Mexpats we will be

Seb never really found the right way to tell me about the idea of Mexico and I think he knew about it a week before he actually told me because he gave me lots of little pseudo scenarios. "And if when I go to quit they say 'how about international travel' what then?" I just looked at him one eyebrow cocked. "And what if it's the States for three years, what then?" I continued glaring. "It'll be Detroit so the answer will be no." I said knowing full well that his automotive industry background would not land us on the Eastern Seaboard but somewhere more Aldous Huxley than East Hampton and there was no way I was leaving The French Alps for The Motor City. I don't care how much good music they crank out. These feet are glued to these mountains.

We thought we had it made last month. Seb stood poised to quit his job, ready to throw in the Dream Job towel. He'd found something closer to home, a simple, sane company in Haute Savoie. The pay would have to be compromised a little because his new job wasn't able to match his old salary, they weren't the same mega corporation grooming corporate starlets, but we felt if I worked some it would help balance things out. I had interviewed for the umpteenth time with the ANPE and hey that always works, right? * And besides life would simply balance itself out financially just like it always does. When one door closes another opens, right. We were just happy about settling back into our old life again, watching our home being finished while we sat with our feet up in front of the fireplace each evening.

It wasn't Detroit though it was Mexico. That's right and they were very cunning in their efforts to keep Seb from leaving his job. They proposed him a job in a city with a fabulous climate, a country with delectable food and beautiful rustic charm. They chose a place with 250 dollar flights to Tampa, Florida, A place with "spring-like weather the whole year round" and mountains and desert all rolled into one. And they chose a language I have always wanted to learn, Spanish. Cunning company that they are they knew enough to propose the job to the wife, not the husband. It worked like a charm.

So we leave in about ten months, in midsummer. We pack everything in boxes to be shipped to San Luis Potosi, Mexico and store the rest in a storage facility provided by the company here in France. We rent our lovely finished *sob* house and say goodbye to our dear, sweet neighbors. We pack up cats and cookware and sell all the appliances and probably a lot of the junk we've accumulated over the last four years which sits rotting in the basement right now anyway. We have a lot of work to do.

The best part is that we get to discover something together. This part will be so good that it will likely heal any wounds of what we leave behind. Or at least we hope it will.

I speak as if it's forever. It's only for three years though. That's really just a blip in life in the grand scheme of it all. We won't miss much. What we gain from it all will be enormous and that is why we have said si.


*sarcasm, something the French invented.