april 23 2007

There is nothing special about today except that Jen's mother forwarded me her blog about being here in Merida, so I decided to start one too. This should make it MUCH easier for friends in other places to enjoy pictures of our travels and of our times in Merida -- however, the caveat here is that we still expect ALL our frends to visit us and see things in person, up close and personal, although we do understand that summer is just too darn hot to do so.
We have been experiencing the hot already this month. Even though everyone will tell you that May is THE hottest month, we have had days that were already hitting above 40 C (ans were about 112-115 degrees farenheit) and yes, it's a wet heat so it feels every bit of those numbers.
This is coming up on the start of our third year here in Merida. We arrived in 2005 around the middle of May having sold our beloved home in Swainwood, in Glenview IL after Sandy and Marilla lived there 20 years. We came planning to purchase and quickly move into a house, but fate had other plans for us.
Initially we lived out at the beach in a town called Chuburna in a house owned by our friends from IL, Paul and Michael. We loved our beach time since we had the entire Gulf coast pretty much to ourselves (it being too cold for the Yucatecos to go to the beach then. August is a different story and the the water is too hot for us to even think about going in. Talk about bath water!!). However, after about 6 weeks, we found ourselves leaving -- in typical, we later learned, Mexican fashion, the utilities were turned off. This meant that although we were close to a very large body of water, there was none in our house. Neither was there any electricity. We quickly found that the breezes which we thought were so nice were just not cool enough for sleeping and those quick trips down to the beach to pee were really not all that much fun.
So we headed to Merida where we found what seemed like a darling apartment, newly finished and furnished, for about $300US per month. And since we expected to be there only a short time, we didn't care that it was small. At least at first.
A month later we cared more since the purchase of our house fell through mainly because we pulled out of the purchase -- one MIA family member who needed to sign the documents showed up and we quickly understood why the rest of the family had not looked too hard to find this guy. Anyway, here we were in a tiny apartment, with no home to go back to, and no prospects for one in Merida. So we hit the streets and looked at lots of properties and finally found one we could live with. We actually found two at the same time, but the family of the house we liked better since it was larger wanted us to pay their inheritance taxes and we just said no.
So in September 2005, we purchased calle 54 #453 (51 y 53) centro, Merida, Yucatan 97000 Mexico and began to rennovate it while we still lived in that little temporary apartment. Eva could not take it, so when we headed north for my niece's wedding, she stayed north to keep her clients and herself happy.
Sandy drew plans and redrew them and kept redrawing them until two things happened: #1, we bought the property next door at #455 in December which gave us space for car parking, a big swimming pool, and two guest rooms; and #2, we let our contractor go in January 2006. Eva came back to Merida to help run the abaniles (work crew of masons and helpers) and Sandy finalized those drawings and designs and we finished building the place -- pretty much completed by the following September. However, after a year of construction (we could no longer stand our tiny rented apartment by May and moved into the construction zone), we went north to send down our things in a sea-going container and moved in. Ahhhhhhh.
Now, six months later, we feel old hands at the living in Merida thing. We have our house and garden pretty well settled. We have had the time and energy to do some travelling. We have made many friends and are enjoying life immensely. And we want to share our experiences.
So, although they were all posted in April 2007, many of the blog entries contain emails from June 2005 through our construction process, moving process, and finally living process here in Merida, photos of trips taken up to the present, and things you may already have seen. From this point on, however, the posts will be up to the minute.