I went out and took some pictures the other day of the beautiful bougainvilla flowers that grow along the walls outside Tim & Melissa's house. When I look out my bedroom window, I can see the wall that surrounds the house, a little bit of the sky above it, and part of this beautiful purple bougainvilla that grows there.
When I look at these flowers against the concrete wall, to me it is a very accurate picture of what México is like - there is incredible beauty juxtaposed over harsh, bare, concrete reality. There are beautiful, warm hearted, generous people whose smiles light up the room, alongside poor people who suffer through grinding poverty every single day, whose eyes have lost the light of hope in them. There are beautiful cities with winding cobblestone streets that are filled with families walking and talking in the evenings, and that light up at night like the gorgeous medevial cities in Europe; and right outside of those cities are families who live and work at the dump, and as darkness falls around their homes, where often there is no electricity, their eyes scan the horizon, watching for something to break the monotony, whether it is something that will bring them hope, or something that will bring them danger. I have never experienced the extremes in Canada that they experience here in México. You cannot be neutral in this country.
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