Check out how massive the house we’re renting in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico is
It is so big that when we arrived, we were warned that there was an entire West Wing that we were not to enter under any circumstances.
Mark
My husband, Michael, and I are renting a house in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. It is so big that when we arrived, we were warned that there was an entire West Wing that we were not to enter under any circumstances.
Also, the servants have all been transformed into furniture, and our host is a hideous beast.
Okay, maybe this place isn’t quite as big as the castle from Beauty and the Beast, although I wouldn’t be entirely shocked if there’s an enchanted rose tucked away in some room we have yet to explore.
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It’s a three-story house with a massive living room, five bathrooms, four fireplaces, two bedrooms, and both a casita and a den. And there’s a courtyard and a rooftop garden — both with outdoor BBQs — and two massive water features.
Oh, and the house has three balconies off the various rooms — although I didn’t even know about one of the balconies until we’d been living here a whole week.
In other words, we really can’t rule out that enchanted rose.
Incidentally, that massive living room? It’s so big that it needs to have little mini-coffee tables on which to set your drinks because the actual coffee table is too far from the couches to do any good:
Michael and I have traveled the world as nomads these past eight years. We’ve usually stayed in one—or two-bedroom apartments and sometimes hotel rooms, and we’ve both occasionally lamented our lack of personal space.
But if either of us lamented anything now, the other probably wouldn’t hear it, because we’d most likely be out of earshot.
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To be clear, this is a very nice house, and we’re really enjoying living here.
Problem is, every time I come down the grand stairway to the ground floor, I’m reminded of that massive Beverly Hills mansion in the 
Another problem with living in a house this big is that whenever you need something — your Kindle, a cup of tea, the tube of athlete’s foot cream — it’s always on the exact opposite side of the house.
The good news is, we’re getting in our “steps.” The bad news is that we’re wearing out our shoes.
On one hand, we’re new to San Miguel de Allende, and we still don’t know that many people, so we haven’t had a dinner party yet.
On the other hand, if we ever do hold a dinner party, we have room to invite the entire student body from Hogwarts — all seven years.
How are Michael and I able to afford such a big house? It’s partly because it’s Mexico, which is much more affordable than America. Still, it’s mostly because we know the owners, who rent their place to friends at a very reasonable rate, to keep it occupied when they travel.
Unfortunately, if the owners see this, they will no doubt never extend this offer to us again, not after reading me mock the size of their beautiful home.
(In fairness to them, they use such a big house to host family and friends — and former-friends like us.)
I was joking before saying the staff had all been transformed into furniture, but the house has three staff members. We have thrice-weekly housekeeping, twice-weekly gardening, and a house manager overseeing everything and handling anything that goes wrong.
I’d joke about this, too, except it’s a little disturbing how easy it is to get used to having other people pick up after you. You tell yourself, “I should really keep things as neat as possible for the housekeeper.”
But two weeks in, I’m already thinking, “Oh, well, if she’s just going to remake the bed anyway…”
This is the part of the essay where I stop making jokes and get serious for a moment. You can’t live in a house this big and beautiful in a country like Mexico without thinking about income disparity and the general unfairness of the world.
The house is in a fairly diverse neighborhood with both expats and Mexicans — some rich, some middle class, and some poor.
There’s a shop down the street that sells roasted chickens and potatoes with a small salad for seven dollars USD, and a woman across the street who sets up a little box on the sidewalk at night to sell these little plastic containers of Jello and flan for fifty cents each.
Michael and I have been regularly buying both the chickens and the flan, although I confess that I haven’t been eating the flan, because I’m not sure the woman is using purified water, which is a serious issue here.
I know people online have a lot to say about relatively wealthy Americans living in poorer countries, most of it critical and some of it fairly
And I agree that most of us should be more upset than we are about poverty and the incredibly unfair distribution of the world’s resources.
But having lived in some of these poorer countries for many years now — and having had approximately six zillion conversations with locals and expats — I think these issues are way more complicated than most online critics seem to know.
If you want to sell everything you have and devote your life to the poor, I applaud you.
But short of that, I don’t think it’s such a terrible thing, Michael and I temporarily employing a whole staff of local workers and dropping money all over a grateful town that we’d otherwise be spending back in America.
All this said, I’m still not eating the flan.
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