Adapting to Life in Mexico

 We came down here with only the things we could fit in our car, and in the little carrier we stuck on top.  So all our furniture was sold and I knew I had to buy new furniture in Mexico.  

It's demoralizing to have to buy the exact same thing you already had like a week before.  I thought, maybe it will be cheaper in Mexico.  But no.  This is a peninsula, and it's hard to get merchandise here.  It's been annoying trying to get everything we need.  

Right now my mom is struggling to get up from a mattress on a floor because we couldn't get her bed base in time.  It's a few more days of hell for her.  I figured she'd sleep up in my room until she got the bed and I'd sleep down there, but the stairs are too much for her.

I thought that I would be able to get everything I needed and wanted in Mexico.  They have Amazon here, right?  But it's not true.  The stories I heard about things being hard to get in Baja California Sur are true.  That's what I wanted to cover here.

We wanted to buy cheap stuff to replace all we sold.  I couldn't find any used furniture stores.  Okay, so we went to new furniture stores.  All of them had dicey delivery dates that were usually wrong.  It has to come from Juarez.  It has to come from Guadalajara.  Who knows when you'll get it?

The most reliable was Walmart.com.mx, but even that has changed dates.  Some stuff came too early, before we were here, meaning we had to run over from the Air BnB.  Other stuff was supposed to be here by now, but isn't.  Delivery dates were changed and no notifications sent.

Okay, fine.  It's inconvenient, but we'll get it all eventually right?  That's for the things we could find.  What about the stuff we couldn't find?

My mom needs an arm chair that lifts her up.  We had one in the States.  I found one on Mercado Libre.  I ordered it.  They canceled the order and refunded me.  I don't know why.

The Mexico Walmart lets me pay in Paypal which is a form of payment that never gets canceled.  So great.  I've gotten the bulk of our furniture from there.  But they don't have this chair she needs.

They have it on Amazon.com.mx.  They accept my credit card there and don't cancel on me later.  I just had to give my immigration number so stuff could be imported in my name. Great.  However, I'm literally having to have the chair shipped from the USA.  They don't have any in Mexico.  So my $650 chair is now $1100.  

Further more, they don't know when it will ship.  They said to order it and they'll get back to me.

That's one example, another two are fly swatters and back scrubbers.  I guess these aren't things used in this area.  No store has them.  Not even the expensive gringo mall.  I had to have those imported too, and I still don't have them as of right now.  The flies are driving me crazy.  

You think some things are universal and basic.  Like a scale to weigh yourself.  I try searching for 'escala' online.  I get tiny food scales.  Apparently there's a different word for them here.  Balanza.  It's been hard to find one.

I can't find body wash.  I've had to go back to bar soap.  

I use wrist weights when I exercise.  I've had to have those imported from the USA again.

Speaking of exercise, I have a new treadmill and finally used it today.  It's short.  Like it's made for a shorter person than me.  I have to lean down to reach the handrails.  It's also narrow.  I worried I'd hit the sides with my feet, but it was okay.

What's not okay is that the timer resets when I have to stop to get off and take a drink of water.  Which I have to do because the only Topo Chico I can get is giant 1.5L bottles that won't fit in the cup holders.  I couldn't keep track of how long I was on.

The light switches are never where you expect them.  My bedroom light:  it should be right by the door.  No.  It's in some random place on the wall.  Same with the bathroom light.  Why there?  Also they are sideways instead of up and down.

The toilet is stupidly placed too close to the sink so it's difficult to use.  Again, probably because I'm tall?  But I'm not really seeing that many people shorter than me, honestly.  They have great diets here and aren't suffering malnutrition.  But I guess the house was built back when Mexicans were shorter.  

I've had to get my mom's travel toilet grab-bars and use them for my toilet because there's not enough space in front of me to stand up easily.  

I love that Mexico only has showers and not difficult to step into bathtubs (I realize that's because no one wants to sit in a tub of contaminated Mexican water).  However, I don't have a shower curtain.  There's no feasible way to shower without the water spraying all over the bathroom floor.  

I do have 'hot' water now.  Not as hot as I'd like, but warm enough that I can actually stay under the flow and enjoy a shower instead of just reaching in for enough ice cold water to clean my vital areas.  We didn't have hot water when we moved in because we were out of gas.  Now we have reasonably warm water, and I'm grateful.

