The Month Of México: April 2022 Recap

by A Purple Life, posted in Blogging, Budget Check-In, Early Retirement, Early Retirement Updates, Film, Finance, Fitness, Food, Hobbies, Keto, Net Worth Update, Spending, Travel
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Ok – seriously, how is 2022 1/3 over? Traveling internationally has seriously made this year fly by. I need to recalibrate 🙂 . Anyway, after our month in Thailand, we hung out in the northeast that was flirting with spring before heading to our next adventure: México! Let’s see what I got up to this month 🙂 .

We Moved To Mérida, México!

In a complete contrast to the million hoops we had to jump through to be let into Thailand, México required no pandemic precautions to enter…I wasn’t sure that was a good thing for the country, but it did make our entry process a lot easier. You don’t even need a visa to stay for less than 3 months, so I hopped on a plane like it was a normal domestic flight and ended up across the border 🙂 . Also, heads up: this is an awesome Wikipedia page that easily lists what visa requirements there are by country for US citizens. It’s saved my ass many times.

Anyway, after I arrived in México, I was excited to see my Mom (it’s been a month since our adventure to Thailand), and settle into the Airbnb that will be our longest stay on record: 9 weeks! I was happy to find that it’s possibly the most beautiful house we’ve ever stayed in. I love it and am excited to stay here another month. Once we leave, I’ll share what it looks like with y’all on my Insta per usual 😉 .

I Went To Spanish Classes

Basically, this:

After we switched to online classes, my class time went from 4 hours a day to 2 hours a day so I had the bright idea that I need to supplement that time…WRONG 🙂 .

As I mentioned in that Insta post, 2 hours of private online classes really feels like 4 hours of in person class with 3+ other people. There’s no down time in those 2 hours because there are no other students for the teacher to focus on. So when we continue online classes, I will most likely change up these additional things I was doing.

In addition to the 2 hours of class, I would review what we learned and do my homework for about an hour after class or right before our next one. I would also watch at least 1 hour of a show or movie per day with Spanish audio and no subtitles. In just two weeks I got through:

  1. The Spy Who Dumped Me
  2. The Other Guys
  3. Pacific Rim
  4. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
  5. Ted Lasso (Season 1 & Season 2)

I’ve also started speaking with my Argentinian ex-roommate in Spanish for our weekly calls. She said she was surprised by how much I could say after only a week of class and that’s only improved! We were having whole ass conversations 🙂 . It’s wild.

In addition to that, I’ve been texting with my other friends who speak Spanish and our Airbnb host has been very kind and helpful in that he said he’d only text with us in Spanish, which has led to some interesting interactions . I now know how to talk about an air conditioner and toilet bowl at length in Spanish 🙂 .

And obviously outside the house, we’re always speaking Spanish. One of the reasons we chose to live in Mérida was because it’s not a tourist town so few people actually speak English. If we’re going to the market or the doctor or the pharmacy – we’re speaking Spanish the whole time and we’ve been learning a wild amount. Immersion for the win!

I Explored The Yucatán Peninsula

We ventured out of Mérida and hired a taxi for the day to take us to some local haunts. It was extremely cool to see Mayan ruins and finally explore the cenotes I’ve heard so much about 🙂 .

I Shared Reviews On TripAdvisor

This started in Thailand: either a restaurant owner specifically asked for a TripAdvisor review or there was a sign about it next to a cashier stand. This is because they were trying to get tourism back and wanted to have recent reviews of a place after an almost two year shutdown.

The same thing happened when I got to Mexico. I wasn’t asked to give reviews there, but I saw a sign about it next to a cashier stand and since I review everything in my life anyway as some kind of compulsion, I was happy to do so 🙂 . I’ve been editing the reviews that I post on Instagram and uploading them to my TripAdvisor. I want people to have great experiences when they start traveling again!

I Learned How To Inject A Needle

So I’ve been tweeting about my adventures using the awesome Mexican medical system and I have full posts planned around my use of medical tourism going to the doctor, dentist and getting prescriptions at wildly affordable prices in México.

