So much has happened in the last two months and I don’t have time to do a break down but I will when we settle. Unfortunately, right after my last post my wife and I came down with COVID that knocked us down for several weeks. Triple vaxxed and still, but I digress..
I have often looked to the universe for signs. Good, bad, indifferent, I have come to rely on signs to point me in the right direction. If it is meant to be, it will. If it isn’t, stop fighting and listen. We have gone from a dream, to a plan, to an action. We sold our home to friends during this crazy market. It has reaffirmed our decision and it felt so right. We have sold our cars without issue, donated, gifted or sold the rest of our belongings and the path has remained clear. We will be leaving Washington state later this week for a, ” farewell tour” to California to see my family before boarding a plane on a one way ticket to Mexico later this month.
I will update next month after we settle in. Until then-Saludos!
Yes, of course, moving out of the country is going to be stressful. This is especially true when you combine it with being a mom, a small business owner, a home owner, a commercial office owner, a pet owner, etc. etc.
The last few months have consisted of check boxes and to- do lists. One of my pressing issues is to ensure my physical health is on order. I’ve done several things to naturally reset my immune system but tomorrow I see a cardiologist and this makes me nervous. I recently saw my rheumatologist who was very impressed with my numbers and what I’ve accomplished (I contribute this to 72 hour fasting, look up Dr. Longo at USC and his various fasting studies. I hope I get the same ringing endorsement tomorrow. Since I had 2 sisters pass away in their 40’s, I want to ensure we aren’t doing all of this so I can up and die in the next few years.
Work has been hectic but retirement news has been well received by both my colleagues and my wife’s. We joke that she sold her soul to the county when she was 20 to be able to fully vest in her retirement now. It will be much stranger for her than me since I’ll be working very part time but she is ecstatic to do nothing for awhile. I’ll be happy to get out of of the secondary trauma of child welfare. To say it negatively impacts my health would be an understatement. When we sent out our retirement announcements, I can’t say any part of me had second doubts. I love(ed) my job and have for the last decade but I am ready to move into a place of being gleefully ignorant of the abuse and neglect that happens on a daily basis for so many children.
The house is sold, along with most of the furniture, cars and the cats. The cats are likely going to the new homeowners (and friends of ours) but we shall see how the integration over the next few weeks goes- they are coming to live with us before the move to see how well they all adapt.
I spent last weekend going through momentos with my older 2 boys, I have the younger 2 to go but we are are 90% done.Pretty damn amazing if I don’t say so myself.
Next up, changing of addresses, closing of accounts, final touches, last days of work, and then our hasta luego party to say goodbye to friends and family. Deposits have been placed on our new car (chip shortage) and Lisa’s custom golf cart 😅. We have a 2.5 week trip through California, Nevada and Arizona to say our final farewells before using our one way tickets to Cancun in late May. Today marks the 1 year anniversary of closing on our home in Mexico.
Villa de Chicas 2021
Put in the work. If it was meant to happen, it will. If you are met with a closed door, be grateful. That is the Universes’ way of keeping you from people and places not meant for you.
Wow! It been a hot minute since I’ve updated anything. To pick up where I left off, we had just finished the consulate process in Seattle and we had appointments at INM in Playa del Carmen in the 9th of November. This was the perfect way to spend our wedding anniversary. The process was relatively easy and we did not have to wait long at the office to be processed and receive our residency cards but that was largely because we used Milly Arceo at Legally in Mexico to complete the paperwork on the Mexican side of the border.
When it was time to come back, the depression set in. Everyone wants to spend more time in Mexico, sure, but the dread of returning to the States and to work is more pronounced each time. What made that return trip home is we knew it would be the last one before the final move. It was hard to say goodbye to our friends and our home. The entire Riviera Maya just feels so magical, it has a a pull on my soul that I cannot put into words. We both planned to make our retirement announcements soon after our return.
