u/ZookeepergameCool880

I spoke at length with C**** (won't let me post without editing) and a dear friend of mine to come up with this, and wanted to see if this is solid or could be modified to be better (not sure if packing too many things!).

Tentatively looking at June 27 to July 5, but could cut it down shorter - imp context: husband and I work Eastern hours so we'd be working for the most part!

These are not in order but -

Day 1 - June 27 -Zócalo, Metropolitan Cathedral, Palacio de Bellas Artes

Day 2 - June 28 - Chapultepec Castle, National Museum of Anthropology, Chapultepec Park

June 29 to July 3 work week - post 4 pm or so whatever we can squeeze in ---

Parque México walk, Frida Kahlo Museum, Coyoacán, Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Xochimilco,

July 4 - Teotihuacán

July 5 - want to keep this minimal and flight oriented

We've been suggested to stay in/around Condesa or Roma Norte, any specific suggestions?

We haven't figured out food places yet! Suggestions more than welcome. I’m not the biggest fan of Mexican food we get in the US but my husband is. what are some food places to try? we don’t want always want to do touristy traps, but we love to discover lesser known hole in the wall gems.

Would someone also be kind enough to help us figure out best forms of public transport to get to and from these places?

If there is anything else nearby that is a must-do, please let me know as well. We are both into history, culture and nature-y things to do as well, and also love discovering new places to walk around/eat/drink.

Is a $2,500 budget for two people realistic for this?

We have never been outside the US, and we are quite excited!

This might be An utterly ridiculous post so I won’t be surprised if it gets deleted.

my immigration lawyer warned me not to travel internationally during the Biden administration! I had a change of status back then, and needed visa stamped if I left the country. she said it’s extremely dangerous and unreliable and I’ll very likely get stuck. This visa in question was a govt sponsored J1. it turned out to be an absolute breeze.

We worked with her for my AOS and now she’s telling me that it’s dangerous to travel durning Trump and not to travel. So I just stay put until 2029 or so?!

I don’t want to go so far as to dismiss her claims entirely. She’s an excellent lawyer and has gone out of her way to help us out more than once. But this part cannot be real.

My husband has never been out of the US and we want to use the green card!

it’s more of a I don’t want to be extra ballsy, but I tried asking other lawyers but they tell me to speak to her who handled our case 😭

It’s so confusing and so difficult to look up the hours online.

But is the shooting range open today Or is it closed Monday and Tuesday? Can someone confirm?

a friend came into town specifically for that, and we feel terribly stupid for not having checked prior, our bad entirely.

This will probably be a really silly question, but I can't get in touch with my immigration lawyers anymore. It appears they have left the firm, and I can't reach anyone else at the firm for a valid contact.

My lawyer told me to always check with her without fail before planning any international travel, hence this post. I have a conditional gc right now, and I very recently accepted a new job offer so we have some downtime before I start work. Husband and I want to travel to an international destination for the upcoming long weekend - we are thinking Mexico City or Vancouver (if anyone has any other suggestions, more than welcome!) - we can both work remote so thinking about a week or so leading upto the weekend ---

Is this all safe to do at this time? Again, I know 90% sure the answer is probably yes but it feels kind of risky without the lawyer approval (gosh I became so dependent) - so I am asking if anyone traveled with the conditional gc recently in the last couple weeks and could share their experience? We will definitely fly!

I am not sure if I am being a bit of a meanie here..

So this friend in question, let's call him B, has been friends with my husband (A) for about 3-4 years now? And B is arguably A's closest friend in town atm. B is currently dating C, who is a common friend for all of us - we are all in the same social circle. Me, A and C are in the same age range, while B is 4 years younger, and enrolled in a PhD program while we are all working full time.

I would call B a generally good-hearted person, but he is also known for being coarse, jokingly aggressive, and kind of offensive in a way that a lot of people find very annoying. At first it didn’t bother me much, but over time I started getting increasingly icked out by it. There have honestly been MANY times I wanted to speak my mind to him, but I knew it would create drama I did not want to deal with, so I usually made peace with it and stayed quiet. What confuses me is how a grown man in his mid 20s can behave this way and people just shrug it off with: “Oh, that’s just B being B. He doesn’t mean it.” That's everyone from my husband, to his girlfriend, to his close friends and family.

Secondly, he is quite a sore loser (And a little baby can deal with this better, if I may say so) and when he is losing even casual card games / ping pong /pickleball etc just played informally among friends, he has uncalled for outbursts and starts yelling quite mean things. I have been at the receiving end of these more than once, to the extent that I stopped playing any non-co-op games with him or anything in any sort of direct competition with him. To be fair tho, after some of these incidents he did send generic apology texts, and I accepted them. One time, he was playing ping pong with my husband and he lost badly, so he threw his paddle on the ground and broke it. It was a fancy paddle too.

I think the next part would make sense knowing he is a sore loser, because he is quite competitive in his studies as well. In the middle of last semester, he started saying he had lost his ability to do well in his studies, and being good in academia was his "sole defining factor" and only thing he is proud of, so now there "is no more reason to continue living". Soon after, multiple people in the friends group started receiving suicidal and self deprecating texts from time to time - I used to take the first couple rounds seriously until (sorry to be insensitive from this point on) they started to become fairly regular, and followed such a similar pattern that they have turned out to be quite comical to me now.

