team) won the Stanley Cup on June 4th. The last time they won it back in ‘02, I was a freshman in high school who followed the NHL closely. But since I’m a much less avid hockey fan now (I blame it on the lockout), I wasn’t as into the 2008 playoffs. In fact, I had only watched 2 games from the entire playoff season.

Regardless, the Wings winning it all relieved me of the pain of the Pistons losing the Eastern Conference Finals. Coming home on June 5th was pretty great. Even the Detroit Metropolitan airport (which, ironically, is a good 20 miles from Detroit) was filled with fans wearing Wings jerseys. Unfortunately, I missed out on the championship parade that took place just as I was heading back to New York.

But fear not, I return to blog with detailed, albiet long-delayed, updates.

(For more instant updates, make sure to check out my Twitterfeed for my, uh, “microblogging” of life in the city).

And now, without further adieu…

WEEK 1

Saturday, May 24: I arrived safely at LaGuardia airport, my parents accompanying me. We left the rest of the family behind because, well, let’s face it, who wants to take their entire family of 8 on an airplane? What if that family of 8 also included a restless 4 year old boy?

It’s kind of hard to pack your life belongings away to stow on an airplane; it’s even more difficult to do so with recent limits on the number of bags you can bring with you on a plane. Luckily, we were able to get my three, yes three, bags on the plane without incurring any of those nasty additional fees. I call it being crafty.

We stayed at the Grand Hyatt Hotel above Grand Central Station, which instantly became #1 on my list of the nicest hotels I’ve ever stayed at. Even their workout room was amazing.

After a day of navigating the city and eating at some fancy restaurants, I watched a disappointing Eastern Conference Finals Game 3 while working out, and then went to bed.

(For the record, I’m a tad obsessed with the Detroit Pistons).

Sunday, May 25: Went running with my dad in Central Park before heading to St. Patrick’s Cathedral for Mass. I guess I got spoiled when I went to Rome 8 years ago to see St. Peter’s, but I still thought the Cathedral was gorgeous. But tourists taking photos during the service were a little distracting.

(Above: A shot of St. Patrick’s from my Webshots account. Before you laugh at me for having a Webshots, know that it is from 2005, when I was still in high school. Webshots was way cooler than Flickr back then).

Then we went to the NYU dorms to start moving my luggage in. And let’s just say, after staying in the nicest hotel I think I’ve ever been to, walking into a not-yet-cleaned dorm room with trashbags from previous occupants was a little disheartening.

Eventually, staff members cleaned it for us, but the final result wasn’t much better.

(Welcome to New York!)

After I moved eveything in, we went to buy some groceries. Then we headed off Little Italy for our last dinner together.

And in the blink of an eye, I was by myself. All alone. In New York City.

Monday, May 26: Memorial Day was a pretty hot day for May, so of course I went running in Central Park in the middle of the afternoon. Smart move.

Only one of my suitemates — another Times intern — had moved in at this point, but she had errands to do, so I was all alone with lots of time to kill during the day. So I decided I would do a dry run of my daily commute to the Times.

And let me tell you, even from the outside, the building was beautiful. As I walked by, I saw a tourist taking a photo of the entrance. It took me a few seconds to realize that this woman was taking a photo of the place where I would be working this summer. Pretty neat, huh?

After taking it all in, I decided to explore some more. I had about an hour or so until sunset, so I went downtown. It couldn’t hurt to figure out the subway system, could it?

I wanted to see Wall Street, but the streets downtown got a little confusing, so instead, I headed towards Ground Zero. I had been there once before in 2005, so I wanted to see what progress had been made on the site.

From what little I could see of the area — most of it was fenced off — not much had changed, except for the placement of the victims’ names. In fact, they seemed nowhere to be found. However, construction had indeed begun on the Freedom Tower, as signs around the area seemed to indicate.

I took few minutes to sit down across the street from the site to reflect until it started to get a little dark. I walked around St. Paul’s Church before taking the subway back to my dorm to call it a night.

Tuesday, May 27: Well, this was it. My first day of work. Only one problem: I had no idea what time to come in.

Now before you tsk tsk me for being an irresponsible employee, I would like it to be known that I did try to contact someone about starting time, but couldn’t reach anyone. I later found out, of course, that they did try to email the interns on Friday about when to start, but experienced technological difficulties.

