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Back in August Victor informed me that he had a life story to tell. We set about recording this story; and due to the ups and downs, followed by general exhaustion, we took a break. Not wanting to rush Victor, I prompted him to return to the telling of his story at intervals of about a week or so. It wasn’t long, as you might imagine, before Victor’s life filled with many other interests and the story remained trapped. We (read I) hope that one day we will return and add to this but who knows?
What follows is Victor’s life story – part I, for the most part, in his own words. At his request, I have done minor editing removing a fair number of “ands” – he told me there were too many.
Starting at four or five
When I four or five or something. I liked transformers a lot and I liked making my own made up monster pictures. So one time in Mexico I had some friends that were called Toño and Carmelli and we all went to an art class in our neighbourhood. There was a thing they were going on about in the art class, and they called it Huggy Wuggy!
I didn’t know what that was.
A few months later I returned to Canada.
My family tried lots of different schools for me. When they finally found one, I got a friend called Nash.
One day I was trying to learn about Piggy (from Roblox) that I thought I saw on one of my channels. My dad and I tried to find different videos about it on his phone but we didn’t find any. So then on our Roku TV my mom and I tried to find videos about Piggy and we found lots. I watched one of the videos but then when I tried to go out of the video it sent me to a YouTube channel that I didn’t know about. What I found was Five Nights at Freddy’s and other stuff. For those of you who don’t know, Five Nights at Freddy’s is a video game. I started watching it a lot on a YouTube Channel called “ThinkNoodles“.
One day when I was going to watch ThinkNoodles I found out that the background for the channel changed. It was weird for me. One day I put more YouTube Channels on my TV.
Then we went back to Mexico (we were going between Canada and Mexico a lot). On one of our trips to the beach, when we were staying in one of the hotels, I started liking YouTube a lot. Then when we came back to our house in Mexico my mom helped me put YouTube on our TV. Then we started watching Lilo and Stitch. When the show was done, I started watching the Five Night at Freddy’s videos in Mexico as well. If you haven’t guessed, I like Five Night at Freddy’s a looooooooot!
And so we have come to the end of installment one. Installment two may come one day and then again, it may not. Meanwhile I will leave Victor’s story to him and update you with the family story.
Going back to September
In September, just like in Canada, the Mexican school year starts. Our challenge, like in Canada, was to have Victor embrace returning to school with less angst than we experienced back in March when we moved to Mexico.
Back in March, the start of each school day was filled with drama – mainly Victor not wanting to go to school. He had left all his friends back in Canada, and at his new school he had but one friend. This friend he had met back in the summer of 2023. One of the main reasons this school was chosen was because this friend attended classes there. The two of them quickly became inseparable.
Victor faced the added challenge of fitting into an established group dynamic. His classmates, six in number, had been together from September to March and the relationships had been established. He was definitely the new kid on the block. It’s very safe to say that he struggled; that he was not comfortable and that he needed, in various ways, to let the rest of us know. Meanwhile, the children in his class attempted to make him feel welcome. He had great difficulty accepting them; allowing himself to be accepted by them.
With everyone’s patience, we managed to finish the school year which was capped with a spectacular dance performance (Did I mention it was a dance school?) from all the students. And I do not say this as a doting parent. In fact, we had expected to attend the performance, admire how cute the children were; gush over our own kid and be thankful that the show had finally ended. Instead we sat mesmerized for two and half hours. As a result of the show, we were committed to having Victor attend the school in September.
It occurred to me that Victor needed to see, and be seen, by each classmate, separately. He needed an opportunity to socialize outside the dynamics of the class. He needed to develop individual relationships. We also needed to find a way of fitting into the school community. So with these goals in mind, we started to invite one family at a time to our house for comida (midday meal). The invitations started close to the end of the school year and continued through the summer. By the time September rolled along, Victor had more than one “friend” at the school. He was no longer the outsider. He started to look forward to going to school to be with his friends.
Sometime in the fall, Pokémon cards were introduced into the culture of the school, and all the children started selling and trading cards. Victor appears to have become the king of Pokémon cards and his friendships have grown and solidified. There is no longer angst when we go to school.
Meanwhile, back in the adult world
While not being involved in getting Victor to and from school, along with other domestic duties, Lucia and I have spent the last three months waiting to complete the purchase of a wonderful piece of land between Coatepec and Xalapa. We’re always attempting to have the best of all worlds. Agreeing with the Liberals here, the NDP there and the Conservatives over there. In Mexico we only seem to have Morena (Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional) with their leader, a Jew, in a predominately Catholic country, voicing opposition to the Israeli genocide. Why Mexico? people have asked. I digress.
As I may have mentioned in a previous post, we put a 50% deposit on the land back in May when the peso was trading at 12 pesos per dollar. The balance was due on November 30. During the next six months, as the peso went down, we began transferring money from Canada to Mexico. In addition to the increasingly favourable exchange rates, we were also able to take advantage of the higher interest rates. While Canadian banks offered three to four percent, Mexican banks were offering seven to fourteen percent. Like magic, we were able to increase our limited resources by about 20% in six months.
We had decided that we wanted both our names on the deed, but to do that, we needed confirmation from the government that we (I) was not buying land that fell under national protection. So while we accumulated the money to finish paying for the land, Lucia researched, and then set in motion the steps needed to for me to own land in Mexico.
Mexico has a bureaucracy that I am sure would give many bureaucracies a run for their money so to speak. Lots of paper work, and identifications etc. Our ace in the hole was Lucia. She understands how it works; what they want, and more often than not, we only need one trip before we walk out of government office with what we need. We also hired a woman, who had just finished obtaining permission for another Canadian to buy land in the same project that we were buying land in. She managed the process while Lucia and I provided her with the various documents. Two months after starting the process and a week or so before the November 30th deadline, we had permission for me to own land in Mexico. Goodness knows why I want to own land anywhere at this stage in my life, but I do.
What to build?
While we were preparing to take ownership of the land, we started to interview architects. There seems to be a formula that they all follow including what they charge. It almost feels like a case of collusion, anti-trust, or whatever one might call it. We also discovered that they all went to the same architectural school together. Rumour has it that that’s not the only thing they all did together, but I digress again. In the end, we started conversations with three architects and one engineer.
They all quoted between 17,000 and 29,000 pesos ($1,500-$2000 CAN) for what is called a “propuesta arquitectónica”. An propuesta arquitectónica is an initial design of a house based on discussions with the client. It includes a breakdown of the cost and a high level overview of the project. Given the modest cost for this phase, we are considering having more than one architect participate at this level.
The first architect we met with, just finished building a house for a friend. We were very excited at her use of space, and approach to building. She manages the building of the house, but leaves all the buying of the material to the client. This seemed to have saved our friends a small fortune. I was very interested in her approach, primarily around the cost savings. While Lucia loved the use of space, she was doubtful about us doing the buying of building materials. Turns out the Architect is currently unavailable, having come down with a case of Dengue. An ailment described to me by Lucia’s cousin as, “compared to Dengue, COVID is a walk in the park”.
We have ended up starting out by engaging the last architects we interviewed to be the first to provide us with a “propuesta arquitectónica”. They are a lovely team that are just starting up a company. Their approach, full of flexibility, is really appealing to us. We will go through the first stage with them before deciding if we want another architect to present their “propuesta arquitectónica”.
I can also share . . .
I’ve just finished reading “Animal Farm” to Victor and tried to read “Tom Sawyer” which did not go so well.
I am reading or rereading, my memory is shot, “1984”. What a world we live in.
It sounds as if everything is going just about perfectly. I’m so glad to hear that.
I hope you and victor can find the time to update your journey. I will be looking forward to this continuation.