Hello, again. And welcome to our amazing website! (that’s just our unbiased opinion)
If this is your first time here, feel free to take a look around 🙂
If you’re here from the newsletter, hi! Thanks for clicking on the random links we include there.
If you ended up here from somewhere else – hi! We don’t know how you ended up reading this blog post. But we’re happy you are here!
(You can sign up to our newsletter since you’re here anyways)
Why A ‘Diary’ Blog Post?
We’ve always had this random category on our blog with the idea of writing a journal about our full time travels… how cute!!
But guess what? Writing takes a lot of time. And time is something we currently don’t have a lot of.
However, sometimes a lot happens on the road. And there are things we don’t want to forget, so that’s basically why sometimes, we will have these random diary blog posts. These will probably coincide when we leave a place after a long time (like Oaxaca) or at the end of a travel series.
Okay, here comes our life update in:
3…
2…
1..
We’re In GUADALAJARA, GUADALAJARA!
Did you sing ‘Guadalajara, Guadalajara!’ like you were supposed to?
Do you know what I’m talking about?
If you answered ‘No’ to both questions, then you clearly didn’t click the link we put in the newsletter email. We are missing out on a deeper level of bonding if you keep ignoring our silly requests 🙂
Anywho…
Yesterday we finally said goodbye to Oaxaca City and made it to Guadalajara. The alarm woke us up at 4 am, hence the sleepy faces pictured below. The good thing about the early flight was that we were at the local Walmart before lunchtime!
Surprised to see Walmart in Guadalajara? Don’t be! The bigger cities in Mexico love themselves a good Walmart.
And it turns out that this will be our neighborhood supermarket for the next two weeks…
Gracias Oaxaca!
Our last week in Oaxaca City wasn’t massively eventful. The only time it was exciting was when we went to town to say goodbye with drinks of Mezcal at the local cantina!!
Besides for that, we went to the gym 5 times, did our jobs, and honestly didn’t venture out much from the blue hole (pictured below). But we did go to the dentist! A cleaning cost us $700 MXP, $37 US – a bit more than we paid in Istanbul, but it was all very professional!
Check out our clean, post-dentist teeth (haircuts are still pending for both of us):
In the end, we spent 4 beautiful weeks in Oaxaca de Juarez! That’s the longest we stayed in a single place ever. And it’s the most time we’ll stay put until we house sit in Montgomery, Alabama during the summer. (I still haven’t gotten over the fact that we will be living in Alabama)
In those 4 weeks, we really felt at home in this incredible city. Every time we came back to our neighborhood in the outskirts of town it felt like we were coming back to our ‘hood.’ It was the same way we used to feel when coming back to our Lakeview neighborhood, back when we lived in Chicago. This is something we don’t take for granted, considering we don’t have a home and typically bounce around every 4 or 5 days!
Thank you Oaxaca!
We are very grateful to you, and we have the fondest memories of – almost – catching up with work, fresh mountain air (unless a bus is driving by and blowing diesel smoke in your face), yummy foods, and all the friendly local people and their smiling faces!
Spreading The Love In Oaxaca
You know when you see someone and you just want to hug them until they pass out? No… ?
Well, there was an old man who worked near our apartment selling mangos. We would always pass him on the way to the gym, and he would give us a big smile. Of course we also bought delicious little mangos from him a few times.
There was something about this man… he must have been in his 70s, and despite not being in great physical shape, he still showed up every single day with his wheelbarrow full of mangos, sitting all afternoon under the shade of a tree until he sold everything.
Are you ready for a cute story?
I (Aimara) was raised by extremely generous parents. We didn’t always have much, but if there’s a value that my parents instilled in me deeply, it was generosity and caring for other people.
One of our goals with this blog and our YouTube channel is to eventually make it profitable in a way that it runs on *almost* auto. So we can free up some of our time and serve in any way we can. Give more and make the world a better place. We might not change the world, but if we change someone’s world, that’s enough for us.
Lately, we’ve been watching a lot of Mr. Beast & Yes Theory videos. You might have heard of them as two of the most famous/successful/biggest YouTube channels out there. They are people we truly admire. These creators are dedicated to making the world a better place before they die. This resonates with us deeply.
So, we may not have a lot of money to give, but we still decided that on our last day, we would give this man 1000 pesos (roughly $50). It doesn’t change his life, but hopefully it was enough to buy extra groceries, take his wife out to dinner, take a week off, or simply feel seen, loved and appreciated.
Why Are We Sharing This?
It’s really not for you to think we’re good people. We’re just okay.
We’re sharing because our giving has been inspired by others sharing their giving. And the same way this stirs something in our hearts, maybe it will do the same for you. We will try to help more people we stumble upon as we travel, and maybe for the next one, we can do it together 🙂
Anyways, that was our cute story.
This was very special to us because believe or not, I (Aimara) have a very hard time approaching people. Starting a conversation with strangers gives me anxiety. And even though I needed to talk to this man to give him something, I struggled with the idea for days and I almost didn’t go for it because of this crazy fear. I was shaking as I gave him the envelope!
Maybe this small action helped me more than it helped him, because in the end, I was so proud of myself. Not only for giving him something that hopefully made him happy, but because I didn’t let my fear freeze me. This is something we are going to work towards to more aggressively moving forward this year.
You’ll see 😉
‘Seek Discomfort’ is a motto we hope to live by in 2023!
Hey you! Click the links to watch this week’s awesome YouTube videos:
- Everything to know before visiting Portugal: Essential viewing for anyone planning a trip to Portugal!
- 24 hour travel day from Lisbon to Paris: Essential viewing for anyone that thinks we look funny while sleeping on buses.
New Apartment Where’s Waldo
We were chatting with some full-time-traveler friends over email (hello Tim & Lisa!), and they mentioned that whenever they put their bags down in a new ‘home,’ they experience the eventual ‘Where’s Waldo’ of finding awkward and questionable features in their new Airbnb’s. And we could totally relate!
We thought it would be fun to officially start the new game:
Where’s Waldo: Oaxaca Edition (these are meant to be funny – not to complain):
- No trash pick up – hello composting and freezing chicken bones so our trash can wouldn’t get stinky!
- Water being connected to an external tank and running out without notice. No showers, no flushing toilets… (sometimes)
- G didn’t fit under the shower! Surprise 🙂
- And the best one… a washer that made our clothes dirtier 😂 Pretty ironic because this was the first time we could read and understand the words on the machine, but I guess she didn’t understand we wanted our clothes clean!
Thanks For Stopping By 🙂
We really appreciate that you dropped by to check out very first Diary entry to our blog!
We wanted to share these longer updates every now and then because we don’t know for how long we’re going to be able to keep this lifestyle, so these diary blog posts will help us remember all the random little things that come with life on the road!
Thanks for reading! See you in the next one.
Adios amigos!
Aimara & Gordon