Regardless, I showed up to the Times at 8:00 AM, the standard working time*, just to make sure I wouldn’t miss out on anything.

*Fellow journalists, you can laugh at this since the standard starting work time is usually much later than 8 AM. I knew this, but it’s better to be safe than sorry!

The security guards had me wait in the cafeteria. But of course, I didn’t understand the elevator system and ended up on the completely wrong floor.

(For the record, at the Times you push button for the floor you want to go on BEFORE the elevator door opens. Easy concept, hard to remember).

As it would turn out, I was early, but not by much — we were supposed to arrive at 8:30.

Over a free (!) breakfast, I met 8 of the other interns starting that week — reporting interns for BizDay, Sports, Science and the Washington Bureau, the Video Intern, two Photography interns, and the other Design Intern. (She’s working primarily in news design while I’ll be over in features). Five Copy Editing interns, a Foreign Desk intern, and Graphics intern would be arriving the next week, while two Metro interns and a T-magazine intern would be arriving later in the summer. Also, another Graphics intern had already arrived before May 27.

Just to clear things up, that’s 20 interns.

Right before lunch, I got my super-neat NYTimes employee card. Apparently, I can get into any museum in the city for free with it. AND I can bring guests.

Along with the other design intern, I had lunch with two members of the Times News Art Department. We went to a restaurant across the street that also had a good view of the old Times building (which, of course, made for interesting conversation material). After lunch, we met some of the many members of the news and features design departments, before I met again with Ken, my assigned Times mentor (who also interviewed me at SNDBoston last October).

After the introductions, the interns were given a tour of the new building before heading home for the day.

After the tour, some of the other interns and I went to go get our NYU ID cards. We foolishly thought that coming in at 5:50 would mean shorter lines. (The office closes at 6). Boy, were we wrong. Basically, every other person interning in New York for the summer was there, business-casual clad and all. We didn’t finish until about 7.

When I finally came back to my new “home,” my new roomie had just arrived. She’s interning at Money magazine through a program run by the American Society of Magazine Editors, and there are about 20 of them on our floor. So you know what that means: our floor is FULL of journalists — Times and ASME interns, to be exact.

Finally, I went to a mandatory NYU hall meeting before going to bed.

Wednesday, May 28: My second day of orientation involved a lot of training sessions for the newsroom technology programs, including one for the dreaded CCI. Luckily, I learned that I would be primarily be working with InDesign CS3, which of course made me very happy.

At the end of our CCI training session, the visual interns were invited to sit in on a Page One Summary meeting. (The reporting interns had seen it the day before). Very exciting stuff. All of the top editors from each section were there, suggesting the top 5 or 6 stories that would run on the front page.

Thursday, May 29: The third day of orientation was long, but very interesting. We had hour-long sessions for each of the following topics:

• Times Traditions (which included a video with different movie clips in which the New York Times is mentioned)
• Ethics and Standards
• “Getting it Right” (a session on avoiding errors)
• Legal Issues

We were also briefed on a treasure hunt with the interns (!) that would take place the next day. We learned that we would be broken up into teams of two and would be traveling to various Burroughs to take photos of certain landmarks. Being a competitive bunch, many of us already started to figure out our subway routes, and even did some trash talking with the other groups.

After work, I had authentic New York pizza with some of the other interns.

Friday, May 30: Originally, I planned to wake up at 5:00 AM to go see Usher perform for Good Morning America. Instead, I took one look at the time when my alarm clock went off, and went back to sleep.

But, I woke up again in time to arrive to work for the fourth, and final, day of orientation.

We started out the day with a tour of the downtown area with a reporter who has been covering the Ground Zero recovery efforts since 9/11. I couldn’t have asked for a better tour guide. I took lots of photos, which will be on Flickr very soon (hopefully!)

At the end of the tour, we were off on our own to start the treasure hunt. We were also given money for lunch.

My partner, the Science intern, and I wanted very much to win, so we set off immediately. Our assigned photos included:

• The “Imagine” circle in Strawberry Fields (in Central Park)
• The Bronx Zoo entrance
• The Ghandi statue in Union Square
• Junior’s Cheesecake Restaurant in Brooklyn

We were so competitive that we didn’t even stop for lunch. Or Junior’s for that matter. We did stop to buy a cupcake near Strawberry Fields, but that was about it.

