I can’t say I was thrilled with the idea at first, but I was never against it either. My daughter spent her junior year at Harvard studying in Spain. She came home with new-found worldliness, self-confidence, fluency in Spanish, and the love of her life. Carlos, a young Mexican man studying law in Spain, was intelligent, outgoing, friendly, enthusiastic, and obviously wildly crazy for Amy, as she was for him. It was hard to resist his charisma, and from the first meeting with him when he came to visit, I knew my daughter had found a wonderful man.

Okay, so Amy still had a year to finish at Harvard while Carlos still had studies in Spain. This put their love to the test of time and distance. Maybe I never thought it would last…..maybe subconsciously I hoped it wouldn’t, although consciously I, too, loved this young man. After graduation from Harvard, Amy went to Spain to spend a year with Carlos while he finished his law studies there. The result of this time spent together was that Amy was determined that Carlos was her future, and she would somehow spend the rest of her life with him. If this meant making his homeland of Mexico her own, she was willing to do so.

Amy returned home after her year in Spain to take only enough time to buy a car, put things in order, and pack her most needed belongings for a long drive to move to Mexico in July of 2002. She planned to drive to Mexico, BY HERSELF, during the span of one week’s time, stopping to visit some college connections in convenient locations along the way. On the day she left, I will never forget the way my stomach dropped when I stood in my driveway watching her drive off ….Her dad, her brother, and I just stood in utter silence and watched the car fade away in the distance. Somehow the finality of that drive away was so gut wrenching. We hadn’t thought it would hurt so badly. It was real, and it hurt.

Amy made it to Mexico with no mishaps and began searching for a job while living with Carlos’ parents. She was lucky enough to find a very good job teaching English to Mexican students in one of the Tec schools. How proud I was to hear of how my daughter forged her way in a country so foreign to her. She took her car across the border, learned to maneuver the Mexican city of Monterrey, and established herself in her boyfriend’s household before he even came home to Mexico.

Carlos returned from Spain in October, and shortly before Christmas of that year, 2002, asked Amy to marry him and make Mexico her home with him. Because Carlos’ family is very large and very religious, they decided to plan to have the official church wedding ceremony in Mexico. They were coming home to Massachusetts for Christmas, so we hurriedly planned an engagement party for them on December 28, 2002, so that people who would not be able to fly to Mexico for the summer wedding would have an opportunity to meet Carlos and celebrate with us. The holidays flew by, and we enjoyed the celebrations and a lovely engagement party. When the time came for Amy and Carlos to return to Mexico, it was the second hard departure for our family. When I brought Amy and Carlos to the airport to fly back to Mexico, I could hardly keep my composure.

This time I knew for sure that my daughter had chosen to spend her life in a distant part of the world away from her family. Although her dad and I had raised her to be independent, to be adventurous, and to strive for her goals and make them happen, we didn’t wish for that to have to include moving away so far from us. I cried for a whole day thinking of Carlos at the engagement party, raising his arm and shouting “Monterrey!” proudly amongst Amy’s high school friends. “Monterrey?” What was there about Monterrey to be so proud of? Did I even want to know what life there would be like?

The wedding was planned for July 11, 2003, and it seemed so far off that it was just a dream in our minds. After Christmas we did go online and shop around for a flight and hotel package to travel to Mexico for a few days before the wedding. We asked around and found out which people could really commit to going with us. A small group of seven of us planned to go, and we booked the trip in late January. With the use of e-tickets, even this did not seem like a reality. In April, I made it a goal to buy a dress for the wedding, and shoes, etc.

Still, it did not seem like reality. In June the invitations came, and emails from Amy started to sound panicky about coordinating all the details. I was not there to be of any help; all her dad and I could do was send the money to pay for it! I’m sure that helped, but it was not the way I imagined planning my daughter’s wedding.

Amy pulled everything together herself, with the love and help of Carlos’ family, who really gave them quite a start by letting her live with them, rent-free, for the entire year. Amy and Carlos were able to save enough money to purchase a new home which they will move into in October.

And then, the week of the wedding arrived! We were to fly to Mexico on July 8, 2003. Thus began a week of breaking down the reserves and falling in love with the country that stole my precious daughter from me. I cannot begin to recreate the experiences we shared there. Our group of seven pilgrims from Massachusetts and our Spanish family of three from Leon, Spain, whose son we had hosted one summer when Amy was sixteen, arrived on the same day about an hour apart.

We were embraced by Carlos’ family immediately and enfolded into a country and family atmosphere of love from the moment of our greeting at the airport. It was a miracle I had not imagined possible, and it swept me away with its intensity.

Carlos’ wonderful family took excellent care of us, chauffeuring us all around the large city of Monterrey. They made sure we were picked up and dropped off everywhere, not an easy task with a group of 10 and especially when they were in the middle of taking care of the final details of the wedding and reception.

On our arrival night, we were invited to a lovely rooftop barbecue hosted by Carlos’ family. We were delighted by a tour of their lovely home: the two kitchens, the indoor gardens complete with singing birds, and the spectacular rooftop patio with trees, plantings, refreshing breezes, and commanding views of the city and mountains. The steak, potatoes, quesadillas, and everything all tasted so especially delicious because we were with a family who wanted to adopt us and teach us to love their city and their ways. It was so much more than a normal tourist travel experience. We took part in gift exchanging and listened to a speech from an uncle in the family complimenting us on our daughter, and there was an enormous building of acceptance and goodwill between the extended families. It was indeed a perfect welcome.

The second day there, our group went to see Amy and Carlos’ new home under construction. We toured the model homes and saw what a finished one would look like all decorated. Then we actually were able to drive right down into the construction area to see their actual lot and home, under construction – the first floor was up, and workers were on the top working on the second story.

Although we were asked to move out because we were blocking the construction trucks from their access to the area, we did get to take some pictures! Carlos has a way with people and usually gets what he wants!!!

That evening we were to go listen to the band for their reception. Amy and Carlos had asked the band to learn some special songs, and they wanted to see if the band had learned them well enough to play at the reception. The poor band – when they saw the twelve of us trooping in to see if they passed the test! Yet they were gracious and found room for all of us to sit in comfort to listen. As they broke into the first number, I had my first emotional and significant experience of three that really moved me there in Mexico. I immediately recognized the opening strains of “The Prayer” by Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion. I had asked Amy to consider using this song at her wedding during her visit to Massachusetts at Christmas time. She loved the song and took a copy of the CD back to Mexico with her, but she also expressed some doubts about using it since it would be in Italian or English, and most of the guests would understand neither. What a thrill to realize she had gone ahead and requested it! What a wonderful and moving surprise! I cried during the entire rendition of the song, which was admirably done by the two lead singers. This proved to be a good thing, though, since I did not feel the need to cry during the performance of this song on the actual wedding night. The band went on to perform for us for another hour or so. We had a wonderful private concert which we thoroughly enjoyed and which left us anxious to dance to their music at the wedding in two more nights.

On Thursday morning, most of our USA group wanted to go to the museums in the downtown area of Monterrey. I opted to go with Amy to Carlos’ home to work on the final details of the wedding and to spend time with her while she packed for her honeymoon. It was precious time to me, and I hope to her also. Carlos’ parents were around the house, but left us to spend our time together. Although we could not speak directly because of my lack of Spanish and their lack of English, I wanted to express some of what I was feeling with them. I asked Carlos to call his parents to his room and through the translations of Amy and Carlos, I tried to express to Gloria and Carlos senior just how much I appreciated what they had done for Amy and Carlos in giving them their start in life by letting Amy live with them for a year rent-free. I also wanted them to know that I appreciated how they were a family for Amy and had supervised and protected her while she was there.

I told them I hoped they never had to experience the turmoil of losing a child to such a distance, but that it was now much easier for me to let Amy go to Mexico and to them as a family, since I had experienced first-hand their love and acceptance. We all cried, and then we took pictures of ourselves crying, but I felt better for the bonds created in spite of the language barrier. After a while I didn’t know if we were speaking Spanish, English, or just the language of the heart, but the message was given and received, loud and clear. This was the second of my three emotional bonding experiences, and it was far more important than the first.

On the day of the wedding, Friday, I went to the hairdresser with Amy in the morning to get her hair and makeup and my hair done.

Shortly after these few hours came my third and most powerful bonding experience with Amy and with what her experiences with loving Carlos, a Mexican man, had done for her. When we returned to our hotel to dress for the wedding pictures, Amy and I had a few moments together before all the women in our group arrived to help mother her and get her dressed.

Amy had had to go to confession before the wedding ceremony. We laughed about this because although raised as a Catholic, Amy had not practiced the rituals faithfully. Growing up, her father and I taught her CCD classes and she had made First Communion and Confirmation. In fact, I was the one who instructed her class in second grade on how to go to confession. When she reached Confirmation age, I told her it was now time to make up her own mind about embracing religion and what she would do about it. I was only concerned that she be a moral human being. Amy took a very nonchalant attitude toward going to church and all of the other rituals.

