Category: Culture

A musical interlude, before we commence the blogging:

I know I am too old for teenage rebellion, but there is something about getting a new vehicle which just requires dipping into The Who’s “Who’s Next” album for a golden oldie.

We spent the last several weeks investigating our automobile options. We knew we wanted a new car, as my Toyota FJ is 11 years old, can not be nationalized for Mexico (damn that NAFTA), and is a hot deal on the stateside resale scene.

The new-car buying experience is similar between Mexico and the States. You work with dealers, in big showrooms with lots of salesmen, and they offer a standard suite of models with trim/option packages. So far so good. Now for the differences.

New car prices in Mexico are set by the manufacturer on a monthly basis and are uniform across the country. No haggling, no imaginary MSRP, no “INSANE” labor day sales. The only way you can change the total price is by varying the options or by using dealer provided financing (which is relatively new here). This is nice, since we didn’t need to wonder whether the dealer across town had a better deal.

At least in our area, the dealers were all in Guadalajara. In the States, it seems like every small town has a few car dealerships, who are often big fish in the local business community.  Does not seem to be the case here. And that’s important, because in Mexico, when they say “you should use the dealer for all maintenance”, what they mean is “…if you want to maintain your warranty.” That’s right, any unauthorized (i.e., non-dealer) maintenance, or any missed maintenance, VOIDS your warranty.

Now you may think that the warranty is not a big deal, but maintenance is a major factor in your Mexico driving experience. Roads here vary between normal pavement to cobblestones to dirt streets, often with massive potholes, accompanied by roadside livestock, cyclists and mopeds which pass on all sides, and of course, random pedestrians. Even if you are very alert, you’ll face the ultimate Mexican driving challenge: the topé.

 

Topés are a cross between speed bumps and the Czech Hedgehog. In place of frequent police radar traps,  these silent sentries pop up everywhere to slow you down. Sometimes they are a series of rumble-strips on steroids, or metal bumps which rattle your frame, and the always popular undercarriage scraping raised platform.  Sometimes they are foreshadowed by warning signs, sometimes not. Sometimes old, worn

topés are left in place, and they no longer work, but you don’t know that! In general, the poor roads, erratic traffic, and topés = double your maintenance costs.

Sorry, topés brought on a rant, back to cars: dealers here don’t seem to be the cutthroat experience of the States.  Apparently sales staff are NOT paid on commission, and are not necessarily expert on their product. Just-in-time inventory is not quite.  We went to one Subaru dealer who was selling still new 2016 models because they had not received any 2017 models, and yes, this was as the 2018 models were coming out! When we asked about the turbo option on another car, we received the following answers: yes, no, never, of course, and finally, yes. Yes was correct.

We were looking for an SUV, and preferably a manual transmission with a sunroof.  This is the unicorn of new cars, and we quickly realized we needed to compromise.  Like in the States, manual transmissions are less than 5% of new car sales, and generally not even available on most models. Now if you know me, you know I love my manual transmission, but it was clear that requirement needed to go. Judy had a 2008 Subaru with a continuously variable transmission (CVT), but that really did not satisfy in the acceleration department. We did research, and learned that the CVT’s had become much more responsive; I also ran into Volkswagen’s dual clutch transmission, which intrigued.

We test-drove the Hyundai Creta, Kia Sportage, VW Tiguan, and Honda HRV. We found some models did not have cruise control (?), or lacked a turbo, which we found necessary for automatics. It came down to the Kia and the VW, and we ended up selecting the VW. There was only one left in stock: a special edition Wolfsburg.

We were taken on our test-drives and met with the dealer’s/sale staff accompanied by Spencer Shulman, who runs S&S Auto, a local car retailer who also serves as a buying-service for expats. Spencer also completed all the paperwork, helped us transfer money to the dealer (all electronically), got the car registered and plated, and delivered it to us.  He will also assist us getting all the maintenace done. He was also invaluable in explaining how dealerships work here, what is and is not available.

