We departed in the middle of the night, January 1, just a couple of hours after singing in the New Year during a devotional. As a result, most people spent a good part of the bus ride sleeping. The trip from Lubbock to Mexico City is between 25 and 30 hours by bus, and as far as scenery is concerned there is not much to help pass the time. I, and a couple of friends, went to Wal-Mart the night before and I invested in a cheap Walkman to listen to tapes on. Thus, the main activity besides sleeping (or unsuccessfully trying to sleep) was listening to music. We did have some good visiting time as well, and one of the other things I brought with me was a plastic grocery bag full of food - beef jerky, dinner rolls, a whole bag of generic Lucky Charms, a couple of oranges, some chocolate, and two bottles of water. I enjoyed sharing it with others, especially Donovan Fox, who is a beef jerky fanatic. Every time I got out some food, Karma White, who sat a couple of rows in front of me, smelled it within seconds. Without even turning, she would yell out, "Robby, are you eating an orange?" and my response would be "Yes, ma'am."

After riding all the way to the border city of Laredo in the Sunset bus, we deboarded and exchanged our spending money into Mexican pesos at La Casa De Cambio. We then waited in a bus station (Image 1) to board a public bus especially arranged to carry people across the border and to Mexican customs. Here, I started writing and sketching in my journal which I had just received as a gift, and which became a valuable tool and companion to help me record the things I saw and thought. In a wonderful demonstration of God's control, the Mexican authorities did not even ask us to go through customs, which has never happened on an AIM trip to Mexico City. They just let us walk right through the doors and into the bus station where we now waited upon our third bus, which would take us from there to our destination in Mexico City. Due to our exemption from customs inspection, this ended up being a very long wait, from about 4 PM to 9 PM, all of which had to be spent within the confines of the spacious (but boring) bus station (Image 2). Our group sprawled out and many slept, others spent much of the time socializing (Image 3), and still others engaged in long tournaments of Spades and other games (Image 4).

9:00 finally rolled around, and the group departed from Nuevo Laredo in two very nice Mexican buses. These buses were much roomier than what we were used to, and one of the best features was the reclining chairs that went back pretty far. The rough Mexican roads offset this comfort, however, and thus it remained no less of a challenge to get a decent amount of sleep. There were also several televisions throughout the length of the bus, which played a Spanish-dubbed version of Contact before retiring to unpowered blankness for the rest of the trip. I peeked out the curtained window next to me often during the night and following morning, often seeing nothing but flat, shrubby desert. The buildings and towns throughout the drive did not look very much unlike what I am familiar with from my 7 trips to Baja California, Mexico in the past.

Sometime in the morning, the bus driver stopped for breakfast at a little family-run roadside restaurant (Image 5). This gave us our first opportunity for true, authentic Mexican food. I was not hungry because I had been feeding off of my dinner rolls and generic lucky charms all night; however, many of my classmates ordered a taco which, as I recall, contained goat meat. The old mother of the family offered fresh orange juice for something like four pesos (40 cents US), and I did not hesitate to order a glass of this (Image 6). She squeezed and filtered it right as I waited, which was neat to watch, and the resulting juice was easily the most flavorful orange juice I can remember tasting. It was great!

After a couple more hours, we arrived at our destination - Mexico City. To be specific, the buses took us to the Pink House, which is a large house in a Mexico City neighborhood which is owned by the Sunset church of Christ in Lubbock. Here, we unloaded everything (Image 7), went to settle in at our respective places of lodging, and thus we began our grand and memorable Mexico City experience.