Welcome back all you loyal tangerineys! And if you are new to our channel, My name is Maddie, and I'm Jordan, and we are Tangerine Travels. So in our last video, we asked you guys what video you
wanted to see next. And overwhelmingly. You picked number three, which is "why
we're so glad we moved to Mexico." At this point, it has been almost a year,
January 31st, right? Yes. A year ago January 31st we packed up our tangerine
colored car, that's why we're called to Tangerine travels, not because of the
fruit. [Laughter] Not the fruit. And came to Mexico. It didn't take us long to realize this was a really
great decision that we made! Perhaps the best in our life? Over time, Why it's the best decision we've made
has kind of changed, and we've come to Learn a little bit more about ourselves,
and about our lives, and about the world. And While this video is going to be
primarily all the positive things that have come from our decision to move to
Mexico, we won't lie to you, it has not always been rainbows and sunshine. It has
not always been good things, there have been plenty of times where, I myself,
thought: Why did we do this? This was a mistake. What were we thinking? [Laughter] I felt like that mostly the first, like three days. Yeah big time, oh my gosh. Really long days of driving after
months and months of stressful packing, and selling stuff. Since then, a lot of times it has surrounded the rental situation - Have been a little bit stressful and all that but, But as a sweeping whole, it has been Amazing! We think back like: Why didn't we
do this sooner? What was holding us back? So we're gonna share what exactly
it is. Probably things that you're not expecting as to why we're so glad we
moved to Mexico. Alright, let's get to it! And if you didn't see our last video, we
are in the very beautiful, Quaint, charming fishing village of Puerto
Morelos in the Yucatan Peninsula. One of the first things that we realized when we
started traveling through Mexico is how much more freedom we have here in Mexico
than we did in the US. Of course, the u.s. is touted to be the land of the
free, and the home of the brave, and all that. But like, without getting too
political You're really not that free to do
whatever you want. It's like they tell you that repeatedly so that they hope you believe it. If you're at a Restaurant, you have to have a beer
within the confines of what the liquor license covers, and if you move four
feet over with your beer, you can get arrested. Uh-huh. And you have the freedom of speech in the US, but only to a Certain extent. But here in Mexico, you have the freedom to do what you want. And people also respect
that. And you respect other people. You Might not always like that people are
shooting rockets off in the street or playing the music that they want at
certain hours of the day and night, but you do have the freedom to do that, and
people generally are very welcoming and accepting of that. This was one of
the first realizations we had when coming to Mexico, and it's kind of like
the US has become such a culture of: "We should have a law against that. That
should be illegal." And then pretty soon you can't do anything. And you're scared
to think outside the box and do other things for fear of being reprimanded in
some way, shape, or form. As I remember you saying a while back, it's kind of
creating a society full of idiots. Oh yeah, uh-huh. That and social media. The next one on our list is something I
personally find so so refreshing after living in the US, and that is, I believe there is less focus on body image and looking a certain way in Mexico. I've
felt, people in general are more free to own their body type and look how they
look as opposed to in the u.s. where There's so much focus on... Especially for
women, having a small waist, having zero body fat, but huge boobs, and a huge butt,
and all these like boxes that you have to check off in order to be "pretty."
And here, I think there's just less focus on that and more focus on things that
actually matter, like family, friends. There's stuff happening in the u.s. to
sort of correct that a little bit, or People attempting to change the negative
body image That many men and women have. Like a company called Aerie by American Eagle who doesn't retouch their photos in Photoshop or anything.
