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Greetings From Mexico

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Afternoon Scene in the Zocalo
Author: Ty Trumbull
Author: Ty Trumbull

The heat hasn’t quite hit yet. Neither has the pollution. The noise from the road outside is beginning to grow as the morning commute gets underway. I’m sitting on my couch as I type this, computer in my lap and coffee at my side. The Mexican street dog we adopted chases the cat we brought from Canada around the apartment.

My girlfriend and I moved to Mexico a little over a year and a half ago. Along with the cat, Strummer. People ask us all the time, “Why Mexico?”

To be honest, we can never give a satisfactory answer.

In Toronto, I was a business reporter and editor in the largest radio newsroom in the country, 680News. I spent vacations and holidays touring Canada in various folk and punk bands. But while Canada in the summer is beautiful, the winters can be harsh. We started to think we could make a go of it in a warmer climate and experience a new culture at the same time.

We began to look for possible places to live, spinning a globe and dropping our fingers. We contemplated Spain and Ghana, among others. But I had always said wherever we went, the cat had to come with us. (After all, she had been born in my guitar case on my birthday and we had grown very attached.) So, with that caveat in place, we began looking closer to home.

Let's Go South

After that realization, Mexico seemed like an obvious choice. My girlfriend had been there once before and loved it. I had only ever been to Canada and the U.S., but I liked spicy food. It seemed like a perfect fit.

So after a few months of planning, we quit our respective jobs, moved most of our belongings into storage, gave the cat a heavy sedative and boarded a plane for Mexico City. We arrived with zero Spanish, no friends, and not much of a plan. But somehow we made it work.

Through our Airbnb, we made great friends that eventually helped us find an apartment. A large and cheap place on a very busy stretch of a four-lane, one-way road. As I type, the noise of the honking horns and engines along Avenida Revolucion grows louder.

Through a wonderful and fun open mic night at a local bar I met some local musicians. From there, I started a band, making me one of the only professional banjo players in Mexico City.

Still, there was something missing. In the beginning, I taught English classes to make rent. But the writing bug is hard to shake.

My Journey and Your Journey: The Intersection

The urge to get back to writing and journalism continued to grow in me. I began scouring the internet for potential work and found a posting from ChannelE2E. I reached out and thankfully Joe and Amy (ChannelE2E's co-founders) responded. They offered me an opportunity to cover the stories of founders and CEOs. At the same time, I would be able to build my knowledge of the tech industry and data protection.

I’m grateful for the opportunity because I’m fascinated by the journeys people take. Speaking with passionate people, founders and business leaders can provide great insight. And learning how people got to where they are is one of the great joys in life. These are the stories I look forward to sharing with ChannelE2E readers.

In the time we’ve been here, we’ve fallen in love with this country. There’s a local park where we like to take walks and on the weekends they have pets for adoption. One day my girlfriend met a dog there named Toby and fell in love. She suggested I go meet him and sure enough, the little guy won me over. So we decided to adopt him.

We’ve come to love this country and everything it has to offer. We came here with zero plans and zero prospects. Now I sit in my home office writing away with my new dog at my feet. My Canadian cat is trying to walk across my keyboard. And I still don’t have a good answer about why we moved to Mexico, but it’s a pretty good story.