The Truth About Mexico!

Archive for Jillian

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Good Times

Like I told you, I didn’t experience the layered love embrace of Mother Mexico upon arrival in this country, or really ever. So be it. Some people discover a love of this place that burns like a thousand suns. For others it just burns. I know that sometimes my tart reactions are triggered by the [...]

9Mar2010 | Jillian | 0 comments | Continued
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On The Town: Wicky’s in Playa del Carmen

We are so lucky to be just four hours from the crazy amazing waters of the Caribbean. We don’t make the drive very often but when we do it is with gusto and great dedication to pleasure. Laying supine in a beach chair, staring at the sky and taking intermittent dips in the ocean is [...]

9Mar2010 | Jillian | 2 comments | Continued
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Ramblings

When Mexico is adorable it is wonderfully so. Children chasing chickens in the yard, festivals of colors and lights and saints, spontaneous parades, palm trees, colonial architecture and cheap delicious street food are all undeniably very good things. But when Mexico is awful*, it is terribly so. We’ve discussed how there is not really anything [...]

1Mar2010 | Jillian | 5 comments | Continued
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The News Not The Weather

I remember a tempestuous August storm. It was nothing more than a strong summer rain. But sheets of water were falling from the sky and collecting in quick inches on our street and I was scared. My parents flung open the doors and stood outside to marvel at the intensity and I thought, not for [...]

25Feb2010 | Jillian | 0 comments | Continued
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Things to do in Yucatan Before I Leave aka My Yucket List

Dance all night at The Mambo Cafe
We had our wedding reception at this live music venue/dance club at the Plaza Las Americas mall and it was amazing, shiny, loud, and vibrating. But I was a little distracted/overwhelmed/intoxicated and would love to go back to shake my money maker without worrying about our forty friends and [...]

23Feb2010 | Jillian | 4 comments | Continued
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That’s Debatable: A Person of Interest

This house maintains that living abroad makes you a more interesting person.
Pro
To live abroad successfully you have to be adaptable and open to new ways of thinking. Your worldview is cracked wide open, if not totally destroyed and forced into a new configuaration. It’s a symbolic death, such as one experienced by the hero. Out [...]

19Feb2010 | Jillian | 0 comments | Continued
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Part-Time Paradise is a Full-Time Hell

Believe me I flagellate every time I even think about complaining, so don’t get upset and decide that I’m awful. But every holiday must end and even the beach gets boring, especially in a town such as this. Chelem, like the mysterious city Brigadoon, is not meant to exist all the time. It only comes to life [...]

18Feb2010 | Jillian | 0 comments | Continued
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Waiting For My Man

We’ve had one norte after the next blowing through our port, the skies are opaque gray and all the Yucatecans and casi Yucatecans are bundled up and battened down. We drove into Progreso to run errands while the help leveled rubble and planted and washed our pots and pans. I picked up our laundry and was waiting for [...]

17Feb2010 | Jillian | 0 comments | Continued
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Mexico Micro and Macro

I would say we keep our distance. I prefer that my hands are clean. I want to want to look more closely at life, to face certain facts about the world, but when I do it’s with shock and sad horror. Perhaps I’m too empathetic. Or is it selfish? Or just squeamish. Maybe I would [...]

16Feb2010 | Jillian | 2 comments | Continued
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The Misfits

What if I’ve become too strange to go back?
strangerinastrangelandyoucantgohomeagainpeoplearestrangewhenyoureastrangertheresnoplacelikehome
These are the fleet streaming thoughts that pluck me out of sleep at four am.
itsabanditsthatarthurmillermarilynmonroemoviehesthemaniaccharacterinagoodmanishardtofind
But I wouldn’t say I’m too terribly anxious.
Not like the months leading up to leaving. I was a wreck, all panic attacks and acting out. Going home is both easier and more frought. [...]

16Feb2010 | Jillian | 2 comments | Continued
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A Nation of Two

As much as we have lived in Mexico these last four years, mostly we have lived alone in a world of our own construct. Throughout our relationship we’ve always been close. I distinctly remember the year we met, during our ritual of watching The Practice and eating takeout in Malcolm’s tiny first floor dorm room [...]

12Feb2010 | Jillian | 0 comments | Continued
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Life in a Small Fishing Village

It’s not that pictureque, actually. Oh, but it can be. I was naive to think it would look like a painting, with colorful masts studding the ocean’s swells, happy moppet children playing with their untoys, and beautific faces in church on every Sunday. Those idyllic images do occur. There have been afternoons when fishermens’ families are meeting boats onshore at sunset, a dynamic tangle [...]

11Feb2010 | Jillian | 2 comments | Continued
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