December was a hectic month, I had surgery, we had the holidays, the important people Lisa needed to talk to before announcing it formally had taken time off and we ultimately pushed the announcement off until just a few weeks ago. The presiding Judge was not at all surprised, she had known we had bought a home and obtained residency. Some of the other Judges took it a little harder. Lisa has been such a pillar of strength and leadership over the last 30 years, it is no surprise that many of her co workers had mixed feelings about the announcement.
My announcement followed hers and while I won’t be officially done working, I will shift my focus to business operations and will no longer be the program manager. A decade and thousands of cases of abused and neglected children later, in an era where children’s rights and interests are largely placed on the back burner, has really taken a toll on me. I will miss many of my colleagues and some of the great reunification and adoptions I’ve been apart of but I am more than ready to separate myself from the secondary and tertiary trauma that comes with this line of work. Our last days at work will be April 15th!
So what’s next? The universe is still creating a very easy path for us. We already have our house under contract(and they are taking most of the furniture!), one of my vehicles is already promised to a buyer, I’ve sorted and organized 30 years with of kids art work, photos and other keepsakes. Our house is set to close May 6th and we have airline tickets for May 7th to spend a month traveling California and Arizona to see family before we make the trip from LAX to Cancun in late May. It’s hard to believe it is so close when it feels like we just started this journey. When it’s right, it’s right. Until next time, mi amigos. Salud.
Also known as, Consulado de México. This is where you start the process of legally entering Mexico if you want to stay past the 180 day tourist visa. Obviously our intent is to stay for an undetermined amount of time. Could be a several years, could be forever. The one thing I can say with absolute certainty is the only thing that is consist between consulates is that their Visa requirements are all different. Covid has restricted some consulates to only serving people in their geographical area, as determined by them. Portland, for example, is currently only serving Oregon and southern Washington state. Other consulates, like Las Vegas, are serving anyone. We chose Seattle because A) that’s our closest office. B) They were only asking for 6 months of financial documentation (which was still 35 pages) and C) They were conducting the initial interview via Zoom. All good things. In my last entry, I had just been notified that we had been processed and they had offered us an interview date!
Fast forward several weeks, our Zoom interview went very well. We were asked questions surrounding why we chose México, what ties we had there, and other basic questions. While I was nervous about the interview, I knew our intentions were solid and reflected what they wanted to see in someone seeking permanent residency. It helped that we are homeowners there and had already established solid ties to friends and our community, I’m on our HOA board and we had made several trips down over the last few years. It also helped that my wife lights up every time we talk about México and what she loves about the people, culture, and of course, the food. We were approved for our Visas and I can tell you that I genuinely felt welcomed to Mexico. Our agent was extremely helpful and kind throughout the process. This is not a new feeling, most Mexicans are extremely kind and welcoming to foreigners in their country so long as you show some respect and leave the entitlement at the border. We then needed to appear at the consulate in person to have our fingerprints and photos taken. I returned the next day to pick up our actual visas. This is what it looks like, they place it in your passport. You have 6 months to enter México to finish the process at INM (Instituto Nacional de Migración/Immigration) and exchange your visa for your resident card. Once you enter, you have 30 days to start the process.
Visa that goes into your passportPermanent resident card (RP/Residente Permanente)
Depending on your finances, age, and intentions, you may be approved for temporary or permanent residency. The only difference is that temporary needs to be renewed, sometimes annually, for up to 4 years at which time you will have to roll it over to permanent or leave the country. The one upside to temporary (TP/Temporal Residente) is that you could bring a foreign plated car into México via a TIP (Temporary Import Permit) for a long as your visa is valid. Qroo Paul has an excellent blog with endless information about moving to Mexico. You can read the article here for more information on the ends and outs of bringing your car.
If you are offered permanent residency and have no intention of bringing a car, take it. Nobody wants to spend their time, money, or patience having to deal with immigration in Mexico. Further, if you are not fluent in Spanish (reading and writing) and don’t have a bunch of time, money and patience, I highly recommend using an immigration specialist to help you complete the process in Mexico. There are several throughout the country, search the Facebook expat boards for recommendations.
