The Luxpats

Category: Destinations

  • Mazatlan: Love in the Time of Coronavirus

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    Driving along the malecón in Mazatlan, the ocean is not choppy today, it isn’t throwing shards of gold. This morning it wears a conservative navy blue and a muted glitter. Yellow tape flaps at the top of every set of stairs leading down to the beach. Because the beaches are closed, no one is here to…

  • Paradise or Pair O’ Dice?

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    To travel is to stretch time between your fingers and test its tensile strength. As nomads we might as well have been permanently suspended in the stratosphere, for all that time slowed and even seemed to reverse itself on occasion. That was life with one child and two backpacks.  Fast forward to the intensity of settling…

  • Acta de Nacimiento for Our Expat Baby: A Tale of Woe

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    Y’all. I’m pretty sure Dante Alighieri had a baby in Mexico and then tried to get its Acta de Nacimiento and U.S. passport before he wrote The Divine Comedy. “Naked and futile, they race through the mist in eternal pursuit of an elusive, wavering banner.” Yep. This post is for anyone starting the same process,…

  • Read About Giving Birth in Guanajuato, Mexico

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    The long wait is over. Now we can tell you all about giving birth in Guanajuato! After touring the birthing ward at Plaza Mayor and paying the 5,000 peso deposit, we settled in to wait out the last days of the pregnancy. At 38 weeks, I was as uncomfortable as I’d ever been: sleepless with swollen…

  • Guanajuato Preschool: Our Search for a Mexican Preschool

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    Our search for a Guanajuato preschool was a bit of a saga. In this post we detail the ins and outs of finding, enrolling in, and equipping ourselves for preschool, and what Spencer’s school has been like so far. Preschool or Daycare? In Playa del Carmen, Spencer attended a guarderia or daycare, with about fifteen…

  • Guanajuato Walking is a Way of Life

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    luxpat
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    Guanajuato walking is different than walking in other cities–even cities known for being walking cities. New York is a walking city, in the sense that walking is part of life. You walk from your apartment to the train, from the train to work, and back again at the end of the day. Or Amsterdam, or Bruges. You…

  • If You’re Homesick, will a Home Base Help?

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    luxpat
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    Every few months David and I have a stupid argument. Well, we have a lot of stupid arguments, but every few months we have one particular stupid argument. It usually starts in one of two ways: either I’m sulking around, generally homesick and looking to pick a fight, or, David’s annoyed that I haven’t done the…

  • How Can We Make the U.S. Better?

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    We received a lot of thoughtful feedback about our last post on why we don’t want to live in the U.S. One valid point is that in many cases it’s not an option to move. And there are ways we can fight to make the U.S. better from the inside. Here are ten things you can do while…

  • Why Do You Want to Live Outside the U.S.?

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    One of the questions we’re asked most often is “why do you want to live outside the U.S.?” At first, we answered that we love travel and want to pursue our dream careers in countries with a low cost of living. While this answer still holds true, there is a second question we have to answer now that we’ve been traveling…

  • Wish You Were Here: Playa Del Carmen

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    I don’t know how an unseen man playing the saxophone on a rooftop can make it feel like Christmas on a sunny afternoon in October, but he does. My husband says he’s seen the man, but I can never find him. As I sit out on our narrow balcony and search the uneven landscape of…