You’ll see us driving our VW with Jalisco plates back in the States sometime. We’ll be passing you, maybe even on the left!

My second set of observations on expat culture here in Mexico may have as much to do with being retired from Washington DC as anything else. Let me explain.

Washington DC may be the nation’s capital, but it is also the “type A” capital of the world. The DC metro area is full of very highly educated, very dedicated professionals set on making a difference. Everybody is in a big hurry, and few people suffer fools lightly, if at all. Making policy is the name of the game, and it is a competitive business.  There is a degree of insularity which resembles that of a company town, but in the big-city way that New York is a company town for fashion and business, or LA is one for entertainment.

In social situations in DC, I found it generally took about a minute for the “what do you do?” question to come up. Being at a social event was like speed-dating: 30 seconds to make a determination whether the stranger you just met was important or interesting enough to talk to. Even people who retired in the region tended to keep “in the game.” Former officials kept their titles, and were understood to be waiting the next round of administration changes to get back “in the game.”

People really seemed to identify who they were with what they do/did. (Note: I am told by friends from NY and LA it is the same there…sigh)

Fast forward to retirement and move 2400 miles southwest.

Here, I know how many kids/grandkids people have, where they have traveled, what pets they have, or where their favorite seafood restaurant is. At most, I hear something like I was a teacher, or a banker, but rarely any details. There are a few folks who take “border promotions,” meaning they now claim a more prestigious job title than they actually had.  But in general, nobody cares. Partly that’s because what you used to be is irrelevant to your identity as an expat. Partly it is because our (collective) circumstances are so different, what we each have the most in-common is our commitment to live the expat lifestyle. That first conversation between new expat friends is inevitably about something you like to do.

Unlike the increasing trend in the States to live among like-minded people, expats end up being thrown together socially, if not literally.  If you live in a gated community, there might be some less mixing, but the property costs may be low enough that it is still not as extreme as NOB. If you live out among the locals, you’ll quickly notice that most properties have a high wall, and behind that could be an enormous hacienda or a series of tents, all in the same neighborhood!

Out socially, expats do tend to flock to certain restaurants and bars, but not segregated in any way. As an expat, you’ll acquire friends from all political stripes, from anarchist-to-nationalist. You’ll meet libertines, libertarians, librarians and Rotarians. While most of these folks have settled views that aren’t amenable to change, the fact we are all strangers-in-a-strange-land makes everyone just a little more accepting. Oh, if you want a debate, you can get one on any topic, but there’s a sense that you don’t push arguments too far here: no sense “harshing the mellow” in paradise.

I would like to think being among the Mexican people has something to do with it, too. They are among the most easy-going, friendly, and welcoming people on the planet, and that has to rub off on the expats. Even with all the vitriol during and after the recent US election, which offended the Mexican people’s pride, I have not heard a harsh word directed at the expats. As one local told me, “we (Mexicans) are used to crazy people in charge, you gringos not so much.”

 

The last stop in our normalization process sent us to the offices of the Secretaría De Movidad, the Mexican equivalent of the Transportation Department, which also runs the equivalent of the stateside DMV, or the BMV, depending on where you live.  Wherever you live, it is a visit most people dread, since the bureaucrats who process drivers licenses are universally considered some of the most inept and/or incompetent on the planet.

(Note: not intending to insult any of my former state and local government colleagues; just making an observation. While I am on thin ice, may I take a moment and request that my Washington, DC-based friends join me in fighting the use of the phrase “the Dee-Emm-Vee” to refer to the Washington metropolitan area?  I hear it with increasing frequency on local radio and TV, and it needs to be crushed as quickly as possible.  It is Washington, or DC, or NoVa if you live on the correct side of the Potomac. Why would anyone want to borrow such an odious acronym? What’s next, a new car called the Edsall? A new dirigible called the Hindenburg?)