Getting the gas delivered was a pain in the ass.  I'm still learning Spanish so I don't like calling places.  Even if I could understand them, they talk too fast and ask questions I'm not expecting.  So I tried to order gas online.  I ordered 3 times and finally got a call from someone.  I was in the store and my mom was home.  

They asked where my house was.  I gave the address.  No.  They want the coordinates.  I'm sorry, I don't have my sextant and it's day time so I can't align it with the stars.  WTF do you mean you want the fucking coordinates?!  

Okay, I got the coordinates from Google Maps and send it through Whatsapp.  They reply with 'Call the vendor. Here's the number'.  ASSHOLE!  JUST DELIVER THE FUCKING GAS!  

I had to have my mom call and we finally got our gas tank filled in a horrifying way.  They put a ladder against a beam.  They climbed up and balanced on the beam with a giant hose to walk 10 feet to the entry to the roof.  My eyeballs nearly dropped from my head.  He's 30 feet up balancing like a trapeze artist with a fucking gas hose.  Then he filled the tank that's apparently up there.

I was wondering:  What if he fell.  Would I be liable?  Would the landlords be liable?  Would the gas company be liable?  Is liability a thing in Mexico or do they just send the family flowers?

But gas meant I finally got a warm shower and could truly get clean.  Praise God for that.

Meanwhile, I need my bidet toilet seat.  I thought:  I'll just import one from the USA if they don't have any here (which they don't).  But guess what?  Toilets are different sizes and shapes in Mexico.  

Again, like an idiot, I figured toilet sizes were a universal thing.  No.  The toilets here are weird, short, and designed to get as dirty as possible as fast as possible (at least for me).  

But I did find a Mexican bidet toilet seat on Amazon.com.mx.  (Before you give me shit over this, I have a medical condition that makes me use the bathroom 9-12 times a day. A bidet saves me from a lot of problems.  I don't want to live without one).  It was supposed to come April 1.  Then April 4.  Then April 7.  And now April 11.  :sigh:  

We're also waiting for a washing machine.  Dryers aren't widely used in Mexico and my mom is too old to be hanging laundry.  We have division of labor and laundry is her job.  I cook and keep the house clean (by paying a maid).  

Anyway, we have space outside in our nice open garden area for a washing machine.  It's by the kitchen, right outside the back door, so not too inconvenient.  Washers are usually outside because that's where you have to hang the clothes anyway.  It has a sink by it that has groves for you to scrub the clothes against...like those old washing boards.

There's no room for a dryer in that spot.  We thought we'd get a stacked washer dryer, but there's shit above the washer, so we can't do that.  Okay, around the corner in the garden is another outlet and a spot where we could put a dryer.  

Landlords:  The electricity for that outlet isn't strong enough for a dryer.  You'd keep getting shorts.

We have to use the same outlet as the washer.  Where there's no room for a dryer.  And putting an extension cord outdoors is asking for trouble.

Okay, so I bought a washer/dryer combo.  A lavasecadora it's called.  It should be here April 1.  No, April 4.  No April 7.  Meanwhile my mom got fed up and hand-washed some underwear so she could shower.  We didn't have much clothes left from what we got rid of before we moved.

I'm making do with my tiny Mexican kitchen.  I got it all set up just how I liked it.  So the landlord came to tell me to get everything out of the main cabinet since he's putting in a new one.  I said not to do that because I'd just gotten everything perfect.  He said my mom requested it.  FFS.

So I took every out of the cabinet.  And a new cabinet arrived.  Because he ordered it online.  They dropped it off and left.  So my shit is all over the place because no one got rid of the old one and installed the new one.  I don't even want to go downstairs. I'd just gotten to where I could cook and serve food easily.  I had a designated coffee area, microwave area, cutting area, and it's all fucked up for who knows how long.

So yeah.  We're still trying to get settled.

Meanwhile I still have to do my work.  And it's piled up.  I had to get three games out yesterday.  The main one, I don't know.  It's not as good as it should be.  I just didn't have time to deal with it.  We'll see what the reviewers say.

