From the US to Mexico: Brian
Adjusting. Acclimating. Falling in love.
Brian moved to Mexico for love. Twice.
The first time he moved because he wanted to see about pursuing a relationship with a Mexican woman he’d met at his church in Arizona. Spoiler: This is a success story.
The second time he moved because he was in love with the country and he and his wife were given an incredible opportunity to start an educational project in the Central Highlands. Spoiler: Also a success story.
What was it about Mexico that was so easy for him to love?
After 34 years there, does it feel like a safe place to live? And raise a family?
What advice would he give his younger self (and anyone with Mexico on their radar)?
I hope you enjoy Brian’s story about leaving home and finding home. In Mexico.
What took you to Mexico the first time? And where in Mexico did it take you?
I was working as a teacher in a high school in Tucson, Arizona and I met Mireya, who is my wife of over 35 years, at church. Mireya’s from Mazatlan, which is a resort town on the Pacific coast, and her family knew a family in Tuscon, so she was up living with them and learning English. After four months, she went back to Mexico. So we started writing letters and then I decided that I would go visit her on spring break.
I took the train down. It was an 18-hour train ride to Mazatlan, Sinaloa. I met her. I met her family. and I decided to pursue that relationship. And at the end of the school year, I resigned and I moved down with some money in the bank to Mazatlan, Mexico.
I was blown away by Mexico. It just seemed like a different planet. Everything was different—the language, the staccato of Spanish, the smells. There were some really good smells and some not so good smells. Everything was stronger. It's warm, it's humid. It was very colorful. My hobby and side gig has been photography and so I was very excited visually. It was all new to me.
Had you ever been to Mexico before? Did you speak Spanish?
I'd never been to Mexico. I had enrolled in a community college course in Tucson and I was working hard at the Spanish and felt like I was starting to get somewhere with that. And so I went down to South Tucson one day just to listen to two Spanish speakers speak. And I remember being in this tire shop and listening to two native Spanish speakers go back and forth and I didn't understand a thing. And I thought: Wow, this is going to be a lot harder than I thought.
And that was one of the biggest challenges. Because I had the idea, like many people do, that if you learn the language, you'll do just fine.
But there are also all these cultural differences between nations. Things that are ingrained in us that sometimes people are just oblivious to. And they get you in trouble.
How long did you live in Mexico that first time?
I moved down in June and it was the hottest and the most humid place I'd ever been in my life. It was seriously a challenge living in that heat. Mireya had a job in the mornings till two. I would work on my Spanish and work on a lot of vocabulary—she would help me with that in the afternoon. And then, we were just getting to know each other better. I was getting to know her family. And we got to a point where we were like, We should consider marriage. And we talked about that and I asked her dad and he said he had two conditions.
He said, “First of all you have to be able to say “(editors note: Sorry, I have no idea how to write this, but it’s the Spanish word for supercalifragilisticexpialidocious)”–he had a good sense of humor. And then he said, “You need to have a job.” Because he saw me down there not working.
So at that point, my goals changed and I started studying for an actuary exam, because I had read that if you do that, you can get a job in a large city in the Western United States, which is where we wanted to live.
I was able to get a job at an insurance company in Portland, Oregon and we got married and we moved up. She moved from sunny Mazatlan to dark, rainy, cloudy Portland in mid-December.
Tell me about the second time you moved to Mexico.
We enjoyed our time in Portland. I had a good job. We bought a small house. Mireya was able to study art. She's an excellent artist and that wasn't something she could have studied in her hometown in Mexico. So we enjoyed Portland. But you know, corporate wasn't necessarily for me. I missed teaching.
We met a businesswoman at our church and she had this desire to start an educational project in Mexico. They were looking for another couple to help them do this. It helped that we already knew the language. It helped very much that Mireya was Mexican and could help us with many of the obstacles that we would face there. So we sold everything and rented the house at that point and moved to Morelia, Michoacán, which is a city of over a million people in the Central Highlands of Mexico.
A lot of people, when they think Mexico, they think either beaches or cactus desert. But 70% of Mexico's population lives over 5,000 feet above sea level. The Central Highlands in Mexico are very colonial cities with a lot of Spanish influence in the architecture. The climate is very temperate. For instance, it's April 17th and today it'll get up to probably 85 degrees and down to 50 or 55 degrees. May is our hottest month and then the rains start. Our springs here are hotter than our summers. But it's a very temperate climate. We've never lived in a house that had either air conditioning or heating.
We love it. We've been here ever since–34 years.
So when you moved the first time, the language was the thing that you were worried about. What about the second time? Was there something you were concerned about? Or were you just like, We've done this before, we know what we're doing, no worries?
No, it was very different. The first time I came down, I was a single guy who could live pretty cheap. But the second time, we were now a family and so the idea was: I need to work hard to make this project function. It was more work-related concerns the second time.
We hear a lot about how dangerous Mexico has become. What's your take as someone who's living there?
I've lived here for 34 years. I've driven the highways of every state except one in Mexico. We've lived here. We've raised two kids here. My daughters went to school, they took public transportation… In all that time, our house was broken into one time. And actually, we were five years in Portland, and it also happened one time. I’ve never been assaulted and never seen a gunshot fired, except on New Year's Eve where they shoot them up into the air.
