Category: Preparation

Closing out the series on utilities, let’s talk television, telephone, and internet.

First, you have to understand that every country has rules and regulations (i.e., laws) on who can broadcast what within their borders. These rules go back to the dawn of the broadcast radio era, then were broadened and reinforced when television was invented. Cable television was a challenge to these rules, but could be accomodated. Satellite and streaming blow the national rules apart. So while it may be illegal for a US firm to broadcast its signals into Mexico, it is not your fault if you receive them. And if someone else receives a signal and resells it to you, they may be liable, but you probably are not. Perfectly clear? No, of course not, but this is useful background to understand the details I will cover now.

In Mexico, you can sign up for Mexican cable and satellite services as well as receive signals over-the-air. What you will get are channels in packages designed for the Mexican mass market, with some English language channels thrown in. If that does not satisfy your needs, you can buy a satellite dish from a US or Canadian provider and install it in Mexico; there are experts here waiting to assist you. The service provider is not supposed to provide service in Mexico, but they cannot control where you pick up their signal. If you let them know you are in Mexico, they will cancel your service, but if you don’t, you just pay them as you would if your home was in Toronto or Tampa. Sometimes the geography can pose complications. I hear that Shaw (a major Canadian satellite provider) is switching to a new satellite which is difficult to target from Mexico. Likewise, some packages available in the States may not be available in Mexico (I still don’t know exactly why). You can get a basic channel package for less than $100 dollars a month, which gets you the major networks, sports, and entertainment channels.

If you have a decent internet connection, you can watch television with devices such as Roku, Amazon Firestick, or Kodi, etc. These are vehicles to access content on the internet, which may require additional costs for the actual service provider (think Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, etc.). In some cases you just buy these services, but in some cases those pesky national laws interfere and you need a IP masker which fools the internet into thinking you are in whatever country you choose. Some enterprising individuals will also sell unlimited pay services which they are accessing and retransmitting. These deals are usually “too good to be true” in that they are violations of the copy- and broadcast-rights of the original service provider.  Service providers and access devices makers work together to shut down such pirate resellers, resulting in spotty service. Costs for streaming are very a la carte, meaning prices are all over the map and depend on what level of quality and access you desire.

Speaking of the interwebs, rural Mexico is where the US was 10 years ago. The main provider is TelMex, the phone system, in competition with Mexican cable providers like IZZI and Telecable. Most access is shared, meaning high-usage periods result in slow service, which is generally neither particularly high-speed nor consistent. We have 10 MBs download with about .5 MB upload via TelMex, sufficient to watch TV/streaming. There is a high-speed, fiber-optic cable system considering running direct service to our area this year, which would be a significant leap forward (say 50-75 MBs in a basic package). Some satellite internet service is available, but very expensive.  Despite this, many expats who work on the internet find ways to obtain sufficient bandwidth to work from lakeside.

The phone system in Mexico was only deregulated recently, so change is underway. Previously Telmex was a subsidiary (and a near monopoly) under América Móvil, which belongs to Carlos Slim; depending on his holdings and the value of the Peso, he is either the richest or one of the richest people on the planet on any given day. A basic landline or simple cell plan is very cheap, and often includes free calls to the US. Some expats keep their US cell plans, although if you use all your data continuously outside the States, they might cancel on you. Many expats use free or low-cost VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) systems such as Vonage or MagicJack. Different from the States, many Mexicans use WhatsApp, an asynchronous messaging application which permits voice, text, photo or video sharing either over cell data or wifi.

Phew! That is a lot to digest, and more importantly, it is changing all the time, so consider this a snapshot at best. The short version is: like most things, basic communications service in Mexico is inexpensive. As an expat, you can access most anything communications-wise you want to in Mexico, but it may not be easy or cheap.

But they still don’t have “any stinkin’ badges!”

I previously covered the ins and outs of electric power in Mexico. What about the other utilities? I’ll leave television, the internet, and phones for another day. Here are the other mainstays.

