I'm setting up this simple blog today so that we'll have a way of recording and sharing our day-to-day experiences during our year in Mexico. Right now we are less than ten days away from our planned departure from Yountville, California where we've been living since November of 2006. The three months we were planning to be here stretched to over eight as the Mexican immigration bureau (the INM) took its time processing my visa paperwork. I finally picked up my FM3 visa, which gives me legal permission to work in Mexico, on June 22nd.
Today is Robin’s last day of work. We’ve both been working for temporary employment agencies to keep some money rolling in during our unexpectedly lengthy stay here. Robin has had a steady gig for the last couple of months in the legal department at Sutter Home. I quit my job the day I picked up the visa, but Robin gave two weeks notice. The preparations for our actual departure are numerous, and I’ve been working on them alone for the last two weeks while Enid is at school. Next week will be her last week of preschool here and hopefully with both Robin and I working we can finish up all the necessary preparations for our anticipated July 15th departure.
We’ll be driving to Monterrey, Mexico after some brief visits with friends and family in Southern California. We’re hoping to be in Monterrey around August 1st. My father is planning to caravan with us in his minivan to help us bring our household possessions down (since there’s little cargo space in our Honda Civic). Right now among the biggest details we need to take care of is preparing our “menaje de casa” inventory. That phrase basically translates to “household goods”. We are allowed to bring a fairly large amount of stuff with us duty-free, but it has to be contained in numbered boxes and each numbered box must be completely inventoried in Spanish. The inventory must me pre-approved by the Mexican consulate. I’m hoping to submit the menaje de casa for approval at the consulate in Sacramento on Tuesday, when we plan to be in that area anyway.
Most of the boxing up is done already. Robin still needs to do her and Enid’s clothes, plus we need to deal with Enid’s toys and books. I want to leave some of them out so she’ll have things to play with up until the last day, but I have to at least figure out how many boxes they’ll fit into so that I can add them to the inventory. And I need to start translating the inventory into Spanish.
