AND INTO THE LIGHT!!!

We were excited last year about finding such a Mexican style house in a part of town we liked.  Not so crowded.  Cows, horses, small fields.  Country.  It served us well for the first several months.  Then the construction started.  On 3 sides.  The noise brought us to our knees.  I nearly had a nervous breakdown (truly) it was so persistent.  Monday through Friday 8-6.  We’d had a view of the neighborhood, lake, and mountains, but now began to feel more and more closed in, compressed, sometimes trapped.  Nowhere to escape for more than a few hours.  Our dream of being hiker/artist, Spanish-speaking writer/photograper, took a sharp turn we weren’t expecting.  Yes, we expected noise in Mexico.  But this was over the top.  So we decided we had to get out.  After a couple months of searching, a nearby neighborhood house went up for sale.  Gated community?  Why not?  We swore we wouldn’t be part of such an elitist idea.  We wanted to be in the thick of things.  Little did we know how much good construction, order, space, and quiet meant to us.  So we made the leap.

This house met 7 of 8 criteria for us.  What was #7?  Rustic Mexican architecture.   Arches, tiles, color…instead we found a bright, airy, spacious, well built, detached house with no adjoining walls (to other houses).  As I’m writing this we are less than 3 days away from moving in and we are so excited.  Waiting to exhale…

Welcome to “Hallelujah House”!  Surrounded by exotic plants and flowers, fruit trees, and a cacophony of persistent birdsong, she is energized by the sun, fronted by Lake Chapala, and surrounded by the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains.  She is modern, well built, and stunning, sitting in the middle of a dozen houses barely two blocks from from our former “Casa Mirada”.

Neither of us have ever lived in a house this nice.  Or this complex.  It has solar electric, solar heated pool, a clothesline!  We can even throw our food and plants scraps over the back wall into the cornfield.  Mexican composting.  We feel a little guilty, a little embarrassed at times, but we also feel more comfortable and we know it’s a good investment.

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What you can’t see in the photos is the ground floor casita – a one bedroom apartment listed with HomeAway – right next to our little pool, fruit trees around the corner.  Since the previous owners had already rented it through March we stepped right into a landlord situation.  And it couldn’t be more pleasant.  Glynis and Bill are from Ontario.  Easy-going, easy to talk to, comfortable folks who aren’t offended or put off by our learning curve.  What a great start!  Thanks you two!

The trick now is to figure out how to continue to integrate with the Mexican community.  Our neighborhood is half and half.  Some are Canadians who go home half the year.  Some are full-time like us.  Some are Guadalajarans who come only on weekends.  There’s even a “hippie house” next door where the inhabitants don’t quite fit the expected mold.  Keeps us grounded.  I’m always happy when I’m in the village and I haven’t done much of that with all this going on.  I even dropped my Spanish class.  But it’s time now to get back out.  Circulate again.  Meanwhile, here’s the view from our place.

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We are blessed to be in this beautiful house.  It is a delight to share it with friends, to sit on the mirador with a glass of wine, to cook in a roomy, sunlit kitchen.  And though it may not meet the original plan of downsizing, simplifying, letting go, I think it has its own lessons to teach.  We’ll see how the next year goes.  So much to learn in life.