Let’s start with the postal system, or Correos de México. Getting mail directly from NOB to your home address is entirely a crap-shoot. It may disappear or it may show up months late. Based on some magazine subscriptions I transfered down as a test, you can anticipate a 3-4 month lag. However, there is a work-around: many expats sign up for local PO boxes in Texas and mail transfer services which (in effect) hand carry your snail mail down to lakeside. So if you have to have regular mail delivery, there is a way to get it. As to local mail, all I get are electric and telephone bills which always come on time. Regular mail is delivered to our development whenever the mailman has access to his bicycle. Package delivery varies: Amazon Mexico is pretty fast and consistent; some stateside ordering (including Amazon USA) can get hung up either because they don’t use international shipping services (think DHL for Mexico) or if there are customs issues with your order.

Water varies in quality and type of service based on where you live.  Most municipal and well water is not potable, so folks have bottled water delivered in bulk for drinking and cooking. Most Mexican homes have a aljibe or cistern which gradually fills up from a low pressure municipal feed.  A pump moves the water from the cistern to a tinaco or water tank on the roof which provides a store of water under pressure, which is also heated by the sun (but that is as hot as it gets for those houses). Some expats add pumps and heaters to address the pressure and heat limitations. If you live in a more modern development, especially one built with expats in mind, you will probably have a community water system which is filtered and pressurized. We also have an infrared water purification filter for our house so whatever comes out of the faucet is as good as anywhere NOB. We have a propane water heater which provides ample hot water. Since the local water is very hard, we must use a water softener. Water costs us about $15 USD monthly, including our fountain and landscaping needs.

That mention of propane in the last paragraph was not a typo: propane is the fuel of choice in Mexico. We have a sizable propane tank in a bodega in front of our house, which a gas truck comes and tops off whenever we run low. We use propane for cooking, grilling, heating water and a single fireplace. A gas refill runs about $70 USD and lasts around five to six weeks. Gas trucks cruise the neighborhoods, playing unique company jingles over loudspeakers and always ready to refill a tank.

The trash team comes by on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. They ride a huge truck with giant trash bags hanging off the sides. They leap off the truck, grab whatever they find in or near the trash can, and toss it to the top where the other team members sort/throw it into the appropriate bag, and away they go. Trash fees are built into our homeowners association, which is approximately $90 a month (covers outside maintenance, security, etc).

Sewage is also covered by the HOA fee, and just disappears down to drain (as it should be). However, our situation is unique as again we live in a development built for expats and Tapatios (the nickname for people from Guadalajara). In most of Mexico outside the big cities, tourist and expat zones, the waste system is not designed for paper products. You’ll see signs in Spanish and English reminding you to throw all toilet paper in the trash can in the bathroom. This is a hard habit for many visitors and expats to adopt; the alternative is a clogged toilet. You must determine, before you buy/rent/visit, what type of waste system is in the casa you are considering.

Sorry for all the nitty-gritty details, but that’s a part of expat life!

Actually, we don’t need more power, but we’re getting some anyway. We just had solar panels installed, which led me to reconsider one aspect of expat life in general: utilities.

Utilities are something you take for granted NOB. The water works and is potable, the electricity is always on and the voltage constant, mail is delivered whether “sleet or snow” and sewage just goes away. This is not always the case lakeside. Of course you pay for the luxury of not thinking about your utilities NOB, while here in Mexico we might pay less, with less certainty.

For example, consider electrical power. The line voltage can wax or wane, so you may need to purchase a voltage regulator, or use local appliances designed to operate in such conditions.  Power is generally stable here, although we do get occasional outages during especially powerful storms in the rainy season. Given we endured several such outages in our last apartment in Arlington, Virginia, I can hardly complain. My dear wife tells me our electric bills NOB for a small apartment averaged $105 monthly; I wouldn’t know, as I never paid a utility bill in my life (thanks, dear!). Like typical Americans, we had a TV running constantly, air conditioned/heated to 70 degrees year-round, and had all manner of computers and appliances plugged in continuously.

