Transitioning Back to Mexico

When you get medically evacuated from the Peace Corps, you have 45 days stateside to return or your service is over.  I found out that I was medically cleared to return to Mexico on day 43, and arrived back at my site on day 45, exactly one month after my surgery.  I had about 36 hours to say goodbye to everyone, purchase some last-minute provisions, and alert my office and my landlord that I was coming back.  

I am super happy to be back in Mexico but I will miss this family!

I invited all of my siblings and their families over to my aunt’s house for a celebratory pizza party on my final night.  You'll notice I was living it up, shoes-free inside the house.   

Every house I stayed at in the US had a minimum of 2 pets. 

I'm only missing pictures of a super shy cat and a pet bunny.  Also, my sister's orange cat is enormous!

I was a little worried about how my Spanish would be after 6 weeks of English, and I started out a little rusty.  Day one was ok as I just had to deal with taxi and bus drivers and my beloved boss who delivered my apartment keys and carried my suitcase upstairs.  Day two I ran into two acquaintances on the street and said “Thanks. Good.” in response to the question "how are you," and then “nice to meet you” instead of “thank you very much” to someone I knew quite well.  When another acquaintance stopped his motorcycle to chat with me, I was able to successfully converse with him and understood that he wanted to get a big, smiling pumpkin tattooed on his chest but not why.

It’s both familiar and strange to return to Mexico after such a long absence.  I was really happy to see the mountains and fields of flowers as I rolled into town, and I will admit that it was nice to have my own space again.  My super kind neighbor prepared my apartment to be vacant for a long time immediately after I left, so I returned to a clean home with no rotting food, animal infestations or weird smells.  She also took all my dirty laundry and bedding to be cleaned, and paid my electricity and internet bills for two months, which was beyond kind.  I was unfortunately all out of drinking water and gas, and neither could be purchased till Monday, so cold showers and uncooked food carried me through the weekend.  I would much rather return to internet and no hot water than vice versa, especially when it’s still in the upper 80s here.

There's nothing like finding a water truck to bring you joy.  I finally got gas and water on Monday morning. 

This was my old view during my daily walks. 

And this is my new walking view, where the sun is MUCH stronger. 

There were a few things I encountered upon my return that indicated I was definitely back in Mexico:

• It was 90 degrees and dripping with humidity when I got off the plane.
• I saw two men in the back of a pickup holding a refrigerator with their hands to keep it in place while flying down the highway.
• More than one person on the bus listened to music on their phone without any headphones.
• I heard a cacophony of chickens, dogs, church bells and live music within 20 minutes of arriving home.
• I found a lizard in my bathroom. 
• People I've passed on the street, but never spoken to, stopped me to ask where I had been. 
• My neighbors shot off fireworks outside my bedroom window at 10 PM, followed by live music that started at 11 PM, on a Tuesday night. 
• Everyone started speaking Spanish ;)

I have to admit that it’s a little lonely to be back after so much time in the warm glow of my family.  If you’re also a volunteer and haven’t been back to the US in a while, let me share a few things I learned on this trip:

• Snoop Dog is hosting a new game show.  I’m not kidding. 
• Noone uses What’s App and the majority of people I spoke to had never heard of it.
• Everyone has Netflix and/or Hulu. 
• People still buy bottled water to drink at home at hugely inflated prices even though they have safe, cheap tap water to drink.  This feels plain ol' crazy after living somewhere where drinking water is so hard to get.
• Super fancy donuts are really popular. 
• Most people are going to laugh at you and think you’ve been living in a cave if you have an iPhone 3.

 Bright, beautiful flowers outside my apartment. 

Yellow flowers on the bus ride back into town. 

Yellow flowers behind my apartment.  Apparently 'tis the season for yellow flowers.

All the corn is gone behind my apartment, and there's no evidence it ever existed.  

I learned a few important things during my trip to the US: 1) I can actually live near/with my family and have a great time, 2) I’m not ready to start looking for a job or use an alarm yet, 3) not everyone wants to hear about Mexico and some people only want to hear stories that reinforce their existing perceptions, and 4) I'm going to have to work hard at not returning to my old way of life when I return for good.  

What do I mean by that?  Well, I savored every $4 coffee I drank at hip coffee shops.  I reveled in two trips to Target to just look at stuff.  I watched a ton of TV, including seasons 6 and 7 of Game of Thrones, all seasons of the Great British Bake Off (by far the best thing to watch - ever), The Good Place, the BBC series Doc Martin, Frasier, several iterations of competitions between the Property Brothers, Tiny House Hunters, Chopped, etc.  I loved it all!  And I felt kind of sad about it all, because consumption and screen time can feel so good, but a meaningful life they do not make. 

It's easy to find adventure and stories around every corner when you're living abroad.  It's easy to avoid purchasing a bunch of stuff you don't need when there are only a few stores in town and you're on a really limited budget.  And it's easy to avoid getting sucked into hours of TV when you have to choose exactly what you want to watch from Netflix and have that constant guilty feeling that you should be doing more than watching TV when you only have 7 months left living in a different country.  

I can see that I will have to put forth a conscious effort to make sure I take what I've learned here in Mexico and put it into practice in my "normal" life in the US.  That includes working on being generous.  I was gone for 6+ weeks and people immediately started welcoming me back and offering me their guest rooms if I didn't want to climb the stairs to my apartment.  In the US, I received Halloween candy from my 7-year old cousin - without any prompting - and did not want to share any of it with my pregnant sister.  So yeah, I still gotta work on that generosity part.