Today I traveled from the California Bay Area over to El Paso (and Las Cruces) for a short visit. In the San Jose airport there were some birds, like by accident. There was this grown man watching them. He took out his iPhone and started to record them, following them around. Then he took out some bread from his luggage and fed them. He watched them again, I swear like he was saying goodbye, then boarded his plane.

I slept mostly on my flights. Once we landed and everyone got up to grab their bags and head out, the guy next to me, this nice older Chinese guy, reaches in the seat pocket and grabs a bag of peanuts and says, These were for you. He saved my peanuts because I was asleep. That was a first.

El Paso looks the same to me, all dusty and flat and desert-like. I love it. I miss it. I look forward to coming back here later this year. It's nice to see my grad school buds and take in the stark desert landscape. On Friday I fly up to Portland and Seattle for several days before heading back to the Bay Area, then back to Guate on Jan 18.