The most common question we have been asked when we say we are moving to Mexico is, “Why?”, so I thought I’d gather some of our reasons here. It’s not actually a top ten list, that just made a catchy title. These are in no particular order.
1. Christmas lasts a month. It starts in early December with the Feast of Our Lady and lasts into January with the Epiphany. There are wonderful daily activities and celebrations full of meaning and tradition. My favorite is the Posadas. Children dress up as Mary and Joseph, often with Mary actually on a burro. Other children dress as angels, the three wise men, and a lot shepherds and shepherdesses. The group proceeds through through the town, reenacting Mary and Joseph’s quest for lodging. They travel the street, knocking at doors and requesting shelter, each time being told there is no room. The procession gathers spectators along the way, until they finally knock at the door of the designated house and are told they may seek shelter in the stable. Then the home’s doors are flung wide and all are invited to a celebration. How cool is that?
Chuck and I love to see the ways people celebrate. On any given weekend during festival season, you can find Chuck and I in the car (now with the dog too) traveling to small towns in Texas for one festival or another. We particularly like the Texas Steak Cookoff in Hico. Teams compete for the title of best steak cooker. They all bring their own rigs decorate their booths, hide their secret ingredients, and show off. The barbecue rigs range from modest to magnificent and are something to see. Regardless of size and options, they all have one thing in common - there isn’t a gas grill in the lot. Each team grills over 100 steaks and then chooses the best one to present for judging. After that’s done, the entire town sits down to a steak dinner with all the trimmings in the town square, where enough tables are set up in the streets to seat over 2,000 people.
In Mexico it seems there is always a celebration of some kind going on. The festivals, feasts, and celebrations really appeal to us, even if most of them do start with fireworks and a brass band parading down the street at 4 o’clock in the morning.
2. Trash pickup 6 days a week. That’s right. 6 days a week. Sounds like heaven to me. Our venerable city council keeps changing the trash system around here from one system that doesn’t work to another. We used to get trash pickup twice a week of whatever we could put out in bags, recycling pickup once a week, and big trash pickup once a month of just about anything that you couldn’t put in bags. Brush and yard waste was picked up separately to be composted. You just put a pile of branches or whatever on the curb and big truck with an arm came by, scooped it up and took it to the shredder. Not anymore.
We now have these big rolling carts for trash and recycling. They were not designed with stability in mind and will turn over on you in a hurry. The trucks that empty the carts have really bad aim and often dump part of the contents in the street. We keep a broom and really big dustpan handy to clean up the garbage and broken glass, which has to be done before you can even pull into the driveway if you want to keep your tires that lovely circular shape. After cleaning up the mess, we have to stroll down the street to locate and retrieve our bins. Heaven forbid the truck operator actually leave the bin in front of your house. The bins all have serial numbers that are registered to your house.
On top of all this, our fearless leaders seem to have forgotten that we live in Texas. It’s January 1st. It’s 83 degrees outside. During our sweltering summers, garbage really starts to stink when left outside for a week. When one of those top heavy bins with tiny wheels turn over on the way to the curb, your stomach starts doing acrobatics.
It may seem like a little thing, but we are really jazzed at the prospect of having an actual person come by and pick up trash every day.
3. The weather. As you may have gathered from the previous entry, its hot here. We spend months hovering around 100 degrees, and 105 is not uncommon. But that doesn’t prevent us from getting down to 15 in winter.
We’re looking at moving to the central highlands, where the daily highs average from the mid 70’s to the mid 80’s, depending on the time of year, and the lows average from the mid 40’s to the mid 60’s. And since its in the mountains, the humidity is usually pretty low. Add to that an hour’s drive to beautiful Pacific beaches, and you pretty much have our definition of Heaven.
4. Tianguis. Open air markets where you can buy just about anything: local crafts, fresh flowers, car parts, dried beans, puppies, you name it. What I am most excited about is the abundant fresh fruits and vegetables. And these aren’t factory-farm raised, picked early so they will last during transport, and then exposed to chemicals to make the color develop. The fruits and vegetables at the tianguis are actually raised by a person and picked that morning before being brought to market. Mangos, papayas, bananas, strawberries, squash, onions, avocados, tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce, limes, oranges, carrots, grapefruit, pineapple, potatoes, tomatillos, chiles, bell peppers…the list goes on. You can also get fresh eggs and chicken. Free range chicken, not mass produced. You can go pick you live chicken, pay for it, and come back later and pick it up cleaned and dressed and ready to become dinner.
5. Mexican Food. Real Mexican food, not TexMex or, memorably, some guy from Rhode Island’s idea of what Mexican food is.
6. Manana. Any Spanish-English dictionary will tell you that manana means “tomorrow”. What it actually means is “not today”. Mexicans have a very elastic relationship with time. When your mechanic says your car will be ready manana, it could be three days from now. He would never dream of offending you by giving you an answer you don’t like or that would disappoint you. And he may have every intention of getting your car back to you tomorrow. But you have to be prepared to wait when someone arrives with a more pressing problem, a good friend arrives with a good bottle of tequila, or his godson announces his engagement and there is a big celebration. Each of these things will come before you.
While this can be very annoying, it can also be very freeing. We live in an instant gratification oriented society, and I am pretty guilty of the “I want what I want, and I want it now” syndrome. I am also a slave to it, as all of my clients want what they want and they want it now. I am looking forward to telling my clients their project will be done manana, knowing that if a more pressing problem arises, a good friend arrives with a good bottle of tequila, or my godson announces his engagement, I am free to do what is necessary for the situation without suffering guilt, pressure, or staying up all night to get everything done. It will be done manana.
7. I will be able to afford a gardener and a maid. ’nuff said.
8. Dr. Pepper in Mexico is made with pure cane sugar instead of corn syrup.
9. Whole milk is 5%.
10. We can. We’re young(ish), no kids, financially stable, and lucky enough to be able to work from anywhere. Why not? We’ve been saving for and dreaming about our perfect retirement home on the Brazos river. A lot of things we want to do now have been deferred in favor of saving more for that house. We skip vacations, and we don’t go out much. We work a lot now, always looking for more clients and more money so we can someday enjoy life. The problem is we’re missing it all now and mostly feel like we are waiting for our real life to begin. We realized this is a ludicrous way to live. Why not enjoy it all along the way? It will at least be an amazing adventure.
This is by no means a comprehensive list of our reasons. 10 just seems like a nice round number. I hope it at least starts to answer the question “Why?”
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