When we finally arrived back at the Times, we learned that we got second*. I was slightly disappointed, but I was relieved when I received a runners up prize — a mug.

*A week later, I learned that the first place duo was disqualified because they took a photo of the Brooklyn Bridge from the wrong side. Meaning…my team won!

The weekend, May 30 (evening)-June 1: Met Rudy Giuliani over dinner with some of the interns on my floor at an Italian restaurant in Chinatown…Watched the Pistons self-destruct against the Celtics to lose in 6 games…Discovered that the NYU dorms provide ESPN360 (a must for the TV-less NBA fan)…explored Union Square…Went shopping…Attended mass at St. Patrick’s for the second week in a row (and decided that it would become my weekly Church destination).

(Yep. That would be Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City and once 2008 Presidential Candidate. Photos, such as this one, will be on Flickr as the summer goes on!)

Though the contest is “simpler and considerably broader this year,” you’d have to be pretty crazy not to apply. Anyone who applies and shows up to the FREE student workshop automatically qualifies for the first round. At most, you’ll risk losing a few cents in postage for sending in the application.

What are you waiting for? Apply!

The Guardian Tech Blog reports that ROFLcon, a two day event at MIT beginning today, features a “panel of experts” who will speak about memes and, quite possibly, what could become the next LOLcat.

For those of you who can’t fly over to Cambridge, Mass. this weekend, the Guardian will be liveblogging the conference. The folks over at ROFLcon have also set up a Twitter feed with instant updates, as well as a Live Webcast.

(Cross posted at The Circuit.)

Could any of these four guys be in the Finals?

This post may seem out of place. But in case you didn’t know, I am a HUGE NBA fan. Day one of the playoffs is like Christmas for me.

I try not to pretend to be an NBA analyst, but sometimes, you have to make those picks. So without further adieu, here’s who I pick to win this year*:

*I intend to make new picks after each round, just in case my first round picks are completely off.

First Round

Eastern Conference

Boston (1) over Atlanta (8) in 4
Detroit (2) over Philly (7) in 5
Orlando (3) over Toronto (6) in 5
Washington (5) over Cleveland (4) in 7

Western Conference

LA Lakers (1) over Denver (8) in 5
Dallas (7) over New Orleans (2) in 6
Phoenix (6) over San Antonio (3) in 7
Houston (5) over Utah (4) in 7

Notes: I’m not as knowledgeable about the Western Conference as I am the Eastern Conference, so I’m fully aware that my picks for the West could be completely wrong…Atlanta has its first playoff berth since 1999. Too bad they’re playing Boston…Sans Gilbert Arenas, I still think Soulja Boy, er, the Wizards finally have it in them to beat the Cavs this year. Besides, I’ve already forgotten who won the Eastern Conference last year…I hate to pick the Mavs, but that chip on their shoulder after losing to Golden State last year is pretty heavy…Why does the best series of the entire playoffs have to be in the first round? (I’m looking at you Suns-Spurs). And what could be more of an x-factor in determining the winner — the fact that the defending NBA champs want to avoid the embarrassment of a first round loss or the fact that the Suns were robbed of a championship last year? Hence, 7 games…Sure Utah got to the conference finals last year, and sure, Houston is without a certain Yao Ming, but does that 22-game winning streak mean nothing? How about the fact that Yao didn’t play in 11 of those wins?

Second Round

Eastern Conference

Boston over Washington in 5
Detroit over Orlando in 6

Western Conference

LA Lakers over Houston in 6
Phoenix over Dallas in 5

Notes: Not much to note here except for the fact that I expect Boston to roll through the first two rounds and Detroit to struggle against Orlando before the inevitable Eastern Conference Finals matchup.

Conference Finals

Eastern Conference

Detroit over Boston in 7

Western Conference

Suns over LA Lakers in 7

Notes: As much as I love KG and Boston, and as much as I can’t deny the fact that they’ve been dominant this year, KG, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen have very little Conference Finals experience. Plus, Detroit has a lot to prove after losing to Cleveland last year…Sure, Phoenix is a #6 seed. But they’ve been hungry for a championship for YEARS.

