Raine and I worked full-time for a combined 76 years at an East Coast pace (if you're not a resident of the Right Coast, that's the pace Joe Jackson used in his song "Got The Time.")
As we soon discovered, that's around 200 Mexican years.
Things happen slowly here. At first, it drove us nuts-- we'd head down to the Avenida Alvaro Obregon for lunch at one and find nothing was open, even though all the signs said 'open at 1.' What we didn't understand was that almost all schedules here are approximate-- none of the natives sweat it if their favorite cafe opens fifteen minutes late, and besides, no one eats that early anyway. As a couple who always had breakfast at 7, lunch at noon and dinner at 5, we had some *major* mental adjusting to do.
For the past few days we followed the following routine, and that seems to work much better:
1. Get up when we feel like it.
2. Make bi-weekly runs for breakfast stuff and eat it in the apartment (there are truly excellent bakeries nearby, so that works great.)
3. Go out for lunch around two. That's our big meal of the day.
4. Snack in the apartment (cheese, bread, fruit, wine) for dinner.
5. Go to bed when we feel like it.
It sounds stupid, but it took a whole week for it to sink in that we were retired now and *didn't have to be anywhere or do anything* and that we didn't have to schedule for anyone but us. Now we feel more in sync with the local pace and, not surprisingly, are still getting everything we want to done. Plenty of hours in the day, and plenty of days left. No rush.
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