Now, suddenly, in the few quiet moments we had in the hotel room with her face beautifully made up and her veil and pearl tiara on her head, my little girl asked me a totally unexpected question. She asked me “Mom, how do you say the Hail Mary?” We recited it together, stumbling along and both remembering as we prayed together. Then she asked the same about the Our Father, and we said that one together too. Turns out her penance for the confession she had just made was to say some Hail Marys and some Our Fathers, and she was sincere in wanting to do them, and do them correctly. What a moment for me – to see my child embrace a religion and take it on willingly, for the love of her new husband, his family, and his country. This was my third and most emotional moment of the trip, for I realized the depth of the bonding that had taken place for my daughter with her new culture.

The wedding itself was almost anticlimactic for me after these three experiences. Amy was a beautiful bride, and her Carlos was dashing and handsome. The church was lovely, AIRCONDITIONED, and the service was beautifully shared by friends and family from three different countries: Mexico, the USA, and Spain. Amy’s brother Jim carried the Bible to the altar, our exchange student David did a reading, Cris, the mother of Amy’s best school friend did a reading, and Ani, her best friend carried the gold coins. Felipe and Marimy, her Spanish mother and father, were the patrons of the rings, and as such, signed the marriage certificate as witnesses. Amy’s father and I walked her down the aisle together, and later lit a family candle, as did Carlos’ parents, from which Amy and Carlos lit their own new family candle. The traditions of the Mexican service were wonderful and moving.

The reception was a gala affair! The band lived up to the preview we had had. The food was delicious, and the dancing lasted till 1 AM!

Mexicans must be the best dancers in the world!!! And do they ever have stamina! The success of the wedding from my point of view was in the bonding of the two cultures.

This bonding is now mine to share. I look forward to continuing a love affair with the family and the country my daughter has introduced me to. Watching her take all these changes in stride with such grace and maturity was the greatest gift a mother can get from her child. I know that I have succeeded in launching my daughter into her chosen life of independence. MONTERREY!!!

The post A bonding of families and countries appeared first on MexConnect.

Who would have thought that buying a house in Mexico would be such a scandal? Maybe it should have occurred to me beforehand that I would encounter some very unusual problems while trying to acquire property here, but I think I still had faith in the goodness of people and the future of Mexico at that point. I’ve become somewhat jaded through this experience, and the constant trials and tribulations have taken away from the pleasure of being a first time home owner. In any event, I have learned about Mexican culture yet again, and I would like to share my experiences with anyone interested in buying property somewhere within the Mexican border. Don’t be scared away; the bottom line is to plan ahead and know what you’re walking into.

When I first arrived in Mexico, I accompanied my sister-in-law and her husband to look at some houses in Guadalupe, a city that is adjacent to Monterrey and is basically part of Monterrey. It is much poorer in general than Monterrey, although it does have its rich sections. We were not looking, however, in the rich sections. When I first saw the houses that they were thinking about buying, I have to admit I was horrified! The neighborhood slightly resembled something straight out of Levittown. All the houses were the same. There were lines, and lines, and lines, and lines of houses. Did I mention they all looked the same???? Well, in all fairness, every other house had a different façade so I guess they weren’t all exactly the same. They looked like propped up shoeboxes: tall and skinny. When we went in the model homes, I was equally as horrified. They were painted and decorated to look appealing, but you could still see where the window frame was crooked, the tile was cracked, or the roof was leaking. They were cramped even with small amounts of furniture, and forget about fitting a typical Mexican family in a space that small. I don’t think even Carlos’s immediate family would fit comfortably.

Then, there was the neighborhood. Although it was relatively green and well-kept, the street to arrive there was horrible. Rundown houses and businesses line a pockmarked street congested with beat-up old cars and their choking black emissions.

I had a splitting headache by the time we got back to the cleaner part of Monterrey.

Now, it’s not that I want to sound spoiled. I wouldn’t even be in a position to buy a house in the States for years. More than anything, I was just shocked at the lack of quality. I can’t imagine anyone buying a new house with crooked windows in the States. The other teeny tiny drawback to houses here is that what you buy is literally the four main walls of the house. There are no frills, no extras, and as I mentioned before, sometimes even the bare necessities aren’t up to par. I was surprised to find out that the houses are sold without closets, kitchens, and in some cases even bathroom facilities. The preparation is there, such as a nook where a closet should go, but there is not so much as a bar hanging. Some houses don’t even have grass in the front and back yard. The “yard” is pure, inert dirt that needs to be broken up with a pick axe and carted out before anything – even a weed – will grow.

All disadvantages aside, there was no doubt for Carlos and me that buying a house, albeit a small crooked one, was better than flushing money down the drain on rent. Mortgage payments here are often less than rent for a small apartment, so we began to look for ways to buy our own house. Our first strange experience with Mexican house-buying started when we solicited credit to buy the house. I couldn’t get the credit in my name because I had not lived and worked in Mexico for over a year yet. We were going to get the credit in Carlos’s name, but when they heard he was a lawyer, they immediately said, “No credit for lawyers.” Neither Carlos nor I could believe it. We were applying for FOVI, a type of credit offered by the government that supposedly can’t discriminate by profession. Obviously we wanted to know why lawyers were excluded, and the construction company told us that they had had problems with lawyers in the past because they had found loopholes in the contracts and then sued for the value of their homes. The sales lady with us the house was able to get around the “No lawyers” policy by emphasizing that Carlos teaches law and does not practice. However, I think this whole incident should have set off warning bells with us.

When we first started looking at the houses in this neighborhood, we assumed that they would look just like the model houses – completely separate from each other. The house separation factor is a given in Massachusetts, where I am from, and houses are often separated by sprawling green lawns or at least a fence or trees of some sort. Here in Monterrey, houses are very often build right smack next to each other, with only a meter of distance between them. And, in some cases, houses are even attached. Unlike duplexes where two houses share one whole wall, the houses in our neighborhood shared an upstairs wall only. On the first floor, the houses were separate, which made room for a skinny passageway from the front yard to the back yard.

At first, we hadn’t even noticed that some of the houses were joined. But as we got more serious about buying, we drove through the neighborhood quite often. Some of the houses were completely separate and others were attached as I described above. It seemed so foolish to us to join houses in that manner. Carlos’s sister is an architect, and the first thing she mentioned to us when she heard was that having our house attached to another could cause us huge problems down the road. For example, the bathroom wall of our house would be the same as the bedroom of the other. What would happen if we had a problem with the plumbing and needed to break into the wall? We would have to also break their bedroom wall.

Carlos and I were completely disillusioned because this was the only neighborhood within our price range that was halfway decent and that was able to find a way to get us credit given our special situation, but we simply didn’t want our house attached to another. Then, we got lucky. The sales lady offered us a house on the corner of the street. It had more land than the attached houses (although not much more) and it was completely separate from the neighboring house. We agreed to buy this house.

We were about a month away from signing papers on the house when the sales lady called to say that they were missing a document from us. Apparently we were supposed to have gone to la Secretaría de Asuntos Exteriores to ask for a very special letter. This one-page letter, stating my FM3 (my immigration document) information and not much else at all, granted me permission to buy property in Mexico. It was a simple letter that cost me $4000 pesos (about $365 USD) and is valid only for this specific piece of property. Anytime in the future that I wish to buy some sort of property on Mexican soil, I have to solicit yet another shockingly expensive and ridiculously simple letter. Sometimes I honestly think that there is some bitter Mexican sitting somewhere inventing ways to steal money from “rich” gringos and put it directly into his corrupt pocket. All I know is that I was out 4000 pesos at a very crucial time. What would it have taken for someone to warn me about the need for this letter sooner? Four months had passed since we had started to buy the house and according to the construction company, ALL our documents were in order-until the last minute. **Sigh.**

When the house was finally built and ready for us to sign papers, we had a meeting with the neighborhood architect to check out the house. We were to identify any problems we found with the house and they would be fixed by the next day. The architect gave us an appointment at 5:30pm, by which time it was almost dark out. There was no electricity in the house yet, so we could barely see. We went around looking at pieces of the plaster wall that had been gouged or scraped, windows that didn’t shut or slide correctly, and so on. The next day, we went back to check that everything had been fixed. Once again, the architect told us to come at 5:30. We were not smart enough to bring a flashlight so we were bumping around in the dark trying to see if any improvements had been made on the house. Of course, hardly any improvements had been made, but we couldn’t see well enough to find out until we actually signed papers and moved into the house a few weeks later.

Our first week in the house, it rained pretty hard outside. We ended up with a big, wet spot on our bedroom wall. Either the window or the concrete block had not been sealed correctly, and water was entering. The following day we called the architect and someone came to seal the outside of the house. Luckily, we haven’t had water since. The second week in the house we reported a window that was clearly defective because we could barely slide it shut. After a few more weeks, the window suppliers came to install windows in some other houses, so they replaced our window free of charge. These were things that worked out well for us because they were taken care of relatively quickly, but at the same time, it was a brand new house. These things should never have been issues in the first place.