However, this is a less fun story 🙂 . One of the prescriptions I was given was an injection, and it was given to me as DIY: I was just sent away from the pharmacy with needles and a few vials. I have been fortunate enough to never have to inject myself with anything before. I asked my partner and mom if they would be willing to do it and they didn’t feel confident, so I considered just going back to the doctor each day to have them give it to me – visits are only $2.50 so why not?

But then, we were saved by one of my best friends. She’s a badass pediatric ER nurse and native Spanish speaker, so sending her pictures of my medicines and their Spanish instructions was not a problem. She was so kind, told us exactly how to do it, sent a helpful video and then offered to hop on a video call and walk my partner and mom through injecting me with a (IMHO HUGE 😉 ) needle. She was a great teacher, they did a wonderful job injecting me and we all learned something new so wins all around 🙂 .

I Watched Movies & Hung Out With People

This month my weekly movie club became more of a “scream about Severance” club, which is fair because that shit is FUCKING AWESOME!!!

A friend I used to have an in person weekly Supper Club with in Seattle kickstarted a graphic novel that’s part of the universe of one of our favorite films, Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim (no I’m not kidding – It rocks 🙂 ).

Well, she received the graphic novel, shared it with me and we read it as a mini book club and then started watching Season 2 of the awesome show Pacific Rim: The Black that was just released. We’d watched Season 1 with each other last year.

In addition to that, my partner and I started watching Taika Waititi’s awesome new show, Our Flag Means Death and my weekly movie club watched the below films. Overall, it was a wonderful month filled with some awesome new films and shows.

Movies & TV Shows

Rewatches

If you’re interested in following along with what I’m watching and how I rate films, feel free to check out my Letterboxd profile here.

I Read 5 Books

This month I read:

  1. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen
  2. The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
  3. Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
  4. Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause
  5. Pacific Rim: Blackout by Cavan Scott

It was also another great month for books. I’m still enjoying the 75% fiction, 25% non-fiction percentage that I seem to be accidentally following this year. If you’re curious about what I’m reading and my ratings of these books, I have a Goodreads account you can check out here.

I Wrote 4 Posts

In case you missed it, this month I published the below posts:

  1. Lessons Learned After 1 Year Of Airbnb Nomad Life
  2. The Month Of Spring(?): March 2022 Recap
  3. Slow Travel Review: Phuket, Thailand – The Land Of Sea & Food
  4. Review: Grab – The Lyft, DoorDash and InstaCart of Asia

I’ve been continuing my trend of saying no to extra things 🙂 . For example, I was asked to review financial products on a YouTube channel (not my bag thx), to review a new finance book that’s coming out with a childfree twist (cool take, but naps are calling me) and asked to provide a media quote 12 hours from when email was sent (obviously not lol).

However, I did say yes to a few things that intrigued me. I ended up recording that podcast I previously mentioned and it went live yesterday:

I also pre-recorded my talk for the free Financial Feminist Summit (RSVP here) and in doing so, I taught myself how to edit audio in iMovie. I’m gathering new skills left and right!

I also joined the Plutus Awards Panel for the 3rd year in a row and continue to give feedback on my FIRE friend’s novel when new chapters are ready. Phew! Now I definitely need a nap 🙂 .

Physical

Sleep

My asthma was acting up this month until I went to the doctor so sleeping was not great since I couldn’t breathe 🙂 . However, after I got some medicine, it was much better and I got back to sleeping wonderfully for the rest of the month.

Food

I was skeptical about how I would be able to stay keto while living in México, but I shouldn’t have worried. If I had thought about it longer, I would have realized that most Mexican food is keto. Take tacos for example, here the taco just includes meat and veggies and if rice or beans are there, they’re on the side. If I just eat what is in the taco, give the carbs to my partner and I’m good to go!

I also learned that most local restaurants allow you to order kilos of their cooked and seasoned meat, such as carne asada, pastor or chorizo and it’s DELICIOUS! As a result, I have been ordering out more than I planned, but I truly don’t care because the seasonings they use on their meat is magic and I want it in my mouth always 🙂 .

So I’ve been staying keto this month, calorie counting with MyFitnessPal and generally staying healthy. However, I am planning to go off keto for at least a month to try all the carby delicacies Mérida has to offer as well.

