During our two hour trip from the airport in Albuquerque to Gallup, New Mexico, my sister and I pass countless trucks on cross-country routes, the humming neon lights of approximately six desert casinos, and absolutely nothing else.
One in the morning finds us pulling up to the tiny house Margot calls home, which she and her roommates have affectionately and appropriately named "The Box." I step out of the car and kick what turns out to be an empty old plastic vodka bottle; Margot's mailbox is nailed to a dead tree and her neighbors on two sides live in trailers; she has warned me that stray dogs roam these streets, and "most of them aren't friendly." Exhausted from our short trip, we collapse onto my sister's bed: a sleeping bag and some dilapidated old throw pillows atop a twin sized mattress.
I traveled to New Mexico at the dawn of my junior year in college to gain a sense of what moving to a new and unfamiliar place in the name of education and adventure might look like; little did I realize how inspired I would be. While a persistent interest in international affairs prompted me to set my sights on teaching abroad, my love of the English language cemented this dream into a prospective reality: teaching English as a second language.
Unless you are esoterically familiar with Bob Dylan's fictionalized version of his childhood or have memorized the lyrics to "(Get Your Kicks) On Route 66," you've probably never heard of Gallup. Although census statistics claim it to be the most populous city between Albuquerque and Flagstaff, I was surprised to learn that the term city could even be applied to this place. While its positioning in some sort of convergence zone between the reservation lands of the Zuni and Hopi tribes and Navajo Nation has afforded Gallup the questionable title of "Indian Capital of the World," this campy Western town hardly lives up to the grandeur this designation suggests. Tourists on Historic Route 66 may stop in at Gallup's El Rancho Hotel, buy some Navajo jewelery and feel they have sustained a cultural experience. General exploitation of American Indian culture as a tourist commodity is only one of Gallup's more apparent tragedies; other problems include rampant alcoholism throughout the reservations, crippling poverty and, incidentally, the worst standardized test scores in the country.
The latter point encompasses what brought my sister to New Mexico. Conversely, my move to Indonesia was heralded by a much more positive endorsement: my cousin Soti, who has long served in the United States diplomatic corps and worked extensively in Jakarta, claims that Indonesia is her favorite place on earth; Soti was all encouragement and enthusiasm upon learning of my hopes to teach and travel.
"It will be hard," she warned. "But I think that if you go to Indonesia and you have an open mind, a very open mind, and you are patient, you will find that it quickly feels like home."