NBA Finals

Detroit over Phoenix in 7

Notes: (Biased Detroit fan speaking).

So what does this mean for you? Well, nothing really. But if you happen to encounter any problems, feel free to contact me .

Oh, and for any Wordpress users out there, I highly recommend you switch to 2.5 if you haven’t done so already. It’s super clean and efficient.

Made in Windows Movie Maker.

I really need to learn FinalCut Pro ASAP.

(Photo from The Michigan Daily).

This year, I got involved in something I never thought I’d actually be a part of during my limited time at the University: Dance Marthon.

Sure, I’d seen the crazy promotions across campus since I came to visit the University in high school. During my campus day tour* my senior year of high school, the tour guide explained to us that the people on the giant see-saw in the Diag were actually raising money for DM. My freshman year, a person dressed as an iPod walked around campus promoting the event.

*Interestingly enough, my campus day tour was on St. Patrick’s Day. But that’s a different story.

“Maybe I’ll donate,” I would tell myself whenever I saw the DM people bucketing around Ann Arbor to collect loose change. But never did I think I would actually participate in the Marathon.

Until this year. I don’t know what inspired me to join, or better yet, what took me so long to finally do it. But one moment, I was on the UMDM homepage reading information about the Marathon, and the next thing you know, I’m signed up to become a dancer. All in one fell swoop.

BACKGROUND

For those of you who don’t know what DM is, I’ll explain. The basic idea behind DM is for participants to “stand up” (literally) for the children who can’t. It’s called a marathon because you do it for 30 hours. It’s called Dance Marathon because, well, what fun is there in standing for 30 hours if you aren’t going to dance?

DM is actually a pretty popular event at colleges across the U.S. It started at Penn State in 1973, and today about 80 universities hold a similar event. Michigan’s DM program was founded in 1997, and to date it has raised over $2 million for pediatric rehabilitation programs at Motts Children’s Hospital (Ann Arbor, MI) and Beaumont Hopsital (Royal Oak, MI).

Last year, UMDM raised about $350,000.

THE LEAD UP TO THE 2008 MARATHON

As I mentioned previously, my decision to join was sort of last minute. I was part of the final dancer deadline, which meant that I had just about two months to raise my required amount of money.

This year’s requirement? $300. That’s pretty hard for a poor college student. Oh, and while I was raising money for DM, I was in the process of raising $700 for my Alternative Spring Break group to go to Texas and Mexico. (As a group of course.)

Between January and March, I did everything I could to raise that $300. That included bucketing on the streets of Ann Arbor in the cold, bucketing (with treats) at the local bars at 2 AM, going to a charity ball, being a participant in weird psychological studies on campus, and helping out with a one-time clothing sale at the Michigan Union. At 6:00 AM. On a school day.

With about 3 weeks to go before the Marathon (which took place on the 15th and 16th), I got a sort of “warning email” from the DM office letting me know that I still had quite a bit of money to raise. Thankfully, I met the requirement (and even went a little bit above the minimum).

Then, the bad news came. The week before the Marathon, I had to cut caffeine out of my diet. The reasoning? They weren’t going to be providing it at the Marathon. As someone who lives off of caffeine, it was difficult. But I’m proud to say that I made it.

THE 2008 MARATHON: 30 HOURS OF MUSIC AND PAIN

The Marathon happened to fall on a, shall we say, interesting weekend: St. Patty’s Day weekend. Apparently the Pope moved the Feast Day to the 15th so that Catholics could honor Holy Week properly*.

*As an Catholic who’s about 70% Irish, I was conflicted. NOT following St. Patty’s Day on the 17th is like not celebrating Christmas on December 25th. Blasphemous. But I digress.

And on a sidenote: What is it with me and happening to go to important events on St. Patty’s Day?

Needless to say, my walk to the Indoor Track Building on Saturday the 15th was fun.

When I finally got there, I met up with my dance team, Team W. We called ourselves the Wombats. Before you knew it, the Marathon had started, and I wasn’t allowed to sit or sleep until the next day at 4:00 pm.

