We flew to Puerto Vallarta for our official move about two weeks ago (mid September). For this first phase, I just brought one suitcase, a carry on bag, and my accordion. My accordion, Garp (as in: The World Accordioning to Garp) even got his own airplane seat.
It has been a little anti-climactic to arrive. I have done so much research, and imagined this moment for so long, it hardly seems new. But we’re here finally! (Mostly we’re excited to not be in transit anymore). We are staying in an AirBnB for two weeks as we settle in and look for an apartment.
It is the rainy season in Puerto Vallarta, and the sky is delivering! We’ve gotten some weather from the hurricanes far off the coast of Mexico (Polo, now Rachel). I watched the weather reports obsessively, and took lots of videos of storms, but I think this is just typical rainy season for this area. It is really hot and muggy during the day, and then most evenings, around 5pm, we get exciting thunder storms with heavy rain for a couple of hours.
On the Sunday after we arrived, Dan and I wandered down to Puerto Vallarta’s historic church (Parroquia de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe). In the square nearby, a municipal orchestra was playing, and couples were dancing. It started to rain, and people danced in the rain. It started to pour, and many just moved underneath an overhang and kept dancing. We ducked into a cafe between the church and the square and marveled at the cacophony of sounds: thunder, rain, the band, and the church bells, all at once. The church bells rang over and over!
I said to Dan, “The bells are ringing! That must mean it’s 6:18! … The bells are ringing again! Could it be 6:47 already? … Oh wow, more bells! Does time even exist?” (The bells were probably related to mass, but I grew up Mormon, so it all sounds random to me).
Over the last year, I got rid of about 90% of my belongings, and now I am living lean! So far I have everything I need except a Sodastream. It’s okay though. I am surviving okay on flat water. I intend to bring over just one more suitcase of stuff in January, but that will be all I have here. For the first year, we will live in a furnished apartment, and perhaps after that we will need to own more stuff. But for now I feel liberated from the weight of maximalism.
There is some amount of exhaustion that comes with moving to a new country:
- Can I quickly convert pesos in my head?
- Has the sour cream in the fridge gone bad or is it just different here?
- How does the public transit system here work?
- Which ATMs have the highest fees, and which ones will work?
- How do I find the cool kid scene here?
- Am I tipping too little? Too much? — Ack, I’m gonna ruin PV if I don’t have change with me!
- How can I minimize the effect of my gentrification?
- Did I bungle that last phrase in Spanish? Are they secretly laughing at me?
- When exactly do I switch from “buenas tardes” to “buenas noches”?
Living here is super exciting, but it takes a lot of energy, and so to prevent burnout or frustration, I am taking things very slowly. “Yes, let’s have a beer at 1pm and take a break to watch a movie!” “Yes, let’s go to bed early and wake up late!” I have to remind myself that with time, I will return to being a high-functioning interesting person, but for now, it’s all about going slow and steady.