Of course, I was homesick. And, on top of that, I had not ever felt like I knew for sure that moving to Mexico was the right thing to do nor was it the right time to do it. It is perfectly natural to miss friends and family and I know I’m not the first person to move to a foreign country and wonder what the hell I had done.

Rebecca had asked me to come early so that she could personally hand off the keys, talk to me about the house and utilities and so we had some time to get to know one another a little. She was going to leave the day after I arrived, which would have made it the 28th of April. Hannah, and at least Nori, was going to come with me, spend a couple of weeks, help me get settled and have some time to enjoy the beach. With Rebecca leaving, that would have been perfect. She had packed up some of her belongings that were still in the house and they were stored in the second floor bedroom, named the Frida Kahlo room. The next day, Hannah and Enora would have the room.

Rebecca had an arrangement with the previous tenant to stay in the house during high season. She has a business selling these amazing dolls that she and women in prison make by hand. Now, the Rebecca Roth story is a long story and I will tell it, but not now, but be assured, you will be mad, sad and shaken by it. The markets are very active here during the fall through spring. I had already discussed with her that I expected visitors during the high season and my agreement with her as a tenant was not to share the house with her, so she would not be staying here. She would look for other lodgings  when she came back. For now, she was moving to a small town near Guadalajara where she spends the summers.

When I arrived, Rebecca informed me that she wouldn’t be leaving until Friday. This wasn’t a bad revelation since Hannah had decided that it would be just too expensive to come, especially now that her expenses for the house would be tripling since she would have no roommates to share them. I was feeling very bad about her predicament but I also thought that she, within two months, would have affordable housing for her and the kids. I made arrangements to pay half the rent on the house for two months so that she could afford to stay there for at least that long. I felt some relief but this was weighing heavy on my heart and mind.

So, Rebecca and I spent the days changing the electricity into my name, going to Costco and to Mega, a Fred Myer type store and running errands as she tied up loose ends. I spent $60.00 at Mega buying things for the kitchen and about $276.00 at Costco on gin and tonic, vodka, wine, and three shade sails for the roof, toilet paper, laundry soap, a nice roast of beef and such. We were hoping that the shade sails would help to keep the house cooler and make the roof a cool hangout. That was a lot more than I had planned to spend, but it wasn’t more than I had brought with me. I wanted to be comfortable and feel at home and there’s something about having some liquor around to share that did that.

Rebecca cooked the beef and the tuna. She is a fabulous cook and knew just what to do to make special meals with not much work . We ate only at home and had thinly sliced rare roast to eat with horseradish and tuna medallions to eat with salad and whatever for the days before she left. Finally, on Thursday, knowing that she was leaving, she started to gather things out of the kitchen to put into bags. Rebecca is an extraordinary woman. I felt immediately like I was with a sister. I came to love her in these short days together. Rebecca read to me from her published anthology of poems. We watched Gravity, we talked and we talked and I learned more of her incredible story. My life was enriched by spending time with her.

I was grateful that Rebecca was not leaving until Friday. I wanted to know more about her and what about her journey made her so tough. Her son, with his Mexican girlfriend and her two sons were coming to pack up two cars and drive the six hours to Lake Chapala with no AC, just as the weather was beginning to heat up. Thursday, as I said, she started to move things out of the kitchen in earnest and to actually put things in garbage bags that were, to my eye, in total chaos in the bedroom. To my relief, she was leaving more in the kitchen than I thought and there was no need for me to fully furnish it.

By this point, I was getting tired of just sitting around, so I decided to clean. The kitchen was not bad but not good either. Rebecca had a cleaning woman, Lupe, but I knew once I got into the shelves and counters and floors that I would not be engaging Lupe as my cleaning woman. I found a lot that Rebecca needed to pack and I pulled everything out of the shelves and tore that place apart. After a full day of cleaning, I was finally satisfied. There are enough cleaning supplies in the house for a couple of years.

After a lovely dinner and more conversation, I went to bed, knowing that Rebecca would be leaving the next morning and the house would be mine and I would be on my own in this entirely Mexican neighborhood in a city I had never wanted to move to in the first place.

I was still on Portland time. I didn’t wake until after 9:30 Friday morning. I came downstairs and the living room was not navigable. Everything that Rebecca was taking was on the floor. Her son was late and it was going to be a wonder: #1 if everything would fit into two cars with 5 people and their luggage; #2 that they would actually be able to get out of here before noon. Rebecca wanted to leave in the early morning. It wasn’t going to happen. She was cooking potatoes and beef to feed the family while she and her son bickered about how to pack the cars. I curled up in the corner of the couch to stay out of their way. I was hungry but I wasn’t going to try to get to the kitchen… not even for coffee.

Miracles do happen. They filled the cars to their over-full capacity. Everyone but the drivers were sitting on something with their feet propped straight out. While Rebecca and her son fought about where the antifreeze and extra oil would fit, the two old Chihuahuas, Obi Juan and Don Juan, looked about furtively from their perches. I wondered how everyone, including these cars would fare on the long, hot drive.