That’s all for now folks! Happy fall and safe travels.
I apologize to those of you who had been following along. I have dropped the ball. Life has been CRAZY this year.
Previously on, BBYODO, we had just returned from the Riviera Maya and purchased a home in Puerto Aventuras. I had a horrific diving accident at 100 feet that landed me in the chamber with the bends and I thought I would likely never dive again.
Shortly after we returned from Mexico in November, we began plotting a return trip to get the new house ready. We had hoped to close on our property in January but the seller lived in Colorado and the secretary of state there was backed up for weeks due to Covid. She need a letter apostilled so her attorney in Mexico would have power of attorney to sign all the documents on her behalf. We were able to do the same in Washington and it only took a few days. Our trip back to Puerto Aventuras and our new home had been booked for late February. Well, closing day in January came and went and we agreed to an extension to early February. That day came and went… at this point, we were becoming very nervous about the entire process. We had already wired all of our money to the escrow account set up by our agent and it wasn’t that we were concerned about that, we were concerned that the seller would fail to preform and we were already committed to this house emotionally and financially. Ultimately, the night before our flight, we agreed on a soft close. The form that we had been waiting for from the State of Colorado finally came the first week of March while we were there. SUCH a relief!
While we were down in February, I knew I was not ready to go back to diving. Instead, we made our way to Akumal and spent the day snorkeling with the Turtles in Akumal bay. By the way, there is a trick to avoiding all the people selling tours, etc. Go grab some breakfast at Lol-Ha where you can park close to the bay or consider visiting Akumal Dive Center to rent a locker or gear if you need it. From Lol-Ha, walk down toward the bay and slightly to your right. You do not need to buy a tour to swim in the bay but these rules are constantly changing. You do need to stay out of the roped off areas but there is still plenty of bay to explore on your own. Here is a greatmap with tips and tricks I found for Akumal bay. Turtles galore! Make sure you wear biodegradable sunscreen and don’t wear fins.
I am not going to lie, just having my face in the water with a snorkel was anxiety producing. At one point, I ended up leaving Lisa to do her own thing while I collected myself. I had no expectations of being able to go diving but I was surprised that just being in the ocean was PTSD provoking. This is not ok! The whole reason we chose the area of Mexico that we did was so we would have very easy accessibility to the ocean, diving, etc. It was about this time I befriended a woman named Robin who owns Aquanauts dive shop in Puerto Aventuras. I shared with her my experience and fears and she confidently told me that she would be ready to help me get back in the water when I was ready. Having the correct fitting gear and the right instructor were going to be the answer. She even offered to let me try out her own wing style BCD to ensure proper fit (Women, especially big busted gals don’t fit into standard BCDs…) and having a BCD with integrated weights was going to be a must for me but I just wasn’t ready in March.
July rolls around and we head back to Mexico. (see why I have had no time to blog? I can’t wait until I am no longer working full time and the move is over!) At this point, we had submitted 48 pages of documents to the Consulate and were awaiting an email regarding our residency applications. If you learn anything about Mexico from this blog, know that the only thing that is consistent is inconsistency. If you are thinking about applying for residency, I highly suggest you visit websites for each one within your area to see what they are requesting. Even if you give them everything that they are asking for, it is at their discretion whether you are approved or not and for what type. (permanent or temporal) The main Consulate website can be found here. Other important tip, you cannot start the residency process within Mexico! If you head down and fall in love with Mexico, you have to come back to start the residency process. Visitor visas are good for 180 days. While we were down, we received an email with our appointment date for our interviews for residency. Yay!!! We had not received any sort of confirmation that our papers had been received and the website states to not follow up with an email to check the status. It is a, don’t contact us, we will contact you, mañana, process. More to come on that later. By the way mañana doesn’t actually mean tomorrow, sometimes it does but it really just means later. So far, this experience has been an excellent exercise in patience, letting go, trusting the universe, and trying not to lose my hair in the process.