Electric power in Mexico is heavily subsidized by the federal government.  There are varying rates for electric use, with the smallest use being very cheap. Once you cross over into high use (called by the acronym DAC) your rates triple. This is meant to deter energy waste, but it is still cheap by NOB standards. The DAC measurement is based on a running 12 month average, so it is not a one-time trip wire, but once you go into DAC you stay at the triple rate until your average goes completely below the limit.

I was really focussed on NOT being an ugly American energy waster when we moved down, so I was a fanatic the first month at turning off lights, unplugging small appliances, etc. Then my first bill came.

Now that bi-montly bill only totaled about $27 USD per month. But as you can see, the usage arrow is way over in the red, the dreaded DAC. ¡A poco!  Our bills hovered in the same area the rest of the year. Meanwhile, we sweated through a particularly hot end of the dry season in May and June, which forced us to reconsider the standard no-heat-and-no-air conditioning mantra of lakeside.  But if we went with mini-split air conditioners, we would bust DAC permanently.

All of which led us to consider installing solar panels. The purchase and complete installation of four panels with microinverters and a monitoring system ran us approximately $3000 USD, which is still cheap. And yes, I know that even considering the permanent DAC costs, this was not a great move in terms of return on investment. It was more about peace of mind while not worrying about our comfort. We’ll soon follow-up with two mini-split air conditioners.  Even after that, our electrical usage should be back down into the low or very low range.

More about the other utilities in future posts!

The final leg of our Great American Road Trip included visits to New Hampshire and Maryland.  The former was for the ordination of my brother-in-law as a Deacon in the Roman Catholic Church; the latter for my niece’s Bat Mitzvah.

The juxtaposition of these two family events got me to thinking about one thing you bring with you as an expat: your faith. As the famous philosopher Buckaroo Banzai once said, “wherever you go, there you are.” In the context of being an American expat, you bring your faith with you to the new environment, and it will almost certainly be an environment very different from the States.

Take Mexico, for example.  Mexico is an overwhelmingly Catholic country: 91% Catholic according to the 2010 census, making Mexico second only to Brazil worldwide for numbers of Catholics. Every Mexican town has a Catholic church in the main square, and that church is the center of town life. The festival for that church’s patron saint is a major party, and other saints have similar festivals which involve early morning bands, parades, parties, and day or week-long fireworks. Some churches broadcast daily prayers, like a rosary, over loudspeakers for the whole town to enjoy. So Mexico is noisily Catholic.

While Catholicism is prevalent in Mexico, it is not overwhelming. There are growing numbers of younger Mexicans who are culturally Catholic, but whose beliefs and practices more closely resemble the “Nones” NOB. The missing nine percent from the 2010 census belong to a variety of other Christian churches, which have proselytized in Mexico for years.  Most importantly, the Catholic church in Mexico has had a contentious relationship with the federal government in Mexico City, going all the way back to the Mexican War of Reform (1857-1860). During the revolution in the early 2oth century, the Church opposed the socialist groups which consolidated power, and the eventual winner, the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) returned the favor by expropriating Church property and outlawing public displays of religion. By the 1920s, this led to the Cristeros rebellion, which was especially brutal. After this inconclusive conflict, both sides remained combative, but over time a gradual truce developed where the Church was left alone as long as it stayed out of politics. So Catholicism in Mexico may sometimes be out of sight, but rarely out of mind. Learning all this was quite enlightening to this Irish Catholic, and put the culture wars NOB in a different perspective, since the culture wars down in Mexico were real wars!

When choosing where to live as an expat, you’ll need to consider how your faith will fit in with your new country. Lakeside is unique for Mexico in terms of the number and diversity of faith offerings for expats. Having a faith community to welcome you can be a big boost psychologically, and can provide important assistance during the critical early transition period. Likewise, not understanding local religious practices can lead to a rocky start. I have heard more than one expat complain about the noisy Mexican patronal saint celebrations, expressing surprise at something that happens every year on the same date, usually with a big build-up in the weeks preceding!

Especially for Americans accustomed to faith being a personal or private matter, it can be a challenge adapting to other cultures where faith is something very public and shared! Not insurmountable, but still one more thing to consider in deciding to go the expat route.

