Loose of Limits

My life revolves around bugs. The extent to which I think about, strategize against, and am tortured by bugs has increased 100 fold in a few short weeks. We saw a tailless whip scorpion in our sink. Ugly. But whatever. I'm no wimp. However, the mosquitos have our kids looking like intravenous drug users (combined with Lou's green-tinted hair from the pool, and she's really starting to look like a 90s club kid). They basically go to school in the jungle. And when we pull up to drop them off, entire extended families of mosquitos settle into our car for a roadtrip. Manley killed a freaking TARANTULA in our house and maybe got bitten by it and so now has a sore paw and is wearing a cone of shame. We are the foxes. They are the hunters. And the ants, OH MY GOD THE ANTS. There are tiny ants everywhere, and I don't mind them too much. But every night, the big fat ants invade our home and make us feel unwelcome. I bought a bunch of delicious bananas the other day. When we wo...

When Tom and I were here in June, our main priority was finding a school for the kids. We didn't look for a house, so we tried to sort that out after we got back to Portland. We kept our home in Portland (which we own), and are renting it out. And we plan to rent in Mérida until we have a better idea of our long-term plans. Back in Portland, we weren't super excited about committing to a long-term rental house in Mérida without seeing it in person, so we found a short-term rental in a neighborhood we were familiar with, and we moved in here when we arrived. We'll only be here until late October. Then, we move into our long-term rental. Our current house is really special. It's an old Spanish colonial with the original pasta tiles and beautiful Mayan art throughout. We feel really happy here, even though it probably wouldn't suit us long-term.  Here's our current house, Casa de la Artesania. (And yes, there's a whole lot of Catholicism up in this house, whic...

I don't really know how to structure these posts. When we were traveling full-time, it was easy to know what to say and when because it was chronological and temporary. But we live here now. So when do I post what? As I say all the time, "No sé." But if you know and love Tom and me, you are probably really here just to hear funny bathroom stories and see pictures of our kids. As a parent, I use my kids all the time to break the ice and make excuses, and this blog is no exception. So while I know lots of people want to hear why we moved and how we chose Mérida, those feel like loaded questions right now. So allow me to use my kids as a buffer and, instead, tell you about their new school. Tom and I came down to Mérida in June 2022 to see if it might be a good place for us to move. A huge factor in that decision was schools. We really want to give our kids new and even challenging experiences. We want them to learn another language and to understand how big and interesting ...

It's been awhile, hasn't it? Over ten years ago, we started this blog to chronicle our 13 months of traveling in India, Southeast Asia, and Southern Africa. The internet wasn't what it is today, so we were always behind on getting our blog posts up because we rarely had reliable Wifi. And we never even ended up posting about our time in Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe.  We also didn't chronicle the even bigger adventures—Louisa, born in 2016; and Frank, born in 2018. (And our pup, Manley, who we adopted in 2015.) After our trip, we settled back into San Francisco, changed our careers, got a dog, had a baby, moved to Portland, Oregon, bought a house, had another baby, renovated that house, changed jobs again, and weathered a pandemic.  And right now? We're in Mérida, Mexico, where we moved only 12 days ago. The preparation for this move was considerable. The emotions have been all over the place. The logistics were daunting. Our time here so ...