Circling back to what I had said about Aquanauts, I had decided that I was ready to ease back into some scuba gear, in a pool, and work with Emilio (DM) on skills and reestablishing my confidence. After a 3 hour session, I was feeling pretty confident. I was able to relax and enjoy my trip back in the water and I really just cannot say enough awesome things about Robin, Emilio and their whole staff. I wrote a pretty detailed review here. Safe to say, I am looking forward to buying my own equipment and many more dives with Aquanauts and grabbing a margarita or two with Robin! Until next time- Salud!
2020 is almost over, thank goodness! I realize it has been quite some time since I have written anything- I think we all got sucked into the COVID abyss. While the end is coming to a year, 2020 has been full of as many ups as there have been downs. Big news!!!! We bought a place in Mexico! That’s correct, a place to call our own in the Riviera Maya. We made a trip down in November to complete our PADI Advanced Open Water dives since our training was about to expire and to check out some locations we had narrowed down. I will post separately about my horrid, near death experience with Seth Drabinsky through Seth Dive Mexico though you can read my review on TripAdvisor and his completely inappropriate and unprofessional response to it until then. I did find out the hard way that the healthcare providers in Playa are pretty top notch (for a gringo with money and good insurance) and I received better care there than I have ever in the US. I was treated by Playa International Clinic– Dr. Denise and my nurse Paula were amazing. Lisa was able to stay the night with me at the clinic in my room and they kept an eye on her for decompression illness and even fed her for free.
After spending countless hours on the computer to research areas, we narrowed our search down to Playacar, Puerto Aventuras, and Akumal. All of these areas are within 30 minutes or so from Playa del Carmen. We looked at several properties and were torn between a home in Playacar and one in Puerto. It was a very difficult decision but we went with home in Puerto. While Playacar is absolutely lovely, Puerto has it beat when it comes to snorkeling and a marina and it is about half way between Akumal and PDC. The beaches in Playacar are stunning but there is nothing to see in the water there. Puerto also has a variety of shops, restaurants, etc and was designed as an expat neighborhood. Don’t read that as expats just from the US, Puerto is like a giant Epcot center and right across the highway is where most of the locals live. We wanted something safe and in a gated community but what we did not want was a community that is filled with Americans. A big motivator in moving out of the country is to experience different cultures, people, and places.
I can tell you that buying in Mexico is not for the faint of heart, obviously. There is something about having the right realtor and attorney that can ease your fears but standing in your bank, wiring your 10% earnest money to an escrow account in Mexico takes some serious nerve. We are working with Marieke Brown, a very respected, straight shooting realtor who has talked me down a few times so far. We will be using our attorney to sign closing papers for us, I can say as someone who trusts no one, this is quite the experience. We will be back down several times (COVID/Vaccine willing) before our final move in 2022.
Flying during COVID was also something that caused a great amount of distress. There are tons of articles and studies surrounding COVID and the risk of contagion on an airplane. The risk is extremely low. We put on our N95s and sanitized everything. Alaska Airlines did a phenomenal job and I did not see a single person wearing a mask incorrectly and they blocked out middle seats. We were disheartened to see so many tourists not respecting guidelines once we got to Mexico. My biggest fear was what if we gave it to some poor local. They do not have the resources or hospital infrastructure to handle the COVID crisis. Read, Why Mexico is failing to confront the COVID crisis. With that said, I felt way safer in Playa del Carmen that I do here in Washington state. It isn’t a political issue for locals, they take it seriously. I just wished more tourist would have as well. We tested for COVID before our trip and then 6 days after we returned home. Side note- Mexico, at least the state of Quintana Roo, is very LGBT friendly. We felt extremely comfortable working with realtors, attorneys, etc. and have never felt discriminated against during any of our trips down.
I am sure most of my 2021 blog will be filed with the ups and downs of buying internationally and obtaining permanent resident status. Until next time, HanukkahSameach!! Stay safe and healthy.
Be brave! You only die once 
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