Sorry, end of rant.  The SDM complex is in Guadalajara, and we arrived on a recent Tuesday after the long Semana Santa holiday. That detail is important, since the government offices had been closed for two weeks, creating much pent up demand for licenses.  We entered the building and got in a long line, which naturally stretched out into a central courtyard under the tropical sun. The line crept forward, about ten people at a time. A man with an official looking lanyard was giving advice on the testing procedures, and offering to sell a quick look at “sample” test question for a few pesos (free-marker capitalism at work). After about an hour, we worked our way up to the first guard official, who was controlling access to the office.

When he let us pass with a cursory glance at our paperwork, we were in the entrance hall, where four officials were set up to review our paperwork. They ensured we had a valid visa, copies of our passports and US drivers licenses, and a bill or other document attesting to our current address in Mexico.  When they approved, we were let into the main office through another guarded doorway.

This room held about 70 plastic chairs which were numbered, and we were directed to take a seat at the very back. One at a time, the applicant at the front of the room was called forward to the next available official, and the rest of the room got up and moved forward one chair. This went pretty quickly, and within 30 minutes we were being processed, but the musical chairs approach was a sight to behold. According to Francisco, who accompanied us through the process, they used to give out numbers, but people would pay others to get a number for them, so they made it a more physical process. I will admit it was quite orderly, and even when too many people were let in the room by the gate guards, everybody quickly re-established the queue.

Once we were called forward, a nice official took our paperwork and entered it into the computer system, then had us verify it was correct. We were asked our blood type, whether we wanted to be organ donors, and what was our current phone number. Next we went for photographs and fingerprints, which took about 5 minutes, and soon we were in line for the written test.

Most of the people getting their first licenses were very young.  If we had been 60 or over, we could have skipped all the waits and gone straight to the front of the line, but we waited with the young people. We had some fun conversations with Mexicans who spoke excellent English and had been through the same process in the States. Finally, our turn to test came up.

The written test is just ten questions on a computer kiosk, but you must answer all ten correctly. Make a mistake, and you either have to take a training course or come back to retest in two weeks. They show you a video or a road sign and give you three choices for what you should do, or what the sign means. We asked for the “examen en ingles” and both Judy and I were routed to kiosks for the gringos where we were supposed to get an English-language version.

The key word here is “supposed,” because we were dealing with computers, so of course, things started to go wrong. On my computer, one side of the screen read “El pregunto no requiere un imagen.” The other side had three answers, in English.  Hmmmmm. It took me a minute, but I figured out that the left side said “No image was required for this question” but how was I to answer without a sign or question? When the official initialized my test, he simply hit the forward button, so I tried that.  Now I was on Pregunto Dos, with the same “no image” on the left and three new answers on the right. Not good.  I hit it one more time, and of course, the same result: Pregunto Tres, new answers.

I looked up from my kiosk (a no-no) and saw Judy with a similarly perplexed look.  We gave each other a shoulder shrug. We could not talk, nor could we get the attention of the officials who were administering the test. Judy later told me she decided the “test” was fixed, so she started hitting any answer just to get through it. I started waving my hands over my head and said “Una Problema!”

This got the official’s attention, and he was none too happy, not so much with me, but at the distraction from his well-planned administration of the test site. He came to my kiosk, grimaced at the screen, then started re-initializing the test and downloading the English language images (a-HA!). I pointed at Judy, and he went to her kiosk to effect the same fix. However, I was still on question three! So I dutifully answered the rest of the questions. The screen told me I got seven out of ten correct, and the test was done.  Oh-oh.

I got in line to see the official proctoring the test, and when my turn came I started to explain “only seven questions” but he waved me off and said “no, no, ok.” He stamped my form and sent me on my way; Judy got the same treatment. Somehow we “passed.” We got in line for the driving test, where a name check and our US licenses got us past the requirement. Now we just had to pay at one window, then wait about 40 minutes at the second for our final license.

