when you're alone and life is making you lonely . . . you can always go *downtown*

i decided to do a bit of exploring downtown today because i needed to get out of the room and didn't want to spend money. as good as my intentions are to *not* spend it, put me in a mall, a target, a walmart -- anywhere that has something to be purchased -- and i will spend money. and so i decided to take a driving tour of the area to just see if i could find *something* to do!

downtown el paso is very interesting. there were a few museums i saw that i'd like to check out -- the art museum, the el paso holocaust museum -- but unfortunately, being that it's sunday, they were all closed. i will have to go down there sometime during the week and hope to catch them during business hours. other than that, there really wasn't much to the downtown area. there are a ton of tall buildings but it seems pretty rundown for the most part. there are a lot of cramped stores altogether in the area, most of them with signs written in spanish. i didn't stop just because nothing seemed to be worth my time. most of it looked secondhand but there were also shops with little trinkets and those mexican blankets [are they called sarapis?]. either way, i figured if i went downtown to explore again, i'd wait til there was a group of us so that it wouldn't be just me being bored.

there really wasn't much of anything else down there. for some reason, i guess i was expecting it to be a lot like dallas or austin, but nope. i admit i was a little disappointed. there seemed to be a lot of little taquerias i might check out, though . . . i am always on a mission to find great mexican / tex-mex food, and the more authentic, the better! the rest of the test team gets here this coming week, to include one of my best friends, ben, so maybe i'll drag him around on my quest to find the perfect gordita!

anyhow, i'll leave you with my *new* favorite church sign of the moment that i saw on the way back to the hotel on some spanish church:

*the easter bunny didn't rise from the dead, but jesus did*

HAPPY SUNDAY, EVERYONE!