Mexico is the 6th country I’ve lived in (after the US, New Zealand, Kazakhstan, China, and Ukraine).
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If I could sum up the experience in one word it would be interesting. Living in a different country is interesting. Everything is interesting. Going to the store to buy a Snickers is an adventure. The plants and trees here are different from the plants in the US, so I pay more attention to them. I was in a park the other day and the squirrels look different. Everything here is something I haven’t seen before, and that’s a very refreshing situation to be in.
But living in another country is hard, especially if you don’t speak the language. (I don’t speak Spanish but am learning.) The downside to “Everything is an adventure” is that everything is, well, an adventure. I’d like to go to a restaurant and understand fully what it is that I’m ordering. I’d like to figure out why on Earth the taxi driver took me to the Cuatro Caminos metro station when I clearly said (and I know he understood me when I said) the Auditorio metro station. (Was he going to Cuatro Caminos anyway? Did he want to get a higher fare out of me?)
Yes, everything is more interesting, but everything is also more difficult. Everything requires more effort, but everything is also more meaningful.
Instead of just flipping through the pages of your life, you have to/get to sit down and sound out every single word.