Learning to live in Mexico

We have been here for two months now, and have learned a lot of the ropes of living here. Mind you, we are sure there will be many more lessons to be learned, but we thought we would chronicle them as we come across them.

One of the first lessons we learned was patience when dealing with people who you want to hire for various projects. Innumerable times we have heard that we would be called "tomorrow" or that someone would come to give an estimate, and several weeks later it may happen, or in one case it never did happen. This particular instance had us laughing. We wanted some wrought iron curtain rods, and went to a local fellow who was having a grand opening of a new shop. Let's call him R. R took Nancy's phone number and said he would call the next day. We heard nothing for a week. So Nancy called, and made an appointment for R to come out on "Monday at 3:15". He never came. We went to his store and spoke with him again. He wrote down what we were looking for , and the measurements, and said he would call the next day to give a price. He asked Nancy for her phone number. Nancy spotted her number on a list on his desk and said, "Use that number right there". So he laughed, and said he would, and we have not heard from him yet! The next day we went to a local ironworks and ordered the rods, and got them in two days. Probably the same place R would have gone to.

We had new awnings made to shield both sun and wind on our terrace. After taking measurements, the lady called to make sure she had the right phone number. So we asked when she would be coming up to install. She said, "next week". Four weeks later they came up and installed them! No phone call, they were just suddenly there. (the awnings are beautiful, tho)

Mind you, not all contractors are time-challenged like that. But we are learning that either no one comes, or everyone comes at the same time. Friday we had painters, concrete layers, the maid, and our friends the Almanzas, all at once!

There are a couple of things of note. The craftsmanship is absolutely of top quality. Many of the trades that you can get here are no longer available in the US or only at a very high cost. Because many of the conveniences available in the US are not available here, the craftsmen have talents that are essentially lost, or too costly in the US. For example, painters that can mix paint by eye and match precisely what you are looking for without the aid of a computerized machine. Or how about highly skilled masons and bricklayers, who mix their own cement, cut the stones to size or make a domed ceiling of brick? We have noticed that each trade is typical of many years ago in the US, where you have the master, the journeyman and the apprentice. For example, we had a concrete terrace installed and the apprentice graded the area with a shovel, the journeyman laid the concrete, using a cement mixer, and the master put in the stone steps and gave early morning instructions. It definitely is like the 1950's, and we love it.

Also when you have contractors come in, they give you an estimate and then request a deposit that essentially covers purchase of any materials. Then, they WILL NOT take final payment until the job is complete and you are satisfied. Since this is a cash society, you give them their payment in pesos and invariably they never count it, trusting that you gave the correct amount. They work 8:30 to 5:30 Monday through Friday and then 8:30 until 2:00 pm on Saturday. They are very hard working and very considerate. We are very happy with the work that has been done so far.

The painters finally arrived this last week and have begun cleaning up the walls and painting. The prepping of the walls is messy and time consuming, as they scrape, and dig out and fill any areas they think are not up to par. (Our walls are not sheet rock, they are brick and concrete) These guys are real artists, and our challenge is to keep up with their suggestions for colors. They can view a color, put a large sample on the wall to give you an idea of what it will look like all over. They don't mind doing it over and over. In one case they have given us six samples on the wall for us to decide. Oh, and when we say sample, we mean a swatch about six or more feet wide and ceiling to floor. It isn't just a little chip on the wall. So you can get a good handle on whether you can live with what you thought you wanted. But now we have to decide, and it definitely is not easy. Many of the final decisions we will leave with them because they are true "maestros".

Speaking of a cash society, we enjoy it because our visa account is generally around zero and there never are any checks outstanding to forget about when checking your bank account. The only problem is leaving the house with sufficient cash. Today we went to Walmart and we thought we had plenty of money with us, but when we got to the case register we realized we had barely enough. And it is the rare store that takes credit cards.

Now for the major thing we learned. Utility bills, electric and telephone, are your your responsibility to pay, whether you get the bill or not. Typically the bill is delivered to your house, or in our case, to the front gate. If you don't get your bill on time and are late in paying, they cut your power or telephone off without notice. No grace period. And it will usually cost you a penalty to get it turned back on. Last week we received our first electric bill on a Tuesday, and the power was turned off two days later, and it took five days and many phone calls by different people to get it turned back on. It turns out, when we received the bill, it was already overdue. But we didn't know that. And they didn't care. Now we know that our next bill "should" be here mid-August. Whether we see it or not, we are going down to pay the bill before the end of August. Being without power is not fun!! Oh yeah, you don't ever pay your bills by mail, you go somewhere (maybe a little booth set up in a paint store for a week) to pay it. But many things that we would have paid monthly can be paid annually here, so there are really only a couple of bills to remember.

The other significant thing we have learned is that a large portion of the people we deal with do not speak English. You can get by without Spanish but you are really limiting yourself and what you can get done. And you will never be part of the culture. So we have begun taking Spanish classes with a language school for missionaries. It is three hours a day four or five days a week. There is homework and there are exams!! It is difficult getting back into doing homework again after all these years. However, we anticipate, because of the accelerated rate of this program, that by the end of this calendar year we should be quite fluent in Spanish, at least that is the hope. After being in class for only two weeks we already have been successful in negotiating with various contractors what we wanted done. Our gardener is grateful that we are willing to learn Spanish and has taken it upon himself to help us by expanding our vocabulary as well as perfecting our pronunciation. We find that most people are like that here.

A fascinating and comforting lesson for us is the weather this far South. People generally believe that when you are only 20 degrees North latitude of the equator, that the weather at this time of year would be intolerably hot. We looked at the weather forecast for Lake Camanche in California, where right now they are setting up Survival Camp. It looks like the temperature there will be in the low 100's. In comparison, on our way home from church today around 12:30 pm, the outside temperature was 62 degrees and we are almost 2,000 miles closer to the equator! Go figure. We see another value of cobblestone streets - they focus the water (rivers of it) when it rains.

To give you another glimpse of things going on and views of the area, here are some more pictures for your entertainment.