Yes, it is our house now!

The wire transfers came through, the signatures are done, the notario is paid, and the house is ours!

After so much buildup is was incredibly easy. Happy faces and handshakes all around.

I went to dinner with the former owner of our house (wow that was fun to type) last night and it was great to finally relax and get to know each other now that it is over! He is getting going on his next renovation project, and has promised to take me there before I leave Mazatan this time.

A couple of notable experiences:

I bought a cell phone from a woman who had basically no English. I bought the Amigo kit from Telcel. It is a cheap phone that you use phone cards with….but should be fine for us for the time being. But the notable thing here is that it was a challenging transaction for me and my Spanish but I did it! And it was fun!

Paul and I had a video chat last night. We both have webcams on our computers, and when the vonage phone here was acting up we just went to the computers. It was great! The picture is very good, and I even got to see the dogs! The only problem is I even missed him more afterwards. We will really try to get people in the US to use this if possible – it was fun, free, and much nicer than talking on a phone.

I have known that a challenge for me – not just with regard to our move to Mexico, but in general – is to be a bit less intense about transactions.

This would be things like – when people don’t call or come when they said they would – or people saying they would do things and then not doing them. I can get pretty cranky sometimes, and especially get frustrated when I had multiple assurances that there would be no problem.

Yesterday was my travel day – and also the day the wire transfers for our house were to be initiated. I had met with our banker twice in the past two weeks to pave the way for everything to go smoothly. I had gone into the bank and been assured that the wire transfers were prepared correctly and were timed to send Monday morning.

So why should I be surprised that everything didn’t go smoothly? It was my fault I didn’t leave Paul with copies of everything, which complicated things for him….and when I got to Mazatlan I spent two hours back and forth with the bank, the Seller and Paul. It finally got straightened out, at 6 pm.

The problem was the wire to the Casa de Cambio in Mazatlan. The wire goes through an intermediary bank in New York and then to the Casa de Cambio. Casa de Cambio uses names, not account numbers to sort out their wires, and Wells Fargo requires an account number on their form. Kind of an impasse there! Until finally the Seller’s banker (also Wells Fargo) talked to our banker and ta da! The problem was solved.

Thank goodness our B & B has a vonage phone so I could get this all ironed out. But I am ashamed to say I was very frustrated by all this yesterday and need to really work on my response to challenges like this in the future.