Some context here; my husband's first roommate in college, many many years ago, committed suicide. He is obviously still quite deeply traumatized by it, so whenever B sends one of those texts, A springs into instant savior mode, drops every single thing and runs over to comfort him. Many times he would bring B to our place and make him spend the night so that B isn't left alone and honestly, what annoys me more is that he seems to be exploiting A. Any time he'd have these episodes, A would start offering food/drinks to comfort him, to the point that B sometimes demanded them if A didn't happen to do so. One time, B was hungry and said he's ordering food, and A had JUST eaten so he wasn't hungry. B said "would you consider paying for the food!" - and one other time, he asked A to straight up send him $50, and to be fair, he is a graduate student. At the same time, we are salaried, so not that any of it is making any dents for us, but I really just despise the whole attitude and entitlement surrounding how he asks for these things during these episodes.

And what bothers me even more is that even while my husband is actively comforting him during these crises, B still talks to him rudely sometimes. Like quite snappy, demanding, dismissive. I find it incredibly ungrateful considering A is the one constantly dropping everything to support him.

I don't want to go so far as to dismiss anything he is feeling, but it is all quite frustrating having to deal with this second-hand quite regularly. It is like a loop now - he sends suicidal texts, people intervene (and my husband most of all), he calms down and makes his demands, I get extremely annoyed, and then I feel guilty about feeling like this when he is struggling. At times I suggest calling the police or some professional wellness check bec my husband is not supposed to be his on-call guardian at all times, but A is.. just an extremely kind person and wants to take everything upon his shoulders to be there for the people he loves. I both love and dislike that about him.

Honest truth? It has become such routine that I truly kind of stopped caring and I am convinced he is never actually committing suicide.

Over time, for various reasons including these, I developed a lot of resentment toward B. My solution was mostly to withdraw. If he came over, I’d quietly disappear into another room and keep interactions to zero. I figured if I couldn’t improve the situation for either B or my husband, the least I could do was stay out of the way.

Cut to yesterday: My parents are visiting my husband and me, and we all (me, A, B, C) were watching tv. at one point, my parents went to sleep but we kept watching a comedy show.

B has always been kind of oblivious to social cues (he would not always keep away his plates after eating, create a mess, lacks general courtesy, etc) - so it should not have been a surprise that he kept laughing really loud during funny moments on the show, making loud comments. C shushed him politely a couple times, but either he didn't care or couldn't regulate himself, so he kept being loud, so I kind of snapped at him saying "can you please be quiet" - Maybe I could have said it more nicely? Honestly, I don’t even think I said it that harshly. It was literally one sentence and I even smiled at the end because I know he can get touchy.

He started fuming instantly, and ordered C that it's time to leave. We all had plans with our parents the next morning and C mentioned while heading out the door to let them know the details, to which B (extremely rudely, may I add) said "we are not going" and my husband tried to calm him down but he just stormed out and slammed the door (quite loudly! my parents are still sleeping!) and we could hear him yelling very loudly outside. He said quite a lot of mean, demeaning things about me, including "she doesn't even f****** deserve to be in this country" - and other stuff.

More context here: I am a first-generation immigrant in the US. I came on a student visa and got a job at a federal agency right after graduation. They sponsored my work visa and even filed for my employment-based green card. But literally 2 months later, the current administration gutted this agency so I was out of status. I'd been dating my husband (then-boyfriend) for about 3-ish years at the time, so we decided to get married. We went thru the whole process and I have my marriage based green card now, and I also got another job soon after that. So, him thinking I don't deserve to be in this country felt far more worse than any of the other verbal abuse he has hurled at me at this time or a previous time. Sure, I didn't always like the guy, but even so I generally thought he was an ally in terms of something like my immigration status, if that makes sense. This.. I truly never saw coming.

My husband was visibly disturbed by this too, and he didn't use the word outright but implied in many ways that he has essentially 'disowned' B, and stressed it to me over and over that B is "never" invited back in our home, and he will not be seeing him for pickleball or ping pong "any time soon, probably never". He asked for some money back that B owes him, which A had previously said he would never ask for until B got a job.

And this time I genuinely do not want an apology text.

Because I am 100% sure he would not mean it. Even my husband said he would probably become “a little bitch” about it if I did not immediately accept the apology and move on. I dont want to have to suck it up and do that anymore. I don’t even want some big confrontation. I just want to stop acknowledging his existence, especially because in all probability I know I will still probably see him socially here and there.

I am hurt, yes, but I also feel… relieved.

Like, are you telling me I genuinely do not have to deal with this person anymore? No more tiptoeing around him in my own home? No more wondering whether a basic request will trigger a meltdown? No more emotional hostage situations every few weeks?

Part of me does feel guilty bec he is suicidal and my husband seems genuinely heartbroken by all this, he is after all a close friend. But another part of me is like, wait. Our lives might actually become B-free now? And if I’m being completely candid: C can also be annoying sometimes (though far more tolerable), so potentially seeing less of both of them honestly feels like a net positive for me. Now, I don't know what exactly will happen when B sends out another suicial text, and maybe he won't anymore bec he knows he burned a bridge here, TBD? But for now, it feels like a bit of a win win situation for me.

Soooo yeah, reddit is probably the only place I can say all this honestly without sounding like a horrible person. 😄