One of the most common pieces of advice we’ve had when people hear about our move is, “Don’t drink the water!” Considering all of the other issues that go along with an international move, the water is probably a minor one, but the effects of drinking bad water can be debilitating – at least temporarily.

When Ben and I went to Zanzibar during our 5-week camping trip from Nairobi to Johannesburg, I made the mistake of ordering a frozen drink. I didn’t think about the ice, and that decision resulted in 2 days spent in the bathroom, wondering how long I should sit there holding the trash can before I needed to go to the hospital. Our 3 nights in Zanzibar were the only nights of the trip (besides the first and last) that we were not in a tent, so I guess if it was going to happen, that was the best time.

In Morocco we never drink the tap water, but there’s something about the food or the spices they use that always gives us some “digestional irregularities.” Our pediatrician told me a long time ago to pack fiber gummies and that would help to free up the bathroom. We’ve never gotten really sick there, but my brother and sister-in-law did and it was not pretty.

The house we rented last time we were here in Mexico has a water filtration system, but I had no intention of drinking the water from the tap. We were only here for a month, so we could make do with bottled water. I don’t know what caused that plan to go out the window but we threw caution to the wind and drank the tap water from Day 1 with no problems.

Our current house also has a water filtration system, but when we arrived there was an empty giant water bottle with a spigot (like the office water cooler without the cooler). Adela told me that for 25 pesos ($1.50), Fernando could get us a new bottle. The tap water is probably fine, but for that price, it seemed like a good investment. Plus they re-fill the bottles so we’re not contributing to the plastic water bottle problem.  And…we can buy new bottles from Miguel at la papeleria (yes – water from the paper store) so it’s close by and gives us another excuse to chat with our neighbors.

We do use the tap water for everything else, including washing the dishes and brushing our teeth. Fruits and vegetables have to be soaked for 10 minutes in an antibacterial solution (there’s a lot of information about that here). I don’t know how I would have figured that out if it hadn’t been in the printed instructions that came with our first house here. It wasn’t mentioned by our current landlord or property manager, and there wasn’t a bottle of the stuff under the sink or a plastic tub dedicated to that purpose like we had last time. I guess everyone just knows that it’s a requirement.

The other water issue in some of the houses here is low water pressure. I’m very happy to say that our house has great water pressure and the shower in the master bath is fabulous. The washer and dryer work great too, and so far the laundry pile hasn’t gotten out of control. One thing to get used to has been washing dishes by hand (no dishwasher) but the kids are on a rotating schedule – 1 clears the table and puts away any leftovers, 1 washes, and 1 dries, while I have a glass of wine and supervise.

I can’t believe we’ve been here for a week already!  And Ben caught the cat!

I woke up with the roosters on our first day in Miguel, even though we had gone to bed around 3 a.m. After catching up on some email I pried everyone else out of bed and we checked out the house more thoroughly. We LOVE the house and the location. It’s close enough to the main square (el Jardin) that we can pop home if someone needs the bathroom, but far enough away that we don’t hear the noise of the crowds. There’s plenty of other noise but it doesn’t bother me – neighbor dogs and kids, church bells, car noise and the occasional horn or radio, birds – including the aforementioned roosters, and police radios. We almost always see police patrols on our street when we go out, which freaked the kids out a little but I think it’s normal. I’m happy to have them here.

The house is perfect for us. You enter off the street into a small foyer. On the right is Adlani’s bedroom, with a connecting bathroom. Straight ahead is a small fountain, which Annie jumped right into when we arrived the first night (she was so thirsty she couldn’t help herself, but we’re trying to keep her from drinking out of it). When you’re in front of the fountain, there is no roof above you – the house is truly a mix of indoor/outdoor living, with a large terrace that has an umbrella table, a small terrace outside the girls’ room with a smaller table, and a roof terrace above their room. After going through the foyer and past the fountain, you enter the living area which has a kitchen with a counter and bar stools, a sitting area with a loveseat, chairs, a fireplace, and TV, and a dining room which has a door to Adlani’s bathroom.

The terrace is up a set of stairs, and our bedroom is up a few more stairs from the terrace. There is a washer and dryer outside of our bedroom, and plenty of closet space in the bedroom along with a gas fireplace and a bathroom. Up some more stairs is the girls’ bedroom, which also has a bathroom. There are A LOT of stairs and sometimes they’re in unexpected places and of random heights. There are tons of plants and the gardener comes on Thursdays to take care of them. The housekeeper comes on Mondays and Thursdays so hopefully that will motivate everyone to keep things neat (a girl can dream).  We’ll eventually post a video tour of the house and some more photos.

Once I finally got everyone up and into semi-clean clothes, we headed to the bakery we’ve been dreaming about for 2 years. About a block from our house, we ran into our Framinghamian friends – Don Taggart and his son Andrew, who arrived the same day we did. After chatting for a couple of blocks, they moseyed along to the wine store and we turned toward the bakery. The price for 7 pastries and 4 bottles of soda (yes, for breakfast) was 79 pesos – $5. We went to el Jardin to eat and get the weekly newspaper – Attencion, and then stopped by Solutions to pay for our mailbox. Our mail will be forwarded from Framingham, or you can send mail directly to us at 5802 Bob Bullock Loop, Suite C1#84-168, Laredo, TX 78041. The kids would LOVE to get some letters or postcards but packages are really expensive for us to receive and they take a long time to arrive.

