26 Southern Arizona Middle School Travel

Hello Menlooooo! It’s your chaperone, Sophie, and sadly this is our last blog. But on the bright side, we all got to sleep in an extra hour today with a late 7am wake-up! We all went to a cute coffee shop near our inn and devoured some bagels, burritos, smoothies, coffee, and more. Then we met our community member of the day, Scott, who guided us through some historic parts of the town of Ajo. We visited a mural with some short text on Indian and Mexican town history, which was destroyed and turned into an American town, a segregated, all-white community (“a company town”). Then we went to a mine, which is not in use anymore, but the size of the hole is breathtaking. We walked around the preexisting Mexican town and Indian town, where only the flooring of the small houses remained with marks of where the rooms were. We were able to see the homes of white leaders of the mine, which were much bigger and much further from the mine, a taste of environmental injustice and racial segregation...

Wasssupppp! Today - The 5th day and final full day - we started the day early at 7am to go visit Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. There, we meet our first ranger Blaine who showed us part of the border wall in-between the U.S. and Mexico. Then we took a hike around the park in Quitoboquito, where we saw a spring with water in the middle of the desert. Lorriane of the O'odham Nation talked to us of her ancestors and how they lived around the spring and performed their ceremonies. Afterwards, we went up to the Ranger Station and had lunch there, while ranger Oliver talked to us about the park and what we thought of the wall. He let us all share our thoughts so we could see other's perspectives. Later we went to the gift shop and we all got Junior Ranger Badges! After that we went back to our hotel and some of us chose to go down into town and look around. We went into a coffee shop and played games and drank cool drinks! We went back to the hotel afterwards and played games. ...

  Day 3 Today we got up fairly early to go and visit a school called Mexicayotl in Nogales. There, the students presented their Hispanic culture through music, poems, sculptures, etc. One of the most meaningful presentations was when we gathered in a circle and we joined them in a unity clap. After that, we joined them in their classroom to experience their day-to-day school life, during which we wrote poems, answered meaningful questions about immigration, and how the border affects them. Another activity that we participated in was called the identity suitcase, where we drew items that showed who we were as people. Next, we joined the students for pizza in their cafeteria. Then, we drove to the border to check out the 30-foot wall and talk with our guide from Borderlandia, Alex, about the history of Nogales and the impact that the wall has had on the economy on both the US and Mexico side. We walked through downtown Nogales, stopping at some murals before making our way to a Mexi...

Today — our second full day in Patagonia, Arizona — we learned about many different ecosystems that surround the area. First, we drove to a farm that specializes in growing native plants to assist in supporting biodiversity. There, we learned about Agave, a succulent native to Arizona. We learned how the Agave plant and bats rely on each other. Bats pollinate the Agave while it is blooming. However, the Agave succulent is in danger because people are cutting it down before it blooms to make Tequila — which is a very popular and highly consumed drink among many adults. This harms both the Agave succulents and the bats. In order to help preserve Agave, we worked with an organization called Borderlands Restoration Network. We divided into two stations. In the first station, we planted Agave seeds in seed trays filled with soil. We learned that Agave plants grow very slowly, and that the seeds we had planted would only start to show leaves in the following year. After our work at ...