And so they allow people to embrace the Flaws that they have and love their body
anyway. But I think, as a rule, that's not The way it is in the U.S. It's about
changing yourself to be perfect, "perfect." [Laughter] And here, not so much. But I guess, to just
wrap this one up, something that I'm glad for being in Mexico is that people
aren't constantly judging what your appearance looks like. So I feel like I
can let my guard down, and that's just not such a heavy focus in culture, which
is very nice, and I think the way it should be. We both came to Mexico
thinking that the landscapes were basically either desert or beaches, which
was kind of stupid to think that. It's Just such a gigantic country. But, through
our travels, we've seen every kind of landscape there is, and so much nature
from jungles, to mountains, to spas on the side of cliffs, seriously everything,
including gorgeous beaches like this! Both of us tend to feel better when
we're around a lot of nature, just in general, how we feel in everyday life, And, there is no shortage of diversity of things like that here. The next reason we
are so glad we moved to Mexico is because people are actually present, in
Mexico. It is amazing the type of Conversations and the things that you
can accomplish when people aren't glued to their phones 24/7. Checking likes on
Instagram, and focused on how much people Online give a crap about them in order
to validate their worth. How many views their YouTube videos get. [Laughter] We might be guilty of that one! But honestly, it's nice to be around
people who care more about having a conversation, or spending quality time
and making memories, versus scrolling endlessly through social media. Getting
totally lost in Netflix binge watching. Tangerine binge watching, that's okay, but
Netflix no. [Laughter] I'm just kidding. We still do that too and We're still guilty of these things too.
But the culture in Mexico, I think is Much more - much more focused on the
people, And the what's happening, versus a little digital robot thing and whatever
could be happening in that universe. It was almost entertaining in the U.S.
Being in a restaurant, looking around, Seeing almost every single person at the
restaurant on their phone. It was like so absurd! Why? Why? You coordinated to hang out with all these people just so that everyone could simultaneously do other
crap on their phone? Before we go into the next one, we wanted to give you guys
a quick update on our rental. On our rental situation. In our last video
we said we think we were going to sign a four month lease. Well, we just didn't
feel right about that and we ended up Backing out, and thank goodness because
the landlord kind of went a bit off the wall. [Laughter] We politely declined because we
just went with that gut feeling of like Something about this just isn't sitting
well with us, and we couldn't figure out what it was. But it was like, you know
what, four months is a long time for us in our travels, and to be stuck in a
lease that... Or a relationship with a landlord that wasn't right, would not be
good. But now we're looking at other Options and there's so many great
options here for us! And thankfully many that are pet friendly or owners who are
willing to allow Laska with a deposit, so that's very nice. We don't quite know
where yet or how long, but it could actually end up being longer like, a year.
Instead of four months, six, Or instead of six months, a year? Yeah, so
pretty exciting! It's exciting. It's exciting. Are you excited? [Laughter] You better! [Laughter] Or get out! [Laughter] I'm just kidding. No, come back! So we just finished a lunch at La Sirena, a very good but expensive place. [Laughter] And, The next thing we're
going to be talking about, since we just Ate lunch, is the food. At this meal I had
eggs, and dairy, and meat. Three things, among many others, that I was not able to
eat when in the United States still. At the time of leaving, I was basically limited
to eating about five foods including: cauliflower, purple cabbage, rice, olive
oil, and a few spices. Guys, that is no exaggeration! She was miserable! Food in the US was killing her. Everything was giving you a reaction. And I do have to
say a big thank you to you because I honestly don't know at the last - At the
time when we were leaving, and the year and a half, almost two years before that.
Really, what I would have done if you weren't there trying to make my life
easier in every way, shape, or form. Down to like the littlest things like going
to Sprouts and sending me pictures of products that I might be able to have
and whether I would want them. But, right before coming to Mexico, I was only able
to eat a few foods, and it was completely miserable! It was like, I'm in my early
20s and my health is like this. What's even the point? I mean, you expect to have these health Problems when you're like in your 80s.
And to be dealing with stuff like this. So then I came to Mexico, no not me, we. [Laughter] We
came to Mexico, And all of a sudden I was just
attempting, like okay, what would happen if I ate egg? Because in the U.S. if I
ate an egg, I would have a migraine that would last one to two days. Nothing,
nothing could fix. This was like a month in. A month after coming to Mexico.
Yeah, finally had the courage to do that, And nothing happened. It was like, what the
heck?!? I know this would cause a migraine in the US! So that I'm like okay how about
cheese? How about this vegetable? How about this
fruit? How about whatever, I just started introducing so many more things and nothing. Nothing happened. It was kind of strange.
