San Juan Capistrano Observation

For this project, I decided to go to San Juan Capistrano to do my observation. San Juan Capistrano is a small town located in Orange County, two hour north of where I live. It’s also my boyfriend Colin’s hometown. Going to San Juan was a random and hasty decision because I didn’t have any real connection to or interest in the town and, in fact, I hadn’t even known that it existed two months ago. Colin convinced me that San Juan would be perfect to write about because I would get to see things that I didn’t normally see in Los Angeles. I trusted him, so we agreed that I would tag along the next morning when he would be driving home for Mother’s Day weekend. We left LA at 10 in the morning, heading south on the 5 toward San Juan Capistrano.
From our spot, I could see the train tracks and the main walk way of the station. When I was observing people getting on and off the train, I noticed some examples of endogamy. There were a lot of white couples, some of them traveling with kids and strollers, and also spotted two or three Latin American families. These couples/families typified endogamy because they were marriages or partnerships within a “family,” which, in this case, meant “race.” This kind of marriage seemed quite typical in this area. One thing that I also noticed was that if there was only one parent walking with the kids, it would be the mom. It was a Friday so I thought it would be safe assume that the dads are at work. This reminded me of the term family wage ideology which we had discussed in class. It implied that men, or fathers, were the main generators of family income, while women/mothers tended to stay home and take care of the children. Another gendered difference I noted when we were sitting at the coffee shop were the ways in which men and women communicated. Sitting across from us were two men reading newspapers, one of whom Colin later told me were his friend Jordan’s
Colin wanted to take some pictures of the llamas, so we stayed there for a while. Business was not too busy that day since it was a school day. There were two families walking about the zoo, and I was thrilled to find that one of them was interracial. The mother was a white woman and the father looked Middle Eastern. One of their three kids who was playing near where we stood had blue eyes and curly black hair. I told Colin he was the cutest kid I’d seen that day, and that was by no mean an understatement. This family was an example of exogamous marriage – a marriage in which the partners belongs to different social groups, or, in this case, ethnic groups. Exogamous partnership was not an uncommon phenomenon nowadays, especially not in the LA area, but seeing this couple here made me feel like I’ve hit the jackpot. When Colin was satisfied with his pictures, he said that he’d take me somewhere he knew I would love. So we heading out of the train station. As we walked past Hidden House Coffee, I saw a couple who were speaking Chinese, and I had a temptation to run over and hug them but of course I restrained myself. We then walked into an antique shop called The Old Barn and I immediately fell in love. The right word to describe this place would be an “antique outlet” because it was huge. The place was owned by exceptionally nice people with very strong Southern accent. After we were done shopping and I