Furniture Trickling In

 I had an acquaintance ask for a video call for me to tell her all about Mexico and everything that happened on our journey.  I gave her the link to this blog instead.  

I guess when you do something crazy you have a lot of people who want to hear all about it.  They want to know if it's something they could do one day too.  Knowing someone who's done it is a link that some people need before taking a leap themselves.

But, between family, therapist, and friends, I'm all talked out.  So I'm glad I started up the blog again to give people the link.  I should take more pictures but...lazy.  So here's some video from my dashcam.

Speaking of the dashcam, I got one because it was supposed to help with police asking for bribes when they pull you over.  But I've never been pulled over.  I'll keep it anyway just to be sure.

Two days ago we got a call that they were delivering packages.  😡 Not good.  We're at the air bnb and they're delivering to the house.  I scheduled everything to be on the 28th.  WTF!

But yeah, I had to run over and we got a mattress and table.  The next afternoon we went there anyway because I had a sense that this was going to happen again, and sure enough, more furniture was delivered.  We'll be there again this afternoon to receive anything else.

Basically:  Don't trust delivery dates.  They ship stuff whenever here.

Other news:  as you know there is a great mystery on how to eat fruit and vegetables here.  You need to wash vegetables before you eat them, right?  Well, the water is contaminated so it doesn't clean anything.  Especially not something you need to eat.  I thought I'd wash and dry fruit and that would be okay.

Apparently I'm wrong.  In the fruit aisle they sell disinfectant you're supposed to use with tap water.  You're supposed to soak fruit and veg in disinfectant for 10 minutes and then eat.  Don't rinse them off after.

I learned this after eating several mangos.  I hope I'm okay.  I may have to take an antiparasitic just to be sure.  Someone said you need to get antiparasitics in Mexico once a year anyway.

We'll see.  I don't know if I recounted this story here, but here's something I texted to friends below:

I've been in Mexico 2 weeks and I know all my neighbors and the family of the person who owns the Air Bnb.  And we aren't going out to get to know people.  It just happens organically.

It started with this beautiful tortie cat.  She came over and flirted with us.  I asked the vet on the way out if she was a stray because we'd love to adopt her as an outdoor cat.  He said probaby not, because she looked too good.

A neighbor overheard the conversation and put a collar on the cat.  We laughed.  Oops.  They know we want to steal their cat.  So we put a note on the collar apologizing and giving them $200 pesos to buy her nice cat food.

That broke the ice.  Neighbors have been hitting us up for eggs, butter, and buckets of water since the water goes off randomly here.  The two little girls next door are always talkign to us when we come out.  Yesterday I bought them ice cream from the vendor who comes around.  The mother is nice to us.  Everyone likes us.

It's not like this in the USA.  I lived 3 years in one place and never spoke to my neighbors.  The sense of community is so much stronger here.

The workers in the stores bend over backwards to help you.  Like a cashier literally leaving her register and going halfway across the huge Walmart sized store to get me reusable bags because I didn't know I needed to bring my own.  People care.  They have empathy.  They want to help.  It's the village mentality that everyone helps each other.

Things are unorganized here and a little more difficult.  Stores don't have web sites.  It's all WhatsApp where you have to ask them stuff directly, or maybe a Facebook page.  Getting furniture was difficult.  You have to buy one thing here, another thing here, another thing here, and you never know when it's all going to be delivered.  America is more organized because of all the corporate influences.  But I don't mind how disorganized Mexico is.  In the end, having money solves any problem.  And I'm wealthy here, even with my measly $2k/month after expenses.  We'll get all we need.  Even if it's a little difficult.  It's worth a little hassle to live here.

Trying to Cook in Mexico

 Here's the Status Report!

• We're in the Air BnB in Mexico
• My mom and I got our residency cards
• We got a nice rental to move into April 1 with a 1 year lease
• We have furniture coming Mar 28 from Walmart.com.mx
• We've bought a lot of the things we gave up to drive down here and have boxes stacked in the new rental.

Buying stuff online to be delivered via our American credit cards is a mixed bag.  Sometimes they reject it out of the blue and we need to pay cash instead (not a scam, the truth).  But Walmart in Mexico takes Paypal.

