Livin' La Vida Lopez

Title: La Vida Lopez
Type of website: Personal blog of young American woman's 6 months in Michoacan, Mexico
Excellent source of...: A true-life experience of what Mexico looks and feels like to an American, as well as what it feels like to be a woman in love with an illegal Mexican.


I have to say: I love this blog. I don't know this woman, but in reading her blog I have been privileged to peek into her life, which interests me because she too has been living in Mexico. And while I may not agree with all her ideas and opinions, I love the way she expresses herself. The blog is fresh, raw and honest.

The blog is an account of the six months that Emily and Sergio, her Mexican immigrant husband spend in his hometown of Morelia, Michoacan while they wait for the United States to grant him a visa to return legally. She is pregnant with their child and going back to Mexico to live in the same house with his mother, father and siblings whom she has never met. Apparently, it isn't enough to marry an American anymore to become legal in the US. After you get married, you have to return to Mexico and wait for your new legal status to be approved. So this is what they are doing. The blog begins with their packing up to go. It ends (so far) with a photo of her getting off the plane back in the States. It's a great story.

In the course of reading the story, I got to discover and explore Mexico through her eyes, as well as the eyes of her husband, returning to Mexico after immigrating to the States years earlier. My favorite post was photo essay of a day spent at her new family home, with photos of the brick wall and the scorpion they found in the kitchen, among other things. But it's all good, from the bus trips being entertained by the local boracho to the cooking lessons with her mother in law.

Emily seems like a typical American girl of Swedish descent who happened to fall in love with a Mexican boy. This circumstance takes her to a part of the world where she would never have found herself otherwise, as it has so many women (and men) in the past. And by reading her blog, we get to vicariously make the journey with her.

(Editors Note: This much-loved blog (at least I loved it...) seems to have disappeared after the writer had her baby. Not much of a surprise, actually, but if you find that it has relocated somewhere, please let me know!)