I stood on the sidewalk knowing that I would miss Rebecca and the dogs (though they pooped and peed all over my bedroom). As they started the engines, a woman walked by saying “Red Alert”. I had no idea what this meant. But later, I found out that while we were busy, members of the New Generation drug cartel were busy both in Vallarta and Guadalajara, burning gas stations, breaking into banks and setting cars on fire as we spoke. People were killed but no tourists or locals, just the military, police and members of the gang.

Off they went, leaving me standing there to go into the house on my own. It was hot; I was sweating as I had been since I stepped off the plane at PVR and as I have been since. I knew nothing about anything, not how to catch the bus, get what I needed nor how to make myself happy and content, I do know Spanish, thank goodness. Little did I know that Vallarta was on fire.

From here, things got strange and very fast.

I am in Mexico and have been here longer than I thought I would be before I posted something in this blog. It was my intention to post daily and to document my first year in Puerto Vallarta. Now, sadly and yet happily, I will return to Portland after two and a half months. The experience to date has been intense.

I had no idea how fragile I was when I left Portland. Sure, I had my misgivings. I mostly wanted to get away from our roommate; I felt frustrated. Perhaps it was me, perhaps we were not meant to inhabit the same space. I won’t go into it here since it is a very private affair, but I was either going to find my own place or move to Mexico.

It had been my dream for decades to retire in Mexico. After some time living/studying here in the 90’s, I had fallen in love with the tropical climate along the Pacific coast. I liked what I knew of the history of Mexico and the culture and had found the people friendly. I had spent a lot of time traveling with the curator of the Museum of Art, Margarite Magdelena. She had taken me to parts of Mexico that I never would have been able to know without an in-depth knowledge of her country. That story has been told and yet to be written. I will however write those experiences later.

So my dream to retire here was based on experiences I had some 21 years in the past. Sure, I had continued to visit Mexico alone and with family and friends throughout the ensuing years as I worked to get my graduate degree in History and Folklore and Mythology. Then as I pursued my career as the Archivist/Assistant professor in the History Of Medicine at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, I continued to enjoy trips to Mexico. When I decided to retire at 66 years old, my answers to the inquiries of others about what I would do when I was no longer working was that I would retire in Mexico.

I didn’t know that as I packed up, our roommate was really going to move, leaving Hannah to pay the rent on an enormous house. After two years of him threatening to move, he actually did, as I finalized my move. I had sent the rent and deposit on a house in Colonia Agua Azul; I had purchased my airline ticket; I had packed up my belongings and paid to have them moved into storage. I was set to go and then he rented a place and began his move. Now, as I think back, I was never sure about the move here but thought that it was just adventure jitters. Yes, I would have lost quite a bit of money if I had backed out then… and I would not have known what I know now had I aborted my plans. I assured myself each day that Hannah would be able to find affordable housing and I would be saving on my small retirement money by moving.

The rent for my beautiful Mexican house is $500.00 monthly with utilities around $60.00 monthly. The cost of food is negligible. What doesn’t drive up to the door in fish and fruit and vegetable trucks can be had at the meat store one door down or at the many tiny stores located every half block.

So, not feeling really excited about the move, I did it anyway. On April 27, 2015, I arrived at the PVR airport with five suitcases to handle on my own. I managed to get out of the airport and into a taxi without too much problem. The heat was powerful and the driver had the windows rolled down and the gas fumes and sea breeze and dust mixed into a recognizable sensory remembrance. This is a Mexico I am familiar with. The sweat began to roll into my eyes and gather under my breasts. Though I had expected the heat and humidity in my head, my body reacted with extreme measures.

The taxi driver asked if I knew where I was going; he had no idea where Agua Azul is located; he ran into the airport for a a map and when he returned, I showed him my new neighborhood. Thank you Google maps. Since I had never been there, I tried to describe the route based on my online Google truck experience. We eventually arrived at the house no worse for wear. Rebecca was waiting and as she opened the door, I threw myself at her, grateful that the Craigslist ad and photos were not a scam. The beautiful yellow house was just as it appeared in the ad and Rebecca in her FaceBook posts. As I walked into the house, it was just like the photos posted in the ad.

Rebecca had lentil soup and iced tea ready for my arrival. I felt completely at ease. Here, I thought, is a sister. We drank iced tea and spent a bit of time chatting. I was too damned hot to eat, though I was starving. She took me out into the street and introduced me around to the neighbors, showed me the stores and we oohed and aawed at the many babies being carried around. A family just kitty corner are 5th generation fishermen. We bought, right then and there, a hunk of tuna right out of the sea. The young man, I forget his name, apologized that he had put it on ice. I paid less than $7.00 for about 12 lbs. of meat. Chela, his grandma, makes tacos every night at 7:30 and sells them for $.70 each until very, very late. The meat store one door down has everything you could ever want.

I was overwhelmed and dead tired and way too hot and sweaty. Rebecca and I ate soup and talked a bit more and I went up to bed, full and feeling… I don’t know… lonely, wondering if I had made the right decision to come here… a whole gamut of thought. Most of all, I wanted Hannah to find the right place to live: a place where Ancel could still ride his bike to school, close to Jack so he could help with Enora, getting her to school and back and to help with Yum Yum.

I slept like a log with ceiling fans whirring and the curtains swaying on the balcony doors.