I discovered last Friday that my proposed exchange match is located in Mexicali, Baja California, México.

"Where is that?" you ask.

Well, I quickly learned--via a Google search--that it's located directly across from Calexico, California. In short, Mexicali is a border town, two hours east of Tijuana and San Diego.

It didn't take me any time to decide that I would prefer to stay put here in Albuquerque rather than go to Mexicali. Not that I have anything against this city of 650,000, nor would I object to teaching at the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California.

My reason for declining this exchange, as I stated in an email to Sonia Barré of the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program, is that "I lived for over 20 years in another near-the-border town, Las Cruces, NM, 45 minutes from Juárez, Chihuahua, México, and for three years I commuted to the University of Texas at El Paso whose campus overlooks the Rio Grande and an outlying barrio of Juárez At UTEP I taught English to Speakers of Other Languages, and my students were Mexican students from Juárez. I also worked for a short time at a Juárez language school. It was my experience of living and working close to the Mexican border that made me want to know México--its people, culture, and geography--more deeply and authentically, that is, away from the US border."

I heard from Sonia by email the next day: "Thank you for getting back to us so quickly about this. I'll be sure to contact the necessary parties and place your application back into the matching pool."

I'm somewhat heartened by Sonia's reply. I did ask her earlier, before I received the proposed match, whether refusing a match would prevent me from getting another. She said that it would lessen my chances but that my name would go back in the hat.

So I still have hope.