All told, about four hours, not including travel time. Francisco, who we retained to assist us, was able to accompany us throughout (except at the test kiosks), which greatly improved the experience. It was a typically Mexican experience, with high and no-tech abiding side-by-side, long lines but orderly movement, and everybody invariably polite. We just heard the Mexican government is introducing an online registration system that will reduce the experience to just the written and driving tests, so perhaps we experienced this particular bit of Mexico just before it passed into history.

One retirement activity we were looking forward to is hiking. A couple can hike together, you can do it at any age and ability level, and it is amazingly good exercise. We had already decided to eventually hike the Camino Frances to Santiago, Spain, next year.  So in the meantime, we joined up with the local hiking club to hike the mountains surrounding our lakeside home.

While long-range hikes require a lot of planning and special gear, day hikes don’t require much beyond good hiking shoes.  Our local club gave us two makeshift hiking poles, and of course we already had the necessary water bottles, hats, and sunscreen. But all we had for our feet were running shoes, which only work for long flat hikes.

That led us to the Merrell store in Guadalajara to get good, lightweight hiking shoes. The store, set in a mall, was a little underwhelming. The place was tiny, and the staff did not seem to have any expertise in hiking. We had done research, and seemed to know more than the sales staff, who did not even have a device to measure our feet.

Using our limited Spanish, we were able to make our needs known, but it quickly became apparent this was going to be complicated.  First, we had a challenge about shoe sizes.  We knew our US shoe size, and the Merrell shoes have sizes listed in US, EU, and CMs, so this should have been an easy translation, but they had almost no inventory in our size for the shoe we wanted. Mexican feet run smaller, apparently.

We looked at other models, but they had no women’s shoes large enough for Judy.  Mexican women’s feet run even smaller. So we were both looking at the men’s selections. As I asked for various sizes to try on, my poor Spanish confused the staff about whether I was asking for US, EU or CM sizes, so I was getting a random selection of sizes. I built up a pile of rejected shoes next to me as I waited for the next offering from the shoe lottery.  Eventually we both found acceptable hiking shoes. We almost left without buying Merino wool socks (a must!) because the sock display was turned toward the back wall, where customers could not see it.

Back home we started meeting with the hiking club, which heads out from the local donut shop (no kidding) every Tuesday and Friday at 9:00 am. The club informally breaks out into a beginner’s group (usually a 2-3 hour hike on a trail up the mountains), an intermediate group (4-5 hours, sometimes on less improved mountainside trails).  Some real hard-core types go off in a group for really long hikes to make new trails or clear old ones.

Here are shots of the flora along the trails; lots of prickly things!

In addition to exercise, the hikes are a great way to meet other expats or visitors, see great lake vistas, and learn a little about our unique environment.  Sometimes we hike trails in ejido land, land given to the indigenous Mexican peoples during the early 20th century land redistribution.  It is often on the mountainsides, with little or no access or infrastructure.  Local peoples still clear it, farm it, graze cattle on it, and sometimes live on it. We have had to share the trail with dogs, horses, and even cattle, who seem as surprised to see us as we are to see them!

Holy Week, as it is known NOB, is a whole different enchilada here en Mexico (pun intended). First off, the holiday comprises two weeks, Semana Santa (Holy Week) and Semana Pascua (Easter Week).  Second, it is the official vacation season in Mexico: schools close, the government shuts down, and Mexicans head to the coast or their favorite colonial cities in the mountains for a break.

To put it in an American perspective, Semana Santa is like Easter, Labor Day, and Spring Break combined. The emphasis on Holy Week may not surprise you, given that Mexico is an overwhelmingly Catholic country. But it is not only that; it is also the fact that Mexico is a Catholic country with a connection to a Latin (i.e., Spanish) heritage that helps to explain the importance of this week.

Semana Santa officially begins on Domingo de Ramos (literally, Sunday of Branches, aka Palm Sunday). Here in Ajijic, there is a festival in the town square starting at 4:00 pm and running into the evening. Volunteers provide all the goods for sale, do the cooking and cleaning, even provide the bands for entertainment.  We enjoyed the bands and the tostadas, pozole, and tamales, all home-made.  All the proceeds go to cover the expenses of the annual passion play, which are considerable. The highpoint of this day’s activity is a procession which starts at the end of town and proceeds past the square to the Church for a 7:00pm mass.  Townfolk line the procession route and cover the cobblestones with alfalfa; actors playing the parts of Jesus and the 12 apostles lead the procession through town and into Mass.