After two months in our new home, we had already settled in and were starting to feel comfortable in the neighborhood. We met another young couple who lived a few houses away, but aside from that, our neighbors were rather reclusive; we had hardly met anyone. Then all of a sudden a neighbor came by and invited us to a neighborhood meeting in the park the next night. There was a pretty good turnout at the meeting, and for the first time we got a good look at our new neighbors. There were a lot of young couples like Carlos and me. It turned out that the reason for the meeting was that it had become obvious that the neighborhood was going to be left open and not closed off by walls as we had originally thought. This was a problem because there is a terribly run-down, generally awful neighborhood right behind ours. With our neighborhood open, it would become a main street connecting the thousands of houses behind us with the main street into town. We were picturing literally hundreds of cars and buses passing through out quiet neighborhood every day.

We also had issues with the park in our neighborhood. It was being used by everyone within a 5 mile radius. We had a brand new playground that was already showing signs of wear. Droves of cars come in on weekends and are parked around the playground/park. The people make a day of it, bringing food and everything. The problem is that they do not clean up their mess. We have found lots of garbage in the park, from plates to tin foil to soda bottles to soiled diapers. It’s disgusting, and since it’s not their park, they have no interest in keeping it clean, only in using it. One day while walking our dog, Carlos and I even found a used condom in the middle of the street. It’s likely that this was left by carpenters, not necessarily park-goers, but it still seemed to stress the point that if access to the neighborhood were left unlimited, we might be finding a lot more trash around.

Over the course of several more meetings, we discussed other points that were bothering us. It seemed that the construction company was selling houses with lies. Their very own brochure stated that the houses were “completely separate” and the neighborhood was “private.” Furthermore, the brochures and plastic models offered only two different designs of houses and plentiful green areas, and in reality, there were four different house designs and very few green areas in the neighborhood. Carlos and I were particularly angry about the presence of other house designs that were never advertised or mentioned. In fact, we didn’t even know about their existence until we noticed the house going in behind us was similar to ours but part of the construction had been removed to make a balcony instead. So, from the second floor balcony of the house behind us, our future neighbors will have a view into our backyard, kitchen, and two upstairs bedrooms.

How come no one ever told us that this style of house would be built behind us? Maybe we still would have bought our house, but we certainly would have thought twice about it.

After a lot of talking and strategizing, we finally decided to take the construction company by surprise on a Monday morning. Six people representing the neighborhood went to the office and demanded to speak to the head engineer. He talked to us and patiently answered all our questions. We didn’t come out winning exactly what we wanted – only one entrance to the neighborhood from the main road – but we did get the construction company to agree to put up fencing and keep the neighborhood closed off until another alternative street from the neighborhood behind us to the main road could be built. The idea was that even though our area will be open to through traffic, with this wider, faster road, cars and buses will avoid crossing through our neighborhood.

So in general, things are quieting down as we are adapting to life in a Mexican “fraccionamiento” or neighborhood. In some ways, all these unexpected problems have been good things because they have served as a cause to unite us neighbors. A neighborhood is always a much nicer place when you know the people around you. As for buying a home in Mexico, I hope someday I’ll have enough money to build my own house, so that I can make sure the windows are straight. But until that day, I’m overjoyed to be in my own little house. It may not be perfect, but it is ours, and that’s a step in the right direction.

The post Buying a home in Mexico appeared first on MexConnect.

I’ve been very quiet for the past few months; I apologize for the silence. I’m finally back, and I have BIIIIIIIIG news. No, it’s not a divorce, or a birth, or a career change that brought me a six-figure salary (too bad). But it’s certainly life-changing, and I feel a bit like a traitor….

It all started last March. One night I came down the stairs and found Carlos seated at our borrowed, plastic, outdoor, dining room table. He looked perplexed. Then all of a sudden he blurted out, “Let’s go!” I thought, where? The supermarket? The video store? So I asked him, “Where do you want to go?”

“TO THE UNITED STATES!”

Was he really serious? What happened to my husband?

If you’ve been reading my articles from the start, you know by now that I made the move to Mexico with the expectation that I was to remain there forever and ever and ever. Carlos is a lawyer, trained in Mexican and Spanish law. He speaks English, but not enough to practice law even if his degree were valid. In Boston, he’d be far from his family, unable to communicate to his liking, and forbidden from practicing law. Yet he was telling me it no longer mattered. I couldn’t believe it.

Overall my experience with Mexico has been a very positive one. I had many ups and downs, periods where I wondered what the hell I was doing in Mexico and days where I wanted to just up and leave. But the vast majority of days were pleasant, the people I met were warm and willing to help me in whatever way they could, and the culture was simply fascinating. I had made such an effort to adapt that it was actually starting to work: I was starting to feel Mexican.

But I can’t deny that my heart leapt at the possibility of moving to Boston-with Carlos. Moving back there without him was never an option for me. I am miserable without him no matter where I am. But this would be a chance for me to pursue my career. Teaching in Mexico was great, but it was no where near what I wanted to be doing with my education. Now I could be close to my family and friends, earn decent money for reasonable hours of work, and maybe even have a 401K or other sort of retirement plan! Ooooh! But secretly, the best part of it all was that I would no longer be making the sacrifices. My efforts, and my success, would no longer be taken for granted. Carlos would finally understand what it was like. I guess this was vengeful, and it’s not that I wanted him to suffer or go through the heartache of being far from his family, but maybe he’d begin to understand how I felt while I was in Mexico.

Obviously, before deciding to make this move, we had some serious issues to discuss: if he can’t practice law, what will he do for work? How will we break the news to his family? Will they kill me right when we tell them or wait until I’m alone and do it? What kind of job do I want now that I have more possibilities open to me? Where would we live in Boston? What would we do with the small house we had just bought in Mexico?

Carlos and I discussed his career options. He said he is willing to work as a paralegal (hopefully in immigration) while he studies to pass the bar exam and make his law degree valid in the US. He would work on his English like crazy in Monterrey and upon arriving in Boston to get up to speed. He was also open to the idea of a career change, although it looks like with a little bit of planning and a lot of effort, it won’t be necessary for him to find another profession!

We decided to break the idea of leaving to his parents gently and a little bit at a time. Carlos took complete charge of that issue, as I was afraid they might break my neck. I decided not to be in the room alone with them after we broke the news.

What I would do for work baffled me. I taught in Mexico by default. I decided I would do job searches online and go from there. I did have the idea that I would like to return to a college admissions office. I decided to look for a position in admissions at one of the many universities in Boston.

We solved the problem of where to live by talking to my dad; just last year my dad bought a little cottage in Hull, Massachusetts, to retire to in two or three years. It’s an adorable little place, just right for two or a small family, and it’s only a block and a half from the beach! Hull is a very down-to-earth working class town, and we decided we would feel at home there and have fun helping my dad fix his new house up. He agreed to rent it to us for at least the next two years.

As for the house we had bought in Mexico, things miraculously fell into place. One day I got an email from a MexConnect reader who was looking for a small house to rent in Guadalupe. It was too much of a coincidence… I immediately offered him my house. It turns out he had been offered a job about 10 minutes away from where our house is. Monterrey is a big, sprawling city; the odds of our house being right where they were looking were next to nil! We didn’t even have to advertise or list the house! A few weeks later, this lovely young couple came to see the house and decided to rent it for a year.

So, after a series of signals, coincidences, omens, whatever you want to call them, we decided to go for it. We would later find out, deciding to move, no matter how hard a choice, is the easy part.

COMING NEXT MONTH: The hard part: the logistics of the move, settling back into post 9/11 America, and living apart from Carlos for three months.

The post Who would have thought? appeared first on MexConnect.

I’ve been living and working in Mexico for almost two years, and lately, I’ve been reflecting a great deal about my experiences-and my articles. I was going to write about Mexican family economics (and I will!), but for the moment, I need this month’s space to share some of the feelings that have resulted from all this serious thinking about my time in Mexico.

Lately, I’ve been shrouded with feelings of guilt. If you’ve been following my articles over the past year and a half, you will probably already know why. My first few articles are so positive and optimistic, and my last few are so caustic and critical. There has been a definite progression from praising Mexico to criticizing it, and that was never my intention. Why and how did this happen?

I must say, from day one, my point in writing these articles was to talk about differences between Mexico and American/Canadian culture and problems that a foreigner might face while living in Mexico. Therefore, it is pointless for me to write articles about things that are the same because it wouldn’t help the unsuspecting visitor to Mexico.

On the other hand, I have never intended to make Mexico sound like a bad place, because it certainly is not. In some ways, I think that my articles have become critical largely because I actually feel a part of the country now, and I can’t help but want to have an opinion about everything and change Mexico for the better. Indifference on my part, I think, would be worse than being critical because it would mean that I never fell in love with Mexico enough to care about its present or future.

The way I see it, there are four types of connections that Gringos have with Mexico.