All this to say though, since coming to Mexico, I've basically been able to open
up my diet to all the normal foods that Normal humans should be able to eat like
fruits and vegetables of all kinds, nuts, Seeds, legumes. I don't really know what
exactly has caused all these things. I'm no scientist, I have not done studies. Is it genetic modification becoming more prevalent? Is it pesticides? Like new
types of pesticides? More of them being used? Things like that. And what portion
of it is that versus you detoxing mercury Because that could be something that's causing you to get better as well. Yeah. As I have mentioned so many times but I'm going to bring it up once more to put this in
perspective, right before coming to Mexico I found out that I had heavy
metal poisoning, specifically mercury toxicity, like crazy bad! On the scale of
.2-.8 mine was a 5.1. It is a little bit hard to say if it was
caused, if my intolerances to food were Caused by pesticides, or genetic
modification, or some other like nefarious thing going on, or if it's due
to heavy metal poisoning. But either way, Coming to Mexico, I'm able to eat food
again, and it is a miracle! The food is Much more natural here. There's something
messed up about the food in the US! There's so many people who are getting
allergies, and these allergies were unheard of 10, 20 years ago. And now it's
just wide spread throughout society. And Epidemic. So There's something going on, and the food there is totally F#@!$% F#@!$%. I was fortunate enough not to have all those problems, But, I saw what you went through. I mean, but coming up to the end, you were
also developing an avocado thing. Oh yeah That's true too. Which had never been...
Mm-hmm, avocado and some nuts. Maybe you Guys have some insight on this? When we
mentioned this briefly in another video A few months ago, someone had said "Hey, I work at the border, actually, and we receive the food from Mexico that was grown in Mexico." Oh yeah, this was crazy! This blew my mind! "We receive this
food, we have to wear full-body hazmat suits with like breathing apparatus
[Maddie struggling to come up with the plural of "Apparatus"] [Laughter] Because we have to spray stuff all over all the produce
that comes into the U.S. And if that's not freaking terrifying, I don't know what
is! They can't breathe it in but then we the population of the U.S. eat it after
that? And somehow it's okay. I don't know. I don't know! Small amounts of poison is okay. In small amounts, as long as you don't eat what's required for a normal human being to
survive. Yeah, okay. So this is a big one! The cost of living. We can live a much
better life here on the same amount of money than we could in the US where we
were at. Yeah, so our rent with utilities, internet, all
that put together, it was about fifteen hundred US dollars. For that price we can
live a "lavish budget lifestyle." Like We're not going out to any restaurant
that we want to, although we can eat out at a restaurant for every meal, and we do
choose to do that most of the time. We can do things like get full-service
laundry as opposed to doing our laundry, Which often we can't anyway because there isn't a washer and dryer. And have a house cleaner come every week or two. And That's really something that pretty much
only millionaires can afford in the U.S. We've said this before, but here it's
typically about... This is a huge generalization because Mexico's huge, the
US is huge, Totally varies based on where you're at.