The next few days are quiet, leading up to Maundy Thursday, or Jueves Santo. After a re-enactment of the Last Supper, the crowds move up a steep hill overlooking the town for scenes from the garden of Gethsemane. This location will also serve as Golgotha on Good Friday (Viernes Santo). The night ends with Jesus’ arrest and a torchlit procession to take him back to the church square for his trial the next day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The theatrical quality peaks on Good Friday morning.  Crews erect an impressive stage and backdrop, which is modified ingeniously between sets to portray the outside of Pilate’s Palace, Herod’s palace, and back to Pilate’s palace. A crowd of locals fill all the Passion play roles, from Roman guards to the Apostles, the Sanhedrin, and even human statues. The dialogue, costumes, and sets represent a significant commitment in terms of time and money, all done by volunteers.

Quality sound and light-systems and special effects complete the scene. The most surprising thing about all of this is it is staged by a small Mexican village, and it is only one of many Passion plays staged in our area (Lakeside)

Locals consider it a high honor to be chosen to participate. The day concludes with a Via Crucis (Way of the Cross), as Jesus carries his cross back up that steep hill for the crucifixion.

Sábado Santo (Holy Saturday) is the grand finale; the day is mostly quiet until the vigil mass of the Resurrection (with a re-enactment, naturally) in the early evening  and a large festival afterwards. The festival includes la quema de Judas, where Judas effigies (including fireworks) are set alight. Sometimes unpopular political figures are also burned/exploded, all in good fun.

Like many holidays in Mexico, Easter Sunday is quiet time to spend with the family, or to recover from the vigil parties. If you are ever in Mexico during Holy Week, do brave the sun and the crowds and enjoy a Passion play experience for yourself.

Hope you enjoyed this overview of Semana Santa, and Happy Easter all!

You don’t go on the internet to get something done in rural Mexico.  You certainly don’t look for advertising in a paper or on TV. I have never seen a Mexican phonebook.

No, when you want to get something done, you tell a friend, and they tell you about “the guy” they have to get it done. Now I know you’re thinking “that’s no different than in the States” and to some extent you’re right.  Back when we lived stateside, we had a go-to mechanic and a guy who did home repairs. But for most things, we could do a search, use Consumer Checkbook, the Better Business Bureau, even Yelp for good tips.

Mexico, at least rural Mexico, is very much a word of mouth society, and it works.  We have a “guy” for just about everything… even though many of them are “gals.”

Julia Vargas and her associate Francisco have guided us through the immigration and visa process, and we’ll work with them to get our Mexican drivers licenses next. Working with them, we avoided long lines, paperwork mistakes, and all the potential hassles one could encounter when dealing with any government bureaucracy.

Christina Peña is our interior designer, arranging for all the purchases to equip our new home, and even driving us to Guadalajara several times to visit the various carpenters, artists, plumbers, etc. we needed to see. We

never would have found the places she took us to shop and outfit our home, and in some cases, if we had found them, we would not have been let in, as they don’t market their wares retail.

Marcos oversaw the building of our house, and we ask him back to consult when we make any changes. He has been responsible for many of the handyman services involved in complex installation.

Georgina Russell is our property manager, making sure our taxes and dues are paid on time, arranging for our gardener and house-keeper, and watching over the place all those years before we even moved here. She also advises us on maintenance issues and watches out for us in general.

We just met with Spencer Shulman, who serves as the middleman when dealing with all the new car dealerships in Guadalajara. New cars here are “set-price” but there is all the paperwork that goes with licensing, as well as the requirement to have all servicing done by the dealer, which his office can facilitate.

