I had a really brutal work day yesterday (Monday) and am running on way too little sleep for way too many days in a row. So today is ending up to be pretty much a write-off. I have tons of work for the rest of the week, due late Friday, but the amount will still be manageable if I skip today. I’m looking at my hammock and wondering if I might actually be able to fall asleep if I crawl into it…

When I started to seriously think about Mexico for this winter, I was still very much in the working extremely hard for little money stage of my life. I envisioned my Mexico winter to be pretty much what November has been and what last winter was like, being housebound, typing madly, and occasionally emerging for the odd meal out and a bit of sunshine. I was okay with that and I am okay with how my first few weeks in Mexico have been. I mean, I am in Mexico.

One of my good friends is at a resort at an exotic location right now. When the pictures starting showing up in my feed, I felt a momentary pang of jealousy that I can’t afford to take vacations like that. And then, I remember where the heck I am! I can’t afford to take vacations like that, but I can afford to port my life to amazing destinations!

I didn’t get to eat much yesterday, what with the schedule being as crazy as it was, and December money is going to be coming in very quickly. So I decided this morning that I had earned a splurge and went to Carmelita’s for lunch. I didn’t bring a book or device, choosing to instead sit outside and watch the ocean and the beach crowds and let my thoughts go any way they wanted.

My life is so simple and yet it affords me the luxury of being at a beach resort location on a gloriously warm and sunny day when it is grey and absolutely freezing back home. I might not be able to afford to vacation here, but I can live here and have an authentic experience of what it means to live in a country that is quite different from my own. I have no regrets.

I ordered a mineral water limonada (it was sweet this time, but not so much so as to be undrinkable), and one of the most expensive things on the menu, the shrimp quesadillas. They turned out be more like my idea of a shrimp taco, but in flour tortillas, with the shrimp so sweet and chewy and non-fishy that I was momentarily overwhelmed by their succulent flavour. I actually wondered if I had ever in my life tasted something so incredibly delicious. Seriously. I must be really bored with my cooking!

I took my time savouring each delightful bite, worked my way through most of the bowl of pico de gallo as well as sides of rice and beans, and sipped my drink slowly enough that the ice had time to melt.

The server has seen me a few times and we talked a little today about where I’m staying here and where I’m from. He tries to serve me in English, but I’m adamant about responding in Spanish.

My meal came to a hefty 160 pesos and left a 25 peso tip. I could feed myself for a week on that, so I won’t be eating out again at a Gringo place for a while, but, really, it was just $15.25 and I pay exactly that for lunch at 121 in Assiniboia without batting an eyelash because it’s such good value.

December will be quite different from November if work keeps up the way it has. I’ll be able to get back into a more normal routine with evenings and days off. I’m planning to take the village panga to Maz on Saturday to find the Ley grocery store and I’d like to get into the habit of going to Maz at least once, if not twice, a week. It’s an inexpensive trip (just 16 pesos for residents on the village panga), so there’s no reason not to expand the boundaries of my Mexican home.

Six months sounds like such a long time, but I’m already about to start the first of only four complete months here on Isla. Time is going to go really, really fast. I know how easy it is to settle into a groove somewhere, thinking that there is plenty of time to see everything, and then it’s suddenly time to leave.

Speaking of Saturday, I will be going to the airport in the afternoon to pick up my new neighbour in the little suite. She is flying in from… Saskatchewan! I’ve had a good laugh about that! She has negotiated the use of the palapa and the washer, so my not-so-quiet existence here is about to come to an end and I may end up having to change my office setup since I look right out onto the palapa. But my new neighbour sounds great (we’ve been emailing) and she was here in my suite last year, so it’ll be nice to have someone who knows the ropes and her way around my landlady. 🙂

I feel so grateful to be here, to be bone tired while looking at coconut palms and iguanas running across the top of the garden wall instead of staring at my neighbour’s garage. I doubt I will ever stop being amused at having to dodge lizards in the hallway while en route to another part of the house, unlike having to chase mice hell bent on killing me (hantvirus!). I miss the quiet of my home back north, but otherwise am quite content here and not really missing anything.

My RVing years taught me to be at home everywhere. They have reduced a lot of the awe at being in a new exotic location because being somewhere new has become my new normal. I worry sometimes that I’m becoming a little jaded, but then I find myself spotting my first wild iguana or nearly getting clocked by a coconut falling out of a palm tree and I am so giddy and happy about the event that I know that I have not lost the ability to look at the world with a child’s eye.

I love my life.