1/20/03
In May of 1998, I moved down to Playa del Carmen, Mexico. I'm heading back there in a few days and I'll get some pictures
for the site, but in the meantime, I'd like to write a bit about it.
I originally went down to Mexico for a vacation in 1996. I booked a flight to Cancun, but didn't book a hotel room right away.
This turned out to be very fortuitous, as I ended up talking to my cousin Clara a few weeks before the trip. When I mentioned
I was going to Cancun, she was very firm. She said, "Don't go to Cancun. As soon as you get to the airport, take a taxi
to Playa del Carmen and stay there. Trust me, you'll love it."
I guess it was fate. I did love it. I loved it so much, that within 3 days of being there, I had decided that
I would move there. I didn't know how or when, but I knew that I was going to live in this beautiful place. I had
this image of "Paradise" in my mind, and this place was it. I can't explain it any other way. I came back and told
my boss and my friends that I was moving to Mexico. My boss ended up buying an additional year of my time with a raise
and promotion, but the agreement was for one year, and after that year ended, I packed up and drove down.
My parents were mixed on the whole idea. My step-mother was my staunchest supporter. When I agreed to stay at my
job for another year, she was very disappointed, and convinced I'd never do it. I reassured her that I had every
intention of doing it and that I would. My father wasn't against it, but thought I should consider other places and
was also concerned about my career. My mother was simply concerned having me live in another country.
On my way down I stopped in Ft. Worth, Texas to visit my dad. After that, I went to Austin and picked up my cousin
Archie, who joined me for the drive down. The drive down was fun. There were army checkpoints at most of the state
borders. I assume they were there looking for drug traffickers. I was pretty intimidated by them (though later got used
to it), but they got a huge laugh out of it. Here were these two gringos who didn't speak a word of Spanish, driving
from one end of their country to the other.
I remember as I was driving down, wondering what I was doing. Was I insane? I was moving to a country where I didn't
speak the language. I had never lived in another country. Was I going to do something stupid and end up in Mexican
prison? Was I going to get robbed and killed by bandidos on the highway?
The two years I spent in Playa del Carmen were among the best of my life. While I worked some, I didn't work much and
I certainly didn't work hard. I lived poor. Most of us did. Most months, I got by on about $500 a month. I met wonderful
people from all over the world one of whom, Christian Uribe, has become one of the best friends I've ever had. We are
constantly in touch via instant messaging and he lets me stay with him when I go to visit.
When I first moved down to Playa, I lived in a hotel, Mom's Hotel. I stayed at Mom's for about 6 weeks. In the second
week, I met a fellow geek who had just moved down there, Jeff Yahner. He had moved down with his wife, Mary. Jeff and I
immediately hit it off. I helped him open two internet cafes, and I worked in the first for a number of months. I spent
a lot of my time hanging out in the internet cafes, first Cyberia, and then Atomic. It was during this time that I
really learned the power of the internet as a tool for education. I learned a lot about a lot of things by spending entire
days cruising the internet. I went down to Mexico unable to answer a single question on Jeopardy and came back rattling
off answers (or questions, to be more precise) left and right. Much of it is probably trivial knowledge, but it's
knowledge nonetheless.
Even though most people in Playa speak English, I did manage to learn a lot of Spanish. I spent my first three months
memorizing verb conjugations from the book, "501 Spanish Verbs." For me, this was the best way to learn the language. Because
I had had a number of years of French, the sentence structure came to me pretty quickly. I knew that if I could conjugate
the verbs and say things the way I intended to say them, the vocabulary would fall into place. Another tool I found
useful was listening to music (mostly rock) in Spanish. I would write down the lyrics in Spanish and then translate
the lyrics to English. If I could then sing along with the song, I could put all the lyrics into a context that I
understood and before long, my vocabulary started to grow rapidly. This method has the odd side-effect of throwing words
into your vocabulary that you'll never use. One of the first words I learned in Spanish was "naufragué," which means,
"I was shipwrecked". The first line of the song goes, "I was shipwrecked in a pool of stars." Fortunately I've never needed
to use that word.
I will always look back fondly on my time in Playa, and while it grown to the point where I'm no longer as
enchanted by the town, I still love to go back and see friends.
If I've learned anything from my time there, it's one simple thing: I can live anywhere I want. The entire world is
open to me, and if I want to live in another country, I can do that. It's a nice feeling to have. I don't know that I'll
ever live in another country again, but I'll always know that I can.