We’ve gotten tips on where to meet the “vegetable guy” for fresh produce from a local farmer, the “coffee guy” who comes to town a few days each week with newly harvested beans, and the “steak guy” who sells filet for a few dollars a pound.

When I needed a special type of masonry screw, I even got a tip for the “screw guy,” which could have lead to many different types of places, but eventually got me to a hardware store. 🙂

 

Some of these services are “pay-as-you-go” at the very low local labor rates. This replacement job on our shower (along with installing the aforementioned headboard) lasted several hours across two days and cost us about one hundred dollars.

Some of the more selective services are retainers, with a fee based on what you purchase or which services you use. Again, rates are very reasonable. Can you process your own visa? Yes. Can you buy furniture and art on your own? Yes. Could you replace your own shower? Yes. What you are buying in each case is local knowledge and expertise. You are paying someone to reduce the friction, either because they know how the shower was constructed, or they know how the immigration office works, or they know which woodworker makes the exact table you want.

All of these services work to make the challenge of becoming an expat that much easier. But they are also part of learning how things are done here, by “the guy” or “the gal.”

 

Today we’ll look at some of the different species of expats making their homes in the Lake Chapala microclimate.

The largest single group are the Snowbirds. These seasonal creatures spend the colder winter months under the bright Jalisco sun, then return North of the Border (NOB) in Spring when the US or Canada becomes more habitable. Snowbirds almost always own a home NOB, which gives them an anchor back to a community there, generally the place they grew up or where they worked as adults. This anchor home comes with all the considerable costs and maintenance of property ownership NOB. As a result, many Snowbirds rent around lakeside, often signing leases for 5-6 months for fully furnished apartments or homes. Some Snowbirds do buy homes lakeside, for the satisfaction of having their own places, the certainty of knowing where they’ll stay, as a hedge for eventually moving full time to Mexico, and because recurring costs (taxes, maintenance) are so low. Snowbirds begin to trickle into the region in October, with a full fledged migration underway by November. Those coming from the coldest areas NOB generally arrive earliest. Snowbird migration doubles 0r triples the size of the local expat population.

The next largest group are the Residentes, an invasive species which has taken up a permanent presence around Lake Chapala. I should have put quotes around “permanent” in the preceding sentence, because this group has several sub-species. There are Residentes who simply put down roots here and stay.  Most buy a home, but there are some who permanently rent and thus move around the various local communities.  There are Residentes who own a home here but use it a base for further travel, either to areas NOB or elsewhere around the globe. There are a few Snowbirds who also practice this non-seasonal, omni-directional migration. The cost-of-living savings available to the Residentes enables different lifestyle patterns. For example, Residentes with means use the saved resources to enable more and better travel; there are also Residentes who make ends meet in a way that would be impossible NOB. Some of these Residentes get by fairly well on a single Social Security check, which would be problematic at best in the US or Canada.

The final and smallest group are the Sunbirds, also known as Sweatbirds or Shadebirds. These rare birds leave the warmer stateside locations (think Florida or Texas) when they get too beastly hot and humid and make for lakeside. Since they visit for a shorter period, they are more likely to rent, but some do own homes. We have only come across two or three of this rarely seen species in our time here.

I bring all this up because the Snowbird migration has begun at Lake Chapala. Traffic (yes, we call it that, even though it’s not much) gets lighter, restaurants don’t require reservations, and the number of volunteers suddenly drops. Our good friends Tom and Linda are Snowbirds from Pennsylvania, and we had a nice farewell dinner at Adelita’s (a great local ribs place) for them. We have visited here at all different times of year, but this is the first time we have been here during a migration, so it will be interesting watching the change occur.

We’ll miss our friends, and we wish them Vaya con Dios. and Hasta Pronto!