If you are going to live the expat life, you’ll be away from family and friends for months at a time. This is one of the negative aspects, but it also means you’ll on occasion travel back to visit. We are on one of those visits right now, after six months setting up our casa in Mexico. Is there anything better than seeing old friends, or getting together with your family, especially your grandkids?

We recently spent a long weekend renewing friendships at a small reunion with my old “college classmates”. I use that term only the your familiarity, because I did not go to college, I went to West Point, which has a passing similarity to college, in the same way that a Sunday drive in the country is similar to the Indy 500. I like to say we did not matriculate, we were institutionalized.  Anyway, the Long Gray Line has a way of instilling lifelong friendships, so it was great to get together and share stories, learn of life’s twists and turns, and just talk. Because of our shared experiences, we all feel very comfortable around each other and easily fall back into an openness which belies the years apart.

As enjoyable as old, lifelong friends can be, nothing bests family, especially grandkids. Lately I have spent mornings constructing an awesome rollercoaster, taking a canoe trip down the Little Miami river, and having an epic water gun fight, all with my oldest grandson, Ian.

It is a simple joy, but simple pleasures are most often the best. It is hard to pack missed months together into a week or two, but we plan to take advantage of our newfound leisure time to visit more frequently. We are blessed in that Ian’s other set of grandparents live nearby, so even if we miss him, he does not lack for grandparental attention!

Next up, a mini-family reunion and a visit to “the Shrine.”

One challenge every expat faces is “what to do about the local language?” Do you just ignore it, speak English very loudly, and hope for the best?  Do you learn a few phrases, so you can ask for another beer, or where the restrooms are, and just get by? Do you rely on Google translate and hope we get the Universal Translator before you croak? Do you just keep trying through experience and osmosis to pick up the language? Do you go online and try the free or pay language training sites? Do you take language classes in person?

We always assumed we would learn Spanish, just to be comfortable in our new home. We both have foreign languages in our past: I spoke German and some French; Judy also spoke German and had four years of high school Spanish. We thought we would find some immersion training in Guadalajara, since it has a major university and is known for immersive language training. However, most of the immersion training is aimed at college students, and we weren’t interested in moving into a dorm for six weeks (imagine that!).

We found many great language aids online. YouTube is full of decent instructional videos. We weren’t partial to Rosetta Stone, but we did like Synergy Spanish and look forward to following Destinos when we learn a little more vocabulary. We really like free apps like Memrise or sites like Spanishdict.com, which can really help with practice or training aids. Judy has done a great job putting new vocabulary words on flashcards on Quizlet.

In the end, we needed more structure: we learned many phrases and short questions/answers, but we weren’t learning the language. So we decided to try a local language school, Olé México. We meet three times a week, for 1 hour and 45 minutes each class. Our class is just four students and one teacher, so we get ample opportunity to practice speaking.

We started with the alphabet and pronunciation drills, and then began conjugating regular verbs. We keep adding vocabulary by learning sets of words, like directions, or adjective pairs (strong/weak, short/tall), or noun groups (Mom, Dad, Son, Daughter, Family). We just tackled the ever-difficult “when to use Ser versus Estar” lesson. For those who don’t know, Spanish has two different versions of the English verb “to be”, and they are used for different qualities of “being.” Ser is for essential characteristics, and estar is for more transitory characteristics, mas o menos.

I always heard from language teachers that Spanish was the easiest foreign language for English-speakers to learn, because many words translate almost directly (like anything ending in -ion), and in Spanish the vowels and consonants have only one sound and you sound them all out.

Our teacher, Nadia, has done a great job. We enjoy lessons where she asks us to describe our favorite actor or singer, and the class has to guess who it is. We just finished describing our extended families. Or sometimes she asks us a basic question like “where were you born?” and then asks us to describe the differences between that place and where we live now. It is a lot of oral practice, but we can already see a difference in our language capabilities. We can hold basic conversations with merchants, exchange pleasantries with people we meet, and at least make ourselves understood, even if we don’t always know the correct terms.

Perhaps I will try out a dual language post in the not too distant future!