We live in the state of Michoacán, which goes from where we're at up here in the highlands, at six thousand feet above sea level, down to the coast. Right before you get to the coast, there's Tierra Caliente, the hotlands. And there are remote villages where there's definitely a cartel presence down there. We don't go and visit those towns. Just like if you were living in Chicago and there are parts of Chicago you wouldn't necessarily go visit.
Right now, if you read the news about Mexico? Sinaloa, which is where my wife is from, is having all these problems. We went to a wedding in Culiacán last November. And we just visited a month ago. If nobody would have told me that there were problems, I would have never known that things were different there.
In Mexico, it's very concentrated on those who are involved in the drug cartel business. There's a lot of violence in those circles. There is sometimes collateral damage that can happen. But in all my time in Mexico I’ve never seen that. There could be a situation where a tourist is involved in some type of situation like that. It doesn't happen very, very often here.
Can you talk a little bit about the healthcare system?
As a retiree, one of the concerns always is healthcare. What we've experienced is that Mexico has a public healthcare system that's not the greatest. But you can pay into that system and you can get care if you need it. But their medical costs are about 10% of what it would cost you in the US if you just paid out of pocket.
Tell me more about the cultural adjustments you had to make from living in the the US to living in Mexico.
Rudeness differs from country to country. Mexico, for instance, is a very much more formal country than the US. For instance, when I talk to my father-in-law and mother-in-law, I use the usted form of Spanish (which is the formal form), whereas I speak to my wife and I speak to friends in the tú, which is the informal form. Because that's the way it's done. It's a polite thing to do.
Also, it was important for me to always greet him, even when we were staying there. You wake up, get out of bed, and you come downstairs to have breakfast and you say, “Good morning. Buenos dias. Como está, Don Humberto? How are you doing?”
In Mexico, we had an exchange program with our school where our best English students would go up and live with an American family for a month in Portland. And I remember they came back one time and they said, “Kids are so rude because sometimes there's a group of us talking and someone comes up and nobody says hi to anybody. And then they just leave the group and they don't say goodbye.” In Mexico, it took me forever to pick my daughter up from an activity because she had to say goodbye to every person with a shake of the hand and a kiss on the cheek.
So the way that we greet people, the occasions that we give a gift or don't give a gift, all these cultural things are ingrained in us. It's how you are polite in the country you live in. And when you move to another country, the first and most important thing is to just realize it's going to be different. And there's some cultural things that you need to observe. Because you can offend people and not have a clue.
If you could go back and give advice to your younger self, what would you would say to young Brian about what is ahead of him?Would you give him some advice?
I think mainly with that whole cultural piece. It took me a while to really understand that. It actually didn't happen until we started having to prepare students to live in the States and then it suddenly clicked with me and I would have liked, right at the beginning, to say: Look, things are different down here. Observe. Be smart about that and do things like they do it in Mexico. Don't have an attitude. Don’t be like, I just don't like saying hi to everybody. I just don't like it. I don't like having to shake hands with everybody. Yeah, just don't be like that. Just totally say, I'm going to figure it out.
Right from the beginning, I think people were very forgiving of me, as they will be a lot of times of any foreigner that lives with them. But yeah, I think that would be the main thing.
What advice or tips or recommendations would you give to someone who is thinking of moving to Mexico or Mexico's on their radar?
Well, obviously you want to subscribe to Mexico Life, which is my substack.
Also, if you just delve into a little bit of Google or Facebook groups or expat groups, people have answers to all those questions you’re probably asking. Hone in on a couple of really good publications or people you can trust. I've seen some of those Facebook groups and they're giving good information. There's one called on the road in Mexico, which is all about driving down and crossing the border. And there are expat groups that form in each major Mexican city.
Do you have any general advice on living in another country?
Learn the language. Open yourself up to a different culture.
I think that because we were helping out a particular segment of the population, we weren’t seen as outsiders. We were part of this community. There aren't really soup kitchens here, but I know a couple of guys that are helping the migrants that are coming up from Central America. When you plug into things like that, you become part of the community. And so I think that's important. I think that's important wherever you live to try and do that.
What is your favorite thing about life in Mexico?
I love the climate down here. It's pretty much sunny almost every day. I have a yard now. I can grow a lot of different things. I have grapefruits. I just picked a papaya yesterday, off a little papaya tree. So I love that. The food down here is just amazingly tasty, so I love that.
And the people are very warm. When you get down into Mexico, especially into places that are not as touristy, they're actually very curious and very welcoming. Curious about what brought you down here. And you'll meet people who want to practice their English. The people are just wonderful actually.
Join in the conversation in the comments—ask questions, share experiences, get ideas, get inspired, get clarity.
Because leaving home is hard. Talking to people who've done it makes it feel less overwhelming. And more fun.
We also talked about:
Where in Mexico might be a good fit for you if you’re a digital nomad, an artist, or a retiree.
The visa, residency, citizenship process he went through.
More of the key cultural differences that caught him off guard and unaware.
The method they used in the US to ensure their daughters were bilingual.
What they brought with them when they moved to Mexico. And the social media to use if you move to Mexico with nothing and need to furnish a home.
The thing they tell people they miss about the US, which is not so much a “thing” as an “event.”
And the reason you might really want to stay inside on New Years Eve.
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Watch the entire interview by clicking play on the video below. Or listen to the podcast.
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If you want to connect with Brian, you can find him at Mexico Life on substack.
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The different way people greet was interesting to notice! good one!