What it's been like to leave home and become an expat
Some initial thoughts on the expat experience, and why we moved here
Many years ago my mom, who is a food writer and editor (and publisher of the website/community The Cook’s Cook) gave me a piece of advice about travel writing: when it comes to editorial, nobody wants to hear about your fabulous vacation.
I think the rise of influencers suggests that may not actually be true, but it’s still a piece of advice I’ve taken to heart, and think is very salient in the context of this newsletter and my desire to document our life in Oaxaca. It would be very easy to present life here as unabashedly idyllic. Cheap drinks, delicious street food, and abundant gardens. But our expat experience, which admittedly is right now in its infancy, has been a mix of charming luxury and daily challenges. I think the best I can do in this format is to try to lay that out, while also examining that it’s been a mix privilege and assistance from friends that has made a lot of things much easier.
So, What’s It Like?
Life in Oaxaca for us is, so far, fabulous. We’ve been here such a short amount of time that we haven’t really begun to settle in, and our stuff won’t arrive until mid-November. But it’s starting to feel familiar, and I can see a framework for a life with new rhythms, new rituals, new friends. And in a lot of ways our life has become easier and more luxurious. We’ve exponentially increased our amount of living space; the climate has enough variation to not be monotonous, but we also don’t have a winter here (my least favorite season); the food is great; it’s an inexpensive place to live. The list of pros is long and when rattled off without detail I think probably more annoying than interesting.
Oaxaca is also, for reasons largely related to culture, a wonderful place to make a home. People are so friendly it’s noteworthy when you run across someone who doesn’t greet you genuinely. In restaurants it’s customary to say “buen provecho” (“enjoy your meal”) to people as you pass them, even if they’re complete strangers. And in our village it is not just customary, it’s expected, to say good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to people as you pass them on the street.
Our village, San Agustín Etla, is also known for its lushness, and when we tell people in Oaxaca where we live their immediate reaction, almost universally, is “oh, you have water.” This is not a statement about our ability to take a shower or run a tap, but about the natural abundance of the area. The central valley that we live in, and which houses the city Oaxaca de Juárez, is high elevation dessert. To live in a place that is green, in this particularly part of Oaxaca, is unusual.
The food is also, of course, wonderful, almost regardless of where we go. The carnitas guy who set up a sheet metal stand on the highway next to the bank we like sells tacos for 10 pesos each (about sixty cents). They’re wonderful. Dinner at the restaurant Los Danzantes, one of the fancier spots in Oaxaca, will cost you about $85 (inclusive of tax and tip) if you order two appetizers, two entrees, mineral water, and two cocktails. It’s also wonderful (with caveats). So regardless of whether you spend four bucks on dinner, or close to one hundred, you’ll have a great time.
In short, we love it here, and in many ways it is not a hard place to live.
So, What Are The Challenges?
When I describe to people the kind of autobiographical writing I hope to do, my best comparison point is Peter Mayle’s book A Year In Provence, which also inspired the name of this newsletter. If you haven’t read it (and I recommend you do), it’s a first-person narrative about the British author and his wife buying a centuries-old farmhouse in Provence, France and over the course of a year fixing it up, settling into a new life, and making new friends.
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One of the draws of A Year In Provence is that it’s something of a beach read. It’s very pleasant, and it’s easy; perhaps too easy. Mayle’s writing is light and fun, but he essentially glosses over the difficulties of acclimation, and of jettisoning an old life in a place of great familiarity. Mayle’s presentation is, in a lot of ways, stereotypically British. If anything is wrong, and not in a funny, casual way, where you buy a table that’s too big to get in your door, or you have a misunderstanding with your butcher, but rather where you ache for home, miss seeing the owner of your favorite restaurant, can’t walk down your favorite paths, have drinks with your friends, go to the places that make you feel like you’re home, he didn’t talk about it.
And we miss all of those things. Life is very different here, and it’s not like being on vacation. We miss our friends, and we miss our city. New York is a much harder place to live than Oaxaca, but we miss the comfortable chaos of it.
We also don’t speak the language yet, although we’re getting better with every passing week. But having to rely on friends, and on translation apps, is a crutch. Until we can communicate effectively, clearly, and without assistance, we’re going to struggle here. And our lack of Spanish fluency means we miss out on the nuance of interactions, and can’t truly integrate.
On Trying To Embrace The Struggle
The differentness of this place is intoxicating, and at times overwhelming. We moved here not for an easier life, though, but for a different one, and knew that would be challenging. But so far it’s also been really fulfilling.
It was the downstairs balcony at our house in San Agustín Etla, Oaxaca that first made me want to live here. It’s a shady spot with dappled light, enclosed with a wrought iron railing interwoven with thick, twining vines erupting with small green tendrils which grow visibly larger with each passing day. The vines reach inward, looking for new outcroppings to cling to. An enormous guava tree sits nearby, pelting the currently-empty chicken coop beneath it with small, unripe fruit and sending its aroma across the house and gardens. From this spot I can hear the jingle of an ice cream truck, birds chirping, the wind rustling the leaves of towering stands of bamboo. Butterflies and hummingbirds dart around, and every day a dragonfly lands in exactly the same spot on a thin hanging strand of fiber optic cable, for reasons I cannot explain.
Once we’ve really had a chance to settle I think we’ll better understand what the years ahead may look like.
Awesome, I'll be there soon, for the second time. I think it's one of my favorite places in the world currently and I agree with all your assessments. So does Paul Theroux.