Exercise

I’ve been running about 3x a week and doing 20 squats 6x a week. I also started planking on the days I don’t run for…some reason 🙂 . I originally thought it would be fun – like a ridiculous person.

I started the month being able to do a 35 second plank and worked my way up to 60 seconds by the end of the month, which was awesome! It wasn’t a straight line to get there, but overall I was increasing my time and it got easier.

Related to the planks, I also started intentionally trying to sit up straight whenever I was sitting down, such as in my 4 hour Spanish class. I’m a sloucher and know it’s bad so tried that. It wasn’t that hard on my abs since I’ve been working them, but I did get lazier as the month went on 🙂 . Regardless, I’m going to keep trying. It’s a good new habit to have.

Mental

As I suspected would happen, I was mentally pretty exhausted this month. It was similar to when I lived in Italy and was going to Italian university, living with Italian roommates and living in a town where people didn’t speak English. Basically I felt like my head was going to explode 🙂 .

I actually considered skipping a weekly post for the first time because I had a hard time finding the mental bandwidth to do it. However, after a few days of watching film commentary on YouTube, I felt the urge to write again and luckily was able to maintain my schedule without forcing it.

Overall though, this month has included a lot more YouTube watching than usual to recover my mental fortitude. I’ll just take it as what’s necessary to keep me sane while I’m learning Spanish at a breakneck pace.

In that vein, I added the Spanish language to my phone keyboard so I can switch between them easily, which I discovered moves my emojis an extra click away (so not sure if I’ll keep it), but I’m finding it helpful while in México and I’m texting people in Spanish daily.

I also changed my Habits app to Spanish so I see those words multiple times a day. As a result, I’ll never forget the phrases for “did you take your pills?” and “have you brushed and flossed your teeth?” So helpful 🙂 . However, I also added a few more Habits and am now up to 12 (Oops…)

Learning

So it’s time for my favorite segment: Fun Facts Nobody Asked For! Here’s what I learned and explored this month:

México

  • México is officially called The United Mexican States – and I had no idea. Oops!
  • There are about 129 million people in México (a little more than 1/2 of the number of people in the US)
  • The US is about 5x bigger than México:

  • The currency exchange is about 20 pesos = 1 USD so I move the decimal over on a price and then divide by 2 to know what something is in USD
  • We were in México during Easter and didn’t realize that the city basically shuts down for a week to celebrate Semana Santa (which sadly has nothing to do with Santa Claus). Next time I’m going to check here for local holidays before planning travel
  • There are apparently 8 different types of bananas grown in México
  • I discovered my new favorite cheese that I’ve only seen here: Oaxaca (Queso Oaxaca). It’s an absolutely delicious snack. I love the string cheese here, but I like the Oaxaca cheese even better than that and am planning to attempt making it into keto pasta. Yum!

Spanish Language In México

During my Spanish class, we made some hilarious mistakes that resulted in me never accidentally pronouncing these words incorrectly again 🙂 :

  • Años (years) vs Anos (anus 🙂 ) – I wouldn’t suggest asking someone “Cuantos anos tienes?” = “How many buttholes do you have?” 🙂
  • Cena (dinner) vs Seno (boob)
  • Tocar means “to touch” or “to play an instrument”, not like children playing “No tocar los ninos” = “Don’t touch the children!”
  • El papa (pope) vs la papa (potato) vs papá (father) – be careful not to call your dad or the pope a potato 🙂

I also was told by a reader that my favorite word I learned this month Aguacate (avocado) actually comes from the Aztec language of Nahuatl. Cool!

Astronomy

Despite Mérida being a sprawling city of 1 million people, I can surprisingly see the stars outside our house. I didn’t learn any new constellations this month, but it was lovely to be able to see those shining stars even in the middle of a city.

Birds (Pájaro/Ave)

I have disovered that there are two words for bird in Spanish. All birds are called Ave in general – it’s the scientific/poetic term for any bird. However, ave is often used to describe a large bird 🦅while pájaro is used to describe birds in general, but specifically small birds🐦.

