Getting Comfortable In Mexico
Sometimes we talk about returning to live in the U.S. There are lots of reasons why it may make sense at some point. The most compelling one is the idea that my daughter might return to Boulder, Colorado for high school. If she does so I think I’ll want to be “local” for her high school years.
Other reasons to go back are: my husband’s family members who live in Colorado, proper yard sales with expensive stuff for cheap in them, the possibility that I might get a decent web design job that pays gobs of money, springtime in Boulder (which is the best spring anywhere), my good friend Teresa Gail who lives there, the MANY health food stores there, and all the other conveniences that living in the States provides.
But just yesterday I was having breakfast with a close friend who is a gringa, and who has lived in Cancun for over 20 years. We started a discussion about what we dislike about the U.S. and it left me with the realization that the longer I live in Cancun the more comfortable I get. And it’s a soul-soothing, long-term, really lazy, don’t-change-a-thing kind of comfortableness.
We both agreed that one of the things we hate most is linoleum. It’s ugly. If you have it in your house, I’m sorry. My mother likes linoleum, maybe liking it skips a generation?
We also agreed that houses which are made of sticks and get blown flat in hurricanes are pathetic. Houses made of concrete which have wooden-trussed roofs that can blow off are also ick-ville.
The two of us dislike wall-to-wall carpeting also. And we both seriously dissed sterile office buildings that are air-conditioned in summer so you freeze during the best weather of the year. We also dislike the fact that neither of us knows more than a handful of people in the U.S. who save any money, most people both of us know are heavily in debt and are slaves to their jobs.
Then there’s the issue of having seen the U.S. from outside. It will not be easy to go back and be surrounded by people who have not traveled and who do not have any idea how the rest of the world sees their country.
Time will tell whether we decide to go back, but for the moment I’m happy here and not terribly excited about moving back to gringolandia.
