Arrival!
We're here! It's been one week since we've arrived, and I could have written a full post about each day. It's been packed, and filled with highs (amazing food! family time! adventures!) and lows (apartment hunting! long lines at the immigration office! tired children!)
Our goal for the first two weeks is to settle in before the kids start school, so that's what we set about doing. Our main three goals were:
- To finalize our temporary residency
- To find permanent housing for the year (we arrived at an airbnb where we COULD stay for up to 2.5 months, but we knew the setup was sub-optimal and that we'd likely want to leave
- To get oriented to the school community and make sure the kids were ready to begin
We arrived Sunday evening, and it was actually as smooth of a trip as we could have imagined. All of our luggage was within the weight limits; the flight itself was smooth; and when we arrived in Mexico, there was almost no line at immigration and our bags came out almost immediately. Everything was going swimmingly. Our Airbnb was easy to access and clean-ish, albeit barebones (there is a pool table, which is by far the most exciting thing about the place for the kids). And we had a first meal of tacos pastor at a place down the street. All good.
Monday was one long exercise in patience. I'll post more about this later, but we basically were at the INM all day to (try to!) secure our temporary residency status (which would allow us to stay here beyond 6 months, which is what a tourist visa allows). It required standing in line to GET an appointment, realizing we were in the wrong line and moving to another line, getting an appointment, and arriving at that appointment time 3 hours later only to wait another 3 hours for the actual appointment. That said, we were very lucky - the folks who arrived literally 10 min after us didn't even get appointments (after waiting for 2 hours), and we were the last people seen of the day (which could have easily turned into a "Sorry, come back tomorrow" situation). Every person we encountered in the process was either visible amused, shocked, or resentful that we were a family of 5 - clearly, we were not making people's days easier! BUT - three days later, we were fingerprinted, vetted, and had our residency cards. HUGE win.
The apartment situation has been much more challenging. We had several places earmarked and appointments scheduled for when we arrived, but every place had its tradeoffs. Of course, this is typical with housing searches, but just feels frustrating and high stakes, and we are all anxious to find a place to get settled and unpack. We've now seen a half dozen places with no real success, but we have two more appointments today and fingers and toes are crossed.
And the school orientation piece is just getting started this week. We were given our kids' schedules and teachers today, and just started getting added to the class WhatsApp group (EVERYTHING here happens via WhatsApp). Everything associated with the school is in Spanish - all written communication, all meetings, etc. The classes are in both Spanish and English, with science, math, social studies, and (of course) Spanish grammar taught in Spanish. I'm not sure what that leaves to be taught in English, but they've assured us that there will be English in the school. It's requiring all of my bravery and extroversion to be in community at the school - it's a combination of being in a huge group of people who all know each other and we know nobody, AND trying to insert ourselves into that type of group when they all speak Spanish (of course, they can speak English, but that's not how they converse with one another). I have to put myself out there a lot, and it's a good reminder to be gentle with both myself and the kids, who are going to experience that anxiety in spades, since their language skills are even less formed.
We've managed to have fun, too - trying lots of yummy food, going to parks, drinking horchata and aguas frescas. The delicious food helps with the "friction" that has entered into our daily lives - which is exactly what we asked for - to find that intersection of discomfort, joy, and ease.