Today is our official one-year Mexi-versary!! One year ago today, we had just arrived in little La Cruz after driving 2,800 miles from Seattle in our dorky mini van with our dorky pup. Amazing. A whole year! And we didn't give up and run home despite not having a clue what we were/are doing with our lives! Go us!
Annnnd, drum roll, please... We also got our brand, spanking new Temporary Resident Visas renewed today and they're good for three more years! Whoop! Well...MY new card was ready to be picked up today, but the immigration office made an error on Ty's because they forgot to include his work permissions on his card, so he'll have to go back next week and blah, blah, blah.
I was sooooo not looking forward to going back to immigration this month, because the first time around was a huge pain in the booty and like 14 trips to their office in Nuevo. We had no idea what we were doing, we spoke very little Spanish, we didn't know where anything was (where to get photos taken, copies made, etc.) so there was a LOT of trial and error and messing up forms and being Gringo losers in general. But THIS year it was a breeeeeeeze! From start to finish the whole renewal process took like 90 minutes and that's including going to the ATM, to the bank to pay our fees and having copies made and then going back to immigration. You're probably thinking, "Um, do you wanna a gold star, little girl?" But, I'm telling you...when you move to a new country and feel like a bubbling, incompetent idiot and you're failing at the most basic adulting skills for several months...it's an amazing feeling when you've finally learned enough about your new country to be slightly less embarrassing! Yippee!
Side note: Not that I make it a habit to make this a very helpful expat blog (obviously), but in case you were wondering how the visa process works...You start the process at the Mexican Consulate nearest to you before you move (we/Ty did it in Seattle) and you have to finish the process within 30 days of arriving in the Mexican state you're going to be living in (Nayarit, in our case) and it's good for one year. When you go to renew it after a year you have the option to renew it for 1, 2, or 3 years...and then after that expires, you can apply for Permanent Residency or Mexican Citizenship (but don't quote me on any of that, Ty, of course, handles all this boring stuff for yours truly, because I can't even.)
Also, before I go ahead and get too high on my "slightly less embarrassing" horse though...I should tell you about our most fish-out-of-water moment that happened this past month, too. (You're welcome.) We spend most evenings hanging out in our living room watching TV or on the computer or whatever and we stupidly made the mistake of leaving one of our doors open past dark and a bat flew in our room and was flying all over the place like a plane that lost its rudder (or whatever planes have.) Oh, have I mentioned we have bats?? There's about a dozen or so that fly around the property at night and eat hundreds my arch enemies (mosquitoes) so, I'm cool with them being around (OUTSIDE, that is.)
Mind you, this happened a couple weeks before, too, and I remained totally calm about it (and definitely didn't make some crazy Facebook post about hiding under the bed) ...but we didn't learn to close our doors after dark from that little episode, apparently.
So, the bat flies into our room and we're just staying low and I'm "mildly" freaking out at this point and we're just hoping he flies back out the door. Well, then I decided it would be a good idea to open ALL of the doors to increase its chances of going outside (which I have to do while crawling around on my hands and knees because I almost got a bat to the face several times.) And as soon as I get all of the doors open, a second bat swooped in and joined his friend in taking turns dive bombing our heads. Yay! Picture two helpless dorks crawling around the floor laughing hysterically and repeating "What do we do?!"
But, wait, there's more! We actually had guests at the time and they were staying in the unit above us and we didn't want to make noise or let them know we had winged rodents trying to give me nightmares, so we had to handle the whole debacle in whisper-yells and quiet-panicking in between all of the laughing and ducking. Ahhhh...good times.
The two bats were swooping around our room and I see one fly into our bathroom and the other one finally flies out the open doors. I rush to close them so no more get in and Ty goes to work trying to convince the bathroom bat to fly out the back door...and that's when I hear a knock. It's our guests... They're wondering if we have any good books they can borrow.
Me: *instantly panics* "Sure! C'mon in! There's a whole bookshelf here, help yourself."
Me to self: "Please oh please oh please little bat don't come flying out of the bathroom."
Guests: *thoroughly looking through every single book all super interested like*
Me: *sweating profusely*
Ty: *still in the bathroom quietly shooing the bat out*
The guests finally leave and Ty gets the bat out without them getting dive-bombed or pooped on -- success!!
From start to finish the whole bat attack and eviction process was probably like 8 minutes, but it felt like 47. Needless to say, we're balancing out our living abroad "wins" with plenty of epic fails. Note to self: Close the damn door at sunset.
What else is new with us? Not much. We've become pretty low-key and boring the last month or so. Summers are typically quieter here (listen to me like I actually know what I'm talking about having spent ONE summer here. Nerd.) and I'm actually looking forward to it despite it kinda feeling like a drag last summer. Restaurants close down, a lot of people go back to the States or Canada until next fall, Jardin is gonna be pretty empty until November (or that's what we keep thinking...but we keep getting last-minute reservations! Whoop!) But we're trying to use this "down time" to make more of an effort to not be such lazy degenerates all the time. It's a lot easier to workout and eat healthy and practice Spanish and spend less money and be productive humans when there's not a party or a band playing or happy hour or beach invite happening every other day. (I'm sure we have your sympathy, right? That poor girl is suffering from having TOO much fun! The horror!!)
Last weekend we played tourists for the first time in forever, and it was really refreshing to get out of the house to do something other than to go to Costco for toilet paper and laundry detergent. (I told you we've been boring lately!) Our car was in the shop for a few days and our kitchen floor was being refinished and it was off-limits for half a day (and you don't wanna see me when I'm hangry!!) so we decided to walk the 45-ish minutes along the beach from Jardin to Bucerias Centro with no real plans. We walked around town a bunch, ran into a Mexican buddy and hung out with him for a while on the beach, we found this super tasty Thai restaurant for dinner and caught the 10-peso bus home before dark. It was a fun day. It reminded me why we fell in love with this area 5 years ago. Note to self: must do more tourist-ing!
What else... Oh! I have officially registered for Spanish school starting in August. Eeeeeek! I'm soooo nervous but also so nerdly excited. I'm going to Habla Hispana in San Miguel de Allende and I mentioned it in one of my last posts. It's a 4-week immersion course with 80 hours of "intensive Spanish classes" with a small number of students and 24 hours of "cultural activities" like Mexican cooking classes and guided walking tours (also done in Spanish, of course.)
I'll be in class from 9:00am-1:00pm, Monday through Friday with the activities in the afternoon...evenings and weekends I'll have to myself. And I'll be staying in a private dorm room at the school for the month... I had the option to bunk with a roommate or two or even stay with a local Mexican family as part of their "homeshare" program, but I feel like I'm already branching waaaaaay out of my comfort zone, so it's probably better to be able to have some time to myself so I can properly freak out when needed. (Trust me, it'll be needed.)
We still gotta figure out the logistics of getting to and from San Miguel, but I'm scheduled to arrive August 27th. That's only 3 months away?? Double eeeek! For those of you who know just how shell-shocked and anxious and panicky I was last year while trying to adapt to life in a foreign country (and how anti-social I have always been in general) the fact that I'm traveling on my own to a place I've never been without my 6'-3" Swedish security blanket to hold my hand and do all of the adulting for me... It's insane!!
Welp, it's passed my bedtime.... Buenas noches, mis amigos!
