Sometimes I marvel at how my wife and I arrived in Guanajuato, Mexico, with so little Spanish and with so few cultural skills. Somehow we managed to survive some pretty severe bumps in the expatriation road. It was in our ninth month of living here when we decided we were sufficiently equipped to handle venturing away from the warm and secure nest that we rented from an American expatriate who had excellent bilingual skills. We believed we were ready to live in “real Mexico” and to cut the ties from this informal but very secure situation. We had a good guy who helped us out, a lot, when the frequent confusion of trying to adapt to a new culture overwhelmed us. We were not ready and could have used someone as a mentor to continue to guide us through our language fumbles and our attempts to develop bicultural fluency.
I don’t think I can begin to explain all the various things that can go wrong when you get it into your head to live in another country, especially Mexico. And, wrong they do go. These days, so many Americans and Canadians seem to be attracted to the Prime Living Locations in Mexico where well-developed Gringo infrastructures already exist....