Today we went to Old Town, San Diego where we met up with Professor Alex Gomex, who is a border activist. Everyone took part in a scavenger hunt around Old Town, looking for significant historical landmarks to gain general knowledge about what Old Town was like 200 years ago.
After the scavenger hunt, we sat down with Alex who gave a brief history of borders in California and borders throughout the United States. He also gave us insight into what the borders were like 200 years ago and how they developed over time. Then, we all went out to lunch at a Mexican Restaurant where we continued the conversation about different types of borders, connected economies, and how the United States corporations are dependent on cheap Mexican labor.
After lunch, everyone had some free time to walk around Old Town and get ice cream and go shopping where people bought Mexican blankets, painted skulls (calaveras), and jewelry. When we got back to the hostel we did group bonding through Apples-to-Apples and then walked down to the waterfront to debrief about the day.
During the debrief we talked about Bryan Stevenson and his four takeaways about moral courage. Those four takeaways are to get closer to the problem, change the narrative, protect our hope, and do things that make us uncomfortable. We talked about each takeaway and how we each had a personal experience with at least one of the takeaways. The group also talked about how we felt after today since we took in a lot of information and shared our hopes for the rest of the trip as well to end on a positive note. We finished the night watching the Olympics, eating pizza, and doing our journal entries for the day.