That Ex-Pat Thing
When I moved to Cancun I didn’t know anyone here. My husband’s brother’s ex-wife’s brother supposedly lives here, but we were too lazy (or confused) to actually call him when we arrived here.
Even though we CHOSE to move here it still sucked at first. I spent the first year trying not to break down every time something went wrong. And something went wrong every 5 minutes.
I’ve always considered myself a pretty flexible person, I have my uptight moments, but I embrace new experiences and love travel. So how come I hated Cancun so much?
Well, it’s simple really. It sucked. The real estate agent we rented our house from sucked (and lied and lied and lied) and ripped us off too. And even though we paid all our bills on time the electric company cut our power twice, once for two weeks. Ditto with the water company who cut the water for 3 months to punish us for the previous tenant’s lack of payment. We couldn’t get a phone line run into the house because the previous renter had an outstanding bill of $1200 usd. We couldn’t get cable because the neighborhood was too new and wasn’t wired for it yet. We didn’t have internet access and couldn’t get it. The only nearby internet cafe had spyware ridden slapped together garbage machines that were slower than shit and crashed every 5 minutes. And not only that the owner of that internet cafe, a middle aged, portly gentleman, was in love with my husband and that made it pretty strange to hang out there.
Not too mention that when you get away from the hotel zone a lot of Cancun is UGLY! There’s garbage that no one picks up. The streets make no sense. There are half finished and aesthetically compromised buildings all over. The storm drains don’t! The streets are full of potholes. And the local government is perpetually broke.
People here are so paranoid about money, and are often so desperate, that if you don’t pay in cash you don’t exist! And even if you do pay them that doesn’t actually have a lot of bearing on whether they will show up and provide whatever service you hired them for…
Mexico sucks!
But somewhere along the way I started making friends with other ex-pats. My friends have lived through this shit too. They’ve all had to adjust to the inefficiencies here, the “Mexican time” and the corruption and the financial paranoia and the lack of good peanut butter and the neighbors who think it’s ok to have outdoor (amplified) karaoke parties that start at 1 a.m. on a Tuesday and all the overprice garbage they sell in the stores here. My friends get it.
And somehow that is almost enough. Having people around who can relate to how this place tortures you almost makes you think you can survive in this mess…
…until of course your friends start leaving and moving to Portland, OREGON (I’m not shouting, REALLY) where there are STARBUCKS and health food stores and street signs that are LOGICAL and a post office that doesn’t lose EVERYTHING you give it and where there’s tamari and wasabi and there are yard sales and sale racks in the clothing stores….
Well, at least the weather is nice here (the City of Roses can kiss my ass).
April 7th, 2006 21:28
HA HA HA. Oh, YES, living in the land of the free and the home of the arrogant is FAN-FLIPPING-TASTIC. Today, por ejemplo, I stood in the center of no less than 45 rude, impatient, in-my-personal-space Americans while waiting for my sushi (sin queso, por supuesto), and then on my way out, past the garbage nobody picks up, and the cars parked like sardines, I nearly got in a wreck. Every day that it doesn’t rain, it is freezing cold. The internet goes out all the time, customer service (in my own language, mind you) is NIL, ZERO, ZILCH, and if you prefer to live in the land of sheep, then have I got a country for you!
Cancun is not so bad away from the zh, it’s no worse than downtown Portland, Seattle, LA, Denver… at least in Cancun the hillbillies aren’t arrogant.
And all this complaining from you is just because you MISS me!
April 9th, 2006 19:47
Yes I miss you SILLY! But mostly I just need to complain I think. This place gets to me sometimes, not that I think I’d be happier in the US, I would just complain about different shit.
But please tell me how can we have hillbillies when we ain’t got no hills here?
April 17th, 2006 15:35
“And somehow that is almost enough. Having people around who can relate to how this place tortures you almost makes you think you can survive in this mess…”
Ditto to that! But not only that, it’s like every day is a freakin challenge and by golly gosh, you are not going to lose the challenge! It’s like a game almost….that you have to win!
I don’t think you can win….but certainly, if you keep telling yourself that, anything is possible.