We went to see my ice cream guy on the way home (who turned out to be a different ice cream guy but still had my favorite ice cream – piñon (pine nut)), and then had an ice cream party with the Taggarts at our house. After a nap, we got pizza from a pizza place we found on our last visit – La Grotta, and had pizza at the Taggarts’ house, which is actually our friends’ John & Carolyn’s home that we rented on our last visit. It was so much fun to see the new pieces of art they have added, and the amazing garden they created. By 9:30 we were home and in bed. We did a lot of walking – over 20,000 steps, and the kids slept for about 12 hours. A great first day!

Cool things we saw today:  A quinceañera, a beautiful serpiente mosaic on the wall beside our mailbox, and una tourista wearing a sombrero and holding a sword while sitting on a donkey’s back.  We also met our neighbor, Miguel.

I was trying to take a photo of the tourista/donkey but I wasn’t quick enough…you can just make her out with the green shirt.  It’s like a Mexican “Where’s Waldo?”

I knew that July 30^th would be a long day for all of us, but I figured the adrenaline would help us summon up the strength for the last push. We were up pretty early to get the rest of the “necessities” crammed into bags, say goodbye to even more friends, and try to catch Wally the cat who had been spotted outside the night before – he’s an indoor cat but obviously knew something was up and decided to opt out.

By 11:30 the house wasn’t ready but I just couldn’t do any more so I left Ben with lots of piles to address. We squeezed into Elizabeth’s minivan and had an uneventful trip to the airport. We were really early so we found Annie some grass in Revere and then went back to the airport where we hauled all of our checked baggage and the dog in her crate to the AeroMexico counter. I’m not kidding when I say there was a team of ayudantes working on us. Luckily there weren’t a lot of other people checking in because we were still pretty early.

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Most of our checked bags were a kilo or two overweight, so our choices were to a) take stuff out, b) pay $15 per kilo, or c) upgrade 1 ticket to first class. At that point I didn’t feel like digging through each bag and negotiating with the kids on what to leave behind, so Adlani ended up sitting in first class which in my opinion was a waste of free booze and a “gourmet” meal. Later when I asked if he had eaten dinner he said, “Yes, I ate a bun.”

We had plenty of time for an overpriced airport lunch and then waited at the gate through a 1-hour delay. We flew to Mexico City because it was a direct flight and I thought it would be easier and safer for the dog, but with the delay we were not going to arrive until about 10 p.m. There wasn’t anything we could do about it, so we just dozed through the 5-hour flight. Going through Immigration was easy, we found our luggage right away and followed the barking to find Annie. Two unlucky porters piled our bags on two trolleys and took us to SAGARPA – La Secretaría de Agricultura, Ganadería, Desarrollo Rural, Pesca y Alimentación.

I had read a lot about getting pets into Mexico, and our awesome vet (Wellesley Animal Hospital) put together a folder of official-looking documents with lots of stamps and signatures. They worked! I had to fill out a short form, the guy made a copy of my paperwork, and spent half an hour typing it all into the computer. He glanced into the crate at Annie, made us put the blanket she was laying on in a biohazard bag, and we were off to Customs where they x-rayed and opened every single bag. I don’t know what they were looking for, but there wasn’t anything that they questioned so we finally exited the baggage claim area around 11:15 p.m.

I found the driver holding my name right away, and headed in his direction. Imagine me, all happy and relieved, la-la-la, followed by 3 kids, a dog, and 2 porters. The first thing the driver said to me (in a super-grumpy voice) was, “I’ve been waiting here two hours.” I knew that it would take a while for us to get from the plane to the driver, so I had discussed this with the shuttle company twice and had been assured that it wouldn’t be a problem. He told me (in front of the kids) that it was very dangerous to drive at this time – in fact, it was too dangerous to let the dog out to pee.

Once the porters got everything squeezed into a giant SUV, we swerved through the streets of Mexico City as if we would be carjacked if we stopped at any red lights. We finally got on the highway and about an hour after we left the airport he stopped at a gas station so I could let Annie out. She would NOT pee – way too much to see, hear, and smell. We got back in the car and I started praying that she wouldn’t pee in the back seat because the guy probably would have left us on the side of the road. He stopped for a smoke break about an hour later and I let Annie out again – the driver did not join me in my victory dance when she peed.

Luckily the kids all fell asleep so I was the only one scanning the roadside for banditos. I don’t know exactly what the dangers were because the driver barely spoke and wore headphones the whole time. I know it’s not recommended to drive in Mexico at night, but we were on the highway with lots of other cars and we had no other option anyway. There was a period of about 8-10 miles after we got off the highway that we drove through an area where we only saw another car every 2 minutes or so, but there was nobody around.

The streets of San Miguel were deserted when we arrived at 3 a.m., and I nervously told the driver that I had to stop and get the key from our friends’ house. He was not happy. Well, tough sh*t. It took me less than a minute to run in and get the key, and their house is 150 meters from ours. When we got to the house I had a heck of a time getting the door unlocked because it involved turning the key 360 degrees counterclockwise, and then turning it clockwise to approximately 2 o’clock and pushing the door at just the right moment. Meanwhile the driver had piled all of the bags on the street and would have driven away and left us there if I had already paid him. Luckily I hadn’t, so he got the door open, collected his money, and took off.

We all revived a little bit and quickly checked out the house, then piled into my bed and were out cold in seconds. I can’t believe we’re actually here!!!