There were tons of things to do at the Marathon. One of the biggest things there was the Spirit Competition. Each of the teams competed to win the most Spirit Points during the 30 hours. The team with the most would win a huge trophy.

Every few hours, the cue came on for a new “theme hour.” All in all, there were 6 theme hours: Western, Underwater, the Arctic, the Jungle, Outer Space, and Far Far Away land. To get Spirit Points for your team, you could dress up or create crafts that were specific to that theme hour. Our team started strong with creating crafts, but after a while, we lost interest in creating them because we were drained.

You could also win points by winning the team games (our team did once and got to go on stage) or participating in the lip sync contest (we unfortunately hadn’t prepared anything). One team went the creative route and did a Britney Spears-themed lip-sync, with the songs transitioning from “…Baby one more time,” “Oops! I did it again,” and “Gimme More.” It was creative because a guy played Britney, and when they got to “Gimme More,” he ripped off his long wig and pretended to be bald.

There were also endless snacks, basketball hoops, breaks for minute-long massages, downtimes to meet with the families we were supporting, and for dorks like me who felt like studying for Chinese, tables to do homework.

Now, I have a history of physical injuries and odd surgeries, including:

• a broken arm (2001)
• jaw surgery (2001)
• appendix removal surgery (2006)
• arthroscopic surgery to remove fluid in my left knee (2004)
• dislocated right knee (2005)
• broken foot (2007)

This didn’t help in standing for 30 hours. My left knee began to swell up after a few hours, and my former-broken foot started aching a little more than the other foot. And of course, my ankles and heels were starting to kill me. To solve this, I walked around the building a lot and used tennis balls. Yes, tennis balls. They became gold at the Marathon: you simply rolled them across the bottom of your foot and suddenly the pain started to go away.

Yet, at times, I wanted to give up.

Then, of course, there was the sleep factor. In the early hours of the morning, a “rave” was held to keep the dancers up. Though we weren’t supposed to know the time, I’m guessing that it was around 4 or 5 AM*.

*How did I know? All the drunken college friends in their St. Patty’s day gear who came to visit the dancers after closing down the bars were suddenly gone. I told you it was an interesting weekend to hold the marathon.

THE LINE DANCE

To keep dancers awake and entertained, the Line Dance was created. Every few hours, dancers would learn the moves to clips from two songs, culminating in a final 14:00 minute-long dance at the end of the Marathon. Here was this year’s music, sans dance:

Surprisingly, people remembered a lot from the 2007 Line Dance when they performed it on stage towards the end.

VISITORS

As I mentioned earlier, friends could visit, either as “Moralers” or as regular visitors. Some of them, shall we say, weren’t quite in the right state of mind. But it was all fun.

There were also times to stretch, and during these breaks, athletes led them. Members of the soccer, gymnastics and football teams came to help out with that. Mike Hart even showed up.

Speaking of Michigan Football, Head Coach Rich Rodriguez and coaching legend Lloyd Carr visited (at separate times) to give pep talks. But Coach Carr goofed when he told dancers that they had about 2.5 hours left of dancing. After hearing the collective “Ooh…” from the audience, Carr said: “And I guess I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

During those last 2.5 hours, the families came on stage to talk about how DM helped them. A lot of dancers (myself included) got pretty emotional during those moments.

RAISING A NEW RECORD

At 4:00 sharp, we were finally allowed to sit down. I can’t tell you how amazing it felt after standing for so long. Words cannot describe it.

After situating ourselves on the floor, the Central Planning Team got up on stage and revealed just how much money we had raised. When we learned that we had raised $428,109.79 (over $75,000 more than last year), some dancers immediately stood back up, practically screaming. It was the most we had ever raised in 10 years as a campus organization.

And I can’t tell you how proud I was to be a part of that.

GOING HOME

When I finally came home, I fell asleep at 4:30 and didn’t wake up until 8…the next morning. The sleep was amazing, though, as all the pain in my legs and feet had gone away.

As for the experience, I was glad to be a part of it, and hope to be involved again next year. Joining DM was probably one of the best decisions I made during my time at the ‘U.’

MORE
UMDM homepage
Michigan Daily Article

(Above: A view of the U.S.-Mexico border from Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. Many of the streets in Juárez weren’t paved.)

For Spring Break this year, I went to Mexico.