• First, there are those that know very little about the country. Perhaps they have visited Cancun or La Riviera Maya and have seen enough to think that Mexico has great beaches and not enough to really see any authentic Mexican culture.
• Second, there are those who have become frequent visitors to the country. They visit every opportunity they can and often have very close Mexican friends or a boyfriend tying them to the country. I was one of these before I moved here to marry my husband. These people have seen authentic Mexican culture and have fallen in love with it. They will defend Mexico to their dying day because it harbors wonderful memories, beautiful friendships, and some sort of enchanting romantic charm for them.
• Third, there are people like me who have been living and working in Mexico for some time. We have been through the hassles of FM3s, bureaucracy, and trying to find the proper balance of adapting to Mexico and still maintaining the parts of our culture that we feel are worth keeping. We have married Mexicans or otherwise tied ourselves inextricably to a Mexican family. We still see Mexico’s charm, but it tends to get lost in our day-to-day existence as Mexico becomes just another place to live and work. Anywhere you live and work eventually loses its magic – it’s simply not a vacation anymore.
• And finally, there is the fourth type of gringo who has either lived here so long that they have adapted more or less completely to Mexican culture and don’t give cultural differences another thought, or they have enough money to create their own mini-US right here in Mexico.

Let me emphasize that I think all of these four types of relationships of Gringos to Mexico are wonderful and necessary. There is not one that is better than the other. We need each other to keep our vision of Mexican and American/Canadian culture real. Dialogue between us keeps us appreciating the foreign culture that has welcomed us, as well as the one we left behind but don’t necessarily want to forget. I am at the point now where I have done my best to become as Mexican as possible, but there are certain things that I refuse to compromise. And my personal experience has been yielding and giving in to everything Mexican. I think this is necessary; obviously you can’t expect to impose your culture on people in their own homes! But I think that what I have been looking for is a little more appreciation and understanding. Sometimes I wish people would understand that there is about 5% of my Americanness that I do not wish you give up.

A characteristic of my more recent articles is that I make terrible generalizations. I just said in the paragraph above, “I wish people”…What people? Well, the problem is I feel slightly guilty about being so honest on the internet about my life here. My articles would be offensive enough to those who know me here without putting their names, addresses, and social security number and announcing it to the public of Mexconnect.

At the same time, writing these articles and sharing my experience has helped me come to terms with everything I have gone through. They have been therapeutic and quite necessary for my sanity. So please, don’t take my stereotyping or generalizations too seriously. They are just that – stereotypes. Sometimes it’s because I feel I can’t name names, and other times my point in using them is to prove that you can’t stereotype a Mexican any more than you can stereotype an American. By being here and creating a dialogue with Mexico, we are working to break these stereotypes and show just how silly they are. So for example, if you read my last article, of course Mexicans read books. Some even have dogs in their houses. But not all Americans get divorced, either. It’s all ridiculous.

I have always been honest in my articles, sometimes obnoxious, sometimes genuine in my love and concern for this country. I won’t apologize for the transition I have made over the past year and a half, but I did reflect upon it, and I’d be lying if I said my relationship with Mexico hasn’t changed at all by living here. So take my articles with a grain of salt. The last thing in the world that I really want to do is insult Mexico in a truly mean and spiteful way. I am critical of the country the same way that I am critical of the US, because I now have roots in both places, and I care about what happens in both countries. My husband is Mexican, his family is Mexican, and my children will be half-Mexican. My children will be bilingual and have an appreciation for their American and Mexican sides, or I will die trying. I think it’s a privilege to be born into two cultures, just as it’s been an honor for me to learn to live and appreciate two very different countries.

The post By the way … appeared first on MexConnect.

There´s no denying it – Mexico is a beautiful land. But there is no uglier sight in this world than what I am about to describe. Imagine a portly man dressed in black pants with a yellow stripe down the side. He is standing on the side of the street, hidden except for his pot-bellied “panza” that nearly gives him away. But somehow he always manages to mask his unwanted presence until the last minute. And BANG! Just like that, he waddles out of nowhere and signals for you to pull you over.

These Transitos, or traffic cops, are literally everywhere in Monterrey, Guadalupe, and all of the surrounding towns at all hours of the day and night. Oh good, you might think. They are there to keep possessed Mexican drivers under control. But no, Transitos are really crossing guards that can cost you money. They carry no more legal authority in terms of stopping a crime than you or I, and as for controlling the traffic, they only make it worse. These guys live for one thing – to make a buck. They have no function except to pressure unsuspecting drivers into giving them a good, old-fashioned Mexican mordida, or bribe.

I live off a street that is absolute hell. It looks like hell, it smells like hell, and it flows like molten lava seeping out of hell. All along this street, which is one of the two main streets accessing a large part of the city, are schools. So, all along the street are school zones and Transitos. The Transitos are there supposedly to help the school children cross, but I see them pulling over more cars in a school zone than helping students to cross. The maximum speed in a school zone is 20 mph in Mexico and these cops take it seriously. However, they are all on foot, and none of them has radar. Who knows if people are actually going over 20? They just pull over anyone they think might be going over 20.

Getting pulled over initiates a 10-30 minute process of haggling with the transito as if he didn´t know how the situation would end. If you are lucky and know how to play the situation, the transito will let you go without having to offer him a bribe. If you are not so lucky, he will expect a bribe. In the rare case that he does not want a bribe, he will give you an official ticket.

I have had to deal with Transitos three times in Mexico in the two years that I have been here. The first two times were for “speeding” and the third was because I was in a minor car accident. Let´s start with the speeding incidents.

The first time I was stopped, I don´t even really know why or on what grounds the transito pulled me over. I had stopped at a light and stepped on the gas when it turned green. Immediately the transito pulled me over. I think I hadn´t even had a chance to hit 20 mph yet. But apparently, I must have just come out of the light too fast according to the transito. I had a nice little chat with the official. I explained to him that I was new to the area and I didn´t realize I had to go so slow on a street with three lanes going in each direction. After a short while, he asked me why I was in Mexico. I told him because I married a Mexican. He immediately asked me where my husband was. DOES IT MATTER? I said he was with his mother. It struck the man as very odd that I was out on my own and not with my husband apparently, because he seemed to have sympathy for me after that and he let me go without giving me a fine. Thank God because I escaped having to decide whether to bribe him or not.

The second time I was stopped for going over 20 mph in a school zone. I think I was actually doing 30 mph, so ok, I was wrong. The transito pulled me over. It just so happened that Carlos was in front of me in his car, and he pulled over too when he saw what had happened. He waited in his car for me. The transito showed me in his official book, which looked like a cartoon drivers´ ed manual, that the maximum speed in a school zone is 20 mph. I asked him where the school was and where the signs were. His answer was basically, “Back there.” Very specific.

I tried to get out of my situation by saying I hadn´t realized it was a school zone, and this was the honest truth. I told him I would be on my best behavior and asked him to let me go this time. He was very insistent, and he knew where he was going with the situation. When I realized he wasn´t going to let me get off, I told him to write me the ticket, but he said that since my car has foreign plates, he was going to hold my license and car permit papers hostage until I paid the fine. I REFUSED to surrender my documents. The mother of a good friend of mine is Mexican. They took her license once and lost it. She never did get it back. My license is from Massachusetts, and I´ll be damned if I´m going to fly back to Massachusetts to get a new one if some transito loses mine. And I´m sure they won´t be paying for the plane ticket!

I told the transito that I would not give him my documents, but if he would accompany me to the office where I have to pay the fine, I would pay it then and there. But of course, he didn´t want to leave the street where he could pull over more cars and make more money, so our conversation was going nowhere. I would not give him the bribe he was looking for, but he would not let me go until I gave him my documents.

By this time, Carlos had seen that the situation was taking a while and he called me on my cell phone to see if I wanted help. I told him to come over. Well, he only made the situation worse. He immediately started to drop names of important people that he knows in order to scare the transito. He told the transito he was a lawyer and that under the Mexican Constitution, no transito has the right to confiscate my documents. The transito said that he did have the right because my plates were foreign. I have to admit the transito may have been right – that is their policy when someone has foreign plates.

But it could also be true that foreigners are protected under the constitution, and if that is the case, then I certainly didn´t have to give him any documents. In any event, the transito got angry at Carlos and started to write the ticket. Carlos then asked me if I wanted to offer him a bribe. I said no, but that I didn´t want to give him my documents either. So Carlos gave him $200 pesos (we didn´t have a smaller bill…) and we went on our way with the documents.

For me, what it boiled down to is that I didn´t want to entrust this person with my important documents. It was a Friday at 6:30 pm. The office where you pay the fines closed at 7 pm. I also thought it probable that the transito would go directly home from his post and not even hand over the documents he had confiscated until Monday. That would give him a whole weekend to lose them. And without my license, I´d have to make an unexpected, expensive trip to Boston to get a new license. Furthermore, without my car papers, I´d be driving illegally and they could confiscate my car. No way, José! Perhaps this seems an excuse, but once you see a transito you will understand – these guys do not inspire you to trust in their responsibility and good nature.