So pájaro is a more common word for all birds and you can use pájaro to refer to a larger bird, but apparently it sounds similar to us in English calling a shark a fish. I had no idea my favorite new hobby would be so complicated 🙂 . The more you know! Anyway, here are the birds I saw this month:

Black-bellied Whistling Duck, Barn Swallow, Spotted Owl, Baltimore Oriole, Rose-throated Becard, Ruddy Ground Dove, Golden-fronted Woodpecker, Tropical Kingbird, Couch’s Kingbird, Clay-colored Thrush, Great-tailed Grackle, Yellow-throated Warbler, White-winged Dove, Black Vulture, Hooded Oriole, Orange Oriole (this bird is ONLY in the Yucatán!), White-fronted Parrot, Tropical Mockingbird, Gartered Trogan, Turquoise Browed Motmot

My favorite new bird I saw, the Turquoise Browed Motmot! (Source)

Something cool that happened this month was that we discovered there’s a White winged dove nest in our tree right outside our Airbnb with baby birds and eggs in it! My Mom discovered this while I was at the dentist. The mama bird flew away and a baby bird fell out of the nest (oh no!).

Luckily another Airbnb guest noticed, texted the host and he came over with two ladders, put the baby back in the nest and waited for the mama to come back, which she did! It’s been fun to look outside and see how they’re doing. One morning we awakened to see an empty shell outside our door. Nature!

Random

Here are some random things I learned this month:

  • There are 195 countries in the world. I thought that number would be way higher!
  • I couldn’t find steak seasoning so looked up what’s in it and then put in the ingredients we had – Why have I never thought of this before?! I keep thinking of things as individual items “steak seasoning” instead of realizing it’s made up of parts that I can find separately.
  • I was watching a movie set in Greenland and thought Greenland was huge, but a friend reminded me that maps distort country size because they’re originally globes. So I looked up a true size map and discovered Greenland is WAY smaller than it appears on maps.

Creativity

As I mentioned above, learning Spanish sapped some of my creative energy when it came to writing.

However, I surprisingly still had the creative juices flowing through me to write other things, such as Instagram captions of the places I go or the new food I’m trying. I’ve also basically never been as active on my Insta stories.

So creativity has been a little all over the place, but it hasn’t left me completely and I’m planning to include more down time in May so I don’t get to that red alert level again.

Emotional

My emotions have been really good this month. Sunshine and hanging in a pool looks good on me 🙂 . However, one thing I noticed is that I have a shorter fuse when I’m in 110F heat, which I think is warranted, but I realized and decided that I need to be aware of it. I’m usually pretty chill, but having to walk a long time in that kind of heat changes me a bit.

Money

As I mentioned, we’re 1/3 done with the year, I have almost all of our lodging booked for 2022 and my budget is still looking good! In addition, México is obviously very well priced and will help me balance out the higher cost places we’re headed to after this, like Seattle and NYC.

Overall though I’m feeling good about my finances and continue to be happy that I am not effected by whatever the market is doing these days (hint: it’s going down).

Conclusion

So that’s what I got up to in the month of April! We have another 5 weeks in México before we head back to the US to explore the west coast. In the meantime, let’s see how many tacos I can fit in my mouth 🙂 .

If you’re interested in the other weekly and monthly retirement updates I’ve written, they’re all here:

Weekly

  1. Early Retirement Week 1: The Freak Out
  2. Early Retirement Week 2: The Vacation
  3. Early Retirement Week 3: The Whiplash
  4. Early Retirement Week 4: The Heartbeat
  5. Early Retirement Week 5: The Election
  6. Early Retirement Week 6: The Trophy
  7. Early Retirement Week 7: The Train
  8. Early Retirement Week 8: The Challenge
  9. Early Retirement Week 9: The Question
  10. Early Retirement Week 10: The Game
  11. Early Retirement Week 11: The Recharge
  12. Early Retirement Week 12: The Holiday