I hope you have enjoyed this study of the migratory habits of Lake Chapala expats. In honor of all the various birds, here’s a tune which seems most appropriate:

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0W1v0kOELA

 

Most everyone’s first reaction when they learn you live in Mexico is “do you feel safe?” There is simply no debating the fact of the amount of violence generated by the drug cartels in Mexico.  The vast majority of the violence is directed by cartels against other cartels, with the second highest amount between the government police/security officers and the cartels. There are still numbers of innocent civilians who either get caught in the crossfire or are victims of violent criminal attacks.

Media north of the border play up the stories for several reasons.  First, there is no local element to offend: that is, cover violence in Chicago and some Chicagoans will take offense; cover violence in Mexico and who is going to get upset? Second, the more theatrical violence (e.g., decapitations) makes better copy.  Third, it reinforces an existing stereotype, namely, “look at those crazy, violent people south of the border!” Truth be told if there was no violence, there would be no story.

So what brings this topic up for me today?  Here’s a good example of how violence really plays out within the expat community.

There was a large shoot-out this past Thursday just down the road near a dusty little village called el Molino.  About 30 kilometers (~20 miles) from where we live, regional police went looking for an officer who was reported missing. They received gunfire from a van and several vehicles on a dirt road, and returned fire, killing five. Some assailants escaped on a motorcycle, leading to additional police activity in the area.

Our experience? We were driving through our village of Ajijic in the noontime traffic when a fleet of police trucks came barreling through the small carretera. Later we could hear some more police sirens heading in the same direction, as our house is just a few blocks off the main drag.

We checked the local online boards, where several posters were asking “what was going on?” and others were opining about “bad things west of town.” More news from Twitter sources and local media indicated some of the basic facts I related above, although it sounded more like police shot bystanders in those accounts.

By Friday morning, there were several accurate accounts, including coverage in the local english-language newspaper, the Guadalajara Reporter. Still no mention of whether the original “missing officer” was found, hurt or unharmed, or whether that part of the story was even correct.

So we saw some police, we heard even more, and we read some online concerns.  Yes, there was a shooting down the road.  It’s even a road we use when going to the local Costco, although the gun-fight happened off a side dirt road. I recall living in the DC suburbs, driving around with my wife and saying “hey, isn’t this where that shooting/stabbing/mugging happened?” In that respect, it is not very different.

Could we have been involved in the violence? Yes, if we had wandered off on a dirt road in a notoriously lawless area. Does the violence sometimes find its way into more populated, otherwise safe areas? You betcha. There is a huge difference between knowing the odds and taking precautions on one hand, and living in fear on the other.  That applies to Mexico, New Mexico, and anywhere else.

So here’s a story meant to show just how much can be the same when living as an expat.

I grew up in small town Indiana in the 1960s and 1970s, just as shopping malls were killing off main street and local stores.  Malls were the cool place to go and hang out. When you were too young to drive, you bummed a ride from friends, or if desperate, went with your parents, taking care NEVER to be seen with your parents while you were at the mall.

As I grew up and started a family of my own, malls became a useful place to one-stop shop, but they were only efficient in terms of time, not price, and seemed to attract a growing number of the wrong types (kids like me years before, but now I was a parent and didn’t want my kids associating with those kids :).

Anyway, I found myself in Guadalajara today, because we needed to shop for a variety of housewares and wanted a little more variety, if not the best price.  And we found the Galerias Mall, which looked like something right out of Tysons Corner, Virginia.

Huge parking garage, check.  Anchor stores (Sears, Liverpool), check. Food court, along with two Starbucks, Dairy Queen, Crispy Kreme, McDonald’s, Applebee’s, Outback Steakhouse, check. Kiosks hawking Sun Glass Hut, cell phones and toys, lots of glass and marble, several high end couture stores, check.

We arrived around 11:00 and the mall was pretty empty, but by 1:00 the restaurants and shops were doing brisk business.  Clearly, this was no “ghost mall.” I am uncertain how I feel about this aspect of American culture exported elsewhere. It did feel a little like a time machine trip to 1975. We did find the housewares we needed, but I much prefer shopping in the small stores and tianguis in Mexico.

I just hope my Dad didn’t see me there.