Can you hear it? Or can you feel it? That imminent moment when your dreams are about to end, and when your alarm is getting ready to wake you up abruptly. Congratulations we are awake now we only need to take a shower, oh wait, we did that last night. Then let’s have breakfast, wait we can’t, it’s already 6:20 and we need to leave. Fridays are a terrible day to leave late. Where are we going? To the bridge. We need to cross to go to school and work. What do you mean you don’t know what the bridge is? You are not new to this area. Here at the border region, it is common to cross the bridge; they are called international bridges and connect two cities and, more importantly, two countries. 

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Ciudad Juarez and El Paso are two cities from Mexico and the U.S.A respectively, everyday hundreds of people cross back and forth between these two countries, and we are not the exception. We are on our way. Sit tight, we have 30 or more minutes of travel depending on how the traffic treats us. The traffic is not that bad today, it is 7:05 and we finally arrive at the bridge. Welcome to Paso del Norte International Bridge, on a perfect day, you will cross it in a 5-minute walk. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world; much less on a weekday when hundreds of students and workers wake up early, ready to cross over.

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Get out of the car, nothing is going to change even if we stay in the car. Pay the toll of the bridge, for pedestrians 40 cents or 6 pesos. Don’t be so sad, look the weather is not that bad; the clouds do cover the sun and it is a little chilly, but it is not raining yet. I am sure that if we hurry up, we will make it and the rain will not catch us. Keep walking, it doesn’t seem to be that full in the first half, get our documents ready for the second half, because if we don’t have them, the officers in the middle will not let us pass. Great. We show our passport and pass, but the line starts once you arrive at a quarter of the bridge. We checked the time, is already 7:15 and our class starts at 9, so we feel a little better. Time goes by and it's already 7:45, but the line has not moved, what could be happening? A friend calls, she says that she is almost at the entrance, so we go with her. We arrive with our friend and the line finally moves; we enter the control point where our documents will be checked. Once inside, we get in the student line, though a little long it has 4 Custom and Border Patrol Officers (CBPS) and seems to be advancing fast. After 5 minutes we are already in the middle of the line, only 10 more people and we will finally cross. However, a group of students in the back started approaching they knew someone in the front so now we have 7 more people in front of us. Good news, we are in front of the line and are about to cross after a long wait, and it is only 8:20. After handing our documents to the CBP and passing our belongings through a scanner we are now officially in El Paso, keep walking that we need to catch the bus and it leaves in 5 minutes.

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After some running, we arrive at the bus transfer center station downtown, we barely make it, but we are on the bus, and it is 8:30. The bus commute was pretty normal; a bus filled to the brim with students and chatting, but at least we are sitting unlike those unfortunately standing. We approach our stop, so our friend pulls the string, we get out of the bus and start walking towards our school. We check the time again and is 8:45, start walking faster and say goodbye to our friend that the classroom we are going is a walk away. Keep walking with no delay, be happy we are almost there. Hallelujah, we arrive at our class, and is only 8:55 so just sit down and relax, this journey has ended, at least for today.