Paypal is the secure payment for Mexico.  It never fails.  You can order expensive furniture to multiple addresses and it all goes through.

So today I scheduled a grocery delivery from Walmart.com.  Pro: they have a lot of food I recognize.  Con: more expensive than a local Mexican grocery.  But we needed food and we've been running around so much my mom is in pain.  

Last time we ordered from Ley Express and my credit card was rejected right before they came to deliver.  So I had to use the last of my cash.  And...stuff was missing.  I didn't get the shrimp I ordered and a few other things.  Did they keep that stuff?  Did they deduct it from the bill?  I don't know.  They showed me a receipt briefly, but I didn't think to ask to keep it.  I should have.

Meanwhile, Chedraui is a really nice mega-grocery store here.  Owned by Walmart, and like a Walmart with groceries, furniture, electronics.  We've bought a lot of stuff from there.  And I need to buy more.  Like all the regular pantry items I had on hand in the USA:  flour, sugar, oats, beans, rice, etc.  

So I have a cart already full of stuff I plan to order when we move into the new place.  I didn't want to empty it to get the stuff we need for the rest of the month at the Air BnB.  So I did a Walmart order.

I got $3,500 pesos worth of stuff which is $173 usd.  I don't have the pan set I bought here or any of my utensils or dishes.  Just the weird odds and ends the Air Bnb had.  I can't really bake stuff here.  So...what do I cook?

In the USA a staple of my food budget was the $2/lb ground turkey.  Healthy, cheap, versatile.  I can make cheeseburger mac and cheese, spaghetti, shepherds pie, salisbury steak, all sorts of things.  I can't find an equivalent in Mexico.  

I've had to settle for 400 gram ground beef tubes that are $3 each.  So what can I make with that at the Air Bnb?  It's been spaghetti twice already.  

I wanted to just get convenience food for the time being since cooking in the tiny kitchen with weird implements is not easy, but convenience food isn't a big thing in Mexico.  They eat healthy by default.  It's the cultural cuisine.  

I looked at other shopping carts when I went to the store for ideas.  The mainstay is: a tomato, onion, and bell pepper.  That makes pico de gallo which they eat with tortillas and some kind of meat.  Often just a few cheap hot dogs.  A lot of carts in the store only have these items.  1 Tomato, 1 onion, 1 pepper, some tortillas, a cheap meat. The tomatos, onions, and peppers are always together in the store for easy access.

It's not what we're used to, and I don't like having to chop these white onions that make you cry.  (I haven't found the milder yellow onions anywhere here).  My mom doesn't eat raw onions.

I want to order meat that I can serve with potatoes and the Italian squash that's so popular here.  Ordering meat is something I'm going to have to learn as I live here.

1. They don't have the same cuts that we have in the USA.  I don't know what this stuff is.
2. Everything's in metric which I need to learn.  I try to do the:  1 kilo is 2 pounds rule, but you often order in 200gram increments which means you get either 600 grams or 400.  600 is too much for one meal.  400 seems a bit short.
3. It's expensive.  As expensive as the USA, and sometimes worse.

Mexico has different cuisines in different regions like the USA.  Some things are popular everywhere, like tamales, but in this area a tamale is meat wrapped in a corn tortilla with tamale sauce, not masa tamales wrapped in corn leaves like we're used to.  We don't like corn tortillas.

I cooked some 'beef'.  I thought it was strips, but it was one whole long skinny piece folded over on itself with lots of round sections separated by gristle.  I don't know what that was.  It was tough.  

I'm guessing the cheap cuts are the thing in Mexico.  I did order some ribs but they're not like USA ribs.  They're weird.  Some sections have bone, some don't.  I in the USA a rib looked like a rib with flat bone on one side, meat and fat on the other.  Or the Korean cut ribs.  That's not what they have here.  

Chicken is chicken, no matter where you go.  They don't have the cornish cross mega-breast meat chickens here, but it's still chicken.  I can bake a whole chicken, eat the dark meat one day with my mom and have the white meat in fajitas or whatever the next day.  That's fine.  But a whole chicken is still pricey.  

Chicken quarters, thighs, and legs are reasonably cheap, so I'm thinking I'll do 1 piece of meat, salad or squash, refried beans and yellow rice.  We can eat that every day just swapping the meat.  That's probably how I'll manage once I can bake chicken in the new place.

