Mexico Is Not For The Weak Or The Well Planned

I’ve learned a few things over the last few weeks living in Mexico.  And it’s not just the living part that has me clutching to the learning curve like a southern woman does with her pearls when she witnesses something particularly scandalous.  I know that in Mexico the streets are perpetually uneven, have super slick spots (when it hasn’t rained), water usage has to be somewhat planned, a wack a mole game feels badly played whenever you cross a street or drive down one, and often, very often mosquitoes take to your blood like you’re their last meal.  All of that does take some getting used to, but it’s manageable.  But now that we own two properties in this part of the world, our eyes have been widely opened to how things really work in Mexico.  

Why am I surprised by the past events?

I have no clue.  I am living in a whole other country; one that operates and beats to its own little unplanned, you must go with the flow, timeliness is a suggestion, heart. And I have written about this before. Last summer when we lived here for a month. However, we were renting, not home owners, and that throws everything into a newly bright perspective.

I’m sure all countries have their own idiosyncrasies,

I’m sure when moving to America there are things that don’t make sense to the well traveled. Pesticides and growth hormones being one, an over abundance of weird and conflicting freedoms being another.

So,

Mexico.

If things don’t go wrong, they are  probably not right to begin with or at the very least that has been our experience thus far.

Getting Internet set up felt a bit like climbing a mountain that you keep sliding down from.  You may see the top at times, and you know you have to get there at some point, you just don’t know the when and the where of it all.

And I can’t really help G all that much.  He was at the Internet office for hours and nothing was accomplished.  Then they told him they would be at our apartment in Puerto Morales between a very large gap of time, then they changed the date, then when we left to go back home (Playa del Carmen, 30 or so minutes away) they called and said that they were an hour away.  When they finally showed up it took two hours for them to tell us the internet couldn’t be connected. We would have to speak to the builder who would need to make a serious change in unblocking something or other, more words I didn’t really understand even if I did speak fluent Spanish. If they would have showed up five or even three hours previously we could have spoken to the necessary people, who were still working on the building, but now it was nine at night.  We were both exhausted and the one thing that needed to get accomplished was going to be pushed back yet again with the very real possibility of it not working out all together.

Patience is a virtue 

or 

so they say.

Maybe instead patience should be a practice like yoga or meditation.

Maybe then we would have been more prepared.

Then there was our air conditioning unit in the Playa apartment. It started to leak. Droplets of water fell down the walls in an annoying display of alerting us to what was wrong and wondering what, if anything we were going to do about it.

My poor husband began googling the possible problems and did find a solution. Before I knew it he was taking apart the unit, undoing a tube or two before putting one end into his mouth and sucking the calcium sludge that was clogging said unit. How he has not gotten sick? I have no idea. It must be the famed steel trap of a Mexican stomach. He did grow up in Mexico City after all.

However, this has all caused me to wonder how people who have grown up in Mexico feel about the intricacies in their country and how it has shaped their personality.

Mexico has consistently been ranked by various polls as the friendliest country to tourists and expats.  Something that I find so incredibly interesting.

They should not be this happy, I sometimes think to myself, but they are.  

The heat be heating, the seaweed be smelling, 

but strangers will greet you with a Buena Dias around every turn and mis shaped pot hole.

When booking an appointment, I’m so used to cutting right to the chase.  

Are you available for this date?

How much will it be?

And then every time I’m met with a 

good day, 

how are you, 

thanks for contacting us, 

and then the business at hand is explained.

What causes such a jovial nature?  

Is it the fact that not all things come particularly that easy?

The beer that takes the place of water?

The tequila that flows like wine?

It will perhaps all remain a mystery to me.

Although

I hope that their good nature runs off on me during my stay here

because

this is where I want to be

this is where I plan to retire

and eventually apply for citizenship

and

drink all the tequilas

while chilling on the beach

forever and a day.