This particular transito seemed miffed as well that I didn´t offer him money at first. I didn´t want to contribute to the cycle of corruption. But I also didn´t want to suffer personal expenses to be a martyr for a cause. I was trying to be realistic. After my third encounter with a transito, I´m actually starting to believe that bribing a transito, even a particularly repugnant one, may be the lesser of all evils. Here´s why:

Here in Mexico, when you are the party responsible for causing a car accident, the Transitos fine you for blocking the flow of traffic (as if you did it on purpose!). Well, when I had my minor accident, I was at fault. I rear ended the car in front of me. Once again, I did not want to offer a bribe, but it was the same dilemma all over again. The police officer wanted to take my documents. Carlos eventually took matters into his own hands and started negotiating with the transito so that he would accept a bribe. Carlos has a way with people, and he ended up talking to the transito for over 20 minutes. He actually had the nerve to ask the transito how much he earned in a month. It was about $400 dollars. A month. The guy had 2 kids. There is no way you can support a family in Monterrey on $400 a month. And this is the kicker. Carlos wanted to offer the transito about $15 because that was all we had on us. The transito wanted something over $25. We had to get him down to a lower price or I´d have to surrender my documents. As Carlos was trying to get him to come down, he said to Carlos, “Man, don´t take me wrong, but as Transitos we pray to God that there will be accidents so we can make a buck.” That shocked me. What an awful thing to say, and what an even worse thing to think!

But this line got me thinking – Who is really at fault here? These guys depend on bribes as a way of living. Really, the situation of a transito in Mexico is similar to that of a waitress in the States. Both earn next to nothing and live off tips or bribes. The government that pays the Transitos urges the Mexican people to end bribery and corruption in Mexico, yet the same government won´t pay these officials enough for them to live as human beings! I´m not saying that offering a bribe is right, but when these people are literally depending on your bribe to live, it makes you wonder if human decency and the right to earn a living should affect our concept and interpretation of what is right.

I have finally come to the conclusion, whether it be right or wrong, that I will continue to bribe Transitos if need be until I can sell my car and buy a Mexican one. That way, I will be able to let them ticket me without them confiscating any of my documents. I came into Mexico wanting to help change it. I still want to change it. But the country itself has weakened me. They make it so hard for you to do the right thing, and it´s equally as hard to know what the right thing is. There is no black and white here in Mexico; everything seems to fall in the gray area. Corruption is bad, but where is the real problem? The transito? Or the big, corrupt government that milks the little guy for all the hard work he´s worth and then pays him too little to provide for his family?

If anyone has a feasible solution to this dilemma, please let me in on it. I´m near exasperation!

The post To bribe or not to bribe? appeared first on MexConnect.

About three months ago, I was at the mall with Carlos. It was a Sunday like any other; we were simply out for a stroll around the shopping center. Carlos always goes to the pet store to look at the dogs, birds, cats, and any weird animal or reptile they may have in captivation. I have always hated pet stores because I don’t like to think how the animals are treated. How can they be well taken care of if there are hundreds of animals in the store to watch? Plus, I think that in the States, pet stores have a bad reputation for selling sickly dogs with emotional issues. Usually, when Carlos goes in the pet store, I wait outside for him. I think I had set foot in this pet store only once before this particular Sunday. For some reason, this time I followed Carlos in the store.

I made a beeline for the dogs, since they are the only animals that interest me. And then I saw it- a puppy Airedale Terrier. She was a ball of black fur nestled in the corner of her cage. The poor little thing looked sad and left out by the other dogs in her cage. I immediately turned to Carlos and tried to explain to him that this was breed of dog I had during my childhood. I had been looking for an Airedale in Mexico for some time, although not really with the intention of buying one since I was still living with my in-laws.

Carlos had never seen or heard of an Airedale terrier before, so he was pushing for a Lab or a Golden Retriever. However, when he saw this adorable little puppy with her droopy ears and tiny little beard, he also fell in love with her. While I was going on and on about how adorable the puppy was, the sales lady noticed my excitement and asked us if we wanted to hold her. At first I said no because I knew that if I held that puppy, I would have to take it home with me. But I couldn’t resist and I finally asked to hold the pup. Of course I wanted to buy her the second I held her in my arms!

The one very large detail that had to be worked out before I bought the dog was where I was going to put it. I suspected that this would not be my one and only problem because of the dog, but it was the first obstacle to overcome in order to bring home my puppy. I resisted the urge to buy the dog on the spot and decided to take a walk around the mall to think about it. I called my mother-in-law from my cell-phone to ask her permission. She said it was ok, but started to say something else when the phone cut off. I had run out of money on my phone card. Finally, after talking it over with Carlos and making him promise up and down that he would help me take care of the dog, we decided to buy the Airedale.

Since I have had Airedales before, I know a little bit about training them. I knew that I would need a kennel for her. This also solved my problem of where to put the dog. I remembered when my sister-in-law brought home a Great Dane puppy. She left it alone all night in the garage, and it cried and howled the whole night. In the morning, my mother-in-law got a rude surprise when she went out for the paper. The whole main door had been scratched up by the puppy. The puppy was gone that very same day, given away to a family my sister-in-law didn’t even know. So, after witnessing this experience, I knew I would have to leave the dog in the cage to sleep and when no one was around, but I didn’t mind since this is a good way to housetrain a puppy.

The first few days with the puppy were uneventful. She immediately came to love Carlos and me. We slipped into a routine. Carlos watched the dog during the day, and I took her out at night. At first, she howled when we left her in the cage, but she adapted in just two days and never howled again. I took her out roughly every two hours at night for the first week: 12:30am, 2:30am and 5:30 am. It was exhausting and even a bit scary since I was out in the street alone. Thank God this schedule did not last. The puppy quickly learned to control herself, and when my mother-in-law found out about my late-night trips outside with the dog, she put a stop to it. She said it was too dangerous.

One day I asked my sister-in-law if she would mind taking the dog out just once before she left the house for the day. She is a self-proclaimed dog lover and the only one in the family besides Carlos and I who can be bothered with a dog. She agreed. Later I found out she complained to Carlos that she thought it was cruel that we had the dog in a cage. By this time I had bought a book on Airedale Terriers for Carlos in Spanish so that he could read a bit about what I consider to be dog culture. Luckily, I had won him over to my side, and he realized that what his sister was saying was not necessarily true. I had won my first battle against Mexican dog culture, or the lack of it.

Here in Mexico, as far as I’m concerned, there is no dog culture. Our next door neighbor had a dog that I actually NEVER saw. I had lived next door to this dog for almost a year before I found out that they had given it away for some reason. I never once saw them take it out for a walk. They fed it only table scraps, including food that my mother-in-law sent over for the dog. It would howl all night long and wake me up in the morning. Heartworm pills are unheard of here, not because they don’t exist, but because no one even knows that this is a threat to a dog. I cannot even begin to count how many Mexicans have told me that their dog was poisoned to death. I wonder how many of these “poisoned” dogs actually died of heartworm or some other parasite or infection.

When we bought the dog, I immediately brought her to be vaccinated and bathed, and I bought her toys, heartworm pills, tick and flea repellant pills, and Eukanuba dog food. Carlos nearly choked when he found out how much the dog food cost (almost $60 for a 35 pound bag here in Mexico), but he didn’t put up a fight. Our next problem however, was a major one. The funny thing is, until we bought the dog, I had never really seen any major cultural differences between Carlos and me. But thanks to Lexi, the Airedale, we fought a lot about the role the dog would play in the family.

After we had had the dog for about a month, we moved into our new house. My idea was the keep the dog in her kennel when we weren’t home, but let her out in spurts throughout the day when we were there so that she could get used to the house and we could housetrain her. Here in Mexico, no one keeps their dog inside the house. Carlos’s family had had dogs before, but they always lived outside. It was very difficult for me to break Carlos of the idea that letting a dog live in the house is completely, entirely, 100% unhygienic. I understand his point. I would never let a typical Mexican dog in my house either, since they are rarely bathed and almost always infested with parasites! But a well-cared for, groomed, trained dog is not a serious health threat. I tried to reason with Carlos. If people all over the United States have dogs in their houses, and people in Europe even let dogs into their teeny tiny apartments, it couldn’t be totally unhygienic. I explained it was more a matter of culture than cleanliness. He still resisted, but I was pretty determined to win this battle.

When we moved into our house, the first thing the dog did was pee on the floor. I tried to explain to Carlos that this, too, was normal. She was marking her territory. Not to mention, we had suddenly changed her surroundings on her. She was still a puppy, and she didn’t know what she was doing. But Carlos was furious! I couldn’t believe he would be so angry and disgusted over a little bit of dog pee. I honestly didn’t understand what was so bad about it. She hadn’t peed on a rug or anything, so I calmly wiped it up with a paper towel and a spray disinfectant. Done. No big deal. I put the dog in the cage, but every time I took her out that day she peed on the floor. Luckily, I was able to wipe it up before Carlos noticed. At the end of the day, he remarked that the dog hadn’t been so bad after all. I just agreed. I had a secret, but I decided to keep it for the sake of the dog. I didn’t want her to be immediately relegated to the back yard for the rest of her dog life.

