Of Narcotraficantes and Men

Recently, I received some emails and a scary pdf about narcotraficantes in Mexico. My older sister told me that the information from the article was not meant to scare me but somehow the visual of decapitated narco heads is still working its' way out of my memory. I also received a haunting voicemail from my eldest brother who warned me to "take the threat seriously." Mexico is not a safe place, he stated unequivocally. You can imagine how I, being the supremely sensitive individual that I am, reacted to the news that my family was giving me. Would the violence in Mexico impact my study/travel sabbatical, I wondered enraged (you can ask Virginia and Miguel Angel). I blamed it all on the narcos. It was their fault that I couldn't go on this study trip, after all. Well, after freaking out I decided that I couldn't let fear control me and that I would go anyway and spend my summer studying in Cuernavaca. I promise to use common sense and really that's all anyone needs to do when they travel. Earlier in my pre-travel journey, I found other issues that occupied my brain and seemed to manifest the rising anxiety I had about traveling. Looking back, it seems the first issue that plagued me was that I was approved for the sabbatical when everybody said it was unlikely given the budget year. But, you can imagine my surprise at being approved for a travel/study sabbatical during one of California's most severe budget crisis in recent memory. My reaction was to feel elation at the thought of not having to get up and go to work for the next 6 months - although part of this time will be spent completing my thesis and learning stuff while I'm away. My second issue was guilt at the colleagues I'd left behind during a possible strike year. Some let me know quite openly that I was lucky to get a sabbatical, indeed I am.