Out Of My Bubble

My mother asked me to come down for the weekend to help register Spanish-speaking voters in Guadalupe, a primarily Latino town near Santa Maria. Santa Maria, a city about an hour north of Santa Barbara, is where I was raised. It's a very Republican city, which I was aware of, but yesterday it was overly obvious. Vero and I went around my old neighborhood to hand out voting suggestion fliers to addresses where people were either registered as Democrats or "declined to state." In the Bay Area, it's a rarity to see a McCain/Palin sticker on someone's car while here it's just the opposite. I saw plenty of McCain/Palin signs in people's yards and nary an Obama sign, although I did see a few stickers. The sign that seemed to be the most popular was "Yes on 8". I suppose that's an issue that crosses party lines pretty easily since it seems to be such a big issue for everyone. It's just a different experience after coming from where I live; I didn't even know what a "Yes on 8" sign looked like until I came here. It just reinforces the fact that I live in a bubble. I like my bubble, but one starts to forget that there's a different kind of world out there.