Emily Cruz? Present!

I cant believe its been over a month since I've checked in with all of you! My trusty old  Dell finally kicked the bucket and I wasn't able to buy a new computer until now. I'm going to miss that computer. She and I shared a lot of tears and laughter and about 428 glasses of wine, but it was time to move on. I switched to an HP which just arrived on Friday and so far, I love it, Windows 8 and all.

We moved into this house a year ago, and if you remember, I was ecstatic. The rent was almost double what we were paying but I fell in love with this house and was prepared to do anything I could to make it work. We lowered the minutes on our cell phone plan, cancelled the cable and got rid of my mailbox in El Paso so that we could afford the extra cost. Once we got settled in we started looking into different internet companies because that is one luxury I refuse to live without. We looked into Axtel and (begrudgingly) Telmex and were appalled to see that we would be paying as much for just internet as we would for internet AND cable with our old provider, Cablemas. In the end it didn't matter. Whoever was living in this house before us left a hefty tab with all 3 of those providers.

In Mexico, bills stay with the property, not with the tenants. If the former tenant racked up a huge electric bill then the next tenant (or landlord) has to pay that debt before you can get the electricity turned back on. Yup. The concept blows my mind but it's the norm here. And so, despite various trips to Cablemas and arguing on my part, we have been without internet for the last year. Basically I had been relying on open networks that my laptop would pick up so obviously it was hit or miss. Sometimes a week would pass without connection. It was annoying to say the least. Sometime over the summer I made another desperate visit to the Cablemas office where I demanded to speak to the supervisor's supervisor. After a lengthy debate she agreed that we could resume services when a year had passed since they cut off the previous tenants' services.

Of course when we went into the office last weekend we were told that we must have misunderstood and that we would still need to pay 9,000+ pesos to set everything up. Of course I asked to speak with the supervisor and thankfully she remembered me and the agreement. Should have gotten that in writing, huh? Really, that wasn't the only thing I should have gotten in writing. This whole thing wouldn't have happened if we had a notarized rental agreement in the first place. Cablemas, and presumably other companies, accept a notarized agreement as proof of your move-in date. I guess this is another one of those "Mexico lessons" for me. Now I'm just happy to put it behind me and enjoy all the Netflix and Nat Geo that my little heart desires.

We've had so much going on in the last month that I'm sure it's going to take me a bit to catch up with you all. There are huge changes on the horizon for immigration reform that I'd like to talk about and Gordo started school! Both obviously warrant their own posts. Unfortunately I have caught a pretty nasty cold so I will have to play catch up later. I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!