Monthly

  1. The Month Of Rest: Early Retirement Month 4 (January 2021)
  2. The Month Of Birds: Early Retirement Month 5 (February 2021)
  3. The Month of Change: Early Retirement Month 6 (March 2021)
  4. The Month of Atlanta: Early Retirement Month 7 (April 2021)
  5. The Month of Portland, Maine: Early Retirement Month 8 (May 2021)
  6. The Month Of New Hampshire: Early Retirement Month 9 (June 2021)
  7. The Month Of The Northeast: Early Retirement Month 10 (July 2021)
  8. The Month Of New York State: Early Retirement Month 11 (August 2021)
  9. The Month Of City Hopping: Early Retirement Month 12 (September 2021)
  10. The Month Of The Southwest USA: October 2021 Recap
  11. The Month Of Santa Fe: November 2021 Recap
  12. The Month Of Family: December 2021 Recap
  13. The Month Of Freezing My Balls Off: January 2022 Recap
  14. The Month Of Thailand: February 2022 Recap
  15. The Month Of Spring(?): March 2022 Recap

How was your month?

18 thoughts on “The Month Of México: April 2022 Recap”

  1. Hey Purple! This was awesome, as usual – I so enjoy reading about your amazing adventures. 🙂

    I’ve got to ask, how to you manage to get such good prices in Airbnbs? Another blogger I read was wondering the same thing about you, so I know it’s not just me. 🙂 Is it just a matter of booking super far in advance so there are a ton of options and you basically have your pick?

    It’s been ages since I studied Spanish (as in, junior year of high school, haha). I never knew there were two words for birds. I love birds, so I think that’s my favorite random fact.

    What habits app do you use? And how do you make all the nice graphics for the blog and your Instagram?

    Reply

    1. Hi Natalie! I’m so glad you enjoyed it.

      And you got it in 1 🙂 – I book at minimum 3 months in advance, further if I’m looking around high seasons or in more remote locations with fewer options. Also staying for a month usually gets me discounts of about 50% that are shown on Airbnb if you put in the search bar that you’re looking to stay for a month.

      I use Loop Habit Tracker. I thought it was just called Habits because that’s the title shown in my phone, but I guess not 🙂 . I use the free Canva website to make all my graphics. Thanks for stopping by!

      Reply

  2. Great write-up! Mexico sounds wonderful and the language learning is clearly going well. What a tough life, but someone has to do it, right? 😉

    Reply

  3. Loved this month’s recap, thanks for sharing! And your daily schedule = retirement goals!!

    Reply

  4. Hola Purple!!!!
    Un muy divertida mes en México para ti! Fantástico! Y que bueno que ayudas tu amiga con ella novela!

    Abrazos!
    Los Dragones en Fuego

    Reply

  7. Have been absolutely loving these blog updates. Very grateful you still feel inspired to document it. We’ve been learning Dutch with DuoLingo, and even an hour leaves my brain spinning. It’s a relief to hear it’s not just me, and that this is normal! 😄 Hope Mérida continues to be excellent.

    Reply

    1. I’m so happy you’re enjoying them! And yeah I’m still having fun doing them 🙂 . And ooh Dutch! That’s cool. And haha yeah – at least with me it’s totally normal.

      Reply

  8. Wow! I was just there in December. Love the cenotes (though I’m scared of the bats sometimes) and I am definitely guilty of spending way too long clapping in front of Chichen Itza!

    I was wondering for the medical tourism part: I was wondering how to find a doctor on foreign soil? I’m most curious about that part because I went to a specialist a month ago and they didn’t have a diagnosis and just said “go take an MRI.” They billed that unfruitful visit $1500 (insurance covers half because I’m on high-deductible). So I’m 1000% interested next time to just fly to another country and then do the medical stuff there since it’ll probably be cheaper than doing it here even if I included plane tickets & hotels. Plus, it’s more fun.

    Reply

    1. Haha cool! As for medical tourism, are you reading my drafts over my shoulder 🙂 . I have a post coming out in about a week about the dentists here and maybe 2 weeks after that about doctors. I might also lump in pharmacies. To not leave you hanging though, I’ve found the medical system here amazing. I see a doctor for $2.50 and then was sent next door for $5 of drugs that cost hundreds in the states. I looked into a hospital nearby and if it was more serious I could see any doctor there for less than $50 according to my Airbnb host (specialists included). Overall the opportunities for medical tourism are even better than I hoped.

      Reply

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