Many chase a second passport for global mobility. While that plays a role in my application this year, the deeper truth is I feel more at home in Mexico than I do in the US. I grew up in a big midwestern family. Yet, it is in Mexico where I have found love, community, and a culture that feels incredibly familiar. I have built a life I am genuinely excited to wake up to every single day. For me, getting the Mexican passport and becoming a citizen is about officially belonging to the place that became my home years ago.

In Mexico, when you get up to grab something from the kitchen, you ask if anyone wants anything. Walk into a room, say buenos días. 
Walk past someone eating, say provecho. Each one struck me as refreshing when I first got here. Now they're just part of a normal Tuesday. I used to call it Mexican warmth. Turns out it's just manners.

As a kid visiting Mexico, the peso was worth about 10 to the dollar. During COVID, it spiked past 25, the weakest it's ever been. Now it's settled around 18. I've watched that number rise and fall, a byproduct of being an immigrant. Not once did it make me think about leaving. This is home. I'm just along for the ride.

Squirrels in Mexico City are on another level

The day after Thanksgiving in the US, you'll hear, "who wants leftovers?" and you eat them meal after meal, sometimes for days, until they're gone (or you're sick of them). The day after Nochebuena in Mexico, that activity has a name: Recalentado. Everyone comes back to eat what's left and just be in each other's company. It's a word for that closeness, not just the meal.

My friend makes a salsa that's incredible. Every time I have it, I tell him he has to send me the recipe. He never does. I bring it up again and he says the same thing: "We have to make it together. I'll show you." Recipes that used to be written down have turned into estimates and habits. Un poco de cebolla, unos chiles, pon todo sobre el fuego hasta que estén... Estén qué? Estén listos. Nothing is measured or exact. The best recipes come with the experience of learning them.

I was in an Uber at a red light. Half a second after it turned green, the car behind us honked. My first thought, in Spanish: "Ush, qué exigente." "Ugh, so demanding." In that moment, I sat there trying to find the English word for exigente and I drew a blank. I understood the word completely, knew exactly how to use it, just couldn't pass the meaning over to the English side of my brain. Funny how fully knowing a word in one language doesn't mean you can find it in the other.

Only in Mexico is there a vending machine of gomitas enchiladas

Claudia Sheinbaum isn't pretending fashion is apolitical. She's leaning all the way in. For this year's Grito, she wore a black two-piece hand-embroidered in Juchitán, Oaxaca, with flower designs she picked herself. The embroiderers are muxe, a third gender recognized in Zapotec culture for generations. People love to say fashion isn't political, then analyze Jackie Kennedy's hats, Michelle Obama's cardigans, Hillary Clinton's pantsuits, and AOC's Met Gala dress. Sheinbaum knows exactly what she's doing. She's pointing the cameras at indigenous art made by muxe hands.

I played volleyball for the first time in a while yesterday, with a completely new team. I only knew one person there. I'd been holding back my hits a little, still getting my bearings, and we were playing against a group of girls that looked like they were still in high school. My teammates called me out on it mid-game. Next opportunity I got, I hit it as hard as I could, straight down. The whole team lost it. Turns out you don't need a shared language for that kind of celebration. Just a shared goal: to win.

Mexico gets a lot of grief for power lines running overhead. I don't mind them, every photo ends up with a little extra character.

A man walked down my block yesterday playing Bésame Mucho on a trumpet. You'd assume a song that is this heartfelt came from a real kiss, real heartbreak, or something deeply lived. Consuelo Velázquez wrote it at 16, before she'd ever been kissed at all. Every bit of longing in the song came from pure imagination. Almost a century later in Mexico City, that same feeling was carried in on a breeze.

I told a family member I'd moved. Their first question: "Back to the US?" No. About five blocks from where I was living. Still not "home," apparently, no matter how many years I live here. I see the same instinct online. People say they're happy somewhere else, and the reply is always some version of "sure, but they'll move back eventually." Maybe home was never supposed to be the country you happened to be born in. Maybe it's wherever makes you want to be alive.

Stayed at a house in Valle de Bravo this weekend. So peaceful I actually slowed down. The owner has adopted seven dogs in the ten years she's lived there. She says she has to stop because seven is too many. I don't believe her for a second. People who adopt that many dogs don't have a limit. Just a heart with room for one more.

I think my parents might move to Mexico. They've lived in the Chicago area my whole life and nearly every year, they talk about leaving. One of their biggest complaints is that people aren't friendly. I told them to just move to Mexico already. They like it here, have residency, and people actually say hi to each other on the street. We might have two new inductees to the club pretty soon.

A little break from the city

At a Yucatecan restaurant, someone at my table asked for limes. The owner brought them, then turned to me, the obvious gringa, and explained in English why lime doesn't belong on cochinita pibil. Every chilango does it anyway, she said, like that settled it. It got me thinking. Is it called queso Oaxaca or quesillo? Does a quesadilla inherently have cheese? Does a michelada always have Clamato? Depends on where in Mexico you are and who you ask, but everyone's sure they're right.

Every household here seems to have a favorite plumber. Ours does plumbing, obviously, but he's also hung curtains, patched walls, painted rooms, and fixed things that had nothing to do with pipes. If he can't do it himself, he knows someone who can. I've never experienced a network like it until moving to Mexico. One guy who somehow doubles as your entire contacts list for anything that breaks.

I'm in limbo waiting on my citizenship test appointment. I need one document from a specific government office, and their system has been down for months. Every time I go in person, they tell me they'll email it, but every time I email to follow up, it bounces back because their email is down too. The one way they keep promising to reach me doesn't work. Daily review of my study materials until further notice it is. Mexico mágico.

I ordered a custom coffee table from a small furniture maker online years ago. Last week, the same owner delivered our second piece. I pointed out the first table, the one from back when he was just starting out. He remembered it, and it's held up beautifully all these years. Since then: a new name, two new locations, a full team. Maintaining quality through that kind of growth isn't easy, but they pulled it off. A piece of his business has been part of my life for years. Being a repeat customer, it turns out, can feel a lot like catching up with an old friend.

One of the most beautiful concerts I’ve ever seen