I did figure out how to light the oven!  In Mexico they don't keep the pilot light on all the time.  It's less toxic and less wasteful.  Lighting the pilot isn't the scary hand into a dark area hoping you won't get burnt affair either.  There's a clear hole on the bottom of the oven that you need to light.  So, I'm fine with that.

We have enough food until the end of our stay now.  Then I can really get organized and set up for long term living in the rental.

I do plan to buy a house in Mexico at some point.  There's no mortgages here (they wouldn't give me one anyway with my zero credit history) but I can buy a place with the proceeds of the house in the USA once it sells.  For now, we're happy with the rental and our landlord is really nice.

Furniture Woes Part 2

 When we last left this blog, I had bought $3,600 worth of furniture from a store called Dicos that they advertised as being available to be shipped to me in 12 days.  Then they sent emails saying, 'Ha ha, no.  It will be multiple shipments over the next month and a half.'

I thought this was just how things are in Mexico and tried to work it out with my rep so we'd have the minimum pieces we needed to move out of the Air BnB in time.  She made me pay another 500 pesos 'to expedite' and would let me know.  

Monday was a holiday.  I thought I'd hear from her Tuesday.  Wednesday I asked for an update.  Today she finally got back to me saying my card had 'irregularities' and I needed to pay for everything by Paypal instead.

Except I'd not only paid with credit card already, I'd already paid for those charges.  And I wasn't going to just pull another $3,600 out of my ass when there was nothing wrong with my payment.  We had an annoying phone call where she wouldn't take a breath to let anyone else talk while my mom desperately tried to translate for me with her not stopping talking.  I literally had to yell, 'Perdon!' to get her to take a damn breath.

I told her that I could do an alternate payment *after* they gave me back the $3600 and extra $500 I'd already paid.  She said if I do that then I won't get my stuff until the end of April.  Send money to this Paypal address immediately or I won't have furniture for weeks.

I was smelling scam, but I can't really say that.  I just said I didn't have the money because I'd already paid my credit card.  She ended the call.

Well, they have my credit card money, they haven't refunded me, and I'm not getting my furniture.  I messaged that she needed to refund me or I was going to dispute the charges.  She sent screen caps of refunds.  

I'm now buying everything all over again from Walmart.com.mx.  I should have just gotten stuff with them in the first place after this company lied about how soon they could deliver things on their web site.  (Something she berated us for saying other people were ahead of us, stuff is in Mexico City and Guadalajara and you can't jump the line.  Bitch, YOUR company said 12 days to trick us to buy this shit.  Figure it the fuck out.  Or don't.  I'll just do Walmart.)  

Conclusion:  Don't buy from Dicos.  Go to Walmart.com.mx.  Same prices, same stuff, honest delivery estimates.

Seven Years of Spanish and I Suck At It

Y'know, I don't get how all the foreigners I've met in the USA are able to become fluent.  Learning a new language is DAMNED HARD.

During the pandemic I started taking Spanish lessons while I worked out on my treadmill.  Just for communicating in the USA with Spanish speakers.  I had no plans to move.  I took the 4 year high school class, then the 3 levels of Metodo classes that forces you to really speak the language.  

Right now I'm going through the highest level they have out, intermediate, and redoing the class a 3rd time.  It moves so fast and becomes so complicated.  But I didn't really start to 'learn' Spanish until that class.  

I have a pile of Udemy classes I plan to keep taking as I work out.  Right now, I'm still going blank when I hear Spanish.  My brain turns off.  I can struggle through transactions sounding horrible.

Like I went into a Mexican Petco and I wanted to ask if they had any cat laxatives because my cat was constipated.  For some reason I assumed it was laxativo because I'm a gringo idiot.  Finally I just said, 'Mi gata no puede caca.'  (My cat can't poopoo).  😖  And yes, he laughed right in my face.  

But I won't give up.  I have dreams of volunteering here and being able to communicate at least as well as I've seen ESL people communicate in the USA.  

My mom is my go-to translator when it comes right down to it.  I drag her out of the car and make her do the things that are too difficult for me.  It's going to be that way for years, I'm sure.