But typically, things cost about a third of what they cost for us in the US. In Phoenix, specifically. Yes. Phoenix is a much lower cost of living city anyway. And then, of course, this is not comparing Phoenix to a place like Playa del Carmen,
the most expensive place in Mexico we've experienced. But, like you said, as a
general rule, probably about a third. Mm-hmm. Except for some things like electronics. And just to put this whole budget lavish lifestyle thing in a nutshell, what can
we Really get for about the price that we are
paying for rent and utilities back in the US? Rent and utilities, eating out
for every meal, not expensive restaurants, But at cheaper restaurants we can do
that. We can get our clothes washed at Lavanderias. Gas, house cleaner, house
cleaner, Maybe tolls. Tolls can be expensive. So gas we could definitely
throw in that budget. But basically what we consider living a very very good life. Yeah, we can do it on just what our rent and utilities cost in Phoenix. Yeah. I'd pretty much say we want for nothing. And This is exactly the type of life I would
want. To be perfectly honest, I'm not - I've never strived to be a millionaire,
or have a ton of money, or drive a really fancy car. Although I think my car's kind of
fancy. [Laughter] it's not an expensive car though But this is a nice life and putting
that alongside things like: people value relationships and spending time together
it's a very fulfilling life. Like all in all, it's just a super fulfilling life! So totally unrelated to this video, we're gonna be walking in this convenience
store. Back when we were living in Guadalajara, we asked how the heck do you
pronounce this because it's nothing - We Imagined it was nothing like the way you
would say an English word. And people were like: Oh, it's as if you were saying
oak as in the type of tree, so, the connective word. And then we taught ourselves, after so long, to say it oak-so And then we heard a commercial, by the
company itself, where in fact they were not pronouncing it oak-so, they were
pronouncing it ox-so, exactly like we Did in the first place. [Laughter] Now I have to untrain that and it's already taking forever! [Laughter] And we just noticed something so Mexican in there. There's like a fresh produce rack and it's stocked very well! Very well. [Laughter] It's
stocked very Mexican. It has onions, tomatoes, and limes. So if you ever need to make some emergency salsa. [Laughter] So our budget and expenses sort of lead
us into the next one on our list and that is in Mexico, it is far less
materialistic. Which we view as a good thing. I'm sure most people would view that as a good thing. Whether it's because They don't have the money or not, people
are just not buying stuff all the time. Unnecessary stuff. And that really
helps with our budget because we don't really buy things. Yeah. We're not buying
clothes all the time. We're not buying 2-day crap off of Amazon. Like, that honestly, I don't
really think I was buying that much stuff off of Amazon. But breaking the
habit of like "Oh, I'll just get it on Amazon." Took a while. And there is Amazon in Mexico but like a 2-day quick shipping thing, that's not really a thing. [Laughter] And a much smaller selection. And a much smaller selection, yes. So we like
that it allows us to focus on things that actually matter, like making
memories here in Mexico versus buying things that seem like they would make us
happy or fulfill us in some way, but at the end of the day, do not. And speaking
of making memories in Mexico, during this year, moving to Mexico. This has been the
most memories that we've made, the most things that we've done, and experienced,
and tasted, and people that we've met. Than probably the whole rest of our
lives, Combined. Yeah, it's been incredibly
fulfilling, and amazing, and I can't believe The number of things we've done here.
Yeah, still blows my mind to think that it's only been a year, but it's also been
a year! It's long, it's felt long, and short at the same time. Long in the sense, I can't
believe we've done so much! And short in the sense, I can't believe it's already
been a year! I don't know about you, but I'm very thankful for this year because
I know if we hadn't done this, we would be living our very routine lives, working
everyday, taking the occasional weekend Trip, and maybe a trip to Europe for a
conference every year. Working every week of the year except for a few fun weeks.
And living the whole life, boring, blah. I'm glad we did this for that reason
alone. So, when we say we can eat out for every meal, it's not always a fancy place.