Lexi quickly learned not to pee in the house, and my secret was never found out. Carlos was coming around. He seemed to actually enjoy having her in the house. But then, one day, it happened. The dog got a little too close to our brand new sofa. Her tooth caught hold of part of the fabric towards the bottom of the couch. When we saw her and yelled “NO!” she immediately let go of the fabric, but not before her tooth had pulled on one of the threads and left it hanging out. Carlos was furious. He spanked the dog on the bum pretty hard, and she went skidding off, not understanding why her “Dad” had gotten so angry with her. Then Carlos got angry at me for letting her near the sofa. He went upstairs and refused to finish his breakfast or come down until I had put the dog back in her cage – where she belonged. At this point, I was very angry that he had hit the dog, and I was willing to let him stew about what he had done upstairs. I threw away the rest of his breakfast and proceeded to play with the dog. I realized that what she did was wrong, but she had always been very respectful of the sofa. We managed to tell her “NO!” when she actually had her mouth on the sofa fabric, and this was really all we could do. Hitting a dog after the fact is completely ineffective.

Later, Carlos came down and we talked about it. I promised to watch her more carefully, and he agreed to give her another chance in the house. Since then, Lexi has behaved very well, and Carlos loves her more than I could have hoped. He has really come around from the typical Mexican “dog-lover” to what I would consider a humane dog-lover. He takes her for walks, buys her toys and treats, and loves to cuddle with her. Whereas this might seem like something insignificant, the dog has been a symbol of cultural differences that exist between us. We have been able to get through these differences with a lot of patience and a lot of talking. One of the things that finally helped me to win Carlos over was that I think he finally realized that I have made an impressive effort to learn to live in his culture. I have adapted in every possible way that does not go against my conscience. But I explained to him that even though Lexi is a dog, she is a living being, and you shouldn’t buy a dog if you aren’t willing to walk it, feed it decent food, entertain it, and keep it healthy. I won this battle because in truth, Carlos has won just about every other since I came to Mexico. So if you have a cultural issue of your own, fight for what you think is right. You have to choose your battles, but if you use the right tactics, anything is possible. Pretty soon, I might even have Lexi sleeping on her king-size dog bed in the same room as us….

The post A dog’s life appeared first on MexConnect.

One of my first questions upon arriving to Monterrey was, “How do people survive here?” Salaries are so embarrassingly low for the majority of the population, and the cost of living is sky high. So how do families have enough money to pay rent, buy a car, eat, pay for private school, and provide designer shirts for their kids? I still haven’t entirely figured out the answer or I would be starting a family and buying myself some decent clothes. The truth is I barely squeak by every month. I have, however, seen a number of factors that seem to come into play in Mexican family economics. Here they go:

1) I could be wrong, but it seems to me that a large number of people in Monterrey own their own homes. In fact, people may live shacks, but homelessness is rare. Why is this? Well, selling one’s house and moving to a bigger and better one doesn’t seem to happen that often, so people are not perpetually paying a high mortgage. Acquiring land is expensive, at least in Monterrey, but labor and materials are still relatively cheap, so custom building a house is not unthinkable. Furthermore, houses often are passed down through families as inheritances. Young married couples in Monterrey, however, are increasingly going into debt to buy houses. The trend here is towards living in neighborhoods where all the houses look basically the same. And the lack of land in the city center has young couples living far far far away from their jobs and their parents.

2) Young people live with their parents until they are married, and sometimes even after. This helps them to be able to build or buy their own houses and not borrow heavily. In my family, room and board was free until I graduated from college. My mom still receives me in her house as a guest, but once I graduated, if I had planned to live there, I would have been expected to help with expenses by paying a small rent. Here, I have friends who are in their 30s and still live with their parents for free. They are not married, do not have kids, and have no bills to pay whatsoever. If they work, their entire income goes towards buying clothes, a nice car, or whatever else is the latest status symbol. Some people, I suppose, actually save for the future, but many also max out various credit cards since no one has taught them what it’s like to pay bills.

3) It’s hard to get started out in Mexico. I had the advantage of living with my in-laws for a year and a half. I would have liked to have moved out and established my independence, but once I moved in, my boyfriend told me that it would be rude for me to move out. His family might have been offended. I found it offensive to be mooching off them and not be paying for food or rent (They would never accept my money for anything.), but I decided to heed the advice of my boyfriend so as not to cause any rifts or problems with my future family.

Yet even despite the help of having lived with my in-laws, things have been a struggle. We managed to save enough for a down-payment on a house, but our salaries were hardly high enough to pay for the house, our cars, food, and utilities after moving in. We wanted to sell one of the cars, but Monterrey is a very difficult city to move in without a car, and my husband and I work at completely opposite ends of the city. We struggle to get by and we both work an extra job on Saturday mornings to make ends meet.

4) Salaries are generally abysmally low. Part of the reason that it’s so hard to survive in Mexico is the low salaries. I made a decent amount as a teacher because I was part of an international program. If they had hired me to teach on the same terms as a Mexican, I would have made about half of what I made as an American. Plus, I had health insurance and gas money. My husband has a fairly well-paying job for the work experience he has, we have not been able to save any money whatsoever. I refuse to live with his family any longer (Otherwise, why did I get married?), I don’t have a house to inherit in Mexico, and I´m not willing to rob or resort to corruption to make a decent buck! I was brought up to be thrifty, but here, it doesn’t seem to help much. We still can’t save money. We would like to have a family, but that’s on hold until at least we can afford the monthly doctor’s appointments. Paying for the birth is a whole other story.

5) Some families hardly ever see each other. My husband and I are not the only ones struggling to get by and working two jobs. In fact, we are very lucky because we still see each other at night and on Sundays. I have a very good friend who is a secretary. Her husband is a doctor. They have two small children. He works two jobs in two different hospitals, and she works from 7:30-4:30 sometimes 5:00. They almost never see each other because of their schedules. But they do it because they have to in order to survive and provide for their two children. One day I happened to find out how much this wonderful secretary made: I almost died of shock, disgust, and embarrassment at how much I made in comparison for the same schedule but as an international teacher. She made roughly $3 an hour or $240 over 15 days. How she can provide for her children on that salary, I have no idea.

6) If you work for the government and have no morals, you can become rich quickly. Getting directly to the point, I know a young man that was assigned an important position in the government. Somehow he managed to steal more than a million dollars from the government and put it in his pocket. Then he quit the job and kept the money. The last time I saw him he was driving a pretty darn nice Jaguar.

7) Saving for retirement seems to be an idea that has not yet become popular in Mexico. I have seen a some families that have nothing saved for the future. They spend their income as fast as it comes in and live paycheck to paycheck. This is probably not a good strategy even if you are 30 years old, but when you are pushing 60, I imagine it is a damn good thing to have something saved for the future, especially since a good number of people here do not have good medical insurance. I think these people that have nothing saved are relying on their children to save them. I can understand this to a certain extent-children should give something back after everything you give them when they are growing up-but it seems unfair to me to slam one’s children with such a heavy responsibility. Perhaps they will be starting a family of their own when the parents or in-laws need financial help. Perhaps they will not have enough to help. I don’t know, but I don’t understand this mentality as a parent of not planning ahead for retirement. I’m not saying it’s always the case, but I’ve seen it enough that it worries me.

I simply do not understand Mexican economics. I wish I did because I would probably succeed in comprehending Mexican culture to a greater depth. In the meantime, I’m still trying (rather unsuccessfully) to save money for the future. I think Mexicans have the same “American” dream as we do: they want to buy a nice house, have kids, and be successful as much as any American does. But now that I’ve seen how hard it is to achieve that dream here, I appreciate the opportunities available to the middle class in the United States all the more. I hope that some day Mexico will be a more hospitable place for those hoping to achieve their “Mexican” dream.

The post Mexican family economics appeared first on MexConnect.

While in Mexico I have learned many things, some of them nice and some of them not so nice. Most of what I have “learned” just makes me chuckle, like the time my mother-in-law told me I would get anemia if I didn’t eat an egg for breakfast. My contribution this month is a stream-of-consciousness list of what I have learned while here in Mexico. I would love to hear from you about some of your own “learning” experiences.

1) Eating watermelon before you go to bed will give you a serious case of indigestion. This fruit contains a ton of water, and water is hard to digest. So make sure you only eat watermelon in the morning and never before swimming.

2) Your face will freeze if it is warm inside and you go outside to a freezing 45 degree F. Monterrey winter’s day without bundling up every part of your body from head to toe. Why is it that my face never froze when I was in Boston? I wonder, can my face freeze if I stick it too far into the fridge?