I know what you’re thinking. But before you jump to any conclusions, I’ll do the explaining: I was there with 10 other students on an Alternative Spring Break trip (through the University of Michigan’s Ginsberg Center) to learn about the Border and immigration.

Oh, and I had to drive there. From Ann Arbor, Michigan. In a van. All in all, we drove through 7 different states:

View Larger Map

The trip there and back added up to about 3,400 miles and 4 days of driving.

Throughout the trip, we crossed the border between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, Texas frequently. On our first night in the area, we slept at Casa Vides in El Paso. Casa Vides was one of the five satellite houses of the Annunciation House, a sort of shelter for newly-crossed (and usually undocumented) immigrants and refugees. We spent the next three days at Casa Emaus in Juárez. Our experiences with Annunciation House were all part of a program known as the Border Awareness Experience (BAE), a program for volunteers to learn about all types of issues relating to immigration.

To say that the experience was enlightening would be an understatement. In our four days there, I learned more about issues relating to immigration than I had ever learned in any class.

What was most surprising was that immigration wasn’t limited to, well, illegal immigrants. In our visits and talks with…

• A Social Worker’s facility in El Paso
• A Farmers labor union in El Paso
• A Factory workers labor union in Juárez
• The office of “Nuestras Hijas,” an organization dedicated to stopping the murders of the femicides in Juárez (more on this shortly)
• The home of a nun and priest working as missionaries in Juárez
• An after-school program run by a local teacher and resident in Juárez
• The Border Patrol Museum in El Paso
• Undocumented immigrants who had risked their lives in crossing

…we learned that Immigration was so much more complex than, well, illegal immigration.

Two of the biggest things I took back from the trip were 1) how the economy affects immigration and 2) how much women are being abused in the area.

What we learned about the former topic was that NAFTA had so negatively affected the Mexican economy that Mexicans were forced to either immigrate to the United States or work close to the border. You see, NAFTA lowered or eliminated tarriffs between North American countries, and as a result, cheap U.S. corn replaced Mexican corn — once the staple of the Mexican economy. Because of that, farmers were displaced and were forced to look for different jobs. Many turned to the factories of the North, causing the boom in Juárez’s population size in a little over ten years. Most of these factories are maquiladoras — assembly plants, and pay is unbelievably low, leading many to turn to the U.S. for better paying options. What’s more, the owners of these facilities have taken to hiring more young women in the last decade. The result has been deadly.

At the same time that these economic issues have been taking place, there have been a number of killings of women in the last 15 years or so. Since the mid-1990s, about 500 young women have been killed or kidnapped, and few suspects have been caught. Many of these women work late hours in the maquiladores, and little has been done to ensure their safety. These killings are simply known as the “femicides.” A popular (and very valid) theory is that powerful figures may be involved in the killings. Though I certainly cannot prove this theory, I watched two different documentaries* which suggest that the theory may be correct.

(On a side note, before going to that area, I knew little about the femicides. So naturally when I learned about the killings soon after finding out that I was to spend 3 days in Juárez, I freaked.)

And while all of this chaos is taking place in Mexico, the U.S. is spending millions of dollars to keep immigrants out. It was sort of ironic, then, to visit the Border Patrol museum on our final day in the area.

When we came back to Michigan, my group was inspired to learn more about the area and inform other students about it. We’re in the process of finding ways to screen the documentaries on campus.

As for me, I’ll always keep this experience in mind.

For photos from my trip, click here.

*Note: I don’t remember the names of these documentaries, but I’ll keep you updated when I find out.

(Above, a screen shot of my new website)

After spending nearly 6 months as this site’s main theme, DePo Clean needed to go. Don’t get me wrong — it was an excellent theme, especially for a coding beginner like myself. Not to mention it was full of white space. Don’t we all love white space? But alas, as the Internet is constantly changing, so too must my Wordpress themes. Eventually I hope to create my own CSS for this website, but not until I have time to sit down and learn advanced coding.

Anyway, the new theme you are looking at is The Unstandard from 5thirtyone. (This information is also in the footer). It was just released for the public a few days ago. Within the next few days, I plan to add some of my own features to the homepage, including Flickr and Twitter streams.

Until then, enjoy the new look!