In fact, it's usually not. It's usually a place more like the one we're at right
now. In which, I ordered eggs with bacon And then we get coffee, and then an agua
fresca, and all of that, in total, is 60 pesos. So it becomes a lot easier to eat
out when you can get a huge meal for three dollars! Okay Laska, you take it from here. [Laughter] [Laska talking] This might be my favorite
one on the list! And that is travel, and living in a new culture, and learning a
new language, really opens up your mind, And it makes you see the world in a
whole new way that you never did before. Pretty soon after we had first started
dating, we went on our first big trip together. And my first ever international trip. We Went to Amsterdam, and it was for a
conference called SteemFest. I had this Realization, just how little I actually
knew about people, about the world, about language. So many people at this
conference we're saying "Oh yeah, I only know four languages." What? [Laughter] Oh, well, just know my piddly old one. That I can't even Speak sometimes very well. [Laughter] And the next year we went to another conference and that was, well that took us to Madrid and
Lisbon. Once again, we were like "We need to travel more!" By that time at least,
we had started doing Spanish lessons and maintained doing them, 30-minute audible
lessons every single day, so that we could be a
little bit less of idiots than we were before. But I don't think there's really
any way we could describe travel good Enough to really hone in on the point of
what it does for you, like what it does to expand your mind, to make you more
empathetic of people, to just like broaden your horizons. And that's like a
huge reason why we did this in the first place. Come what may, good or bad, we
know that it's going to be a fulfilling experience. Yeah. It's really hard to put
into words what learning a new language, And living in another culture does for
you. Oh yeah, throwing language into the mix! Yeah, how it opens up your eyes. But, one example I have of this, is that, living in the U.S. When someone would say "I don't have none," I thought that was a sign that they just weren't smart. But, after learning Spanish,
you realize no, that doesn't mean they're dumb. Spanish is their first language because that's how you say it in Spanish. Mmm-hmm. But I think at the very core of this is just That there's really nothing that
compares to actually traveling, going out and doing things yourself. Like
experiencing... Bug on me. Experiencing all this stuff in person. But hopefully we did a good
job of explaining that, but like I said, It's impossible to really hone in on
exactly the power of travel without actually doing it, or perhaps watching
Tangerine Travels videos. So if you Haven't already, please subscribe! [Laughter] There is a glamorous side of it, of course. There's the fun, the memories that
you can make. But then there's also the side, like every day we are experiencing
situations that we have absolutely no idea how to handle, in English, let alone in
another language! [Laughter] And then trying to Think of what we need to say or ask like
how do you even do something. Sometimes we can't even figure out the heck how to
say that in Spanish! So it's it's a very Humbling exercise daily. And I think it
keeps us grounded. If you want to travel to a Spanish-speaking country and learn
the language, we highly recommend Rocket Languages. It's been a lifesaver for us
to develop our Spanish skills as we've been in Mexico. And if you purchase it
through our link that we're going to put down in the description below this video,
we will get a nice chunk of change from that, which helps us continue our travels
and keep making more videos like this one. Back when we were in Ajijic, we met
this really nice guy named Marc, and he ended up tagging us in a Facebook post
that said "My wife asked me to go to the Tienda for jalapeño peppers. I went down
to the plaza and asked "Necesito ayuda. Me gustaría chile jalapeno." The nice young
lady pointed them out to me and I said gracias. Paid for them with Cinco pesos.
Not a word of English was spoken. This is Not the first time this has happened but
the most complex and complete Spanish Conversation so far. I took this course
based on the recommendation of Tangerine Travels. And we were so so delighted to
hear this because not only is it a big triumph and a win when we can have full
conversations. But we remember back to the days where it was like "Oh my gosh! I
just had this whole conversation in Spanish and it didn't blow up in my face!"
So it's really cool when we get to hear That other people are having those same
breakthroughs because of a really All-inclusive awesome program like
Rocket Spanish. So people mention this One all the time when talking about
Mexico, and that is the more laid-back lifestyle and you're on Mexican time. I have
to say though, there is an exception while driving. They are not laid back
while on the road. [Laughter] However, just in general, they know how to relax, and know
how to just unwind, and it's not "go go go, work, work work" all the time. Yeah, so it's okay to
take a leisurely walk sometimes or have Sobre mesa, where you just talk to the
people you're with after you're done eating. Sobre mesa? Is that what that's
called? I think so! Oh. [Laughter] I'm sure we could come up with Many many more, but these are just a few
of the reasons why we're happy with the decision that we moved to and started
traveling through Mexico. And are now living here. Thanks for watching this
video guys! If you liked it, please give it a thumbs up! And if you think someone
might appreciate this perspective and our experiences, share it with a friend!
Or, if you're trying to convince someone to travel to or move to Mexico, share
this video with them! Please subscribe to our channel if you haven't already and
one more thing. GONG THAT BELL so you Get notified the next time we put out a
new video and we'll see you in the next one!