3) Having a dog in your house is unclean, unhygienic, disgusting, and it might kill you. Dogs should never be within a 20 mile radius of babies because they might infect the baby with some extremely dangerous disease. You should wear gloves when you bathe a dog because, again, you could die.

4) Dogs do not need to eat dog food. Any old table scraps will do. After all, it’s only a dog.

5) Dogs do not need to be walked, petted, talked to, soothed, or even acknowledged. They exist only to guard the mysterious treasures in people´s garages.

6) Do not give money to the men in the derelict horse-drawn carriages who pass through your neighborhood looking to collect garbage. They simply collect the trash and then burn it nearby. In my case, for example, I often have to close my windows in the middle of the night because there are clandestine garbage-burners outside my window! I wonder what kind of health and environmental effects that has.

7) Why save money when you can spend everything you have? You can always depend on friends and family to bail you out of any situation.

8) If someone makes you angry, you can always get your buddies together and beat the !#$% out of the offender.

9) Why move out after you graduate from college or become responsible for yourself when your parents can take care of you until you are 40?

10) School is for socializing and class is for putting on your makeup.

11) Books are great for decorating a shelf in the living room. They look really elegant. Just don’t ask me any questions about them because I don’t know what they are about.

12) Having bars on your windows are a great way to keep burglars out. It’s also a really effective way of trapping you inside.

13) Appearances of normality must be kept at all costs. No one must know if your family is scandalous. No one must know if you made a mistake. Pregnancies outside of marriage must be covered up by an immediate wedding. Divorces are unheard of because all Mexican families are as happy as can be.

14) Americans are obnoxious, rich, immoral people who give no importance whatsoever to family. Oh, and everyone there gets divorced because of infidelity. EVERYONE.

15) If you want to earn a decent wage in Mexico you have manifold options: become the CEO of Televisa; turn yourself into the next Luis Miguel; sell drugs; become a member of the congress and rob the country blind; or start a small business that is lucky enough to take off. Do not become a teacher. And definitely do not become a clandestine garbage burner.

16) If you want to keep your car in good shape, take it in for weekly tune-ups and oil changes. Or better yet, keep it off the road all together.

17) Potholes the size of small cities are only minor obstacles. Besides, slaloming down the street to avoid potholes keeps you on your toes.

18) If your car has foreign license plates and a Transito (traffic cop) signals for you to pull over, pretend you didn´t see him and keep driving. Just get the hell out of there.

19) Tip the garbage man. Tip the bagger at the grocery store.

20) When it rains in Monterrey, roads turn into slip´n´slides, and flash flooding is not unheard of. If inside the hood of your car gets wet and you are stuck in a river of sludge, find someone with a truck to push your car out of the water. Then wait 2 hours for your car to dry out. It will probably turn on now. However, be warned that the water might have washed rocks into where the windows go up and down. Your horn might have gotten wet and might not work anymore. The interior of your car could smell like swamp from having had to sit in it while you were drenched to the bone with that sludge water. And, you may never want to drive in the rain again.

21) You don´t need an invitation to drop in on a good friend or family member.

22) Garages can be used for something good other than storing junk: parties!

23) Carne asada (steak on the grill) is one of life’s finest pleasures, especially when you are accompanied by family and friends.

24) Chile can be combined with just about everything on earth, except maybe diary products. Spicy tamarind candies look like “poo on a stick” according to my 23 year old brother…

25) Sugary chili powder can be sprinkled on fruits like melon, papaya, mango, oranges, or pineapple (to name just a few possibilities). A saltier, more powdery chili powder can be added to corn on the cob along with mayonnaise, cream, and cheese to form a disgusting sounding, but delicious tasting snack.

26) Hair dyes and chemicals are stronger here. My hair was fried for more than a month after putting some highlights in my dirty-blonde hair.

27) Mexicans are fiercely loyal to their country, and while there are many people who emigrate, most would never even consider leaving Mexico for more than a short vacation.

28) Norteño music puts the tuba to use like no one else but the Germans can.

29) The music of Vicente Fernandez, Pedro Infante, and Juan Gabriel bridges generations of Mexicans. Their popularity in Mexico is akin to finding Frank Sinatra music on the stereo at a high school party.

30) You can find Mariachi bands on call at just about any hour of the night on weekends in the center of Monterrey. You never know when you might have use for one.

31) You do not eat the leaf, corn husk, or any other wrapping found holding your tamales together.

32) Mexican toll highways are a dream. The volume of traffic is fairly low there are an astoundingly low number of potholes, or tunnels to China in the roads.

33) The best way to drink a beer is as a michelada, which is beer mixed with lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, chile, and salt.

34) It´s not impolite in Mexico to call someone and then demand to know who answered the phone on the other side when they pick up. I mean, after all, maybe you don´t want to say hello to just anyone.

35) Mexicans are ants-in-your-pants dancers – they are full of action and never seem to tire!

36) Beans, Beans truly are the magical fruit…

37) You mustn’t eat something cold when you are sick or your throat hurts. A cold Coke or an ice cream can make you even sicker.

38) You shouldn’t open your bedroom window-even a crack-if you are sick. The fresh air could kill you.

39) Thank God for air conditioners.

40) El amor entra por la panza… Love enters through a person’s stomach. I don’t really think it’s the whole Latin lover thing that attracts gringas to Mexican men – I think it’s the food that they know how to prepare!!

The post Odds And Ends, Or Forty Things Everyone Should Know appeared first on MexConnect.

I can think of nothing more torturous than driving in Mexico. A free for all with life-threatening vehicles is not my idea of fun or adventure, but Mexicans seem to love it. When I first started driving in Mexico, I nearly died every time I turned the corner. It was petrifying. I was as careful as could be, and yet, whoooooooom! A car would always come flying out of nowhere like a bat out of hell and I would slam on my brakes, barely avoiding ending up injured, mangled, or worse.

Everything, from the way the streets are set up to the traffic laws, seemed to be different from back home. I thought I would be ok in Monterrey since Boston drivers have one of the worst reputations in America, perhaps after New York City cabbies. But “returnos” (turn arounds), frontage roads, a general lack of urban planning, and an extreme reluctance to be in the right lane for highway exits create an environment so adverse to safe driving that even Boston has no comparison.

My first month in Monterrey, I witnessed some of the most gruesome traffic accidents I had ever seen. I saw a car sandwiched between two others, all three parallel to each other. The cars on both sides of the middle car had changed lanes at the same time, and both had not seen the car that was already where they both wanted to be. Impossible, I thought, for someone to drive that carelessly, but the poor car in the middle knew first hand that this is, in fact, possible.

At 7:00AM every morning (and regularly throughout the day) Monterrey is treated to a run-down of all the accidents in the metropolitan area by the ” Reportero del aire.” This is my least favorite thing to hear on the radio when I am in my car. But at least it does inspire me to slow down and drive as safely as possible.

However, perhaps the worst thing for me has been the change in my driving. I used to be an extremely responsible driver. I drove the 5 miles over the speed limit that the police allow you to get away with, and that was it. I respected traffic laws and always made a complete stop at stop signs. And yet now, after just 7 months of driving in Monterrey, I drive horribly. To some extent, this transformation was necessary. If I had continued to drive as I did back home, I would also be in danger. You need to learn to become somewhat aggressive here or people run all over you, also creating danger. You need to be extremely aware here, always expecting that if people can cut you off, they will. You need to predict the movement of the cars around you. But I have unwillingly become as indifferent to traffic laws as the rest of the cars around me. Mexican behavior tends to rub off on you after a short while.

This obviously needs to change, but it’s hard to be the “anal” American who heeds traffic laws when no one around you does. You end up exasperated and angry all the time. So you have to learn to let go a bit, but herein lies the dilemma. Should you try to change Mexico by setting a good example or should you resign yourself to the culture and not try to impose a culture of consciousness?

I suppose that is for each individual to decide, but in the meantime, here is an impromptu Mexican driver’s ed manual to help you with your driving. You might want to try praying as well…

“Stop” Signs

1. “Stop” Signs are easily recognized by the familiar red octagon, with “alto” written in the middle in white letters.
2. The Spanish word “alto” means “stop,” except while driving your car, where “alto” means close your eyes and floor the accelerator just as you cross the intersection.
3. A complete stop is not necessary at an “alto;” Just use peripheral vision to check if someone is coming.
4. If, out of your peripheral vision, you do indeed spot an oncoming car, remember to accelerate. You will probably beat that car through the intersection anyway. It’s all about not backing down, just like a good game of chicken.

“Yield” Signs

1. “Yield” Signs are upside down, white triangles with a red border. Inside it says ” cede el paso” in miniscule letters.
2. Yield signs might as well not exist. They mean the same as stop signs – nothing.
3. Should you be a member of the traffic with the right of way, do not let anyone with a yield enter the traffic. After all, YOU have the right of way. They can wait all night…
4. If you have a yield and are trying to merge with the flow of traffic because you were absolutely unable to “red rover” your way over into the oncoming line of cars, you should roll down your window and ask someone with the right of way to let you in. If they refuse (they will), swear angrily at them and cut them off anyway. Hey, at least you tried to be polite.

