My daughter recently posted two pictures on Facebook from our weekend trip to the colonial era town of Guanajuato. The first one was of her holding her smiling three-year-old on top of a mountain lookout. The second one was of her husband walking away from the lookout carrying the screaming and kicking one-year-old in a football hold.  

She entitled them, ”The Photo Op and the Reality.”

There are indeed a lot of photo ops in Mexico. From colorful murals to plates of tempting tacos, we’ve taken advantage of a good portion of them. But just as those photo ops aren’t necessarily the reality of our vacation weekends, they also aren’t the reality of our life in Mexico.

When people from home ask me what it’s like to live in Mexico, I often find myself at a loss for words.  Not because life isn’t good here, but because the expectation is almost always that life is somehow incredibly different.

And the reality is that it’s not. The weather’s better, the language is challenging, and we have new backgrounds for our pictures, but on a daily basis the people we meet and the things we do aren’t all that dissimilar from back home.

There was a learning curve when I moved from Champaign, Illinois, to Washington, D.C., and there’s a learning curve here. One that’s steeped in a history that I’m just beginning to understand and appreciate, but one that has cultured a population with wants, hopes, and values that feels both familiar and comfortable. 

We were at a local parade and celebration a few months ago when my daughter looked around at the throngs of people and remarked that we were the only gringos she had seen. She might have been right, but I don’t know. I hadn’t noticed.

My reality says that’s a good thing.