What I Learned By Living In Mexico During the Pandemic

March of 2020 came, the borders were closing, and I said to my 7th grade daughter we're going to Mexico, now. I didn't know we'd stay years or that I'd meet my new husband there. I'm sharing it all!

Puerto Vallarta, Los Muertos Beach. Normally shoulder-to-shoulder but there was no one in sight for months.

I Had Zero Preconceived Plan (Total Winging It!)

I don’t know if you remember what you were doing in March of 2020 but I was living my fairly predictable, work-from-home, food blogger life in San Diego with my 7th grade daughter who had just turned 13 and was enjoying junior high, her friends, cheerleading, and life as we knew it.

And just like that, life changed.

All of sudden the pandemic was upon us, no one saw it coming, no one had planned for anything like this, and life became a fly by the seat of your pants adventure.

And an adventure it was because as a food blogger, my job is to cook things but there was no food to make anything with! My grocery stores had bare shelves, shy of some canned anchovies, maraschino cherries, kidney beans, and canned tuna in oil. Grocery shopping felt like the worst basket ever on an episode of Chopped!

This meme has stuck with me for years and nothing could have been truer in the grocery stores. The great thing about Mexico is that hoarding didn’t happen. We had what we needed, including toilet paper without having to barter for it.

That’s when I just decided…we’re going to Mexico. I thought about it for a few hours before mentally committing to do it. The next day.

Our plane was empty. I think we were one of the last flights out, for a long time. Most people were too scared to travel. I was too scared to be trapped.

I Didn’t Know How Long We’d Be There

I told my daughter, honey you need to pack a bag. We’re leaving in the morning. She asked me how long we’d be there - a week or so? I said, no a bit longer. I knew in my 40something mind what a 13 year old mind couldn’t possibly envision.

Because by this time schools had closed for the rest of the month of March, April was iffy, and then it was May and closing in on the end of the school year, and I figured spring semester was going to be a wash.

I said pack a bag for at least a few weeks, maybe a month. “A month???” she cried! “What about my friends?” I told her, rest assured, your friends’ mothers will have them at home under lock and key and you won’t be able to see them anyway. You can text or Snap them 38789 times a day, same as you do now.

Seventh grade finished with school on Zoom. And all of eighth grade she had school on Zoom.

We did SO MANY puzzles! I am not a tv or movie watcher and puzzles passed the time when I wasn't working. The whole world was trying to learn to cook at home and food bloggers were busy!

Which meant that our “couple weeks” turned into over 18 months in one contiguous stretch of time.