Traffic lights

1. Traffic lights are the most respected form of controlling traffic. Most drivers do stop at a red light, although not until the last minute of course.
2. Before turning red, the green light flashes for 3 seconds, turns yellow for an instant, and then changes to red. That one second-yellow light means accelerate while you still can…
3. Always check for oncoming cars when your light has just turned green. There are usually a few stragglers that need some extra time to clear out of the intersection.
4. On the other hand, if you accelerated at the yellow light, you should check for those on the other side that are gunning to go even before their light turns green. Mexico is replete with overanxious drivers.

Crosswalks

1. As a pedestrian, cross whenever and wherever you can; if you wait for a crosswalk, you will get where you’re going when hell freezes over.
2. It’s perfectly ok to cross major highways on foot at a snail’s pace, especially if you are wearing dark clothes. It’s even more fun than Frogger on your old Atari!
3. If you are in your car and there are people jaywalking, toot your horn numerous times, swear up a storm, and swerve around them at the last minute.

Speed Limit

1. The speed limit is almost never posted.
2. The speed limit is strictly enforced when, and only when, traffic cops (Transitos) feel the need to supplement their income.
3. Any speed is acceptable as long as you can get away with it. If you didn’t get away with it, pull out your wallet, smile sweetly, and say, “There must be some way we could take care of this, Officer?”

One-way Streets

1. One-way streets are not strictly one-way. If it is easier to get where you are going by using the one-way street, by all means go ahead; traffic laws aren’t meant to inconvenience anyone. Just cede the right of way to cars going in the correct direction.
2. One-way streets are not often labeled as such. So how do you know if a street is one-way? The direction of parked cars may or may not help. Therefore, just watch for cars honking wildly at you.
3. Some streets may suddenly change from two-way to one-way without more warning than a feeble little sign indicating you should turn off onto another street.

Parking

1. The law of the jungle applies to parking in Mexico. Parallel parking skills are a must. If you do not know how, practice before driving in Mexico or you may be forced to drive around for all eternity looking for a place to park your car.
2. Handicapped parking signs are for decoration only.
3. Sidewalks are great places to park.
4. Double parking is no problem. The others can wait. You are probably busier and more important than they are anyway.

Passing

1. You may pass on the left or right. It is not necessary to use a directional to alert other drivers of your intentions. They should be looking where you are going.
2. Weaving in and out of traffic is allowed only if you are the owner of a bright red Corvette. Do not attempt such maneuvers in any other make or model.
3. It is fun to pass a line of traffic, cut in front of the first car, and then go excessively slow. It makes traffic back up for miles!!!
4. If you are in the high speed lane and want to pass the geezer in front of you doing 30mph, flash your lights at him. If he still doesn’t clear out, try the horn. As a last resort, pass him on the right and shake your fist at him as you drive by.

Changing lanes (see also passing)

1. What lanes? When there are no lines painted on the street, make your own space!
2. Four lane highways are actually wide enough for five cars.
3. Yes, every car has a blind spot, but a quick glance in the trusty rearview or side mirror is enough to justify a lane change at 70mph. Don’t bother to look over your shoulder. You could pull a muscle.

Seatbelts

1. Seatbelt laws have finally made it to Mexico. However, seatbelts are worn more to avoid tickets than to provide protection. Back seat passengers do not wear seatbelts. Ever.
2. If you are re-entering Mexico from the United States, make sure your seatbelt is fastened on the American side. As soon as you reach the “Welcome to Mexico” sign, rip off your belt. You are freeeeeeeeeeeee again!
3. Obscene numbers of people can pile into compact cars. There may be more people than seatbelts, but it’s not like you were going to use them anyway! Just duck if you see a “Transito”!
4. It is common practice to cradle a small child in your arms if you are sitting in the passenger’s seat. After all, accidents never happen to you, and your loving grip is tighter than a seatbelt anyway…

“La Mordida” (Bribes)

1. Corruption runs deep. You can buy your way out of ANYTHING in Mexico.
2. But… also read my post “To bribe or not to bribe?“

Driving in the Rain

1. Due to the fact that Mexico skimps on road materials, driving in rainy conditions can be treacherous. In fact, even dry roads often present miserable conditions.
2. Leave 100 car lengths in front of you when it is rainy. You can brake easier on ice than on wet Mexican roads.
3. If you liked Slip ‘n’ Slide as a kid, you might enjoy driving in the rain.
4. Maybe you can’t afford a boat ride down the Amazon, but you can go for a free simulation in Mexico when it rains. Don’t be surprised if even major city avenues are flooded as high as car windows.

BONUS SECTION:
Getting to know your horn: six uses

1) “Get the HELL out of my way!”

This is useful on a daily basis. There is always someone in your way in Mexico. Just give a long, forceful beep until the car in front lets you by. If he refuses to move, you can complement the blaring horn with your high beams, simultaneously flooding the enemy car with blazing light and grating sound. The jerk is sure to surrender.

2) “Watch out! I’m passing you, and you’d better not cut me off, buddy!”

Due to the fact that no Mexican driver can be trusted to be responsible, horns are often used to warn slower cars in other lanes that you will be passing them. Given the refusal to acknowledge blind spots and a general apathy to checking for other cars before changing lanes, tooting your horn as a warning of your whereabouts makes sense. It could save your life. So go ahead! Lean on that horn!

3) “Oh my God, we’re gonna crash!”

This one’s universal: when in danger, lay on it! Mexican reflexes are remarkably fast, so you may be able to save yourself from disaster after all.

4) “You aren’t bothering me, but you’re an idiot anyway!

The moron on the other side of the road may not be in your way, and he might not be putting your life in danger, but he sure is driving like an idiot. Beep at him! Let him know how you feel! If you don’t beep at him, someone else will.

5) “You are hot stuff!”

For men: horns are a wonderful way to show the sexy woman in the car next to you that you think she is HOT. Let her know; she will surely be flattered. Maybe she will even stop so she can meet you.

6) “Hey! I know you!”

Toot toot, a friendly salute! This one’s not that rare, but the light “beep beep” tends to get drowned out by longer, louder, more forceful “BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPS.”

NOTE: This manual was going to include some offensive language commonly used by Mexicans while driving, but at second thought, I thought it was just too offensive. I don’t want anyone actually using the words to involuntarily find himself the target of a street brawl…Besides, you’ll pick it up fast enough on your own just being here!

The post Mexican driver’s ed, a Monterrey perspective appeared first on MexConnect.

In July 2002, I moved from Boston, Massachusetts, to Monterrey, Mexico, with the intention of remaining there for the rest of my life. It was an “international love affair” that brought me there. But I have had my doubts. Is my love for this man strong enough to keep me happy in a foreign country for the rest of my life? Will I be able to adapt to my new life and my new home? Will I be able to find a good Greek salad in Monterrey?

My transition has not been easy, but I have learned more in these five months than in my whole four years at an Ivy League college. I wish that I had known someone who had been through something similar, who could advise me, or at least tell me more about what actually living in Mexico is like. I hope that this column will serve as that “someone” who can give advice and simply share experiences about adjusting to life in Mexico. I will include both serious, practical information and anecdotal stories about my encounters with Mexican culture and society.

• Jan 2003 – Who am I, and How did I end up in Mexico?
• Feb 2003 – Who Let the Dogs Out? A guide to crossing the border (both ways!) as painlessly as possible.
• Mar 2003 – Mexican Driver’s Ed
• April 2003 – Latin Lovers or Macho Men? – Mexican Machismo through the eyes of a Young, American Woman
• May 2003 – Part 1: Forget John Malkovich. – Being Amy Kirkcaldy: The 5.5 dimensions of Cross-Cultural Love
• June 2003 – Part 2: Forget John Malkovich. – Being Amy Kirkcaldy: The 5.5 dimensions of Cross-Cultural Love
• July/August 2003 – So You Want to Marry a Mexican? 5 Things they never told you…
• September 2003 – Crossing Over: Embracing My Mexican Life
• September 2003 – Special Guest article: A Bonding of Families and Countries – An International Wedding. A Mother’s perspective.
• October 2003 – “Mamitis:” When Adult Birds STILL Haven’t Flown From the Nest…
• November 2003 – Some Like it Hot….
• December 2003 – An Unexpected Visitor…
• February 2004 – A Dog’s Life
• March 2004 – Buying a Home in Mexico
• April 2004 – To Bribe or Not to Bribe? Traffic, Transitos, and Trying Times
• May 2004 – Odds and Ends, OR Forty Things Everyone Should Know.
• June 2004 – By the Way…
• July/August 2004 – Mexifaminomics: Mexican Family Economics
• December 2004 – Who Would Have Thought?

Amy Gray Kirkcaldy lives and works in Monterrey, Mexico.
When not teaching or learning how to dance cumbias, she is learning to live with her new husband Carlos and his family.

The post Learning to live in Mexico – index appeared first on MexConnect.